Tank Stance Redesign

[Dzian]

To be honest unless you dramatically change encounter design tank stances are always gonna be a joke.

Encounters are all so heavily scripted a tank knows pretty much to the second when he's going to use cooldowns before the fight even starts. First tank buster at 18 seconds second one at 98 seconds third one at .... and so on and so on.

The other issue the only thing that ever matters in content is dps dps and even more dps. You use a gcd for anything that isn't dps and its a wasted gcd.

Unless that changes tank stances will always be obsolete.

[shao32]

tank stances have the problem that determinate what tank should pull or being MT the first phases of a fight, with the actual WAR>DRK>PLD you have zero diversity, funny this come after WAR rework and DRK power slash buff after, im up on rework tank stances to don't loose value in any kind of conten, the damage penalty should be removed and lowered tank total firepower if is necesary to a proper balance and no more unchained mechanics the give unfair adventages to 1 job, tank stances should be a important thing to have in mind on tanking not something that feels bad to use.

[PangTong]

The thing about tanks is that the reason they are all so similar in terms of actions is because boss fights in this game are designed under the assumption that the group is going to have access to certain tools. That includes things like, the tank having a big mitigation CD to use for tankbusters, or a ranged enmity action to pick up adds. Tank stances are the same in principle. If the capabilities of tanks start diverging too far, you can quickly end up in a situation where certain tanks are unviable for certain encounters, or where one tank completely trivializes an encounter, which SE doesn't want.

Also remember that raid bosses aren't the only form of content in the game. Tanks stances are in fact still useful for things like dungeon trash pulls, both for their damage reduction and enmity gain. The high levels of enmity gain in tank stance (generally being more than what's absolutely necessary) is also there to facilitate newer or less skilled players. While experienced players and groups can do entire fights without even touching tank stance, some players really struggle to hold aggro even in easier content. I don't really want to make my roulettes even longer or harder because the tank has to fight the group to hold aggro, just to justify the existence of tank stance for advanced players.

And as for why the damage reduction is there, it's to make tanking more interesting. You're making an active tradeoff of enmity and mitigation for more damage. Without this you'd just sit in tank stance all the time until there's a swap, never really having to think about aggro or mitigation at all. The fact that this causes people to devise ways of minimizing the time spent in tank stance shouldn't be seen as tank stance being pointless, since avoiding tank stance so persistently isn't necessary to clear content unless you're going for very early clears.

That isn't to say tank stances couldn't be improved somehow. I do think they should look at ways to make it more important for high level content and also making it so the decision to turn tank stance on or off puts more responsibility on the tank than their group. Right now, when a tank takes tank stance off, they themselves are not really taking on any extra responsibility. They take more damage, but that falls entirely on the healers. They generate less enmity, but that falls to the healers and DPS to use their enmity reduction skills so that the tank's damage remains supported. While I don't think it's a problem that tanks try to minimize the time spent in tank stance, I think it's a bit of a problem if they can get that time down to absolutely nothing, since it makes tank stance irrelevant in high level content, and using it does nothing but annoy people.

If it were me, I'd try something like, removing, retooling, or reducing the effect of enmity reduction skills on healers/DPS, so that tanks would be forced into tank stance at least sometimes, if only to maintain enmity. At least holding enmity would then be entirely their responsibility, and tank stance would have a distinct purpose, and deciding when to switch in and out of it would be more compelling. Couple this with something like, new enmity mechanics on bosses where a boss could for example, suddenly transfer enmity from one person to another, or suddenly drop their enmity on the tank, to further increase enmity-based tank gameplay.

