Quote Originally Posted by ZaqueXIII View Post
If you want to improve tanking or increase its depth you should look forward not backward. All those old mechanics were superfluous bloat. Removing TP has allowed more skill expression in rotation and removed "mandatory" actions. Simplifying enmity management to effectively 3 tank abilities reduces actions bloat too and has allowed for more fluid and mechanically interesting strategies regarding boss management. And sprint no longer robbing you of a resource adds a layer of depth as now you can be reasonably expected to use it and the "punishment" is it going on cooldown so you have to have a plan with it.

All of these changes raise the games overall skill floor by letting players focus on actually important things rather than artificially forcing them to focus on some secondary or tertiary system. The skill ceiling gets a bit of a bump too (not as significant) as now you are no longer constrained by "mandatory" buttons that inhibit your ability to act freely.
Mostly agreed, save for the underlined bits.
  • Not every mechanic was fundamentally superfluous.

    Their past implementations were poor, yes, but that doesn't mean that Enmity, for instance, cannot ever be a mechanic beyond existing and smacking an enemy at least a fifth as often as a DPS. Heck, that doesn't even necessarily require any additional buttons. A poor attempt doesn't necessarily mean its goal is impossible. (Shirk, on the other hand, is just pathetic button waste, the value of which should be wrapped into Provoke if it's somehow considered necessary. Even the tank stances, arguably, are button bloat, as the devs could just have tank Enmity be increased from the enemy's front as not to let the OT pull without Provoke.)

  • Removing TP had zero impact on skill expression, rotational or otherwise.

    No Monk was forgoing the rotational alignment value of, say, Fracture just to avoid its higher TP cost. It'd be more ppgcd efficient, even, to just use an extra Purification within the fight than to start clipping Twin, Dragon, and Demolish where they otherwise wouldn't have. The closest we got to this is that SkS became slightly less punished, but... it's still an inferior option that the devs refuse to actually balance, so that hasn't changed what we can actually do with it at a competitive level.

  • Simplifying enmity didn't allow for any more interesting of boss management strategies.

    It's done nothing that Provoke and other rDPS-free abilities of that time (Shadewalker, Circle-Shirking, etc.) didn't already do.

  • We're still constrained by mandatory bloat buttons, including ones specific to resource generation.

    Have you met Lucid Dreaming, or even the likes of Barrel Stabilizer?


But, agreed that getting rid of TP, at least as it existed then, was a good thing.

That is primarily because TP was never implemented as a meaningful system, though, instead being tertiary at best outside of dungeon AoE. Had it been an actual, meaningful resource system, I'd likely feel differently.