Active Mitigation, what are your thoughts/ideas?

[Mycow8me]

This will never happen but other miracles have occurred. It might be fun to discuss how it might have worked. Tanking would be a lot more engaging and possibly even more fun. How would hate and things work though is the question. For the most part every class still has a good setup for skills even without tank stance but still needs the hate gains. Hate building skills could technically just build the amount of hate they normally would from current tank stance hate modifiers. I think it would be interesting if both tanks had a healing active geared towards certain situations and mob groups. A punishing active possibly more centered towards tankbusters both as 30 second cooldowns, gcds, and no costs to use. The way the Tankbuster ones would work is that you press and hold the button. While holding the button you can cycle through a maximum of 2 gcds. After skipping 1 gcd, the tankbuster skill is automatically released as the 2nd gcd becomes available and you only do a 10% damage reflection. If you time it well enough and you release it before the next gcd becomes available you do the max 50% damage reflection. This might be a poor explanation without pictures but I don't have any.

Rampart would no longer be a mitigation cooldown.

Possible setup:
Edit: After thinking about it a while, it makes sense to remove the stances and just free up the space on hotbars so all of wars skills are available at all times.
War
Hate combo: Butchers block
Hate AOE: Overpower, Steel cyclone
Hate ranged: Tomahawk
Active mitigation GCD
Inner Beast:350 potency Healing based on damage done 30% damage reduction for 5 seconds (gives 50 beast gauge)
Unchained (button must be held and released after attack): Howl before next incoming attack leading into a more powerful looking 2.0 brutal swing animation, 50% of damage received and mitigating 40%.
Non active: Vengeance only change mitigation %30 to 20.

Dark Knight
Hate combo: Power Slash
Hate AOE: Unleash, Abyssal Drain
Hate ranged: Unmend
Active Mitigation GCD
TBN: 350 potency magic damage heals for damage done mitigates 30% and lasts for 5 seconds (gives 50 blood)
Grit (button held and released after attack): Hunkering down into a powerful thrust position and sword gathering energy leading into old 3.x reprisal animation Countering next attack returning 50% of damage mitigating 40%
Non active: Shadow Wall 20% mitigation 120 second cooldown and duration 15 seconds, gives some MP on hits similar to blood price.

Honestly I dont feel comfortable making a PLD one since I dont play it but here goes.
Paladin
Hate Combo: Rage of Halone
Hate AOE: Flash, Circle of Scorn
Hate ranged: Shield Lob
Active Mitigation GCD
Sheltron: Shield bash for 350 potency healing for damage done, blocks all incoming attacks for 5 seconds at -30% mitigation. (gives 50 oath gauge)
Shield Oath: Some type of shield energy gathering animation leading into a Shield Charge animation for 50% of damage received mitigating 40% (button held and released after attack)
Non active: Sentinel 20% mitigation, 15 seconds, and 120 cooldown. Receive MP on hits

I'm unsure about paladin due to oath gauge skills, someone who plays it could do a better job as to which skills to to lose/keep for gauge.

I think it would be more fun as a tank and more engaging. Not worrying about spamming a bunch of instants before a tank buster or anything like that, just reacting to it coming instead of preparations for it in a sense. Maybe I made the mitigation too strong, or classes not unique enough I don't know. The 2 types of active mitigation could still fundamentally operate differently in how it does the damage or receives resources, there's lots of possibilities. I kept them for the most part the same cause I didn't want to create a situation where one was stronger than the other for the actives. This was just a quick rundown of an idea I've had for a long time but never posted cause well... it won't happen. At least its something more fresh to talk about than the everyday tank thread. The recent stance change threads has rekindled my thoughts on this.

Edit: I guess the simplest way to do it would be to have the first active mitigation tool at lvl30 when you get your class. The second one at lvl 50 to prepare for boss content and start learning to use it.

[Jukebox12]

Can I puke?!?

[Mahrze]

While the idea is interesting, the issue is how repetitive the fights are, that you'd see tanks pushing for higher SkS to weave in more attacks. It's stop being active and shift towards reactive.

