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

[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.