It's about time Shield oath and Grit become Abilities instead of Spells. (off-GCD)

[Chrono_Rising]

People don't flip tank stance (often) an instant before a tank buster, but if you make Pld/Drk stances OGCD and (lower or free MP cost) then people WOULD change stance the second before a tank buster. That's my point about 1 size doesn't fit all because the mitigation is immediate while it isn't on war. Tankbuster coming: Pld/Drk- OGCD TBN/Shell+Stance GCD. War Stance OGCD>IB GCD. If the mitigation aspect also becomes OGCD, we will instantly have an abusable system flashing tank stances.

Historic points aside, my recollection matches yours except I think warrior use to have an even higher penalty at one point, I agree, outside of prog, tank stance for mitigation isn’t an often relied on strategy anyway, but I think this points more so to making it oGCD since what it is used for is picking things up when your cotank dies, or just adds that spawn. Grit costing 1 dark arts is enough for me to try and not use it as mitigation at all, Shield Oath and Sword Oath costing a total of 1 requiscats is enough to make me try to avoid using shield oath as mitigation. The GCD cost is just even more deterrent which is unnecessary since the mp cost was enough to make me go “woo lets not get crazy, tank stance?”. I’m not even going to mention the third deterrent, this much negative for an extra rampart and my assumption is devs don’t want me to use this skill.

Yes, changing from Deliverance>Defiance>Deliverance costs no HP. But I don't see the relevancy of that point because being the OT and doing Del>Def>Del wouldn't gain you anything because defiance alone doesn't actually defend you. The fact that it costs Pld/Drk resources to do the same doesn't matter if you aren't using the tank stance for anything. The only time you would use stance is to benefit from it and so to look at the cost vs benefit, you have to look at the benefits+cost, not just cost in a vacuum like HP doesn't change. It has to have other actions to have any defensive effect at all. If your HP doesn't move, you also don't get any benefit from the extra HP and cure potency. Defiance is useless as a defensive tool if you don't pile on additional actions to leverage the effect which means taking damage then healing, while pld/drk immediately get the benefit. Benefits now are more valuable than benefits later.

I know I’m addressing things out of order, but now that we agree that popping into tank stance to mitigate and then switch off is an uncommon practice I would like to point out the major benefit here we aren’t mentioning.

Switching deliverance defiance deliverance does NOT lower your HP, this has a major implication, you can erase a higher % of an attack than paladin and dark knight if you play your cards right because your mitigation is based on your max hp, not DM on the attack itself. And heres the kicker, its not hard to do it just means you might need to talk to your healers.

Since the common practice is to go dps stance, tank stance, dps stance lets take a look at the whole sequence:
My tank has 66k HP. Lets take a tank buster for 50k

On paladin and dark knight I will mitigate that by 20%, leaving me with 26k hp, I drop my tank stance, lowering my defense, and have 26k hp out of 66k max.

On warrior, I am going to need to give up an equilibrium to heal myself (or plan with my healers to heal me to max hp beforehand but one has to wonder what else we are using equilibirum on). Prebuster my HP should be at 82.5k, I take the buster reducing me to 32.5k hp, I drop tank stance, and have 32.5 hp out of 66k max.

In the warrior sequence you mitigated 16.5k damage by cycling in tank stance and working with healers, for dark knight and paladin you mitigated 10k.
You can check the numbers for a variety of tank buster damage, but provided the damage is not above your max HP, Warrior actually has higher survivability by manipulating their tank stance and using their defiance hp as a shield. Again, maybe it doesn’t have an immediate benefit and needs some planning, but like the rest of the warrior kit, if you work it right your weakness becomes a strength.

Here is the math showing to mitigate an equal amount on paladin and dark knight how much damage you need to get hit for to match the warrior max HP strategy:
starting from the relationship: Direct mitigation*Damage = HP Shield strength
we can rearrange the equation to give: damage taken = HP Shield strength/direct mitigation = .25*HP/.2 = 1.25*HP = warrior tank stance.

To show the range where the HP Shield is more effective than damage mitigation solve the inequality:
Direct Mitigation*Damage < HP shield
Solving: Damage < HP shield/direct mitigation = .25*HP/.2 = 1.25*HP = warrior tank stance.



As tank buster damage increases towards max HP of the warrior in defiance (the 25% bonus), the two styles of mitigation are mitigating more and more of the same. There is a tipping point, above your max HP (in tank stance) warrior's mitigate less and paladin and dark knight begin mitigating more, in this range we begin pairing other mitigation anyway to try and get the mitigated damage down below our max hp anyway. And of course, that is a moving target as well, you also have thrill of battle which further increases your base max HP and allows for more HP shielding (up to 50% of deliverance HP when paired with tank stance), but I don't want to make this post any more complicated than it is already. The point is, this idea of no "immediate benefit" means others must pay a huge price while warrior gets numerous beneficial abilities to counter its tank stance "weakness" is very dated.

[Aana]

Snip.

Yes, the HP vs mitigation thing entirely depends on how hard you are getting hit. Same with any shield really, and Shield+Mitigation will always combine more efficiently, (IB+Defiance, TBN+Grit) and why shelltron has stronger mitigation as pld lacks HP synergy. But (imo) the reason why war has so much 'ease' sliding in and out of tank stance is because their cornerstone mitigation is locked behind defiance and a GCD itself. Think of it this way: War/Pld have access to their primary mitigation all the time, but additional mitigation in tank stance is hard to access. War have easy access to tank stance but hard to access primary mitigation.

