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

[Lyth]

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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.

[AziraSyuren]

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.

A lot of high level tanks just genuinely prefer tanking over DPSing despite being more than capable enough to do both.

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.

Still better than slashing debuff and damage down.