Can we remove Tank Stance?

[EdwinLi]

I say just combine both DPS and Tank Stance into 1 skill.

If players want to be in DPS Stance then just click that skill to switch to DPS stance (with the icon change to represent DPS stance) and when they want to Tank Stance then they just click on that skill again to switch to Tank Stance.

[Alexandre_Noireau]

I say just combine both DPS and Tank Stance into 1 skill.

If players want to be in DPS Stance then just click that skill to switch to DPS stance (with the icon change to represent DPS stance) and when they want to Tank Stance then they just click on that skill again to switch to Tank Stance.

I think many classes could use the system of PvP combos. Not for all main skills, but there are several skills that could become "Modal".

[LalaRu]

Nobody here thinking about the tank stance being here to help the casual not good as you on tanking, have the chance to still hold aggro when playing tank?

[Nihility]

Normally I would be against the idea but...

At this point raid tanks whine like crazy if you ask them to turn on tank stance even for a single mechanic and they can always do current savage content without ever using it at all. While at the same time actively mixing there sets to remove tank stats and wearing underlevel accessories for the purposes of stacking more damage stats
So it's kind of like... what's the point of it even existing. Mine as well do away with it for the sake of fighting skill bloat

[lulunami]

Nobody here thinking about the tank stance being here to help the casual not good as you on tanking, have the chance to still hold aggro when playing tank?

Yeah tank stance is for helping newbies and casual players play tank. The defensive mitigation and easy enmity generation of tank stance makes the basics of tanking a lot easier. There was not tank stance before patch 2.0.

[Nerael]

Current WAR main here.

I'd hate for them to remove tank stances. Currently tanking is quite brain dead in dungeons in my opinion, especially when you are decently geared.
During the pull I'm in Defiance, pop up a few overpowers during the initial pull, once pull is finished; Vengeance + Anticipation+ Convalescence then follow it up with IR and spam that Decimate.
Usually for a WHM an Asylum and regen keeps me up with the very occasional Cure I.

Why would you take my DPS stance away to give the WHM in this example a longer fight, thus losing more mana, thus having to heal more intensively, removing their own option to DPS?

Yes my first and foremost job as a tank is to mitigate damage and hold threat, but when a healer is pressing 2 maybe 3 buttons to keep me alive for 15+ seconds (in which 1 of these is ogcd...) why the hell would you even want to think about taking my damage option away? I for one don't want to be stuck in a dungeon for 30+ minutes, especially not when I've ran it 50+ times.

Hell I've not even stepped into savage this tier and can do this fine with average gear level (385).

Bossfights in normal content? I have approx 75k Health in deliverance, a tankbuster will hit me for about 15-25k when i mitigate it, that's a single cure I or Cure II. That's not even accounting for party mitigation, shields and regens.
The moment I see my healer struggling, low on mana or has any other issue? Yea thats the time to swap into Defiance and start doing some self healing to make life easier.

I'm hearing arguments from people about holding enmity, I rarely lose any mobs and even then you simply respond appropriately. (I lost one yesterday when a friend was trying to tease me by single targeting a mob to pull it off me, a provoke and tomahawk before it even reached him secured it back onto me, straight back into the decimate spam).
What does it matter if you have 1000 enmity more than the #2 in the party or 1 gazillion more enmity? The mobs are still on the tank regardless as long as it remains +1.

A good tank does what they should, mitigate, keep mobs on them, sets the pace and when everything is taken care of? Yea we deal some extra damage.
No it's not our priority, but every little bit helps.

You will always have good and bad tanks, just like you will always have good and bad players. Don't take useful tools away from the good ones.
Just like a good DPS will pop Diversion/Lucid when necessary.

[Khalithar]

Paladin main here. Have cleared nearly all the savage tiers on content save for current progging through the last phase of o12s and let me say I’m all for removing tank stance for my job so long as it’s replaced with something more interesting and intuitive. The tank stances for Paladin are really boring compared to the other two.

War has unique attacks in each stance while Drk has access to cool moves like blood weapon meanwhile Pld gets a ~25 potency boost to auto attacks. If they absolutely have to keep shield oath/sword oath then I hope they do something to make them more interesting otherwise I’d rather just see them be scrapped.

