What tanks need more then anything right now is? "More Defensive Cool-downs"

[ItMe]

Warrior currently is probably the best maintank, but it doesnt gain any dps by being that MT role,

Doesn't it?

[AziraSyuren]

Tanking is a completely neutered role. You're better off sticking your worst teammates on it, because there are the least amount of things that they can impact or mess up. I think you're going to see a lot of more skilled players migrate off tanking, especially when Reaper hits next expansion.

I don't think so. Most of the best tanks I know are either ride or die with the role, or versatile enough that they'll play whatever the group needs.

Tanking is still, as a whole, the best it's ever been, especially compared to the disaster it was back in Stormblood. I just think more things have gotten more fun at a quicker rate.

[FoxCh40s]

I don't think so. Most of the best tanks I know are either ride or die with the role, or versatile enough that they'll play whatever the group needs.

Tanking is still, as a whole, the best it's ever been, especially compared to the disaster it was back in Stormblood. I just think more things have gotten more fun at a quicker rate.

That's like.... your opinion man.

[AziraSyuren]

This is the only time where the tanking jobs haven't had some awful, critical design flaws that make playing them feel like I'm just gimping myself unless I play the best one, which always happened to be the most well-designed one.

I'll take tanking that feels lacking at times over tanking that constantly reminds me of one awful thing I wish were different any day.

[FoxCh40s]

This is the only time where the tanking jobs haven't had some awful, critical design flaws that make playing them feel like I'm just gimping myself unless I play the best one, which always happened to be the most well-designed one.

I'll take tanking that feels lacking at times over tanking that constantly reminds me of one awful thing I wish were different any day.

Except Dark Knight is a hastily copied Warrior that's really just worse, Gunbreaker should have been a DPS, Warrior got literally nothing except Fell Cleave the Re-Re-Re Revengining, and Paladin ended up exceptionally well designed because you can tell someone in the Dev Team actually plays it.

[ReiMakoto]

Doesn't it?

This is the only example of a skill that does this and the amount of DPS gained is generally so inconsequential it doesn't rock the balance of tanks. Seriously its half an auto attack of damage that will only tick between 3 and 5 times. Trust me when I say warriors arn't trying to be MT because of venegence damage outside of 100th percentile chasers.

Edit: for how truely inconseqential venegence is and how it doesnt define War as an MT, venegence accounts for less than 0.1% of a 100th percentile warriors damage.

[Dzian]

The issue with defensive cooldowns for many people is they're just boring and often perceived as weak. Literally the only thing they do is reduce a number by a small amount..
here comes a 100k tank buster.. you take 100kdamage..
here comes a 100k tank buster, you pop rampart and still take 90k damage..

big wow.. it's still the same massive chunk of hp off your hp bars... it doesn't feel like anything was different.. this is often made worse by heals.. if a healer heals for 50k for example its still 2 spells to fully heal you up whether you used rampart or not.. so what did that cool down do really? not a whole lot...

its essentially the same issue people have with offensive cooldowns in many ways. in that they dont actually do anything more than make your numbers a tiny bit bigger for a few seconds. heres a balance toss it on a player there we go 5% bigger numbers thats it... most of the time that player wouldnt even notice you put it on him because it really is that lacklustre.

the problem is cooldowns need to be more interesting than just flat % mods of some form.

1.23 Paladin had a pretty sweet cooldown called Aegis Boon, Basically Blocked the next hit entirely and converted the damage you would have taken into HP. dam site more interesting than anything that exists now. Warrior appears to have a small version of it with nascistic flash or whatever its called but the point is it's more interesting because it does more than just modifiy damage by a %

This is where the devs hyper focus on simplicity and accessiility ultimate does more harm than good because it ends up making everything boring af. someone earlier in the thread said 5.0 tanks are the best they've ever been i personally disagree strongly. i had much more fun tanking 4.0 than 5.0, i might even go so far as to say i'd take arr paladin over 5.0 paladin... sure 123 123 123 kinda sucked but you could at least do interesting stuffwith tempered will, halllowed ground and cover. that was fun making the whm incincible.

[Lyth]

...

This strikes me as bizarre. Sure, the damage is small. But why keep it at all?

Sentinel/Vengeance/Shadow Wall/Nebula are all the same action. Either give them all flavor effects, or remove them entirely. This seems like game design 101.

...

Oh, I'm sure that you'll see a few people stick with tanking because it's the only thing that they know and because they can't play anything else. Some people see it as part of their identity. But that's hardly something to feel proud of now. There's a paradoxical mindset in which newer players find tanking intimidating and everyone else sees it as baby's first role. To fix that, you have to just lean into it and give tanks back some responsibility.

[Vyrerus]

This strikes me as bizarre. Sure, the damage is small. But why keep it at all?

It's part of WAR's AOE rotation, and has justified them not adding an oGCD for the longest time. Also, it's Vengeance's original effect. It didn't have any damage mitigation in 2.0, and pretty much required pairing with Berserk, Maim, and Bloodbath to get a decent HP gain on the counters.

