Tank Stance Redesign

[Sylvain]

I would like this kind of rework but would ultimately like one last hung to be added.

An actual difference of game play between the stance.

Paladin somewhat has that with shield swipe (i'd reduce the CD to 5s max). That's one extra thing to do while tanking.

Something similar on the other job would be welcomed. I'm probably not the only one but, tanking has to be more than a dumbed down dps rotation with some ogcd placed to survive a specific attack.

Perhaps a more active Form of mitigation could be introduced via skills interacting with the tank stance to counter stronger AA from boss.

[ArianeEwah]

An actual difference of game play between the stance.

Paladin somewhat has that with shield swipe (i'd reduce the CD to 5s max). That's one extra thing to do while tanking.

Something similar on the other job would be welcomed.

While I agree with your wish to add additional gimmicks for each job, it's hard to archieve. We had this in HW with DRK's parry procs, but they also increased DRK's DPS, so they had to MT. If you are going to lower the CD of Shield Swipe, not only you have to manage your oGCD usage way harder (esp. during Req. Holy Spirit window), but also force PLD into MT position just like DRK in HW. So far, there isn't any encounter in which you can get shield procs every 5 seconds without being MT.

As for more active forms of mitigation... I guess Sheltron counts as such... still feels kinda off because it has a 10s duration.

At least WAR has this kinda gimmick with their tank stance, (Inner Beast) WAR stances in general appear to be best designed right now.

I'll suggest more unique tank stances at the very least, something that might heavily play into the mechanics of the particular job and theme. Paladin and Dark Knight could both have some interesting stuff regarding this.

I tried to achieve that with my suggestions, but at the same time I didn't want to go into extreme. e.g. just increasing block rate for PLD 'cause it's still a random proc mechanic and doesn't affect crit hits. Additionally, it might prove less effective than a flat mitigation if PLD's got an older shield, thus weaker block strength.

Another idea was, (DRK) tank stance could reduce incoming damage by 50% and inflict additional 30% of incoming as DoT on them, but that would increase the burden on healers even further once the DoTs stack up.

Only tangentially related, but I always thought it would be cool if going into Sword Oath put your shield away and swapped out your shield based abilities for more offensive ones.

Do you think of something like WARs Beast Gauge actions which change once you switch stances?

[Sylvain]

While I agree with your wish to add additional gimmicks for each job, it's hard to archieve. We had this in HW with DRK's parry procs, but they also increased DRK's DPS, so they had to MT. If you are going to lower the CD of Shield Swipe, not only you have to manage your oGCD usage way harder (esp. during Req. Holy Spirit window), but also force PLD into MT position just like DRK in HW. So far, there isn't any encounter in which you can get shield procs every 5 seconds without being MT.

As for more active forms of mitigation... I guess Sheltron counts as such... still feels kinda off because it has a 10s duration.

At least WAR has this kinda gimmick with their tank stance, (Inner Beast) WAR stances in general appear to be best designed right now.

Those are very valid concern, I personally believe no tank should be forced to the MT role simply because they play X job. And regarding the weaving issue I for one would like the animation lock entire mechanic to be removed from the game (or the animation lock reduced to something like 0.1s). Too many player don't know about it and beside frustration it doesn't add much to the game.


So regarding the dps, the best thing would be to have both tank pulling out roughly the same dps or at the very least, if the tank stance would be pulling less dmg, it should be marginally less. (Like, unless you're first week racing that shouldn't be regarded as an issue).

I don't think this would be "too" hard to do
Taking the PLD as an example: Sword Oath grants you a very steady amount of potency per minute. Shield Oath grants you a proc on a X.sec cd that you weave in.Balancing one around the other shouldn't be an issue. Worst case scenario we go from "blocking" to "being hit" for Shield Swipe to make it more consistent.

Then, by active form of mitigation yes, we do have Shieltron or The Blackest Night for instance.

But I think more should be done. First, beside for tank burster, Shieltron is usually garbage mitigation and takes way too much time to build in ShO stance. It's also passive generation which means you cannot work your way to build more of it. (which is arguably funny because you'd technically want more gauge when tanking). So part of the "giving gimmick to jobs", this would be something I would adresse.

To take Warrior in WoW as a simple example back then (dunno if they still play this way). Your shield block cost rage, you get rage by smashing, the better and more you smash, the more rage you get, so the more you block. So basically, the more dps you have, the tankier you are. This is a freaking win win situation.

So for instance, let say Shield Swipe would also grant 25 gauge ressource, and that ... I dunno, your goring blade tick also grants gauge. (like 5 per tick) as well as your combo finisher, etc etc. Basically, let say the more you do the more gauge you get. And let's assume for one short instant that boss can actually hit you in a meaningfull way in between TB for substantial damage. (let rework how boss AA works, all attack are crit, parry/block reduces them to none-crit).

Well, the incoming damage on a tank using a lot of shieltron vs one not using many (basically, a tank doing a lot of dps vs one not doing a lot of dps) would be substantial.
But here I think we'd win on both side.
Many tank don't care too much about their tankiness, as long as they survive, and only want to focus on dps (which is usually what's desired), whereas many other tank at first rolled to be... "a tank", like, tough, and to survive and whatnot.

With this kind of design, you achieve the same goal for both player because, the player who solely focus on his dps would still achieve great mitigation whereas the player who wants to be the sturdiest tank that ever was, would need to focus on doing a lot of damage to achieve his goal.

And I think this is an important aspect many people forget. A bit like the healer dps issue, with the "no dps vs full dps camp" on one hand you can't remove the dps aspect of healer without risking to make a significant portion of the healer reroll to dps, on the other hand, doing so would probably make some people actually reroll to healer. This is a very hard situation to solve. But for the tank, at the very least I think both could be achieved.

I know we rarely, if ever, see tank complaining about having to optimise their dps, but from my humble experience, I do know that many tank would like main tanking to be more than simply "dpsing the boss away from the group" with a few ogcd there and there to survive.

[shao32]

You forget holy Spirit generate 20 gauge per cast on ShO