Edit: For further clarification, I’m not exactly a fan of the mere act of going in to sword oath being a dps boost via basic auto attacks. While I’m not asking for some big attack like fel cleave I want to actually have to do *something* in sword oath to get the full potential of my dps stance. Not just stand in melee range and mindlessly auto attack.

[frostmagemari]

Yeah tank stance is for helping newbies and casual players play tank. The defensive mitigation and easy enmity generation of tank stance makes the basics of tanking a lot easier. There was not tank stance before patch 2.0.

There was barely a game before 2.0 >.>

But seriously.. they don't need to remove tank stance.. what they need to do is make tanking engaging so it's not just a race for DPS, because even if they get rid of tank stance.. then it's still just going to be the same thing it is now; pretending to be dps.

Give tanks unique reactions and abilities to use while in the tank form in the stance of procs and reactions (resetting some ability cooldowns when you block/parry/dodge, depending on the tank), and more active mitigation tools outside of 3min cool downs.
And they don't need to buff up the attack of creatures to do this so it's a death sentence to everyone not the tank.. they just need to reduce the tank's base armour a little so it promotes being tanky if you're the MT; and then that allows for non tank stance damage to be a little higher to allow OTs to go ham with the dps abilities on the boss (Or other tanking focused mechanics for the OT to focus on). Give both OT and MT something engaging to do.
Or maybe they could ease up on the scripting of the fights where you can plot out when to use a cooldown because ability X just happened, so you pop a cooldown at 18sec to be ready for the ability that will launch 20sec after X.

Right now, it doesn't feel like you're really a tank.. it kind of feels like you're just a dps that has the most aggro right now.

[Melichoir]

Been in a few parties over the last few days where tanks weren't using their tank stance, were loosing hate, and dying without the damage resistance.

Could we just remove the stance and give them the damage resistance and enmity generation innately?

You had bad tanks who were following strategies they didnt know how to play with.

Pretty much when it comes to raiding and hte like, you drop tank stance after a part of the opener cause you should be able to maintain aggro along with your co tank. Furthermore, mitigation for all the tank busters doesnt require tank stance. Meaning, I can Shadow-Wall and TBN a tank buster and survive it usually (depending content and party composition), or use LD to soak it and get heals from healers who pre-plan their heals. These are all strats used at higher levels of playing (and I use higher a touch loosely here), but they also work at lower levels. I almost always drop grit on bosses unless I run into DPS who refuse to use aggro droppers.

The thing is when you have inexperienced tanks see this, theyre not doing what they need to do to make it work. Not using enough cooldowns, not enough threat generation on the opener, not geared enough so they cant maintain aggro against a fully geared BiS DPS, etc. So they fail at it.

Theres nothing wrong with tank stance from that perspective. Its clunky as a skill and honestly might be better served as an ogcd rather than a stance, but the issue you describe is one where inexperienced tanks are doing something wrong, rather than the skill being bad.

[Dralonis]

Normally I would be against the idea but...

At this point raid tanks whine like crazy if you ask them to turn on tank stance even for a single mechanic and they can always do current savage content without ever using it at all. While at the same time actively mixing there sets to remove tank stats and wearing underlevel accessories for the purposes of stacking more damage stats
So it's kind of like... what's the point of it even existing. Mine as well do away with it for the sake of fighting skill bloat

Honestly, I feel like this stems from 1) It's not any fun or currently useful to use MOST of the time. it has it's uses. 2) It's not OPTIMAL. people want to optimize and will hate on anything that is not optimal or not fun. also because tanks simply don't need those stats. That's on their end for poor balancing. People can over gear it quite quickly that they can easily tank in DPS stance with nearly no setbacks, most of the time. Unless you die or something or healers need mana and not too worried about hitting enrage but more living to see the fight. I feel they may address this in 5.0 and sorta require tank stance a bit more or some form of it. 3) Theres fundamental issues with tanking. Simply increasing damage taken to them isn't fun. I mean, when I'm a dps and do a 24 man raid, I've had several times where tanks lost aggro and it just murders a few dps because tanks barely want to tank, just want to dps as a tank.

