I'd like to see one of the tanks a lot MORE focussed on reactive procs. Reactive procs on being hit are one of the best ways of balancing the DPS output of a tank class, as you can load them up with high damage reactives to keep their DPS up when they're facing a boss, but then this DPS component gets taken away when they're just DPSing the back of a boss waiting to tank-swap in.

I'd like to bring up the design of the Guardian class in Lord of the Rings Online (at least how it was designed when I played it on release). I always felt like it was a very elegantly designed tank class as it solved a big problem with how you can have a tank hold threat when turtling but also do great damage solo without making DPS classes irrelevant. The Guardian was designed to use a Sword and Shield when tanking, and a two handed weapon when soloing. It had a large number of reactive skills that would only light up when you Blocked or Parried an attack.

The thing was, all of the "After a Block" skills were high threat, medium damage abilities that often used the shield to bash the target, whereas "After a Parry" skills were all high damage skills with no bonus threat. The choice was simple. When soloing you'd use a 2h weapon and your personal DPS was increased due to parrying attacks and using the parry reactive. However, you couldn't tank with a 2h weapon because so many threat-holding abilities needed you to be blocking with a shield. Also, because you needed to be attacked to proc a lot of these, you'd only hit your max dps output soloing when things attacked you. You couldn't take the DPS spot in a party because your damage would be lower when attacking things from the back. Conversely, when tanking you would be both blocking and parrying constantly, and it opened up the gameplay of "do i use a high threat block reactive or a high damage parry reactive".

A system like the above would work fantastically for a Paladin Oath redesign and a DRK grit redesign, as a possible alternative to feeling obliged to tank in Sword Oath or without Grit. A lot of people like the thematic idea of Sword Oath actually making the paladin put his shield on his back and use his sword in "hand-and-a-half" style, losing access to blocking and block reactives but gaining the sword oath procs. What if the Paladin was given enough high damage or high threat Block Reactives that they'd push out more dps tanking in Shield Oath than Sword, provided they were attacked frequently enough. You could even have entire combos of TP-efficient on-GCD skills that open up after blocks rather than just an off gcd push-when-it-lights-up button.

Parry Reactives for DRK just seem to be a thematic part of the class somehow... Reprisal may not have seemed interesting but it gave DRK an identity. If you wanted to get rid of Grit feeling like the crappy stance it is, make it simply an off-gcd toggle that only boosts threat, nothing else, or remove it entirely and make Blood Price generate threat when used. Then to make up the damage reduction loss, why not have a parry reactive that gives a personal damage reduction like Inner Beast. This would create an interesting dynamic where DRK doesnt necessarily have a "tank stance" - but when being attacked as long as it can force parry procs it can sustain an average damage reduction self buff. This would contrast with the Paladin's always-on Shield Oath reduction and the zero reduction for a Warrior that gets solved due to the "heal it back more easily" of Defiance.

Reactives are a GOOD THING, as long as they're done in an interesting and meaningful way, because they solve so many tank design issues:
- they translate defensive stats into offensive power. Block/parry more? Do more reactives. You could legitimately replace Tenacity with block/parry chance and have people want to use them.
- they allow tanks to do more damage when actually tanking so their design doesnt require them to output as much DPS as a DPS class on a static target
- they give variety and things that light up in a rotation that is always much simpler than DPS classes as tank kits have to be filled with "rarely used tools" like Sentinel and Divine Veil.

I 100% agree that the current implementation of Shield Swipe is boring. That doesnt mean that Reactives in general are bad. I think whilst Warrior has a really nice rotation that doesn't really need them, both PLD and DRK feel very clunky when it comes to swapping out of tank stance, and both of them feel thematically suited to being given 2-3 meaningful reactive skills each.