Tank Stances, Traited

[frostmagemari]

What I wonder, though, is how you would fix this issue.
Would you remove tank stance completely, forcing progression to be done through "agressive tanking" ?
Would you keep it that way so that those skills are doomed to leave our hotbars once we're comfortable with a content ?
Since tank stance only offer mitigation and enmity, I don't see how one could adjust them outside of making one of those desirable.

There is a simple way to correct the tank stance issue.. and it's reducing the amount of defense on items for tank gear to the levels of dragoon armour and then have the tank stance mechanics increase the defense of the wearer to bring them back up to current defense levels. Then trait the abilities so the +enmity bonuses are only triggered in the tank stance.
This alone would make tank stance not only desirable (Without changing the whole game around rediculous buffs and then trying to change every encounter in the game around them), but required to actually tank something and then when not actively tanking the current off-tank has the choice of higher damage output by not putting on the stance, or placing themselves in tank stance and shirking enmity onto the active tank and then still being able to put themselves into tank stance to assist in shared damage mechanics.

Sadly, the only way to make tank stance desirable is to make not being in the stance undesirable; because as long as you can survive without the tank stance and hold aggro without the tank stance, the tank stance is not needed and is simply a damage cooldown for specific attacks. The only other real alternative is to have tank stance baked into the tank class as a whole (making it a trait as the topic creator mentioned) and overhauling the damage potency and mitigation cooldowns for all tanks so they would be in roughly the same spot as they are now. (Which, let's face it.. is unrealistic to expect of SQE)

[Reynhart]

This alone would make tank stance not only desirable (Without changing the whole game around rediculous buffs and then trying to change every encounter in the game around them), but required to actually tank something

It would shift the playstyle, but still left only one option. Even if we could argue that's what tanks are supposed to be, we have no right to force this playstyle upon everyone.

Sadly, the only way to make tank stance desirable is to make not being in the stance undesirable; because as long as you can survive without the tank stance and hold aggro without the tank stance, the tank stance is not needed and is simply a damage cooldown for specific attacks.

That's not true. Again, the problem with tank stance is not being able to do your job without it, but the damage you lose using it. If having the tank stance allows the party to retain the same overall DPS, then being in tank stance would not be a problem. And since tank stance gives mitigation and enmity, either increasing the mitigation so that healers do more DPS, or make high enmity generation have an effect on other members' DPS.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I'm perfectly fine with you disagreeing with me. What I wonder, though, is how you would fix this issue.
Would you remove tank stance completely, forcing progression to be done through "agressive tanking" ?
Would you keep it that way so that those skills are doomed to leave our hotbars once we're comfortable with a content ?

Since tank stance only offer mitigation and enmity, I don't see how one could adjust them outside of making one of those desirable.

Honestly, I don't really know a good solution. FFXIV is heavily damage dependent for virtually all its content. Such is why people look at healers who refuse to DPS in a negative light. All that comes to mind is adding greater amounts of fluff damage and possibly reducing heal efficiency. This way fights are somewhat less predictable, especially once you couple together a simple Cure II healing upwards of 20,000. There just isn't enough outgoing damage at nearly enough velocity during bosses. Case in point, look at mass pull damages. You generally can't get away with dropping stance for long, if at all. So bosses would need some comparable.

[Kabooa]

I'd rather stances change the playstyle while the stance is active rather than just being a number shift up or down. Even the Warrior doesn't really change when shifting stances because the abilities that change are functionally the same.

[MoarLegion]

People seem to forget that vehicle for which we are named also came with one or two very large guns attached. Whats so bad about tanks fighting along side their friends, instead of just being a punching bag?

[shao32]

False, in 2.x we have real stance dancing, swaps was in tank stance always MT on dps stance was non-existent at excepción of phases where the Boss dont hit you, WAR loss everything if they drop defiance and our mitigation tools was limited, the only thing that exist those days was the str meta with tanks wearing hybrid or full builts.

[PLitz]

If the devs were to make Tank Stances passive traits, then I hope that they would have the foresight to make enemies hit harder and aggro harder to manage. If not the role would become way too easy. Though doing that would also turn less skilled players away from the role. And I think that making fights necessitate tank stance would have a similar effect.

Really when you think about it, we're in a pretty good situation right now. Tank stance allows for flexibility in playstyle which is absolutely necessary for what is arguably the least played role.

[VertoIncantation]

Why would paladin only have 10% when dark knight has 30%? Kinda dumb if you ask me..

[Zerathor]

Why would we want to dumb down this game more?

If you understand your job, you dps and time cool downs to provide dps, watch eminity meters, and use your job to its fullest potential.

If you just want to play casually in tank stance 24/7, that's fine to, all the 4 man dungeons were designed for you.

If tanks just had tank stance mitigation 24/7, you wouldn't need cds. Or eminity combos for that matter. The way the game is now at least.

If anything you DON'T want this because they would gear new content around your new mitigation, and you would HAVE to learn how to manage your cds, or just die even with your constant 20% mitigation.

[shao32]

Why would we want to dumb down this game more?

If you understand your job, you dps and time cool downs to provide dps, watch eminity meters, and use your job to its fullest potential.

If you just want to play casually in tank stance 24/7, that's fine to, all the 4 man dungeons were designed for you.

If tanks just had tank stance mitigation 24/7, you wouldn't need cds. Or eminity combos for that matter. The way the game is now at least.

If anything you DON'T want this because they would gear new content around your new mitigation, and you would HAVE to learn how to manage your cds, or just die even with your constant 20% mitigation.

i will say i challenge you to tank in tank stance and dont use ever a cd in all the current conten and come back and share you fantastic experience.

first of all you guys dont have much idea what are you talking about, current conten is actually desing with tanks in tank stance in mind, the 20% is not gamebreaking or god mode so change tank stances to be 24/7 hen you are MT will dont break the game or need a rework on all current conten at al, stop over exaggerate.

tank stance is a over punishing button for no really reason and sould be fixed somehow, idk why you want to keep the "boring" button forever instead to make tanks more fluid and more fun in every aspect of they gameplay without loosing performance.