War is MUCH easier to use tank stance on, but that is because IB is very hard to access so they smooth out tank stance and reduce penalties (unchained, OGCD, etc). As long as IB is a GCD and behind defiance and TBN/Shell is OGCD and freely accessable, the tanks will not be able to work in the same way. This is not to say that Pld/War should not ease the costs (I personally would rather they leave them GCDs but reduce/remove MP cost and make sword oath like grit, click it off not another GCD on the backend). But with TBN/SHell on OGCD and stance free, I don't think the stance also needs to be OGCD without even more dramatic changes to all 3 tanks which would end up homogenizing them even more. Though bringing IB out of defiance would allow SE to put war defensive actions on similar timers and remove the 'extra' CD war's have, make tank stances all similar, etc. But that is a question of is homogenization for balance better than awkward balance but distinctive jobs. /shrug. If we are under the assumption that homogenization is 'bad' then I cant get behind making drk/pld tank stance as easy/forgiving as war's because war trades awkward IB for EZ stance and Pld/Drk have EZ TBN/Shell but awkward stances. (Also drk needs a snap enmity move to match scorn/onslaught so that tank stance isn't needed for add grabs just like Pld/War and not rework tank stance around Drk missing a tool. I like Dark passenger for this).

[Chrono_Rising]

Yes, the HP vs mitigation thing entirely depends on how hard you are getting hit. Same with any shield really, and Shield+Mitigation will always combine more efficiently, (IB+Defiance, TBN+Grit) and why shelltron has stronger mitigation as pld lacks HP synergy. But (imo) the reason why war has so much 'ease' sliding in and out of tank stance is because their cornerstone mitigation is locked behind defiance and a GCD itself. Think of it this way: War/Pld have access to their primary mitigation all the time, but additional mitigation in tank stance is hard to access. War have easy access to tank stance but hard to access primary mitigation.

War is MUCH easier to use tank stance on, but that is because IB is very hard to access so they smooth out tank stance and reduce penalties (unchained, OGCD, etc). As long as IB is a GCD and behind defiance and TBN/Shell is OGCD and freely accessable, the tanks will not be able to work in the same way. This is not to say that Pld/War should not ease the costs (I personally would rather they leave them GCDs but reduce/remove MP cost and make sword oath like grit, click it off not another GCD on the backend). But with TBN/SHell on OGCD and stance free, I don't think the stance also needs to be OGCD without even more dramatic changes to all 3 tanks which would end up homogenizing them even more. Though bringing IB out of defiance would allow SE to put war defensive actions on similar timers and remove the 'extra' CD war's have, make tank stances all similar, etc. But that is a question of is homogenization for balance better than awkward balance but distinctive jobs. /shrug. If we are under the assumption that homogenization is 'bad' then I cant get behind making drk/pld tank stance as easy/forgiving as war's because war trades awkward IB for EZ stance and Pld/Drk have EZ TBN/Shell but awkward stances. (Also drk needs a snap enmity move to match scorn/onslaught so that tank stance isn't needed for add grabs just like Pld/War and not rework tank stance around Drk missing a tool. I like Dark passenger for this).

The problem with this kind of thinking is that Warrior gets flexibility in stance to use an undesirable mitigation, and then get mitigation buffs so that they never need to use it.

The dev team is giving warrior their cake and letting them eat it too.

The logic behind warrior's balancing appears to be
(1) Warrior has higher dps because it has to give up mitigation
(2) Warrior mitigation is too low without those skills/buff flexibility with multiple uses and synergies so that warriors can use the defensive skills
(3) Flexibility wasn't enough because warriors refuse to use IB and instead use their skills for other utilities. Buff defensive options and flexibility until mitigation issues go away
(4) Oh no warrior is too strong. See you next expac.

There needs to come a point at which we cannot keep making work-arounds for every draw back in a kit. As it stands warrior currently has the following titles:
(1) DPS tank
(2) Emnity tank
(3) Self healing tank
(4) Flexibility tank

Any one of those would be an amazing title, warrior has all of them. Its enough already, start spreading things out.

[Aana]

The problem with this kind of thinking is that Warrior gets flexibility in stance to use an undesirable mitigation, and then get mitigation buffs so that they never need to use it.

This is why I often say SE painted themselves into a corner with War. The way IB relates to TBN/Shelltron means either (talking about defence/mitigation):
* War is equivalent in defiance to Drk/Pld but weaker in deliverance or
* War is equivalent at in deliverance to Drk/Pld but stronger in defiance
* War is both weaker and stronger but more flexible to 'even it out'.


What we currently have is:
War is slightly weaker in deliverance, significantly stronger in defiance and more flexible to get between them. Savy war's can really take advantage of the flex. Less savy ones don't. At the high end of skill war outperforms when optimized.

Without universal access to a cornerstone mitigation, it will be quite tricky to get them on the same page. We can homogenize everybody, but I'm assuming that's not actually what most people want. In which case were left with the awkwardness of two similar tanks with a completely wonky one that works under a completely different set of rules. But again, I think this problem is far deeper than a tank stance swap can fix or be healthy for.

Its obvious the tank stances need to be revisted. I'd rather we just reduce the resource costs and go from there than just copypasta war's stances on drk/pld. Once you start changing abilities fundamental interactions you are changing the entire class. Tweaking numbers doesn't tend to have unforeseen consequences and meta shaping problems. OGCD stances will dramtically change the way tanks are played which goes beyond a power imbalance. Power can be adjusted with simple number tweaks. Gameplay changes are a whole nother ball of wax.

[Kabooa]

Its obvious the tank stances need to be revisted..

Sounds like its time for another rework that nobody asked for!

To the google doc!