A former WAR's Paradigm Shift

[AI_wass]

As things stand currently in progression content, tanks establish aggro quickly then maintain that enmity through brute-force DPS rotations, riding just above the line of aggro for as long as possible, while hitting cooldowns to survive incoming damage. Aggro management here consists of when and how often you have to return to stance or use your enmity combo; particularly in the case of DRKs and PLDs, because their enmity combo is also their lowest potency combo. WAR doesn't really worry about aggro because their highest potency combo /is/ their enmity combo.

WAR notwithstanding, I don't see what's so different about what you desire compared to what's currently implemented, other than the presence of cooldowns used purely to maintain enmity and maybe some fancy aggro tricks in raids; though I can make an argument that those cooldowns already exist in the form of the tanks' defensive stances.

[Brian_]

I agree with your point of view, however remember that part of the current complexity of doing high dps as a tank is stance dancing. A switch to a enmity meta would require us to stay on the tanking stance since its the once that creates more of it. Removing stance dancing removes the risk of losing mitigation/hp buffer and the attention and memory of when to do so.

While a tank that doesn't know how to push buttons would indeed gate your DPS the reality is that removing stance dance and requiring them to do only a 1-2-3 combo for large enmity in the way the game is currently designed is in my opinion a lower skill floor, not a higher one.

It's not a lower skill floor because that's basically already the bare minimum tanks have to do. You stay in tank stance and 1,2,3 for enmity or press 1 button for AoE enmity. You climb the skill ladder by pumping out more and more DPS on top of that. But, if you change the meta to enmity / survivability, the equivalent bare minimum of tanks staying in tank stance and only spamming 1,2,3 or pressing 1 button for AoE enmity would not be enough to hold aggro. They would need to jump through the same hoops of fire that currents tanks do to push DPS except it would only be to meet the bare minimum functionality of a tank and hold aggro.

I'm taking their most vital mechanic and expand on it with proper management.
Exactly how DPS need to manage their rotation to properly do their most vital part...doing damage.

Staying alive would be the same in the current meta or an enmity-meta, so it's not relevant. As for holding aggro, yes, it would require some practice.
But it's not like the meta whould shift all at once. All tanks would have 60 levels and numerous dungeons to practice...and to practice something that really belongs to tanks.

At this point, I've had to re-iterate my argument specifically for you. Wouldn't it be easier just to read?

Good DPS output from DPS players is not vital in all content. Being able to hold mob aggro and stay alive is vital in every fight in the game. Queue for an EX-roulette and just refuse to hold aggro. See how far you get. Queue for an EX-roulette and ask your DPS to pump out a pathetic 500 DPS. You will still clear.

Staying alive would not be the same in the current meta or an enmity-meta because part of the shift would be to make activated mitigation much more demanding. Hence my repeated use of the enmity / survivability terms. So, it's very relevant. But, you wouldn't understand the basic concepts of this discussion because you never bothered to read.

Yea, tanks would obviously adjust. But again, you could say the same thing for the current meta. How long have we been in this meta? 6 months? How long has tank DPS been a thing? 2 years? It's not like players lacked for a means of practice or external resources and yet tanks that pull good DPS are a tiny, tiny minority. I'm done replying because I'm tired of repeating the same points over and over again only to have you fail in basic comprehension. For the last time --

It is fine when the tiny, tiny minority is doing something that is optional in the majority of content.

It is not fine when the tiny, tiny minority is doing something that is mandatory in the majority of content.

It's the same logic with healing in this game. Healers that contribute really good DPS on top of comfortably keeping a group alive are a minority. But, if your only concern is healing, the role is very easy to play outside of some circumstances outside of their control (party is incredibly under-geared / standing in the fire / massive pulls). The result? Dungeon runs are generally pretty smooth from a healing perspective because the healer's basic job is easy. If you made that job significantly harder, then you would see a sharp decrease in effective healers. Is there any argument otherwise?

[Reynhart]

At this point, I've had to re-iterate my argument specifically for you.

And at this point, I still don't understand why you think that holding aggro is always the same, so that a tank who can't hold aggro in some content wouldn't hold aggro in any content.
The same is true for active mitigation.

Again, you're just overdramatizing.

Here's a little example : Tank Swapping.
In Coil, that was a vital skill than every tank should know (Regardless of how difficult we think it is). If you end with a "bad" tank, that don't know how to properly do it, you're screwed (Until you overgear the content, of course). BUT, if you end up with that same tank in any dungeon, 24 man raid or during a Trial Roulette, you wouldn't care if he knows how to do it, because you wouldn't need it. In fact, he could even not have Provoked available, you wouldn't care.
That's one enmity "trick", and I'm sure you could have plenty of others.