Tank Stance Redesign

[Shurrikhan]

Dread Spikes is an ability that DRK has, historically had, which serves a similar function. Why not merge it together with Blood Price? For the next X seconds, your attacks generate additional enmity. Attacks performed against you restore a minor proportion of the damage back.

Functionally, it's not all that different from "for the next X seconds, your %healing increases and your attacks generate additional enmity" or "for the next X seconds, your block rate goes up, Shield Swipe's recast is reduced, and you generate additional enmity."

I just don't see why you'd want to muddy an ability that puts the resources generated entirely under the DRKs control with passive spending of its output. Assuming proper balance, what you gain in HP generated and/or damage reflected you lose from other options, whereas providing pure resource instead puts those options fully in the DRK's hands. What DRK lacks, imo, isn't an stylized Rampart (but without any protection vs. being one-shot, since you can't reabsorb damage taken after you're already dead) so much as spenders strong enough to fill its iconic identity. It needs greater punctuation available to its MP spending and greater utility output from spending that MP.

That likely means trading out Darkside as a flat bonus to a toggle-able that causes your spells and abilities to spend additional mana for additional potency, to be used during burst or emergencies and avoided when banking for such. That certainly means upping the %-damage-to-HP modifier on Souleater and Abyssal Drain. And it likely means adding some vampirism-synergetic bonus to Grit, such as allowing self-overhealing to instead create a (continuously fading, by both flat and percentile rates) shield effect.

[Sapphidia]

The current situation with tank stances is one of the major reasons that made me swap from PLD main to RDM for Stormblood. I've always felt that WAR should really be the only tank that heavily relies on stance swapping.

I wrote a very lengthy thread back at the start of Heavensward here and on Reddit that got a huge bunch of responses discussing the concept of Player Fantasy and the failure of the current tank meta (mostly due to encounter design) on catering for the tank players that like to focus on improving their survivability and being the toughest they can be. It's not changed since then. The game here encourages SACRIFICING any survivability you gain. Get more vitality and defense from gear upgrades? Grats, that just means you can spend more time in DPS stance. We have Tenacity now as a stat that helps our survivability along with dps increase equivalnt to 2/3 a point of Det, but we de-prioritise it despite 2000 Tenacity (easily reachable) being the equivalent mitigation of adding half a tank stance to you... but we don't care because it doesnt matter.

I don't mind a focus on DPS, it gives you something else to think abuot as you tank, but what I do object to is feeling like its never optimal to max out your toughness as this comes about via sacrifice, and tank stances are a major factor of this. To this end, I have four concepts that I feel should be correct about tank stance:

- Tank stance should be designed to be the optimal thing to be in when tanking. If you're dpsing and waiting for your turn to provoke, THEN you should be in DPS stance.
- Tank stance should not noticeably reduce your DPS. In fact it should increase your DPS in tanking situations.
- DPS stance should always be higher DPS but only when not being directly targetted or attacked. It should also be harder to hold threat in.
- Tank stance should provide enough buffs that you're always going to want to use it where appropriate.

(Note - the above really applies to PLD and DRK primarily, as I feel WAR is set up to be the tank which DOES swap stances in combat, in part because Defiance's tanking bonus is based on being healed up after taking damage, not mitigating it as heavily during combat)

I'd accomplish the above via a mechanic change to CRITS from enemies, some threat changes, and relying on REACTIVE skills. The easiest way to prop up damage of Tank stances WHEN TANKING is to ensure they enable things like Shield Swipe, and make them strong. If you're not being attacked you do poop damage but if you are, you can reflect it.

Example of how I'd balance this:

- Make all bosses have a very high Crit rate. 50% perhaps.
- Remove Awareness but make Shield Oath and Grit make you immune to crits. Keep them at maybe 10% damage reduction, but most of your mitigation is via the fact that bosses can't crit you any more.
- Remove the damage penalty in Shield Oath and Grit.
- Make Shield Swipe only available in Shield Oath. Reduce the cooldown to 5-6 seconds, balance the potency to balance the overall dps
- Give DRK a version of Reprisal back for parries, so it has a similar damage return skill. Alternatively, remove Blood Price as an active skill and make its effect a permanent (slightly lesser) always-on passive when you're in Grit.
- Make Sword Oath REDUCE your threat by 50% when in it so you literally can't hold aggro in it. Blood Weapon could also have a similar mechanic so you really don't want to be using it when tanking.