[Sylvain]

That isn't to say tank stances couldn't be improved somehow. I do think they should look at ways to make it more important for high level content and also making it so the decision to turn tank stance on or off puts more responsibility on the tank than their group. Right now, when a tank takes tank stance off, they themselves are not really taking on any extra responsibility. They take more damage, but that falls entirely on the healers. They generate less enmity, but that falls to the healers and DPS to use their enmity reduction skills so that the tank's damage remains supported. While I don't think it's a problem that tanks try to minimize the time spent in tank stance, I think it's a bit of a problem if they can get that time down to absolutely nothing, since it makes tank stance irrelevant in high level content, and using it does nothing but annoy people.

Well this is the core of the reason why we don't use it, because it's absolutely not necessary.

So unless they'd drastically increase the damage done by tank burster or make boss actually hurt the tank consistently I don't see these stance being used in 5.X (for instance, it's not rare to see the tank tanking the add with its tank stance in os10. the breath does quite a bit of damage, but that's about the only situation you see that, and that's the few tank actually doing this stop doing it when they'll have enough gear)

If it were me, I'd try something like, removing, retooling, or reducing the effect of enmity reduction skills on healers/DPS, so that tanks would be forced into tank stance at least sometimes, if only to maintain enmity. At least holding enmity would then be entirely their responsibility, and tank stance would have a distinct purpose, and deciding when to switch in and out of it would be more compelling. Couple this with something like, new enmity mechanics on bosses where a boss could for example, suddenly transfer enmity from one person to another, or suddenly drop their enmity on the tank, to further increase enmity-based tank gameplay.

But beside making it more useful and giving some use of the aggro combo beyond the pull would this actually be an improvement to the tank role?
Tank is the least played role and, usually, loosing aggro is a rather frustrating thing. I might be entirely wrong but I wouldn't be too surprised if actually having the manage aggro would make tanking even less interesting to the crowd. A bit like the healer dps issue where some healer don't want to dps and some love it.

It could also make everyone but the best simply sit in tank stance just for aggro safety. Which is technically no better than the current situation.

[PangTong]

But beside making it more useful and giving some use of the aggro combo beyond the pull would this actually be an improvement to the tank role?
Tank is the least played role and, usually, loosing aggro is a rather frustrating thing. I might be entirely wrong but I wouldn't be too surprised if actually having the manage aggro would make tanking even less interesting to the crowd. A bit like the healer dps issue where some healer don't want to dps and some love it.

It could also make everyone but the best simply sit in tank stance just for aggro safety. Which is technically no better than the current situation.

Even if no one is using their enmity skills it's usually fairly easy to keep aggro with only occasional use of tank stance and the enmity combo. This change would just take tank stance usage from "almost never" to "sometimes". Staying in tank stance for safety is something that most PUG/roulette players already do, and I don't think you need to be "the best" to both maintain aggro and make use of DPS stance even when no one is using their enmity skills. I think the enmity-generation effects of tank stance are honestly the bigger reason to keep it over the mitigation, but everyone acts like the mitigation is the only reason to use it, and since it's not necessary it's pointless. It is not pointless, it's just that enmity has been made into something of a joke since now every job has abilities which let them delete their own enmity or even redirect it.

And yeah, I absolutely think it would enhance the tank role, because holding aggro is a core part of tanking, or at least it's supposed to be. The fact that tanks offload both the responsibility of mitigation and enmity onto their party members means that they are hardly tanks at all, they are "DPS who takes the hits". If people want tanking to actually be about tanking, making changes to force tanks to consider things besides DPS maximization is definitely going to be a necessary part of that.

I think it is absolutely worth saving tank stance (and the enmity combo) because, well, they're meant to be TANKS goddamnit! Things like tank stance are one of the few things still separating the role from DPS, and if tank stance has become useless or a hindrance, then what should be done is to make tank stance necessary, not remove it and further blur the lines between the tank and damage dealer. Yeah, I get it, everyone wants to do damage and hates it when they have to do anything which might potentially reduce it. Well, tough luck. If the game wants to move closer to a state where DPS is not the be-all and end-all of every encounter, changes like this where players have to temporarily put aside DPS to focus on survival or mechanics, are totally necessary.

