Celests opinion bout the state of tanks

[Kalise]

The crux of the matter is thus:

Everyone should feel important in a party.

A tank who's only role is to just sit there and get slapped does not feel important.

They need to be constantly doing something that is worthwhile. There needs to be something they can work towards, that they can use skill to leverage and improve on.

Being slapped is not that thing. Especially with how encounters are designed in this game.

Thus, it comes down to damage. Damage is always useful, damage scales infinitely. Damage can be leveraged and the difference from a beginner Tank who's sat in Defensive Stance and spamming Enmity combos and the veteran Tank who's in DPS Stance and using DPS combos and rolling CD's where necessary is very noticeable.

Personally, I'm not too sold on Tanks being purely about personal damage output though... I've posited that it could be interesting to utilize a FFXIII style Stagger mechanic for tanks, where they work towards creating party DPS increases instead of focusing entirely on personal damage (It would still play a factor, but wouldn't be the only thing)

[Kaedan]

Personally, I'm not too sold on Tanks being purely about personal damage output though... I've posited that it could be interesting to utilize a FFXIII style Stagger mechanic for tanks, where they work towards creating party DPS increases instead of focusing entirely on personal damage (It would still play a factor, but wouldn't be the only thing)

I like this idea a lot. Don't have tanks so much focused on DPS as working through a rotation to add party utility. Maybe some debuffs, maybe some buffs, but some way that tanks help the party do damage rather than focusing on doing personal DPS (though obviously still need some personal dps).

[Kalise]

I like this idea a lot. Don't have tanks so much focused on DPS as working through a rotation to add party utility. Maybe some debuffs, maybe some buffs, but some way that tanks help the party do damage rather than focusing on doing personal DPS (though obviously still need some personal dps).

Yeah, personally, I thought it could be interesting if Tank Stance vs DPS Stance was more like Commando Stance vs Ravager Stance. Wherein the Tank that's actively tanking is using Commando Stance to utilize reactive skills that set up the ability to stack Stagger, while maximizing personal DPS output and Stagger generation, whereas the Tank that doesn't have something to tank at that moment in time will shift into Ravager Stance to work on stacking up the Stagger as well as personal DPS.

Then when the boss is Staggered, both Tanks go into Ravager Stance and go full damage, along with everyone else in the party.

That way you still get the ability for Tanks to play better and get the returns (Higher pDPS, faster Stagger generation meaning more tDPS) without them being entirely focused on personal DPS and getting complaints around doing too much damage or never caring about alternate stances.

Especially if both stances had their own ways of boosting pDPS, for example, Commando Stance has reactive skills that are good damage (Think of things like Shield Swipe being buffed, Blood Price and TBN being more potent, Vengeance's retaliation being a thing etc) while Ravager Stance has more focus on just smacking things more gooder (So for example, better MP gain from Blood Weapon/Syphon Strike/Riot Blade, stronger Bloodspiller/Holy Spirit, use of Fell Cleave etc) with both stances having similar DPS, but done in a different way - Creating a shift in playstyle between the stances instead of "This Stance makes you better" vs "This Stance makes you worse" of the current DPS vs Tank stances...