Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LI Shadowbringers Preview - 1:30pm PDT/4:30pm EDT

[Khalithar]

So it's confirmed in the live letter today.

Offensive stance is gone. Tank stance penalties are gone and toggling tank stance is solely for generating aggro and nothing else.

That means you can stay in tank stance the whole time if you're main tanking with no penalty and nothing to worry about. No obnoxious stance dancing, no wasted gcd's swapping stances as pld or drk (if you turn on grit), and no more stupid arbitrary damage penalty. I'm ecstatic, I wanted tank stances gone entirely, but I'll take this as it's nearly as good. I'm VERY satisfied with this as it's something I've basically wanted forever.

[ElazulHP]

So it's confirmed in the live letter today.

Offensive stance is gone. Tank stance penalties are gone and toggling tank stance is solely for generating aggro and nothing else.

That means you can stay in tank stance the whole time if you're main tanking with no penalty and nothing to worry about. No obnoxious stance dancing, no wasted gcd's swapping stances as pld or drk (if you turn on grit), and no more stupid arbitrary damage penalty. I'm ecstatic, I wanted tank stances gone entirely, but I'll take this as it's nearly as good. I'm VERY satisfied with this as it's something I've basically wanted forever.

Yeah, i'm really digging those tank changes going forward. Solidifies my decision to stay tank when the expansion rolls out.

[Barraind]

So it's confirmed in the live letter today.

Offensive stance is gone. Tank stance penalties are gone and toggling tank stance is solely for generating aggro and nothing else.

That means you can stay in tank stance the whole time if you're main tanking with no penalty and nothing to worry about. No obnoxious stance dancing, no wasted gcd's swapping stances as pld or drk (if you turn on grit), and no more stupid arbitrary damage penalty. I'm ecstatic, I wanted tank stances gone entirely, but I'll take this as it's nearly as good. I'm VERY satisfied with this as it's something I've basically wanted forever.

I actually think removing stances is a terrible design decision.

Not removing TANK stances (those needed to be changed) but the concept of stances in general.

It would let them add abilities without causing bloat (Just make a LOT more stuff work like Fell Cleave / Inner Beast), and emphasize certain aspects of classes.

Imagine if the monk fists were a stance that allowed access to specific skills, and part of the rotation was switching back and forth between stances to hit specific abilities in order.

Or with Warrior, one that emphasizes slightly lower damage skills with secondary effects, and one that is about maximum frontload damage, so you have an obvious "be here in Inner Release" and one that you can use for swapping in debuffs or more defensive cooldowns.