If You Were A Class/Job Designer...

[Syzygian]

Currently, there are some offensive advantages to defiance. Your suggested changes make it completely inferior to grit/ShO (although I'm glad you now realized the HP would need to be reduced when disabled). Also, part of what makes WAR interesting is that you need to manage stacks prior to the stance change if you want mitigation after the stance change. Your suggestion takes the away, makes stack management less important, and ultimately the job a bit more stale.

Okay I admit it, I'm confused. How do the changes I outlined in any way affect WAR's stack management? You still keep yourstacks on the swap. And there's no reason IB HAS to be the mitigation you use after the swap. WAR has other CDs. The only thing that changes is that you don't require a heal to top up to your new HP ceiling upon switching into Defiance, thus when you put up IB, you're actually tanking the damage of a tank in tank stance with their 20% CD running (like DRK would with Grit+Shadowskin or PLD with ShO+Rampart.) I'm not sure why this is a problem, it actually fixes one of the very few and admittedly minor flaws with the job.

What benefit are you trying to get by moving WAR's dps combo to the utility combo? It's not needed and also makes WAR's rotation more stale.

Why change existing combo break mechanics on WAR? Is there a reason other than homogenization?

Not homogenization, its just can be annoying to stance-dance at times on the other two tanks, since they avoid their enmity combo. If you have zerked, BBing WAR while you're in SwO or Gritless, it can be a pain. The point was to make WAR's top DPS combo NOT its hate combo, so while OTing they're not generating excess enmity that is serving no purpose, and is actually a raid DPS loss if your PLD or DRK has to use a RoH or PS combo to keep hate against your burst. (BB=20 potency gain over SE, PS=130 potency loss over DASE/10 potency+884 MP(min 140 potency) loss over DE, RoH=90 potency loss over RA; therefore a PS or RoH negates the gains of anywhere from 4 to 7 BB combos having been used over SE).

I'll give you the Clemency thing. Maybe a 600 potency heal with a 50 potency HoT over 30s? Although honestly the MP cost and the fact that its a lower potency than Equilibrium (with the changes), combined with the fact that none of PLD's CDs buff it like Berserk can, I feel makes it pretty balanced.