Tank adjustments we can agree on?

[Freyyy]

So what you're saying is WAR needs to use Defiance AND a GCD to get the full effect of their tank stance instantly? Guess it's no different from Shield Oath/Grit then.

Not at all. What I'm saying is that if a WAR puts Defiance ON too late to get topped off before receiving damage sufficiently high to make use of these max HP (basically a tank buster), they can instantly use IB which is litteraly on demand 20% mitigation + self-healing which helps also to survive the incoming attack. With experience on the fights, you can turn Defiance on early enough to be topped off by healers before the tank buster (which is the only reason to need more max HP). Other than max HP, what Defiance brings is the increase in healing magic received, which they instantly get. And the simple fact that Grit/Oaths are breaking combos and cost a resource (which is pretty important for DRK) makes Defiance take the advantage. Grit/Oaths dancing is clunky, De/liver/fi/ance stance dancing is smooth as fuck and absolutely orgasmic to play.

[Teiren]

This is completely missing the point. Inner Beast is separate from the passive effects of Defiance that make it a tank stance. He and I were talking about the passive effects of each Job's tank stance, not the overall tanking ability of each Job.

Having only Sword Oath off-GCD is an interesting idea, and perhaps that's all that's needed so that it's like DRK. Related, I think that Grit costing MP, or at least as much as it does, is a little stupid. I still think no tank stance should be on the GCD as long as Defiance isn't because this is supposed to be a casual game at heart, and tank stances being on the GCD feels like a frustrating punishment. However, I do understand his point of view.

[Freyyy]

This is completely missing the point. Inner Beast is separate from the passive effects of Defiance that make it a tank stance. He and I were talking about the passive effects of each Job's tank stance, not the overall tanking ability of each Job.

Inner Beast is tied to Defiance. I think it's not missing the point at all. Considering that not having the HP granted by Defiance instantly healed is like not having the effects of the tanking stance is inaccurate, since increased max HP is only a piece of what Defiance brings. Defiance brings several things : access to Wrath abilities (hello IB), increased healing received, Equilibrium's healing part, and max HP, and all that, you get it instantly when toggling Defiance (you can even Defiance + Equilibrium instantly without clipping your GCD and immediatly IB after if you want). Max HP is only useful if you're topped off, and being topped off is eased by the increased healing + self-healing you get with IB and Equilibrium. Having more HP when topped off is only really useful against burst damage (tank busters), for constant damage only the convo-like effect of Defiance is really what makes you more tanky since VIT doesn't decrease the damage you take. Defiance is unique in its design, you cannot just consider the passive effect and outright compare it to Shield Oath or Grit. You have to take the whole thing with it since half of what Defiance brings is active effects (even the convo-like effect is "active" since it's kind of "triggered" everytime you receive a heal). IMO the max HP bonus from Defiance is even the least important part of it and what makes it a tank stance since it only really matters when you're about to eat a tank buster. And this is what makes WAR so different from PLD and DRK.

With that said, having tank stances on the GCD is not really a penalty since they still have only 2.5 sec CD, so they're still pretty much toggle-able at will. It just makes it clunky, on top of it breaking combos, and costing MP (and Grit is awful with that since it costs almost a Dark Arts to activate). Making them oGCD would not make them more toggle-able at will (would even be the contrary since it would probably have the same 10sec CD that Defiance has), it would just make stance-dancing a more enjoyable experience.

[KinSlayer009]

Lmao that's why you see warriors doing shitty dps. They are saving stacks so when the switch to defiance they can inner beast..... No good warrior will save 5 stacks so he can switch to defiance and inner beast that's a huge dps loss. You get 5 stacks you dell cleave end of story.

[Freyyy]

Lmao that's why you see warriors doing shitty dps. They are saving stacks so when the switch to defiance they can inner beast..... No good warrior will save 5 stacks so he can switch to defiance and inner beast that's a huge dps loss. You get 5 stacks you dell cleave end of story.

Then why is there even Defiance if you're never using your stacks for IB ? Seriously dude. What are you doing when there is let's say A1S's second Plasma coming with no Holmgang, you Fell Cleave and eat it in Deliverance ? No, you get to 5 stacks (you don't save them, you can simply make it so that when you get to 5 stacks you can instantly spend them for IB and take the tank buster), you make the switch to Defiance, you IB. And if it's not that, you can even switch to Defiance earlier and use your stacks for Unchained, then build them again before the tank buster. I never said that WARs should save their stacks to IB or what. I can show you the DPS I'm doing as a WAR anytime. It's just that when people argue that Defiance doesn't immediatly take effect, I don't agree because the max HP part of Defiance is not even the real reason for making the switch. It's mostly because you get all of your tanking capabilities at maximum when you need them, and IB is a really big part of that. I think you completely missed the point being discussed here. It's about switching to tanking stance and gaining its effect because you need it in a scripted raid encounter situation, not about tanking a dungeon boss.

[KinSlayer009]

Yes I don't ever put defiance up on A1S. For each tnk buster I use vengeance and thrill of battle. And that is it. Even on a3s only time i switch to defiance is when I pick up the tethers then back to deliverance.

[Freyyy]

Yes I don't ever put defiance up on A1S. For each tnk buster I use vengeance and thrill of battle. And that is it. Even on a3s only time i switch to defiance is when I pick up the tethers then back to deliverance.