The above would make it very clear - be in Shield Oath/Grit when tanking, or you'll be crit to death. Your damage wont suffer as long as you block and parry enough to boost your DPS via Shield Swipe/Reprisal.

When not tanking, swap to Sword Oath or "Non Grit" and you'll enjoy low threat at the expense of lots of mitigation, but due to Sword Oath procs and Blood Weapon you'll be doing more damage when not tanking a mob.

That's what I'd like to see. I'd also love to see some kind of positive effect of heavy CONSISTANT mitigation outside of cooldowns. How about something like...

Each tank has a resource bar which increases as you reduce damage. EG, take a 1000 damage hit, your combined armor and tenacity and a random parry reduces it to 450 damage.
You've mitigated 550, so your resource bar grows by 550 points.
Then, when you use shield swipe, it has a low base potency but its potency is increased by a factor of current energy bar, and your energy bar is drained to zero.
This would encourage stacking mitigation where possible to speed up the bar increase and would increase your dps as a factor of mitigation but only when actually tanking.

[saltlife]

TBH, I think it's the sacrifice of survivability that makes being in tank stance worth it at all.

Removing crits while having a tank in damage stance would either mean all the bosses basically need auto attacks to do more damage and removes reactive healing that healers have to do since there aren't any crits either. Kinda means that healers need to actually focus tanks which becomes pretty boring, over it would be over the top and healers would never have to heal tanks which kinda takes a part of their identity away.

As far as paladins, your damage would still take a large drop since most of PLD's damage comes from auto attacks. Nearly 15% of their damage comes from auto attacks and another 10% on their damage on top of that is the added damage from sword oath so literally they'll still be doing at least 10% less damage from not being in sword oath.

I would say give a bit more usage tanks can do with their resource bars. I do like that PLD gets actually defensive buffs with theirs that I'd like to see WAR and DRK get so they have a choice of either doing damage, or protecting teammates with their own iteration of Intervention. (I realize DRK has TBN, but this is just random thoughts).

As far as straigh reactive skills, pressing shield swipe every few seconds really isn't refreshing or rewarding in any way than it already is, and giving it to DRK wouldn't be anything anyone would be excited about anyway.

I understand that the whole point of tanks generating less aggro in dps stances is meant when they're not holding hate, but if people planned on optimizing on the fact that pld could MT with sword oath, anyone would just retake aggro when this works just fine as it is anyway.

sure we can take into account always about making tanks "tougher", but it's a game and what fun value does that add to being a tank? Sure it makes sense from a role playing aspect, but personally I find it fun to take a bit more damage if it means I can try and push out more damage. Tank contribute right now in combined dps up to and past 10k dps in fights that usually require 36k dps it's fun to actually contribute to killing the boss instead of being a straight punching bag.

[Shurrikhan]

snip

So you want players to pay an obligatory tax on being tanks atop being tanks? No risk-reward, just make sure you spend your GCD to swap before anything so much as touches you. You can forget all enmity control skills that you've been optimizing around because they won't be enough. Use the otherwise unnecessary mitigation, or your tanking abilities will be punished more than a DPS would just for being a tank.

May I... dare I... ask why?

[Sapphidia]

May I... dare I... ask why?

Because the current design feels somewhat backwards and unsatisfying for those who get more pleasure out of maximising their toughness.

They give us a tank stance that increases threat and reduces damage, and then the design of the game and encounters makes you feel bad and/or wrong if you ever actually use them. Turning off the damage reduction and turning on the dps stances just converts the emphasis onto the healers.

I just feel there should be no negative for using a tank stance with bonus threat and damage reduction when actually -tanking-. I know there's skill in choosing when to turn off the mitigation and go for dps, but the skill and mechanic is identical for all tanks. Why does it have to be homogenous - the Warrior is nicely designed to have stance dancing whilst tanking an integral part of the kit. It just feels clunky and horrible for paladins, and feels super dumb to have an entire threat combo and damage mitigation stance that you're encouraged to never use, and rely on ninjas to hold your threat and healers to keep you up.

There's no space for a tank that keeps its mitigation up at all times, is encouraged to minimise incoming damage, and do heavy damage via reactive/reflecting stuff. It cant be that hard to balance, surely? Lower the cooldown and increase the damage on shield swipe such that a tanking paladin getting hit does equal to or slightly more damage than one in Sword Oath, but make the Sword Oath paladin do far more damage when just tunnelling onto the rear of a boss and not taking hits. That's the balance a lot of tanks want.

