Quote Originally Posted by Kabooa View Post
It seems the sort of thing that would work better with a sub-stat expansion instead of a contraction, which I'm not opposed to.
I'm again not sure why you would assume that. Short of customization in the likeness of a sphere grid, a PoE skill map, or any other particularly dense talent tree, how are you divorcing specific gains (like "will my Shadow Wall be enough for this" or "can I have my Shadowskin counterstrike for me on all three hits of this tankbuster?") from general ones (like the Determination and Critical Hit examples I gave just before)? To separate general gains you would need tailored progression options in order to balance the weights of specific allotments, and even then those options would likely offer only a few competitive choices despite making the game far more esoteric and thereby divisive between players "in the know" and those outside. (That's not to say that I find such options to inherently boil down to "illusion of choice" -- no more so than job choice, at the least -- but that's not just a sub-stat expansion at that point; you'd be adding an entire Junction system of sorts.)

So, again, why not just take a running theme instead and apply it generally? The actual results of each can still be quite deliberate and inherently tailored to each role, since the rotational windows, procs, and numeric breakpoints of tanks and healers will inherently be linked also to tanking and healing just as those of damage-dealers will double down on dealing damage. I didn't pick those core three sub-stats arbitrarily; they specifically allow for control over rotational frames, and control over proc-based gameplay, and control over breakpoints outside of rotation or general proc chance, covering almost any and all gameplay alteration between them so you can tailor your job to your preferred macrorotations and windows for mechanical checks.

A slight sub-stat expansion, especially when allowing the choice between the offensive and defensive, only faces the same issues we already face: rather than, say, offering tanks the choice of how they want to tank, you offer the choice of whether to be more, or less, like tanks at all -- and the damage intake of any new tier, specific fight, or as faced by their toolkit in the context of their co-tank, will usually make that choice for them.