Quote Originally Posted by Phoenicia View Post
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I'm not actually in any camp. What I see is a design inertia that the game seems stuck in, and I just want to see a change. I've also been playing for about five years now, so things are starting to feel a bit stagnant.

It's not about who is on top. I was quite fond of DRK's position in Heavensward. It wasn't the strongest tank, but people respected your skill in playing it, especially when you outperformed a more powerful job. I don't want to see DRK as an uncontested raid pick any more than I want to see WAR doing so. I'll argue equally as hard on removing Dark Mind as I will seeing Holmgang's recast increased. But the time has come to change things up.

I'm entirely in favour of seeing IB coming off of stance lock. One of my favourite parts of ARR WAR was the decision to hold IB vs. using it for more dps. I think that the only defensive abilities that tanks actually need for tankbusters are: a 20%/90s CD, a 30%/120s CD, a resource-gated CD, and an invuln on a 5-7 minute recast. When you start adding more cooldowns, tankbuster damage has to increase. This in turn depreciates the value of your weaker cooldowns. I want the focus to be on resource-based mitigation.

Stances
The problem with stances is that the present system entirely favours WAR. The classic argument is that if you make Grit and Shield Oath oGCD, then it's an on-demand Rampart, and these two tanks pull ahead. Fine. But if you keep things as they are, WAR remains the only tank with oGCD stances with no resource cost attached. That, too, is unfair.

That's why I'd rather see the mitigation value of stances removed altogether. Better yet, just remove stances. Then you don't have to worry about being at a disadvantage because Defiance only heals somesuch, and I can use Souleater to eat my opponents without having the effect be gated behind an expensive GCD stance. Nom.

Shields
I think the easiest solution is just to rein in the LB generation from Shields.

The shield resource bar was mentioned in the Las Vegas Fanfest. I think it was Day 2, if memory serves me correctly, and possibly in the "We will positively look into it" Q+A session, although there doesn't seem to be a transcript that I can search through. Other players brought it up independently as well, so I'm sure it's in there somewhere.

Basically, it's a bar to show the amount of shielding that you presently have. On the surface, that sounds like just a UI issue. But it also suggests that all shields are being merged into a common resource. That's a good thing, because at the moment, shields don't really have that much in the way of diminishing returns. They also retain their full value until the buff expires, which is a silly design decision. On some fights, a deploy adlo off a WAR will last you until the next phase change. And we wonder why healers don't really need to heal.

And I say this knowing that it will have an impact on TBN as well. This is a good change, if it places limitations on shield strength.