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

[Saeno]

Instead of 1 skill to 1 or 1 skill to 3. Look at how the entire kit works.

The wall to access IB and lack of one for shell/TBN is the reason tank stances are the way they are. Applying the same stance rules to all 3 tanks will not work as long as this remains the case. Tanks aren't designed the same way. Copy pasting one tanks actions and putting it on another does not fix asymmetrically balanced tanks.

You speak of Inner beast+Defiance compared to Sheltron+Shield oath/TBN+Grit and how in this combo, you will use one GCD and one oGCD to help you gain two layers of mitigation. One from your stance, one from the special skill from each of these tanks.

The issue from just these two skills is that PLD and DRK payed a chunk of MP to go into their stance, MP/Gauge for their buff and then payed a GCD as well. With WAR, you payed 50 gauge for that Inner beast but that Inner beast did 350 Potency, self healed you and you still have access to those other skills as mentioned before. That WAR gained mit and tank stance like the other tanks but that WAR also gained lifesteal and DPS while only paying 50 gauge as opposed to the PLD and DRK who payed MP, gauge and a GCD. When you stretch it out to more than just these 2 skills, the WAR still has Unchained and Equilibrium while the DRK has a single Bloodspiller (from the TBN you used) and the PLD has...nothing. Just looking at this interaction, the WAR got a sweet deal while the PLD/DRK got ripped off.

This is where the imbalance comes from and why re-evaluation needs to happen.

[shao32]

snip

inner beast is complety irrelevant due WAR kit is too powerful, unchained/defiance and inner beast are 2 extra buttoms on top of that, if we comparing tanks un actual meta WAR toolkit is the best without counting defiance and innerbeast, the "war is more weaker on deliverance" its tend to be false too bcs on optimal play they use holmgang to mitigate regular TB on every fight vs using living dead and hallowed with are use more as strategic tools due long CDs and cant be used more that 1/2 times in a fight as much vs the 4-5 times you can use holmgang.

so on top of this we have a WAR can use defiance as a free CD due unchained and equilibrium vs clunky and painfully taxed grit/shield, WAR can enjoy the bonus of defiance every 90 seconds, thats a rampart, "but i need healing" argument is poor thanks to equilibrium solve that, compared to clemency how is a dps loss no matter how you look at it its not fair, the only valid point is inner beast with is the only WAR skill that have a cost (fell cleave) but the skill it self is complety outclassed by the rest of the kit with its already equal if not superior in some aspects to DRK/PLD kits.

[whiskeybravo]

The wall to access IB and lack of one for shell/TBN is the reason tank stances are the way they are.

I don't think this is a valid argument really, Defiance and Shield/Sword have operated this way since the beginning. If anything it was the 10-second lockout on Defiance and the lack of any damage ability using MP that kept them fairly balanced before. I don't know though, it's a very divisive topic. On one hand, yea maybe War is eating all the cake. On the other hand, we're only talking about a handful of GCDs at most and a little bit of easily recoverable MP. If the goal is to keep War as the main damage tank then a GCD stance lock is basically equivalent to having a lower potency skill since it creates a sort of artificial gap. The only problem with this is a lower potency ability is much easier to swallow (and less obvious) than missing a couple of GCDs.

"but i need healing" argument is poor thanks to equilibrium solve that, compared to clemency how is a dps loss no matter how you look at it its not fair

I mean, you could make Clemency a 60-sec CD instead of being a spammable spell? Other than that it's hard to compare them. I feel like Clemency was only given to PLD to replace what they had with Stoneskin.

[Saeno]

snip

Most of the things you mentioned I agree with 100% and I would even champion as points for any argument related to tanking, but you mentioned imbalances outside of the tank stance issue. For now, I just want to see how people feel about stances because as strong as WAR's kit is, I think its fine that it's so strong because it is just a PvE game, so if one class is strong, then it only benefits the rest of the team. I don't like how tank stance feels from the other tanks mostly. If that issue can be solved, im sure PLD at least will feel just as powerful as WAR in those flex situations where a tank stance might be needed, and DRK could definitely use that buff.

[Saeno]

I mean, you could make Clemency a 60-sec CD instead of being a spammable spell? Other than that it's hard to compare them. I feel like Clemency was only given to PLD to replace what they had with Stoneskin.

Oh god, an instant 1200 heal that is buffed by Requiescat that doesnt require stance would be absolutely broken on PLD. Clemency is fine as is and should be used for progression rather than something that you use regularly. Also, PLD had access to Stoneskin and Clemency in 3.0. Clemency was just added as utility to the PLD to compete with WAR's Equilibrium.

I personally am a huge fan of Clemency in prog and I dont want my ability to spam that skill to go away.

