Tank adjustments we can agree on?

[Freyyy]

Unless SE buffs Defiance to heal the 20% HP upon activation, you will not see Shield Oath/Grit coming off the GCD. 20% at will toggle-able mitigation would be extremely powerful given the scripted nature of FF14.

Inner Beast says hi. You can prepare your 5 stacks in Deliverance, then switch to Defiance oGCD and instantly after use IB. It's totally 20% at will toggle-able mitigation. And it does damage + ignores the Defiance penalty, where the other tanks lose 1 damage GCD to activate their stance on top of breaking combos, costing MP, and not being affected by SS. That's a lot of downsides. Oh and, the WAR still gets the convo-like effect of Defiance instantly. So they at least get half of their tanking stance instantly. I think that the fact that Defiance doesn't heal for the max HP it grants is highly overrated as a "con" and people are using it way too much as an argument where it's not even the case really.

[Exodus_Kenpachi]

Inner Beast says hi. You can prepare your 5 stacks in Deliverance, then switch to Defiance oGCD and instantly after use IB. It's totally 20% at will toggle-able mitigation. And it does damage + ignores the Defiance penalty, where the other tanks lose 1 damage GCD to activate their stance on top of breaking combos, costing MP, and not being affected by SS. That's a lot of downsides. Oh and, the WAR still gets the convo-like effect of Defiance instantly. So they at least get half of their tanking stance instantly. I think that the fact that Defiance doesn't heal for the max HP it grants is highly overrated as a "con" and people are using it way too much as an argument where it's not even the case really.

Wait wait wait... Are you trying to imply that: Waiting 17 seconds to build stacks, blowing a CD, losing DPS by using said CD, and having the healing increase brought about by Defience justifies having an oGCD instant ability to mitigate 20% damage? LMFAO with your thought process I could argue that Shadow Skin + dropping Grit is just fine and that DrK does not (and it doesn't) need Grit to be oGCD.

Bro.....just ugh. Now I'm all for Sword Oath being oGCD... That really needs to happen.

[Freyyy]

Are you trying to imply that: Waiting 17 seconds to build stacks, blowing a CD, losing DPS by using said CD, and having the healing increase brought about by Defience justifies having an oGCD instant ability to mitigate 20% damage? LMFAO with your thought process I could argue that Shadow Skin + dropping Grit is just fine and that DrK does not (and it doesn't) need Grit to be oGCD.

Shadowskin has a little bit more than 17 seconds CD. Your comparison is invalid. The DPS loss of using IB instead of a Fell Cleave is I believe inferior to the DPS loss of using a GCD not hitting at all. Plus, you have to switch only after finishing a combo, where WAR can do it at any time and it even converts stacks. Really. Just the fact of not getting instantly the HP that Defiance brings is not enough of a con compared to what the other stances have (breaking combos, being on GCD, costing MP, being tied to spell speed). If you absolutely don't want Grit/Oaths to be oGCD, please at least make them not break combos anymore.

[Launched]

Inner Beast says hi. You can prepare your 5 stacks in Deliverance, then switch to Defiance oGCD and instantly after use IB.

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.

[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]

I thought WAR had an unfair advantage with Defiance being an Ability instead of a Spell, but I don't have as much experience tanking as WAR, so I guess I'm not considering how much of a hit the missing 25% HP can be. I mean, Defiance still immediately grants +20% healing received, but true, you would be in a considerably more vulnerable state the moment you switch to Defiance compared to a theoretical PLD/DRK with an off-GCD Shield Oath/Grit. I see your point. I'm going to guess this is why WoW has Bear Form also instantly adjust your current HP at the same it increases max HP.

[NFaelivrin]

Not getting your max HP instantly on WAR when swapping to defiance could be considered a fair reason to not make other tank stances off-gcd if WAR wasn't the best tank in the entire game already by a huge margin.

[SpookyGhost]

Sheltron and DA + DM are both usable in SwO/out of Grit. Just throwing that out there.

[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.