How to make tanking fun.

[TouchandFeel]

snip

I did read the entirety of the page and am most definitely not being pedantic.

The description that was given regarding a shift to a more "Active Mitigation model" in which tanks were required to be more "active" in their defense is very similar to the model that FF14 has used for quite a while, focusing on low consistent incoming damage with spikes of high incoming damage through things like tankbusters and abilities designed to counter those damage spikes.
This is juxtaposed by the fairly common tanking model that existed before in MMOs in which defense and incoming damage on the tank was more a battle of attrition where damage was fairly constant and defenses tended to be more passive in implementation, relying on stances or passive ability buffs gained through specialization trees and the like.

Basically the concept of the "Active Mitigation model" that they went over was the more general design concept and delineation of active vs. passive and how that plays into encounter and ability design. Active being abilities that are designed to be activated in response to periods of spike damage and passive being the stuff that just kind of happens in the background that tends to help with just general survivability and lessening damage consistently and being relatively constant over a long period of time.

The more refined idea of "Active Mitigation abilities" that evolved in Legion is something that I also touched upon in my initial post on the matter, pointing out the evolution and implementation of such abilities in FF14 as well with IB, TBN and Sheltron.
WoW just went all-in to one extreme (surprise ... surprise ...) on the conceptual implementation of Active Mitigation, shrinking the breadth of mitigation and highly focusing it into one ability that needs to get used over and over.
FF14 on the other hand did a more measured and mixed approach, where they kept the idea of a number of varied mitigation abilities, paced out by cooldown times but still having relatively shorter durations to be used to counter moments of spike damage but also layered in the short to no cooldown time abilities with very short durations which are gated by other things such as resources akin to what WoW did in Legion.

Both are methods of Active Mitigation design, just with variances of implementation. Spread out or consolidated.

Active mitigation is not determined by it being a part of a rotation, although an ability that provides defense that is part of a rotation can be Active Mitigation.
I feel the confusion likely comes from the implementation in Legion where mitigation was so consolidated, that it resulted in one ability being used over and over regularly and thus being factored into being a part of your standard rotation. This was probably compounded by many of the early implemented abilities along this vein having the mitigation aspect tacked onto an offensive ability.
This is only one heavily skewed implementation of what Active Mitigation can be and by no means is the very definition of it.

So again I state, Active Mitigation is when mitigation is designed to be actively engaged in response to damage and attacks, whereas Passive Mitigation is mitigation that is designed to simply exist passively and fairly consistently without real extra thought or engagement on the player's part.
It is these such variances in design and implementation of Active Mitigation that caused me to ask that people not just generally throw the term around without better defining what they mean.

Also, I think it goes without saying that falling to ad hominems such as calling someone pedantic doesn't strengthen your argument.

[Kalise]

Also, I think it goes without saying that falling to ad hominems such as calling someone pedantic doesn't strengthen your argument.

I never called anyone pedantic.

I merely stated that it would be pedantic to be trying to break things down to stuff like "You technically activate CD's therefore they're 'Active Mitigation'". Since similar logic allows one to say "You technically activate defensive stances, therefore they're 'Active Mitigation'"

Both of which are rarely, if ever, referenced under the term "Active Mitigation"

In terms of WoW, Active Mitigation existed well before Pandaria.

Warriors have had Shield Block and Paladins have had Holy Shield (Later named Shield of the Righteous) forever, which were active skills that they would use frequently to reduce the average amount of damage they took throughout an engagement. Not always a direct response to incoming damage or a telegraphed burst (Especially since they were only block chance increases so ineffective against most sources of burst damage which were spells or abilities) but essentially taking the place of Passive Mitigation in a way that required them to be active in a fight.

With WotLK there was the release of DK which has been the epitome of "Active Mitigation" in its use of Death Strike for self healing and shielding. Again, often used throughout an encounter for replacing Passive Mitigation. Though, there was also some usage in a Legion style burst counter by gaming your Death Strikes by intentionally taking damage before a tankbuster so it would provide a larger shield to let you mitigate the burst damage (Especially when you didn't have a Priest for shielding), this however was not widely utilized and was mostly for the min/max raider types, as it required co-ordination with your healers to make sure you were kept alive while you soaked the damage and healed to full before the tankbuster came.

In Cataclysm, Druids got their first taste of Active Mitigation, with Savage Defense, which would provide them with an absorb shield based on their attack power and cost a whopping 60 Rage to activate, this meant that this truly required Active participation in a fight in order to generate Rage to use this (Along with their other skills for damage and threat). Cata is also where other Tanks active mitigations started to be tied to resource generation from combat, with such things as DK's gaining Runes back faster when they spent Runic Power.

Then Pandaria is when all Tanks were designed to have to manage Active Mitigation that often required resource management (Through fighting), such as Rage generation (For Warriors and Druids), Holy Power generation for Paladins, Rune regeneration for DK's and Monks with Chi generation. This is when Active Mitigation began to involve more "Activity" in order to access the mitigation, creating more dynamic playstyles wherein you'd be pushing out DPS in order to get your resources for mitigation skills back (Some of which were also DPS increases, such as Warriors did bonus damage with Shield Slam while Shield Block was active, or how Paladins and DK's had their highest hitting attack be their active mitigation skills) so that you can survive in lieu of high passive mitigation.

Legion is where Active Mitigation was next altered, wherein they started making Tankbusters that REQUIRED one of these classes active mitigation skills in order to survive. Pushing them into this realm of "Saving it" for these TB's as opposed to using them freely to mitigate damage over the whole engagement (Also, serving to equalize tanks across the board in terms of available CD's to use vs Tankbusters which always favoured DK and Paladin for their numerous and powerful CD's while screwing over Warriors with their long CD's and Monks/Druids who just didn't really have much at all)

But prior to Legion, WoW (To say nothing of every other MMO) had Active Mitigation and it was almost exclusively used as a more engaging form of "Passive Mitigation" designed to be used frequently to decrease the average damage intake, with TB's still forcing out CD's in response and sometimes timing of Active Mitigation to prevent certain types of TB's (Such as block based AM used against auto-attack damage spikes, or DK's gaming their Blood Shields from Death Strike)