True fault of current tank design: Lack of identity

[Ramiee]

This was put to the sword sometime in Stormblood-Shadowbringers—I was on hiatus for that era so don't know exactly when the change happened, only that it did—and Warrior lost their crunchiest GCD in the process. RIP Skull Sunder.

Pretty much all tanks lost their cool animations for the lame ones.

[BabyYoda]

Hammer it is really hard to create new identity when we have this corruption in tank role

Dark knight needs a massive hit

[Erit]

You spelled Butcher's Block wrong.

It combo'd off of Skull Sunder, very little difference in which one gets mentioned.

Tanks have to manage a DPS rotation while also managing defensive CDs, party survival and their own survival, sometimes placing the boss, enmity swap for TBs...
If you're not doing that, you're doing a terrible tank job and just trying to play a tank like a DPS.

Same can be said for DPS, if you master 1 DPS = 80% of other DPS as they all revolves around the same thing, Always Be Casting and doing their burst within raidbuffs.

Not a lot of boss-positioning work to do these days. M1S I'm told and M2/S where keeping her centered makes uptime less cursed, but in most normal content? Nothing doing.

[CKNovel]

Not a lot of boss-positioning work to do these days. M1S I'm told and M2/S where keeping her centered makes uptime less cursed, but in most normal content? Nothing doing.

There's movement in the first 3 savages, it's simply not the focus anymore but it's more than what we used to have in EW, ShB and SB.
In Normal content every role responsibility is incredibly low.

[dspguy]

Last expansion, I made a post here and provided backup that showed that all the tank jobs were mostly the same. You could configure your hotbars in such a way that you could randomly pick a tank and put a piece of tape over the job icon and your hotbars and play just fine. Even if they have different "flavors", in many ways, they are extremely similar.

If I had to peg one that is more different than the rest, it is GNB and that is solely based on Continuation being something unique that the other tank jobs, in my opinion, don't actually get.

[Carighan]

Last expansion, I made a post here and provided backup that showed that all the tank jobs were mostly the same. You could configure your hotbars in such a way that you could randomly pick a tank and put a piece of tape over the job icon and your hotbars and play just fine. Even if they have different "flavors", in many ways, they are extremely similar.

Yeah I do it like that. On my DRK, Living Shadow and Delirium are where Imperator and Fight or Flight are on my Paladin and on my Gunbreaker that's No Mercy and Bloodfest. There's 2 oGCDs next to those, that get used once after the selfbuffs, and once in-between on some of the jobs (like on Gunbreaker one of them has a 60s CD, but I just reflexively press it anyways, on Dark Knight I got C&S and Abyssal there, and since I hit C&S first it doesn't matter that Abyssal is on CD, I can do the exact same motion every 60 seconds on all three jobs).

It's ridiculous how homogenized the tanks are. And I mean, sure, I'll bite and say that it helps get more people to play tanks if they don't feel like they picked "the wrong one". But at the same time, it's stupid that this also removed all distinction between the tanks which would not need their ability loadouts to be that different.

Minor stuff could work:

* On Dark Knight, remove the CD from TBN, remove Oblation, and add an Oblation-like effect to all defensive abilities, as a trait. Meaning that after they end, all defensive single-target buffs a DRK has also give -10% damage taken for 10 seconds, even on other targets. TBN, Living Shadow, even Rampart and so on, everything. Notable: After the primary effect ends! King of defensive CDs, but has to balance mana in turn.
* On Gunbreaker, allow all skills to be used from 25y range with a custom animation. There's a gun in that blade, do more with it than some f/x!
* On Warrior, reduce Bloodwhetting in power but add self-healing to ~everything in turn. Maybe even remove it from Bloodwhetting if needed, reduce damage overall, and make Bloodwhetting a short self-damage-buff (as in, the overall damage and healing is the exact same, but for flavor, everything heals now). Maybe go a step further, and make the tank stance here not cause extra emnity from damage dealt, but from healing, no matter if on self or others, and rebalance the +emnity so it's roughly the same output. Flavor is important!
* On Paladin, likewise, promote helping others far far more. I'd guess working on Cover and Wings is the big one here, making the job way more about taking damage intended for others.

