Let's Talk Tanks

[Shurrikhan]

Generally speaking, sub-stats should be passive boosts that, at most, encourage angles of play.

Gameplay adjustments itself should primarily be the focus of kit interaction. Gear enhances the kit through bolstering passive effects. Unless i'm misunderstanding, giving specific interactions greater interaction through the stat itself (For Example - The auto-block when shield is present, with Determination granting the shield) seems the sort of thing stepping out of its lane.

That seems a fine opinion, but hardly any more than that. Mine is the opposite: if you can't use it for customization over gameplay, why should it even exist? Is it there only to ensure that one reward meant for your job should be better than another of equal item level, thus creating intentionally uneven or graduated gear progression targets? Is it to ensure that you have to meet priority checks like Accuracy, thus having to keep your ambitions checked against arbitrary requirements? Is any of that consistently fun, as compared to not only maintaining such checks (via gameplay breakpoints), but also being able to pursue new ones, with greater agency over those stat's use? I think stats should be simple, but gameplay-affecting, with intuitive player agency.

Passive benefits might not directly change your gameplay, but it does adjust the relative value and weight of the decisions you can make, or enable some scenarios that you otherwise didn't have access to.

Then it still changes gameplay, just in a way that feels less impactful or player-chosen. My idea is simply that there's some added flexibility and intuitive control: gear hold multiple options between which you have freedom to allot secondary stat points. You set, essentially, what you want to happen, and your gear allots its points accordingly. Where your desired breakpoints are not possible, it attempts your second choice system of priorities, or third, or so forth.