That's the way all 3 tanks are designed, and the meta as a whole. And it's fun for a large number of players, and unfun for a lot of others, mostly those who came to FFXIV as career-tanks from other games with a mindset of wanting to be the brick wall. It's a design decision I don't like, and I feel there's space in a game with multiple easily-swapped tank classes to not have all 3 be so near-identical. And because I don't like the design decision, FFXIV is the first MMO where tank is no longer my primary role.

[Lyth]

[...]

I skipped some steps in my explanation.

From a defensive standpoint, it's relatively simple to remove stances from the tanks. It's just a matter of tuning baseline tank defensive values and mob damage output. What makes this different from, say, the removal of Cleric Stance from healers is that stances have the dual function of generating enmity.

The place where enmity matters the most is when you're grabbing initial aggro on the boss or a newly spawned add. That's also the point when you're at highest risk of losing aggro to a non-tank. The general solution to this is to Shirk. But there are situations where you can't rely on Shirk (i.e. your co-tank is on a different target, or is unreliable). Other solutions involve Unchained (WAR only) or Shadewalker (NIN only).

The simplest substitute for tank stance would be a role action ability that simply gives your attacks an enmity multiplier for a short period of time. It's also kind of boring. If you want to inject a bit of flavour, you just need to combine it with a fluff defensive cooldown.

For PLD, you're never going to use Bulwark in isolation to mitigate a tankbuster. So combining it with an ability that increases enmity and perhaps lets you throw in a few more Shield Swipes in the process achieves the above goal while fleshing out the job identity a bit. The same holds true for Dread Spikes. This isn't intended to substitute for the damage reduction of the old tank stances. That's a passive effect that can be built into the jobs at baseline. It's intended to convert a fluff defensive into something that serves a new but essential function.

[...]

I remember that post. I think it did a good job of capturing the growing pains that were associated with Gordias. It wasn't enough to get the best armor and stand in front of the boss, awing your team with how little damage you were taking. It wasn't enough to simply survive and RP fight the big dragon. You now had to study boss attack patterns and compensate for a dps-focused loadout with more skilled use of active, as opposed to passive defensive abilities. Your team now counted on your tanking skill to make the dps check.

I appreciate the sentiment. I wouldn't play a tank if the defensive gameplay elements didn't matter to me. But I felt that your post just about missed the mark then, and it still just misses it now.

Compare and Contrast
The main problem with tank stance is that it's passive. You apply it, and it stays on. There's functionally no difference between a game in which tank stance is mandatory and one in which the mobs all do 20% less damage. So do you attribute the lower damage numbers to the fact that the stance is making you "more defensive", or is it because the bosses don't hit all that hard? You may be "maximising your defense" passively, but it does nothing for the "role fantasy" that you described.

These "role fantasies" are established through contrast. WAR has a relatively low average GCD potency. So when you launch into Inner Release, you see a massive jump in your damage output. If all of WAR's attacks passively did more damage across the board, you'd lose the impact. What is a "powerful attack"? Is it 1000 damage? 100000? Numbers are meaningless unless you have a baseline to compare them to.

On the mitigation side of things, one of the most iconic tanking moments in this game was in T13, when your two tanks, standing side by side, get blasted by wave after wave of destructive energy. It's not passive mitigation that creates the impact of the scene. It's not 100% tank stance uptime. It's the fact that if you don't actively mitigate, the attack vaporises you. Passive effects, like the defensive stats from armour and tank stance, exist to separate tanks from non-tanks. But it doesn't give you the accomplishment of standing resilient in the face of an overwhelming attack. It's the threat, the sense of danger of being one-shot that does this.

The other problem with stances, as you describe them, is that players by nature will seek out ways to maximise their dps. You saw what happened with tank accessories at the start of this expansion. They removed STR from our accessories. What did we do? We equipped i270 STR accessories from the end of Heavensward and rolled cooldowns. You can try to make conditions more hostile for the player, but there's enough variation in skill that you're bound to find someone capable of pulling it off.

And what are these players really doing? They're not cheating the system. When they maximise their dps by replacing passive mitigation with a more nuanced use of cooldowns, they're creating that very sense of danger, that risk of being oneshot. They're creating that very same mitigation fantasy that the draconian stance system would seek to deny them.

