Would you want stances to come back?

[Mikey_R]

Yeah sorry I typed that up in a hurry yesterday. One of my bigger complaints with oath gauge is that it’s used almost exclusively on holy sheltron. Thematically it would be more fitting for paladin’s resource management to be based around mitigations in general instead of only one. I still haven’t fully thought this through but imagine paladin had a handful of unique mitigations with each one consuming different amounts of oath. Like HS would consume 50, bulkwark could consume like 25, a new mit could have a super short CD but consume 100 oath something like that. Maybe they could tie oath into things like reprisal or divine veil.

One of the issues then becomes, how are the other tanks being handled? You are effectively restricting PLD's access to various mitigations, however, if the other tanks are left as is, they have freer access and so are more versatile. You also cannot put these defensives behind the tanks gauges as they are used offensively and mixing a gauge with offence and defence means you aren't using it for defensive purposes.

Regardless, I will agree that Oath Gauge is pretty pointless. I have already said what I think just tying various defensives to it isn't the best idea (Even if you want them to be additional actions, this just adds to PLD's current problem of button bloat), however, if we consider it an offensive gauge, I don't see how it could be used other than something you fill and just dump in the burst phase, which isn't exciting either. It is in a very weird spot.

[SargeTheSeagull]

One of the issues then becomes, how are the other tanks being handled? You are effectively restricting PLD's access to various mitigations, however, if the other tanks are left as is, they have freer access and so are more versatile. You also cannot put these defensives behind the tanks gauges as they are used offensively and mixing a gauge with offence and defence means you aren't using it for defensive purposes.

Oh absolutely, keeping offense and defense resources separate is a must. They could always add passives to PLD that generates extra oath, like if every divine veil barrier is fully absorbed the oath is refunded. Or if you mitigate X damage with passage it fills the oath gauge. A thought that's come to mind more and more as I play other MMOs is that each tank's tankiness is very loosely defined in 14. Each tank mitigates in largely identical ways. Yeah, paladin doesn't have a huge self barrier like DRK and GNB doesn't have immediate self heals like WAR but other than those, nearly every CD is just a defense bump. It would be an interesting thought experiment to think what would be fitting for each tank were they to all get new defensive kits. DRK could be all about personal barriers and debuffing targets to deal less damage. WAR could lean heavy into the "too angry to die" theme and have a ton of CD's that get more potent the lower your HP is.

[Mikey_R]

Each tank mitigates in largely identical ways. Yeah, paladin doesn't have a huge self barrier like DRK and GNB doesn't have immediate self heals like WAR but other than those, nearly every CD is just a defense bump. It would be an interesting thought experiment to think what would be fitting for each tank were they to all get new defensive kits. DRK could be all about personal barriers and debuffing targets to deal less damage. WAR could lean heavy into the "too angry to die" theme and have a ton of CD's that get more potent the lower your HP is.

I will agree, tanks do need to be unique in the mitigation game, however, there is still only so much you can do as, at the end of the day, there is only so many ways to actually reduce damage.

[KenZentra]

I will agree, tanks do need to be unique in the mitigation game, however, there is still only so much you can do as, at the end of the day, there is only so many ways to actually reduce damage.

Right now its just shields and Raw mitigation, though.

You could have the damage be mitigated by a large amount, but a % of it is dealt to you later as a DoT.
You could shift some of the damage to another player as a healing absorption debuff.
You could have reactive healing on yourself that activates after you take damage from an ability.

I believe there are many creative ways to mitigate damage, and we should want for more than raw mitigation and shields.
But overall, I think all tanks need to be very different from each other, as of right now they are just simple DPS with 4 abilities to take less damage and a lot of HP.