Tank Stance Redesign

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I think you are leaving out the options that healers also have on dpsing. While it is true tanks that do damage bring more, tanks that stay defensive give the healers time to dish out a lot of damage without having to focus the full dps tank that is getting rocked. I have seen some healers pull some crazy numbers so I do believe that being a full defensive tank does not fall to far behind a aggressive dps tank. Which is why I mentioned that the stances could be fixed a bit cause I do agree they are not completely balanced but to say it is a poor play style is only looking at the tank itself. In regards to stance dancing when it comes to WAR a lot of our burst damage comes from IR so switching to Deliverance, popping a defensive and IR to dish out huge damage then going back into defiance so you can get caught up in health to go back to deliverance when you are ready again is 100% more viable than just staying in defiance the entire time.

This is decidedly false. Healers lose negligible amounts to their DPS—if any whatsoever—because the vast majority of healing in this game is handled through HoTs and oGCD aoes. More often than not, Tank Stance causes overhealing as tanks no longer take the expected damage making abilities like Excog and Essential less effectively. Regardless, since Tank Stance in a single target environment costs over a 2,000 DPS loss, healers would have to either lose an equivalent amount or deal comparable damage for it to ever been a gain for tanks to sit in Tank Stance. There is no scenario whatsoever where Tank Stance is ever a raid DPS gain. In fact, to put this into perspective, it's less of a DPS loss to have a Monk use Purification to dump their aggro than force a tank into Tank Stance to do an aggro combo unless it's Warrior and they have Unchained. That is how severe the damage penalty is, and why tanks what virtually nothing to do with stances outside Ultimate.

IMO the best way to go would be to cut the stances altogether and shift the tanks' gameplay more towards mitigation. DPS should only be a by-product of the tanking gameplay, secondary in concern to minimizing and smoothing your damage taken.

Unfortunately, this can only happen with a fairly significant philosophy change. The devs would have accept outgoing damage is simply too low while tanks, and healers especially, have far too many options at their disposal to mitigate the damage we do see. Content as a whole would need to encourage defensive play through sheer damage and mechanical necessity, which has the indirect effect of making things more difficult for inexperienced players. With Stormblood's shift to a more simplistic approach, I cannot see them do a 180 come 5.0. Which is somewhat ironic given how much they seem to dislike our aggressive playstyle.

[Big-Isaac]

Unfortunately, this can only happen with a fairly significant philosophy change. The devs would have accept outgoing damage is simply too low while tanks, and healers especially, have far too many options at their disposal to mitigate the damage we do see. Content as a whole would need to encourage defensive play through sheer damage and mechanical necessity, which has the indirect effect of making things more difficult for inexperienced players. With Stormblood's shift to a more simplistic approach, I cannot see them do a 180 come 5.0. Which is somewhat ironic given how much they seem to dislike our aggressive playstyle.

I agree that it would take a lot of work, but I don't think it would be insurmountable. There's plenty of measures they could take to ease the transition and avoid punishing inexperienced players too much. I just really hope this game gets there at some point, if not in 5.X then in 6.X