Note that the counters can direct crit, and add up to a high potency on any mass pull/mass add situation. Also note that by the end of its duration, it's 275 potency if all counters happened in the duration. You'll usually only get 220, but in a mass pull with mostly or all physical mobs, that adds up. Especially if they have extra autos(WSes) or cleave autos on top of their normal ones(means more potency out of Vengeance).

They added a similar and much better ability to BLU, Veil of the Whorl. Though VoW doesn't have any mitigation, it's 50 potency counters against any type of damage for 30 seconds. But it competes with the 350 diminishing AOE Glass Arrow for its cooldown spot, and damage on demand will beat counter damage in almost every situation, simply due to being on demand, and counter damage not always getting its potential potency out.

PLD used to have extra flavor on Sentinel in the form of 40% mitigation, and the only reason they nixed that, that I can tell, is because they lowered its cooldown by 60 seconds(actually better than 40% mit at higher CD) and gave PLD's shield the ability to mitigate magic.

They didn't give DRK's any flavor, I guess because they judged Dark Mind to be so powerful or something... now WAR is the oddity... but I think they should add flavor back to both Sentinel and Shadow Wall. Like, give Sentinel something sort of cool like, increases active Requiescat duration by 4 seconds. Give Shadow Wall, restores 500 MP each time damage is taken. You know, small things that do matter, but don't matter much. Nebula could lengthen Aurora's duration or something.

The most fun I've had on tanking since SHB is on BLU. Having to cast my mitigation has made spell speed pivotal, and my mitigation being almost unlimited, save by my own MP management, is also way more complex/nuanced than other tanks. On top of that, switching Mighty Guard on and off at the right time, not only to maximize damage, but also having to know whether or not it's a phase where my casts will be interrupted(as Mighty Guard prevents casting interruption). Then also getting to basically be an off-healer due to White Wind is often times important, especially if I understand precasting it better/know timings better than my actual BLU Healer(s). Of course, having almost the entire DPS compliment of BLU spells with spells that are equal at their basic level also helps. Due to the nature of Diamondback and Mighty Guard though, I won't ever top any other BLUs in the group on the parse, but actually get close to BLU Healers in certain fights.

[Mikey_R]

The issue with defensive cooldowns for many people is they're just boring and often perceived as weak. Literally the only thing they do is reduce a number by a small amount..
here comes a 100k tank buster.. you take 100kdamage..
here comes a 100k tank buster, you pop rampart and still take 90k damage..

Rampart is 20%, so it would actually go down to 80K.

big wow.. it's still the same massive chunk of hp off your hp bars... it doesn't feel like anything was different.. this is often made worse by heals.. if a healer heals for 50k for example its still 2 spells to fully heal you up whether you used rampart or not.. so what did that cool down do really? not a whole lot...

I mean, what did you expect? A tank buster isn't going to tickle you and in some fights, that mitigation can mean the difference between dying to the tank buster and not dying, so it is important in that regard.

its essentially the same issue people have with offensive cooldowns in many ways. in that they dont actually do anything more than make your numbers a tiny bit bigger for a few seconds. heres a balance toss it on a player there we go 5% bigger numbers thats it... most of the time that player wouldnt even notice you put it on him because it really is that lacklustre.

6% but yes. Just a pure damage up can be boring, however, if you look at it in the context of using them for burst phases where damage matters more, then they are useful, in the same way a big burst of damage in incoming to a tank, you need to reduce it.

the problem is cooldowns need to be more interesting than just flat % mods of some form.

1.23 Paladin had a pretty sweet cooldown called Aegis Boon, Basically Blocked the next hit entirely and converted the damage you would have taken into HP. dam site more interesting than anything that exists now. Warrior appears to have a small version of it with nascistic flash or whatever its called but the point is it's more interesting because it does more than just modifiy damage by a %

I never played 1.0, so I don't know exactly how Aegis boon worked, but from what I have seen, you take no damage and healed yourself? That is crazy strong. I couldn't see anything on a cooldown, but if Paladin had that AND Hallowed Ground, that is ridiculous, no wonder they got rid of it. Even if you changed it so that you 'blocked' damage and healed what you blocked, take your 100K example, blocking is 20%, so you would take 80K damage, then heal for 20K, effectively making it a total of 60K HP lost, a full 40% damage mitigation, assuming you survived the initial hit. Tanks longer cooldown defensives are only 30% and that is more than enough. You could weaken the initial blocked damage%, but you would still need to survive the initial hit, which could necessitate using another cooldown.

This is where the devs hyper focus on simplicity and accessiility ultimate does more harm than good because it ends up making everything boring af. someone earlier in the thread said 5.0 tanks are the best they've ever been i personally disagree strongly. i had much more fun tanking 4.0 than 5.0, i might even go so far as to say i'd take arr paladin over 5.0 paladin... sure 123 123 123 kinda sucked but you could at least do interesting stuffwith tempered will, halllowed ground and cover. that was fun making the whm incincible.

Tempered Will is still there, just renamed as Arm's Length and is a role action. Hallowed and Cover are obviously still around, so the same shenanigans can still be done. What needs to happen is for tanks to be more in control of the boss. Make positioning important again, give more used for stuns and interrupts etc. Doing a simple DPS rotation isn't overly taxing on the brain, but having to pay attention to other mechanics as well, that could enhance the tank gameplay.