I like your + - list Freyy it's actually pretty accurate. In my opinion having the benefit from your tanking stance instantly is actually one of the most important one because what's the point in using tanking stance if you don't get any defense out of it? That's the main utility of tank stance tbh.

Inner Beast use one gcd so, ok tank swaping use 0 GCD but you'll use 1 afterward to use the most common tank buster defensive CD. While PLD and DRK will use 1 gcd to turn on a 20% damage reduction and their following CD will be off gcd. There's a slight balance if you take everything into consideration.

For your information the damage penalty for war in defiance is 25% not 20% like shield oath and grit, so there goes another difference

If you swap too late in defiance you're screwed, you miss a buffed stoneskin, a buffed adlo. So yeah it's actually a major downside, i don't see why it isn't. Pld and Drk can just turn on Shield Oath or grit during a tank buster cast bar and be perfectly fine, doing that as a war is actually a failure. And ofc war can slightly compensate with Inner Beast and Equilibrium but it's still a downside.
Using Equilbrium to top yourself up before a tank buster is quite a failure and usually a huge overheal wasted,you'd be better off saving it for oh shit button once the buster hits.


And Raxiaz i' m not only listing the 10 seconds CD, the major downside is that you dont' benefit instantly from your tanking stance. Which is quite a downside for a tank stance.

All i'm saying is that stance dancing as war does have some downside it's not as perfect as people think. I'm not saying it's balanced between the 3 tanks though.