They very clearly have stated they want tanks to deal less damage since damage should not be their focus, but they make tanks rely a bit more on DPS for aggro so they don't need the stance as well as once you have enough gear, which you can kinda even do that just from crafted gear, it's really not that bad to tank it at certain parts. Especially since it's just scripted with little to no random damage so they can time the cool downs. There's very little need for Active mitigation.

so, if they want to fix tanks in a way they'd like, and talked about liking tanks, and tried especially with tank accessories at the beginning of SB, They'd need to make Tank stance more useful. With tank stance only skills that would be used for MT, decreasing the damage reduction of tank stance from 20% to 10%, reducing over all damage by a small amount so it evens out also so tanks needing the increased threat generation would be more beneficial so they can't stay in DPS stance the whole time and still be above DPS in aggro. They'd also have to lower aggro gained a bit from their dps rotation when they lower their damage. Currently, it's just shirk and switch. So aggro, on the MT, really isn't an issue at all with good tanks. In a raid situation. That's why they need something else to do. What they may do is reduce shirk down to 20% or 15% aggro shift to keep aggro building a bit more necessary.

If what they said about they want 2 MT classes and 2 OT classes, that would be gunbreaker+dark being the OT ones. Then possibly, their aim is for DPS tanks to be around.. 80% of what it currently is and MT's being a bit lower if they were to also be DPS tanks. Since that's kinda the appeal of a DPS tank. Currently, DRKs are supposed to be DPS tanks but.. they kinda messed up with it in 4.x

Now, these are all just my personal opinions on tanking and some suggestions as a whole that I'd be interested in seeing.

Get rid diversion or change it. Getting rid of it would fight skill bloat and it is really just a band aid fix skill since a ton of mediocre dps don't use it anyways and in fact, even have fun not using it so they can have a chance at pulling aggro off a tank. Easier to let them die from a players perspective, but from a game/developer perspective, to just reduce the chance of it happening by other fixes.

Increase aggro generation from tanks ranged attacks/charges. Give paladin a charge. Make that charge free of cost. What they may also do is have the DPS and tank rotations flip based on what stance you are in to reduce skill bloat.(How often do you see tanks even use threat rotation in a lot of content anyways? If they had some sorta synergy with tank stance skills, it could be made useful.) They also need to sorta change how openers work and have more classes better at it for tanks. Currently, warrior is just the defacto puller. Then again, Warriors are just great all around.

Merge a few defensive CD's that barely do much. Some they could even reduce it's effectiveness but reduce it's CD time.

Put spirits within and shelltron on the same button depending on your stance, Merge total eclipse with flash. Maybe roll reprisal into another new skill for all tanks. Then they could add a few more in 5.0 for something new. Like make fight or flight DPS stance only but in tank stance, give it a useful effect. Increase damage dealt maybe still, but not as much, also increase aggro generation.With the MT being in tank stance and these changes, threat really wouldn't ever be an issue or making anyone slightly worry like they do now. ESPECIALLY with pug groups.

Just with a lot of those changes I mentioned, that would get rid of 6+ buttons.

It would also make it more new tank friendly since there's probably people that want to tank, but aren't as well polished at tanking as others (Or even remotely decent) and it's really easy to see their mistakes and we all feel it quite heavily. Tanking can be quite intimidating to new people to it. I've had to teach several people and they are just scared to do it and are very sloppy at it, for quite awhile. Often why there's more DPS in general. It's easier to get the fundamentals of it and a lot of it is just positions and playing your rotation optimally.

They also need something more fun to work towards. Making the Gauge more useful. Currently, as a paladin, it's quite boring. Have the gauge maybe use a spender that's OGCD. Maybe give tank stance some utility as well.

On a fight standpoint, they need to make OT's have more unique jobs rather than just Co tank and dps when you aren't a tank imo. I like add fights Tbh and gives me a reason, when I dps, to use AOE combos. There's very few add fights that we get. I sorta liked that in binding coil of bahamut turn 4. I also enjoy split tank fights and splitting DPS. Omega M and F with resonance and is something I like to see every now and then. Something dynamic.

Then maybe have fights be a bit less scripted in damage. Random bursts of AoE damage, more random auto attacks that hurt, etc. Then reduce the damage needed for enrage timers since your healers may be healing a bit more and tanks would be doing less damage, but that's a given.

This probably could've been it's own thread.