Rewarding Mitigation
I don't really think that reactive skills and RNG crit effects are the answer either. If you have time to react to it after the fact, it's not all that dangerous. What you need is short recast, short duration mitigation moves like Sheltron and TBN which reward tight timing against cleaves. Sheltron-ing your way through Living Liquid's cleaves in Sword Oath was the OG mitigation challenge. It demonstrates an understanding of damage patterns and a mastery of fight timings.

It's worth noting that some of those "other MMOs" that you mentioned have similarly moved away from passive effects like defensive stances, precisely because they're clunky and don't really offer any real gameplay value if they're designed to be "always on".

You point out that there are players who like to do damage, and there are players who like to mitigate. Why not both? Abilities like Sheltron and TBN bridge the gap between attack and defense. You mitigate well in order to do more damage. The solution to reward both groups of players is to create synergy between the two.

I think another issue that we haven't really considered up until now is the idea of counterattacks. Shield Swipe generally benefits you more when you're actively tanking, outside of fishing for procs with Sheltron. But why does it have to be that way? What if your co-tank could proc it by taking damage from the boss? What if countering an attack provided a mitigation benefit to a teammate? Pyros showed us the fun of Reflect. What if the point wasn't just to mitigate, but reflect damage back to the boss through a well timed counter?

Enforcing tank stance is not the answer. The answer is to make mitigation more meaningful through use of contrast and active mitigation, as opposed to passive design.

[Shurrikhan]

Because the current design feels somewhat backwards and unsatisfying for those who get more pleasure out of maximising their toughness.

Okay, that I can get behind. But your examples were very clearly of a category beyond simply making tank stance useful, specifically

be in Shield Oath/Grit when tanking, or you'll be crit to death.

On the other hand...

I just feel there should be no negative for using a tank stance with bonus threat and damage reduction when actually -tanking-.

On this we disagree. If a stance has no downsides, then it offers between little and nothing to gameplay. That is precisely why I think the offensive stance (tank-stance-less) option is overpowered, though not in a way that requires increased dependence on its alternative. As soon as you lose the risk-reward basis of stance-dancing, you kill what little complexity tanks have in place of a more fulfilling toolkit. Frankly, its player count, especially that of more skilled tank players, is unlikely to survive that; you will see significant drop in skilled tank players if you gut the role's gameplay like that.

But let's be clear: "tank stance" is a term we've unified for convenience. As a tank, like any other role, exists to increase the speed and reliability of a clear, there will be times when indirect contribution is outweighed by direct contribution. The issue right now is how often that's true. But the emphasis shouldn't be on opportunity cost then given to avoiding the tank stance, which will fade regardless with time and gear -- and it certainly should not nerf the tank to perform its tanking duties less well than a DPS when outside of "tank stance" -- but on the opportunity benefits possible from the swap. The issue is that with such a high opportunity cost in the swap itself, especially for two out of three jobs, means that you're going to have to pick the stance that performs higher on the bleeding edge and more or less stick with it.

Reduce the opportunity cost of the swap itself, offer utility benefits to Grit and Shield Oath (which needn't go nearly so far as gimmicks and can actually greatly increase gameplay deptth), and perhaps double-down a bit on Warrior's HP-ability interactions, and you've already cleared half the battle here. You do NOT need to gut tank gameplay just to keep everything rigidly aligned -- tank stance for tanking (which, being all any 4-man tank ever does, means they now only have one stance). Very few people care enough about "role identity" enough to sacrifice such a huge portion of their kit complexity, means of maximization, or the like.

[Sapphidia]

Some good points to counter my initial example (which I admit were not the best solutions, just a kind of crystalisation of what I personally would want stuff to feel like). I do agree that it's not a one solution problem - if you make tank stances and dps stances so "basic" in their application then yes, the complexity of tanking disappears and the jobs become more boring. You WOULD need something that could be added to the jobs that would increase the skill cap. DPS players get this by having to manage multiple cooldowns and resource meters, line up dps moves with optimal combos of off-gcd buffs, and generally having a longer more complex rotation. Or in the case of classes like Bard or BLM, you have procs to react to. You'd not want to get as complex as a full DPS class, but adding more reactive mechanics into the tank jobs would be required.