[whiskeybravo]

PLD and WAR are in good spots right now. It's really just DRK that needs attention, it's really the only one that could greatly benefit from this kind of change. Well, they'd benefit the most from an MP cost reduction. As it stands they already have a lot of dual-weaving so unless other things are fixed, the GCD for Grit activation never bothered me, it's that weird delay for turning it off I never understood. And for PLD an upfront cost to activate either Shield or Sword makes sense (you'd be doing this out of battle anyways) but they should remove the MP cost on changing between them if nothing else. If you're going to take it off the GCD then there needs to be a lockout for switching between like Defiance/Deliverance.

Also, PLD had access to Stoneskin and Clemency in 3.0. Clemency was just added as utility to the PLD to compete with WAR's Equilibrium.

Was it? I thought they had removed it because of the HP bloat concern, % shields were going to be too powerful or something. But it's been a while so my memory is fuzzy (also was drg main during HW)

[Saeno]

Was it? I thought they had removed it because of the HP bloat concern, % shields were going to be too powerful or something. But it's been a while so my memory is fuzzy (also was drg main during HW)

Yes! You had access to CNJ skills as a PLD since that was your cross class. Therefore, you had Protect, Stoneskin, Cure 1 and Raise as choices for your 5 cross-class skills. The cross class system persisted from 2.0-3.5.

[Tint]

Was it? I thought they had removed it because of the HP bloat concern, % shields were going to be too powerful or something. But it's been a while so my memory is fuzzy (also was drg main during HW)

they removed the 18% Graniteskin trait from WHM with that argument, but the 10% regular Stoneskin stayed in place until the 4.0 changes. but with TBNs 20% / 10% shield wich scales from the DRKs HP, up to 24% from shake it off and the 15% shield from divine benison that argument is moot anyway.

[Izsha]

inner beast is complety irrelevant due WAR kit is too powerful, unchained/defiance and inner beast are 2 extra buttoms on top of that, if we comparing tanks un actual meta WAR toolkit is the best without counting defiance and innerbeast, the "war is more weaker on deliverance" its tend to be false too bcs on optimal play they use holmgang to mitigate regular TB on every fight vs using living dead and hallowed with are use more as strategic tools due long CDs and cant be used more that 1/2 times in a fight as much vs the 4-5 times you can use holmgang.

so on top of this we have a WAR can use defiance as a free CD due unchained and equilibrium vs clunky and painfully taxed grit/shield, WAR can enjoy the bonus of defiance every 90 seconds, thats a rampart, "but i need healing" argument is poor thanks to equilibrium solve that, compared to clemency how is a dps loss no matter how you look at it its not fair, the only valid point is inner beast with is the only WAR skill that have a cost (fell cleave) but the skill it self is complety outclassed by the rest of the kit with its already equal if not superior in some aspects to DRK/PLD kits.

Except its the not irrelivant. If you play warrior just like Pld/drk and never enter tank stance for a fight, you are significantly more squishy than pld and yes, even drk. The ever lauded OP war CD suite is not as good as Drk+Pld suite if everyone stays out of tank stance. Deliverance warrior has less to fall back on than either pld or drk and it entirely centers around access to the 'always up' CDs of IB/TBN/Shell because IB isnt up. War has 1 more CD than Drk in deliverance. Its ToB (and reduced timer on vengence). Dark Mind vs Raw Int obviously tilt this based on the predominant damage in a fight, but its still rough asymetric parity leaving just TOB/Timer. As stated above ToB once every 2 min +1 more vengence every 6 min does not somehow beat TBN used whenever you want and we dont even need to talk about pld. Thats a shoe in for toughest offense stance and then some.

So for warrior to be able to play the same "all damage all the time" style that covers the raid scene, you HAVE to dip into defiance and unchained to gain access to that mitigation gap to bridge that gap. The way that tanks are played now requires that.

Now dont get me wrong, im not saying that war is flimsy and crappy. I am saying that when talking about offense all the time playstyle that War needs to temporarily dip into tank stance to match a Pld/Drk that never even enters tank stance. Warrior has had this fluidstance since 2.0 and the job has been entirely constructed around it. Copy pasting this core job facet to other jobs that dont work anything like it problematic. War has been built from the ground up around this mechanic. Pld/Drk have been built around entirely different philosophies. IB is entirely relevant to tank swapping as that is the entire reason War has been built the way it is with the extra CD and easy stance dance. If IB were freely available war would not need those things. To ignore IB is to ignore war's different design.

[Saeno]

IB is entirely relevant to tank swapping as that is the entire reason War has been built the way it is with the extra CD and easy stance dance. If IB were freely available war would not need those things. To ignore IB is to ignore war's different design.

I think Shao32's point was that WAR's mitigation is just as powerful as PLD/DRK's WITHOUT inner beast.