Lets nerf WAR :D

[Kydi]

snip

This.

The fundamental issue comes down to the design choices made, both in the classes and the meta (speaking only up to A2S and from progression raiding in other MMOs). The meta requires a minimum threshold (let's say 1) of a variable, let's call it "tankiness". If tankiness is too low, the tank cannot survive the tank buster, thus is not viable. The second variable we have at present for tanks is damage and due to the way the meta is currently structured, damage >> tankiness where tankiness >= 1.

On Equalising tankiness

Part of the issue with the current tanking meta is that it drastically favours short, powerful cooldowns over the longer, weaker ones. Equalising the tankiness of all the tanks would, in my opinion, require a shift in the meta to ensure that damage is normalised across a fight, with some spikes, rather than spike damage being the primary source of danger, which inherently favours the short, powerful cooldown, especially if they have a short recast.

In my opinion, more focus should be placed on tanks needing to roll through cooldowns, gradually mitigating a larger amount of damage the longer they tank and eventually needing to swap with their off tank lest they be flattened (I think A3 normal did this quite well in the final phase, prior to being outgeared, with the stacking blunt resistance down). Assuming that damage is equalised, and tankiness is equalised.

On Equalising Utility

The way I would see that tanks could be put on a level playing field is to have all tanks share equal damage and tankiness, but vary a utility, for instance:

PLD - healer and warding utility with clemency and divine veil;
WAR - party wide damage reduction utility through storm's path;
DRK - damage reduction based on blinding boss, so not guaranteed, but when effective better than WAR.

This would give some interesting combos:

PLD/WAR - general damage down and offhealing/shielding from PLD;
PLD/DRK - chance for higher damage reduction but more importance placed on PLD healing when the chance fails;
DRK/WAR - general damage reduction with a chance of very high damage reduction.

This would, in my opinion, make tanking a little more interesting and synergise the classes a little better, without having one go to pairing being objectively better.

On keeping tanks unique

Notwithstanding party utility, a major concern with normalising tankiness is homogenisation of the classes. In my opinion, the classes would fundamentally share the same basic structure of agro combo, damage combo, debuff combo. However, paladin would still keep it's blocking and healing mechanics, warrior still keep the stacks and dark knight still keep its many off gCD abilities. In my opinion this is sufficient to ensure that even if damage and tankiness are the same, each tank still has a unique flavour.

Summary

Tanking is currently in a difficult situation due in part to class design, but predominantly due to the current meta. I personally am of the opinion that if the meta changed (to one of sustained high damage) we would actually see a lot more balance in the tanking classes, forcing use of tank stance for greater periods of time where we see a lot more balance as WAR ~= DRK > PLD but (on physical fights) PLD > WAR ~= DRK in terms of defence.

It will be very interesting to see what happens with the tanking requirements come 3.2, but in my opinion a buff/nerf to a single class is not the solution.