And this is really what I'd want - as said, there's 3 tank classes. Warriors are designed from the ground up to be all about aggressive tank stance swapping, so why can't ONE of the other two be all about stacking mitigation. And when I said "no downsides", i guess I specifically meant that it would enable increased dps only when taking hits. If you were using it when dpsing, that WOULD offer downside as you'd be sacrificing sword oath procs. The difference would be that if tanking, the buffed shield swipe procs you'd get would out-damage the Oath procs. Something like that. I mean, most skills in FF don't have a downside, just something they sacrifice. There's no downside to Diurnal Sect, you just choose HoTs over Shields. Same with choosing mitigation and damage via reactive skills, vs damage via procs on swings.

I guess my real example from other MMOs was the WoW Paladin's Righteous Fury skill circa Wrath onwards. It's a tank stance. You turn it on and off. What does it do? It increases your threat massively when it's on. That's all, nothing else. No damage boost, no mitigation boost. All it does is say "I want my attacks to generate more threat so I can hold a boss on me".

Lyth - you said I missed the mark slightly, and whilst I do agree with your comment about the nice feeling of mitigating via proper use of the active cooldowns (it IS great to hit that Sheltron 1 second before a massive hammer blow that would have killed you without it), there is that one feeling that I don't think you understand that many of the "brick wall" players feel. It just feels "BAD" to "turn off" a thing that boosts your mitigation. Turning off Tank Stance feels counter intuitive and wrong. You have a skill that reduces your incoming damage by 20% and you could legitimately have it on all the time. Every time I swap to Sword Oath (which I do as much as possible - desire for tankiness doesnt mean just ignoring the tank meta of course!) I feel a little sick in the stomach.

It's purely a psychological thing, a sense of wrongness. I agree on the increased skill and interest from dancing, I agree on all the number and theorycraft. It's also the same with Tenacity - I maintain Tenacity is a "good stat" provided that the last test I saw was correct - that 2000 tenacity provides approximately around 8-9% more damage reduction and about 1300 Det-worth of DPS. That's great.... if we cared about it. But it's still the only "tank stat" we have. NOT stacking tenacity feels wrong to a career tank. when you could stack something that results in "half a tank stance" of mitigation added to you, it feels madness that the game is designed such that it doesnt matter and you're encouraged to avoid it in favor of Crit and Det/DH. It's a feel thing. I'm the one taking the hits. Why shouldn't I ALWAYS be trying to make those hits as small as possible via everything I do. There's no satisfaction for me in increasing my dps slightly via making choices that make those hits larger and mean I need more healing... even if the numbers are quite inconsequential.

In a sense I'd rather they didnt have tank stances at all. You dont get them before 30 when you're levelling as Gladiator and Marauder. The main thing with juggling tank stances is the threat issue - you often just use them to get a threat lead. With a decent ninja setup in a raid you can go straight in without it (if for some reason you're having a Paladin pull). The threat management game is rather fun, in a sense the game is too easy to hold threat in tank stance but too difficult to hold in pure DPS stance without some concessions or assistance or overgearing.

I'd probably enjoy Paladin MORE if Sword Oath autoattack boosts were a Passive always-on ability, the threat on Halone/Savage/Swipe was increased a lot and Shield Oath was just removed. Why? Because such a situation would never have you feeling like you're turning "off" something useful. That's the thing that sucks right now, and it's such a small thing but to a lot of players it matters a lot. 20% mitigation feels huge, even if it isnt needed in any raid encounters really. You only really notice lack of tank stance on big pack pulls in Expert (both from a squishiness and "adds going everywhere if your DPSers are great" element), something you could easily rectify by boosting the threat of Flash and improving the "random" tank cooldowns like Anticipation and Bulwark to be active longer and function more like an average damage reduction to counter the loss of a flat 20%, but still not useful vs tank busters due to the chance element.

That's actually a side issue that almost warrants its own thread - why is the PALADIN the tank that's best suited doing DPS and using its skills to protect others, whereas the Warrior is the tank that's best suited to pulling and being the main focus of attention. I have a shield! The archetype there feels wrong somehow. Warrior feels like they designed the class to be the "high damage offtank that can take up a main tank role when the shield user is elsewhere or needs a tank swap break", whereas this is now the Paladin's job. What's the point of being a shield user if you rarely get to use the shield. A minor aesthetic side issue though, and one for another thread!

