Quote Originally Posted by Bright-Flower View Post
I think it comes down to the dps driven meta. People want it removed to avoid:

Losing damage by having tank stance on when needed.
If it's needed, then they're not losing net damage by having it on. If actually needed, the only alternative was death, which comes with rez delay, stat penalty, CD delay, desync, and loss of gauge -- a net damage rate loss.

Note: I otherwise agree with all you've said. I just want to point out that in the few cases that tank stance is worthwhile at all, it tends to be quite worthwhile. Those situations just tend to be fewer and farther between than they perhaps ought to be. Much of that can be dealt with via the relative cost of defensive stances rather than requiring the full removal of stances altogether. At present, tank stance is mostly an initiation stance and/or a training wheels mode, but even (or especially) the latter isn't something we should so readily or uncompromisingly give up when the game has so few in-game teaching tools and such a wonky difficulty curve. Our player skill levels are all over the place, and thus far tank stances have at least prevented that from wrecking our random dungeon runs.

Granted, if the removal of the stance came with enough increase to convenience and coverage -- deflating some of the difference between high-enmity and low/non-enmity skills, for instance -- while bosses and mobs continue to hit so mildly in most content as they do now... there might not really be any loss. We'd just have spared ourselves a bit of hotbar space, albeit at cost to prospective design paths where those stances could have instead been turned into something interesting. Tanks suffer a bit from a feeling of enforced behavior and schismatic expectations, sure, but just as much they suffer from, well, boredom. Their rotations are generally rather dull compared to those of DPS, and revised stance play could help with that.

Simply put, I'd rather see interesting stances than yet another expansion filler, convoluted, uninteresting macro-rotational, and/or rarely useful ability, and I'd certainly rather see the 10 slots of bloat from Role Actions trimmed before turning on stances for the next bit of butchery.