There's never really going to be a state where people actually -want- to do things besides maximise DPS. That is just always going to be the state of things, because the ultimate, fundamental objective of all battle content in the entire game is "make the enemy's HP reach 0". As long as that is the goal, that's what people are going to optimize for. Every other consideration is secondary, you only need enough mitigation/healing/enmity/mechanics to survive the battle and then all remaining effort can and should be directed towards DPS, that's just the way of it! The only way to even start to do things like have tanks focus on tanking, is to make it so they NEED to do so to clear the content. Changing enmity mechanics is something that can and SHOULD be done as a way of making tanks more about tanking, or else the entire role is just going to end up being gimped DPS who pop a defense cooldown every so often.

It's possible that mitigation could also be refined to be more tank-based rather than the current state of "just eat the damage and let the healers handle it", but it would probably require more significant reworking of the tank jobs to facilitate this, which I'm not gonna try to touch right now.

[Jandor]

Only tangentially related, but I always thought it would be cool if going into Sword Oath put your shield away and swapped out your shield based abilities for more offensive ones.

[Tint]

Since tank stances are barely used anyway and in no way will people ever start using them when it means they lose dps, I think they should just get rid of these stances.

Add the passive defense as a trait wich is always active, reduced damage for PLD and DRK, additional HP and healbuff for WAR.

Buff enmity multipliers on all enmity skills to balance out the missing stance and let the enmity combo apply a buff for X seconds wich increases enmity for all skills.

To prevent a complete rework for WAR he keeps his 2 stances, but the only difference between them is that Defiance will give you acces to selfheals and Inner Beast, while Deliverance has stronger attacks and Fell Cleave.

[ArianeEwah]

Since tank stances are barely used anyway and in no way will people ever start using them when it means they lose dps, I think they should just get rid of these stances.

Add the passive defense as a trait wich is always active, reduced damage for PLD and DRK, additional HP and healbuff for WAR.[...]

I had this thought once, too. But I came to the conclusion that would conflict with the meaning of tank stance, or it must get tuned down the effect it would hardly make any difference. That would just increase the burden on healers if they get bad tanks.

I just think tank stance are pretty awkward. They are available once you get your job (level 30) in dungeons you could easily tank without tank stance before and after. In solo content they provide nothing, in fact they drag on the fight by about 20% while you take 20% less damage... while on the other hand, DPS stance increases damage dealt by 10%, thus you need about 10% less time to kill things.
In dungeons (4 man content) tank stance is "somewhat" helpful, but at the same time it is not. New tanks can compensate for their low gear, but veterans (snyced tanks) can actually pull pretty big numbers and speed up the run without it.
"The faster the enemy dies the less damage they deal."

As you and others have already stated: tank stance is not needed for current nor old content. But would it be bad to make it more comfortable, interessting, or maybe even desireable at some point?

Why did I chose such numbers in OP anyway? Because I thought if DPS stance increases tank DPS by ~10% without any drawback, then tank stance should decrease damage taken by ~15%.

e.g. as PLD if you feel more comfortable to use Shield Oath for the next 5s, you can activate it, take the big hit, and turn it off afterwards. You get those 600 MP from your Roit Blade or Sheltron proc anyway. You just lose 2-3 bonus AA from Sword Oath.

I wanna see flexible, and more exciting stance play, but not "I chose this stance and stay in it".

[Eloah]

I'd need to look over this more thoroughly, but, personally, I wouldn't use traits as an on/off switch.

[Thela]

The whole tank stance system is archaic design anyway. If they should finally decide to get rid of them next expansion, good riddance i say. Tune tanks to do whatever dps they feel they should do, 60-75% or so of a dps job, make auto attacks more threatening and implement some sort of active mitigation to mitigate this higher dmg intake outside only mitigating a TB every few minutes. Technically we already have a working system in place in form of Sheltron/TBN/IB. But would have to be changed to be used much more frequently (and scaled down in effect)