[Shurrikhan]

snip

Alright, now I'm getting where you're coming from a lot more. I guess you could say that I didn't -- and don't -- consider the tank stances as truly tank stances, but rather as 'usually excessive mitigation/enmity toggleables'. Righteous Fury, as a completely no-cost oGCD threat toggle is indeed what I'd call a tank stance; it's choice is simple: Do I want to quickly make myself the one being punched in the face instead of someone else?

As for your later examples, yes absolutely. Lose out on the more reliable Sword Oath AA procs, but exploit those Shield Oath-buffed (or, say, cooldown-reset) Shield Swipes instead -- basically obligatory for Bulwark before many smaller attacks? I would love that. That would feel like a stance worthy of a Paladin and deserving of a place in its kit. It still wouldn't quite be a "tank stance" to me, but neither does it need or ought to be. It should simply feel useful and fitting in its own way in its own situations, preferably in a way that gives Paladin its own sense of tactical rhythm and flow (in not quite the same way as Warrior, but still fluid by its own perspective).

[Lyth]

I see your point about sacrificing defensiveness. The common ground, as you say, is to remove tank stance altogether. The healers didn't seem to miss the old Cleric Stance, and I suspect that the vast majority of us will be the same.

Attributes
I think the issue with Tenacity is that it's a secondary attribute instead of a primary attribute. On a healer, MND boosts both your healing and your attack magic. If TEN is supposed to be an all-around tank stat, then why isn't it our primary instead of STR? STR just influences the amount of damage that you do. TEN impacts physical and magical damage dealt and received, and increases HP restoring abilities. It's effectively a STR stat that covers a much wider range of things. It would also be in a much better position to scale with gear as a primary stat.

This would also remove it from direct competition with Crit and DH, which a lot of players really want. The other thing that I'd like to see happen in this regard is seeing Skill Speed and Spell Speed combined into a single Haste stat. Two of the three tanks are hybrid physical/magical attackers, and it seems strange that some of these stats only benefit half of our kit.

Identities
I don't think that you can compartmentalise tanks so that one is a "better off-tank" or a "better main-tank". We've seen what happens when one tank is given a monopoly on defensiveness or on offensiveness. Every tank needs to be viewed as equally beneficial in both domains, although the ways in which they go about it might be vastly different.

People tend to forget that a shield is an offensive weapon. If you were trained to be a bodyguard for the Sultana, are you going to just sit around blocking attacks from would-be assassins? Or are you going to bash them in the face and pin them to the ground with your tower shield? Intercepting attacks is only part of the picture. You also have to punish the miscreant so that they don't attempt it again.

In fantasy settings, a shield and plate armour isn't the only approach to defence. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the muscle-bound barbarian who shrugs off seemingly mortal wounds in the height of their rage before collapsing to their wounds when it wears off. You can see elements in this with WAR as well. Thrill of Battle is reminiscent of WoW's Last Stand, except that you don't die when the temporary HP wears off. A Holmgang, historically, is a dual to the death in a circular arena. There's a running theme of "I refuse to die until I beat you."

"The law of the land? The authority of a name? These are tools cowards use to escape harm. We have no need of shields figurative or literal." - Frey Myste

Sometimes, it's your convictions that give you resilience. To a Dark Knight, our "Grit" comes from a mix of dark magic and a desire for vengeance. Consider the following:

"He couldn't have carried a shield if he'd wanted to, the blade was so big. Had to keep two hands on it at all times! I was amazed he managed to keep up with that Temple Knight for as long as he did. Fought like a demon from the deepest pits of the seventh hell, bellowing threats and working his arts. I wasn't sure what to make of it at first, but then I heard someone say that he must be a dark knight!

So as I was saying, that heretic was fighting like a man possessed. Even after he took several wounds, he showed no sign of pain─though there was no mistaking the blood. As the fight wore on, it began to soak through his armor, spreading to every ilm of his body. But when it began to rise and envelop him as a mist, I realized it wasn't blood, but something dark and twisted..."

Imagine if Blood Price actually lived up to this description.

Point is, different cultures, different societies all have their own concepts of what the toughest, most stalwart warrior should be. The European concept of a Knight in plate armor with a shield is just one of them. What I want to see is different tanking concepts that achieve similar performance while taking vastly different approaches.

And if BLU comes down out of Thavnaria as a shapeshifting alchemist tank in cloth armor, I would hope that they wouldn't need a shield to prove their defensive worth.