Yeah with gear it's made possible, but I highly doubt you were doing that back in the first weeks of progression. Tank busters have never been as weak as in this set of raids, I was using A1S as an example of current "tank buster" but what is being discussed here is mostly theoretical. People are speaking about the need of switching to tanking stance and having instantly its effects or not to compare Defiance being oGCD with Grit/Oaths being on the GCD but when you don't even need to put your tanking stance on most of the time it's kinda hard to speak about that and using current fights as examples. I was simply arguing that the fact of not having instantly the HP from Defiance doesn't mean that we don't instantly get its effects, we just don't instantly get a little part of its effects but the essential (which is Wrath and bonus healing received) is instantly here and just needs to be triggered, because, you know, WAR is the active mitigation tank. That's basic. People keep comparing passive mitigation from the other tanks with active mitigation from WAR like it was working in the same way where it clearly doesn't.

And even if it was really the case, even if I accepted the argument of WARs don't having the HP from Defiance when switching was enough of a reason for the other stances to be on the GCD and break combos, I'll answer you this : a WAR can put Defiance on whenever he wants. It can be in between Maim and Storm's Eye if he wants, he can just put it on at any time and it doesn't break anything, it converts his stacks, and he can continue his combo without any downtime. Because of the fact that Grit/Oaths break combos on top of being on the GCD, DRK/PLD has to either put their tank stance earlier because they have to have it on before starting the next combo even if they don't need it instantly which results in a DPS loss from both the fact of losing the GCD from stance switching AND having the damage penalty for 2 more GCDs after, or wait for the current combo to be finished in order to put the stance on, then having it on 1-2 GCD later than what they ideally would want, resulting in even more time than a WAR would need to be topped off after toggling Defiance mid-combo. Basically, whenever you use Hard Slash/Fast Blade, you set up yourself in a situation where you can't switch to tanking stance before Delirium/Power Slash/Souleater/Rage Of Halone/Royal Authority/Goring Blade which happens several seconds later. And if you break your combo in order to switch to tanking stance, you lose even more DPS. Doing Hard Slash -> Grit -> Hard Slash -> Syphon Strike -> Delirium for example is even worse than doing Hard Slash -> Hard Slash -> Hard Slash -> Syphon Strike -> Delirium (which no-one does because it's useless and terrible, it's just an example to say how much it sucks), and you never want that to happen, that's why DRK and PLD have to pre-emptively take decisions to switch to tanking stance where a WAR would just not care and do Heavy Swing -> Maim -> Defiance + Unchained -> Storm's Eye or plenty of examples like that and still being on DPS stance during Heavy Swing and Maim. It's not just the GCD to activate the stance, it's the fact that it also breaks combos that make it clunky and disadvantageous compared to Defiance. And for PLD it's even worse because if they want to switch back to DPS, they have to either cancel Shield Oath before finishing the combo, then switch to Sword Oath at the end, or finish his combo in Shield Oath, then switch to Sword Oath, which results in even more DPS loss. DRK only has this problem for switching from DPS to tank, the other way is just dropping Grit and can be done in the middle of a combo.

[Sapphidia]

Hypothetical question: how would the balance of the game be skewed if the three tank stances didn't come with -20% damage?

So Shield Oath/Grit was literally less damage taken and extra threat, and defiance was threat, health, healing and access to different moves. Paladins and Dark Knights would stay in stance 100% and only drop stance when they wanted to tank swap and dps something without having huge threat. Warriors would probably sit in Defiance a lot more and mostly just stance dance to use specific moves.

I only ask as that was how i've seen other games do it - take WoW for instance, where the tank stance for protection paladins was literally "you do more threat with this on" and nothing else. Outside of PvP balance, tanks didn't really suffer a damage decrease in their tank stance (and if they did, it was compensated for by access to moves/talents that ended up doing more damage when tanking compared to a DPS stance).

The issue right now is that as Freyyy has stated, Warriors are designed to stance dance because they have a kit that allows access to different moves in different stances. Stance swapping is accessing different parts of the toolkit. A Fel Cleave is -far- more damage than an Inner beast both due to the potency AND the damage down of Defiance. Equilibrium has both uses. I guess steel cyclone/decimate is fairly similar. But in general, Warriors have been designed with the dancing in mind.

Paladins and Dark Knights -seem- like their stances are merely a "role designation" from the view of the devs - they're either in "I'm tanking something" or "I'm the OT and just DPSing at the moment" modes, as they're so much clunkier to toggle and they don't have anywhere near as much impact in the skill use. They're purely a "do I want 20% damage or 20% less damage taken" toggle that doesnt flow with their abilities, but the player base has minmaxed to the point where they're using a clunky kit in an optimal way that -probably- wasnt how the devs intended the class to be played.

I'm not saying removing the damage penalty is the answer, but it feels like if they arent going to make Grit/Oaths easier or more fluid to swap in combat, they should make tanking in the tanking stance more desirable. What if, for example, they hugely buffed the threat and damage of Shield Swipe and made it apply the Slashing Down Debuff.... but you could only use the skill in Shield Oath? Something like that so paladins and drks feel like actually being in their tanking stance isnt for the most part an entirely negative thing.

Most tanks now, on hard content, use their tank stances in the same way they might use a short duration cooldown: incoming damage, pop tank stance + rampart/skin or something, absorb big hit, back to DPS stance. This feels fine for Warrior due to the fluidity of the kit, but just feels "off" for the other two tanks.

[SpookyGhost]

Hypothetical question: how would the balance of the game be skewed if the three tank stances didn't come with -20% damage?

Unchained would need to be changed, other than that I don't think it would have any real negative effect.

[Freyyy]

A Fel Cleave is -far- more damage than an Inner beast both due to the potency AND the damage down of Defiance.

Inner Beast ignores the damage penalty of Defiance. It's just less potency and -5% because you're not in Deliverance. Otherwise, I agree with everything you said.