Tank Stance Redesign

[shao32]

Yes, WAR's stance swapping mechanic is good, and they're the best DPS tank. That's their role.

However, DRK and PLD do not rely on their healers to mitigate damage for them. If they turn their respective tank stances on, they have more effective HP than a WAR does, in that moment. A WAR has to heal himself with some combination of Inner Beast/Storm's Path/Thrill of Battle/Equilibrium to get the effective HP they need, and that might not be enough. When it comes to consistent auto damage they do have an advantage with a WHM/Diurnal AST in being able to snapshot the healing bonus while swapping to Deliverance, but that kind of swapping is not necessary, nor is it really effective mid-combat. At best you can use it in the opener and after any invul phases for a slight advantage.

you underestimate a lot the power of equilibrium, right now my war have 67.796 hp, on defiance i have 84.745, the diference of hp is 16.949 and equilibrium heal me by 15.830 with a chance to become a crit of over 24k, equilibrium alone cover perfectly this flaw.

I don't think it would be absurd to bake a bloodbath effect into WAR's defiance stance assuming that tanks were going to take more auto attack damage in the next expansion. 10-20% of all damage dealt converted to HP, halved on AoE. I get that Inner Beast/Path heal a fair amount already once set up but this would be a decent alternative for more sustained damage that doesn't really change much about how WAR is played. It gives them another option to help keep themselves alive when the healers are busy, and a reason to use Unchained as a minor tanking cooldown that's not overpowered by any means but helpful in specific situations where you'd like the extra padding.

its actually really absurd especially bcs you dont know if thats true and even if that happen WAR have a lot of free selfheals alone while DRK have none outside of grit and PLD have one that cost mp and GCD to use with is a masive dps loss, for the other side PLD have pasive block, WAR staying on defiance means regular inner beast that adds 20% mitigation pretty much consistent at the rate WAR generate resources, tested to my current gear takes 10-11 seconds to build 50 gauge for 1 innerbeast with this one is 6 seconds of 20% and this without having in mind infuriate and IR, discounting upheaval this means WAR can have inner beast up 6 seconds every 25 seconds more or less, more inner beast with infuriate use and of course IR, defiance is pretty broken in terms of mitigation but nobody cares bcs its a dps lost and all this is unnecesary for any encounter, if tomorrow SE make mandatory tank stanceswithout changing northing more WAR will be op.

and all of this without mention the parry bonus of having you gauge high, the extra heals and the innumerable CDs with such short recast and long duration, oh and unchained to get extra dps

Defiance is the worst stance because you receive less healing from almost every source of healing. Spells like Cure are slightly less effective because it's a 20% healing buff and not 25%. Abilities like Tetra, Assize, Essential Dignity, Collective Unconcious, Excog and Whispering Dawn are all significantly less effective on a WAR because they don't get buffed by Defiance at all. The only sources of healing that aren't weaker are Benediction and Benison because they're percentage based. Even though a tankbuster will hit a WAR in Defiance and a PLD in Shield Oath for the same percentage of their HP, it takes more to heal the WAR afterwards. That's becoming a bigger problem as each expansion adds more and more abilities instead of spells.

calling defiance the worst with only having in mind the stance effect its with all my respect a pretty poor argument, Defiance is not only a 25% HP and 20% heals of certain skills, is inner beast, steel ciclone and equilibrium, WAR alone will take better shields and regens, inner beast will add extra mitigation of his already incredible powerful defensive skill set and equilibrium with is up every 60 seconds will cover any extra damage on every tank buster the game trow at you, all this combine surpass the 20% mitigation of grit and shield.