[Wayfinder3]

Inner Release and Fell is really where things went wrong, what was once something of a reward for warriors has now been dissected thoroughly and bastardized in so many incredibly similar ways that it's no suprise this happened.

The ONLY difference between tank and healer dps rotations is that tanks have their respective glare and dots spread across multiple skills but all of them with the exception of maybe gunbreaker went to the warrior school of how dps as a tank and it really makes them rather droll once you notice it. Warrior imo is the Summoner of Tanks, it's by far the least interesting to play and has basically no skill expression, it's vapid and the easiest tank to play in and out, drk and pld aren't much different than that. GNB is the only one that feels different enough yet alot of what makes GNB different is clunky as hell interactions like continuation. Im not a tank player, and i do enjoy the way tanks play but i'd be remised if i didn't point out that tanks are designed virtually identical to healers. They just hide it better.

[Vinter]

If I were to redesign Warrior I'd build it from the ground up around Inner Release. You're playing a berserker, the whole point is to go berserk. Also it looks cool having the red glowy eyes.

First off we get rid of all the mitigations, we won't need them. Instead of building up beast gauge to do Fell Cleave you build up beast gauge to proc Inner Release, at which point you go berserk and gain +20% damage mitigation and +20% damage output for 30 seconds. This changes your regular combos to new fancy moves that do basically the same thing but with a new coat of paint to really sell that you're giving in to your inner beast and attacking with reckless abandon. What Inner Release also does is that for every 5% of health you lose, you gain 2% increased damage and 2% increased mitigation, so the more damage you take the harder you fight, and the more difficult it gets to kill you. This is why we won't need any of the other mitigations, it's all baked into Inner Release.

For every combo you do you get a free Fell Cleave/Decimate, which still auto crit, and once you run out of Inner Release you smash that Equilibrium to bring your health back up, ready to repeat the process. It'll essentially be 30 seconds of unga bunga followed by 30 seconds of building up more gauge to do more unga bunga. This puts warrior in a space where they rely on vit, crit, and tenacity as their main stats and gives them a risk/reward dynamic where you are encouraged to take damage to increase damage while still keeping the burst damage nature of the class. I have no idea what to do with the oGCDs for this, but I think at least Shake It Off should be kept as the one mitigation skill warrior has.

No clue if this is even a good idea, just a thought I had.

[Supersnow845]

If I were to redesign Warrior I'd build it from the ground up around Inner Release. You're playing a berserker, the whole point is to go berserk. Also it looks cool having the red glowy eyes.

First off we get rid of all the mitigations, we won't need them. Instead of building up beast gauge to do Fell Cleave you build up beast gauge to proc Inner Release, at which point you go berserk and gain +20% damage mitigation and +20% damage output for 30 seconds. This changes your regular combos to new fancy moves that do basically the same thing but with a new coat of paint to really sell that you're giving in to your inner beast and attacking with reckless abandon. What Inner Release also does is that for every 5% of health you lose, you gain 2% increased damage and 2% increased mitigation, so the more damage you take the harder you fight, and the more difficult it gets to kill you. This is why we won't need any of the other mitigations, it's all baked into Inner Release.

For every combo you do you get a free Fell Cleave/Decimate, which still auto crit, and once you run out of Inner Release you smash that Equilibrium to bring your health back up, ready to repeat the process. It'll essentially be 30 seconds of unga bunga followed by 30 seconds of building up more gauge to do more unga bunga. This puts warrior in a space where they rely on vit, crit, and tenacity as their main stats and gives them a risk/reward dynamic where you are encouraged to take damage to increase damage while still keeping the burst damage nature of the class. I have no idea what to do with the oGCDs for this, but I think at least Shake It Off should be kept as the one mitigation skill warrior has.

No clue if this is even a good idea, just a thought I had.

And if a tankbuster fell during the 30 seconds of downtime?

[Vinter]

And if a tankbuster fell during the 30 seconds of downtime?

Shake It Off.