[Mycow8me]

Reactive is probably the better word choice. Personally i dont enjoy pressing mitigation button as a tank, i want to interact with the hits but its probably wishful thinking if the idea alone is capable of making someone puke.. Its kinda sad to say i enjoy the dps aspect of war and drk more than the idea of tanking on them. With a mitigation skill that interacts with busters, I'd actually look forward to using my tank skills instead of "time to use rampart and tbn..." ok i survived back to using the fun skills.

[Steelbreeze]

"Active Mitigation" is what we have already. What you're looking for is a dps minigame.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

Define "active mitigation" please.

What are the fundamental differences between it and what we have now (cooldown rotation)?

[LeoLupinos]

Maybe he's trying to remove tank stance and add it to combo, so that you have one more motive to do the Emnity combo. But it need to last more seconds.

For DRK, for example, it could be Hard Slash > Spining Slash (Gives a buff for more Emnity for 30s) > Power Slash (Gives a buff 20% Damage taken reduces and -20% damage done).
So it will be more "Rotation" rather than simply 1>2>3 forever.
I kinda like it, but it needs more internal mechanic, it can be expanded much further if it's like the way I mentioned.
Tanks are focusing too much in damage, where they should focus on mitigation.

Maybe not removing the tank stance, but put a trait on it that changes all additional effect of the skills. So when in tank stance we need to do X rotation, focusing in mantaining mitigation buffs, and so without tank stance the skill will go back to normal with damage focus, doing Y rotation for more damage.

[Shurrikhan]

You'd have to define what Active Mitigation means to you before I could make heads or tails of your suggestion here, let alone add to your intended discussion.

[Tint]

Reactive is probably the better word choice.

we once had a reactive tank - 2.0 WAR!

basically no mitigation skills, but a huge life pool and powerfull self heals to use after a buster. i am sad that this didn't worked that well, because i really like the idea of a reactive tank v.v/

[Mycow8me]

the better word choice is reactive, you respond to incoming tank buster by pressing the first skill in the list and holding down the button for the second skill in the list.

I don't know i can explain it any better. If tank skills worked like this and had a smaller cooldown... These long lasting mitigation skills would be pretty pointless.

I'll try to explain them a little better using the listed war skills implying both have 30 second cooldowns:
War would go back to using its original Inner Beast skill for smaller mitigation along with self heals periodically through the fight with a 30 second cooldown. This skill would be alot more useful for AOEs and auto attack damage. 30% mitigation for 5 seconds every 30 seconds and a self heal.

The other skill would turn Unchained into a Tank buster skill on a cooldown of 30 seconds. It works alot differently. Mitigation is 40%. You hold the button down and after the boss hits you with the buster, you let go of the button. If you only cycle through 1 gcd you respond to the bosses attack with a 50% damage reflection. If boss does 30k you respond with 15k damage etc... The animation for these attacks would be unique and tanking skills would actually be fun again IMHO. The old Brutal swing animation would prolly work here with a more powerful looking animation. A warrior howl before the swing is a precursor to the incoming attack. If you let go of the button to late and cycle 2 gcds... You only reflect 10% cause you didn't time your button press well enough.

Looking at it this way, every 30 seconds you are able to mitigate 5 seconds for 30% with a self heal and reflect50%/mitigate40% a powerful hit once every 30 seconds. This eliminates the need for rampart which is a skill a tank is going to bring currently anyway. You would have more reactive mitigation and not have to worry about spamming some instants to incoming damage, simply press your tank skill. Make tanks look powerful if nothing else.
War: Howl into a brutal swing
Drk: Parry or thrusting position charge into a 3.x reprisal animation
Pld: Magically enhanced shield block (something like passage of arms but more emphasis on the shield) into a shield charge.

Our current mitigation toolkit allows for us to put stuff up before stuff is coming and just continue dpsing through tank busters. A reactive style would be you press your tank skill in response to incoming damage in the way inner beast and TBN currently works. Long lasting mitigation skills like raw intuition, rampart, etc... these kinds of tank skills are boring. I would edit the first post but I'm not sure its worth it anymore.