Let's Talk Tanks

[Kabooa]

More traditional triggers to me make the most sense coming off specific weaponskills, namely finishers with longer recast times. This is still working within the system instead of having an actual trigger mechanic though.

For example - Solid Barrel is a 5.0s recast timer. It generates a powder charge. 2.5s into its recast, Solid Barrel morphs into its Trigger OGCD, bypassing the GCD similar to old Empyreal Arrow.

[Kabooa]

Lets talk Tenacity. That stat that's actually way better than everything else, except it comes out to less damage so it's not. It shaves off a tiny bit of Determination's damage bonus but adds in more healing and damage reduction. Much like current tanks, it's a bloated stat, an attempt to woo tanks away from Direct hit and Critical strike, but obviously it can't do this because nothing warrants it being useful other than blind bleeding edge progression.

Lets run with the assumption that the other sub-stats also get some rework or tunings, and lets talk about Tenacity and what it could be.

For one, lets get rid of it being More Det. (Though Det and Ten builds are pretty dumb. You won't set it any records, but lol at having effectively a second Darkside)

Tenacity currently:
Increases average damage at about 70-75% the ratio of other stats <= (Here's the problem)
Reduces damage taken.
Increases healing taken.

So lets do the reasonable thing and BURN IT TO THE GROUND.

Tenacity should make -tanking better-. Not "damage dealt", not "damage taken", but -tanking- overall. It should be the stat you work around breakpoints for before dipping into others. So how can we do that?

Idfk. Ya'll fickle. So lets try some things.

Tenacity does several things.
A) It -increases the potency- of offensives buffs the Tank applies to themselves.
B) It -increases the effective duration- of defensive and utility buffs the Tank applies to themselves.
C) It -reduces- the cost of actions.

So lets apply Tenacity to our Dark Knight discussed so far.

"Spinning Slash" applies "Whirling Step". This classifies as a utility buff. Whirling Step's effective duration (and thus overall use) increases with Tenacity.

A new Low-to-High Posture skill applies 100% parry chance for the next three incoming attacks. A defensive buff, thus the amount of attacks deflected increase, increasing its overall amount.

A Neutral-To-High posture skill grants the Dark Knight's next attack from High Posture to deal 30% more damage. An offensive buff, Tenacity would -increase- the 30% bonus, granting higher damage.

Blood Weaponskills would apply "Blood Weapon", a utility effect granting the Dark Knight MP when landing weaponskills for a few attacks. Tenacity is a dual bonus here - Resource reduction on Blood skills and increasing the amount of Blood Weapon charges per skill used.

In short, Tenacity serves to improve the -core functions of the tanking kit-. It would be the equivalent of Spellspeed's current state for Black Mage - Something you can tune around your own wants before moving to another sub-stat to focus.

[Shurrikhan]

Tenacity should make -tanking better-. Not "damage dealt", not "damage taken", but -tanking- overall. It should be the stat you work around breakpoints for before dipping into others. So how can we do that?

Idfk. Ya'll fickle. So lets try some things.

That's fair. My $.02:

What about a sort of revenge mechanic? Yes, it'd apply only to when taking/mitigating damage, but, so long as OT mutually exclusive choices (e.g. 10% mitigation and insignificant healing to co-tank vs. 20% mitigation on self) remain inferior to the personals they share CDs with, we're pretty well obliged to swap in and MT whenever there's damage to actively mitigate (and our mitigation sources ready are presently stronger than what our co-tank has available). Mitigating more = more counter-attack damage = damage balancing in a "tanking" way.

You can also apply buffs that last for a certain amount of damage to be taken, with a bit of server delay on their removal that doubles as a hidden buff. For instance, imagine if Shelltron were to apply a 12% HP shield which causes you to block all incoming attacks so long as it remains. Even if you only have 1 Shield HP left, you still auto-block the whole effect. Well, if your initial mitigation is stronger, that shield is also going to take longer to break, which means more blocking-based mitigation, which means... You get the idea. Likewise, with your Whirling Step effect above, if you had a temporary evasion/expertise buff that could be used to maximize either damage or mitigation, but rarely both in that the first strike it mitigates will consume most or all of the buff, stronger mitigation allows you to better double up the effect.

Edit: That being said, I'd honestly rather get rid of Tenacity, Direct Hit, and Piety, and have each role gain additional tailored effects from Determination, Critical Hit, and Speed... (Tanks, for instance, would recharge their means of mitigation more quickly via Speed, their effects would be dynamically increased via Determination (effectively, consuming a hidden resource in order to ensure that X mitigation type is "just enough" to reach some breakpoint, usually survival or debuff prevention), and Critical Hit would unlock bonus effects (so we don't rely on it for last-ditch RNG mitigation so much as it generates interesting counter-offenses). So, instead of 1 weird stat that's supposed to be more role-purposed, but is either obligatory or ignored, you have three different fitting stats to choose between.

[Kabooa]

That's fair. My $.02:.

With a robust enough sub-stat rework, I'd be pretty okay with relegating "Role specific" attributes folding into the base three.

While "X Shield is active" effects can be tricky, because then it brings about nesting concerns. What shields get hit first, should shields apply by priority or by order of application? We got to see some of the concerns with TBN's implementation, when I believe it was either lower priority or shields were removed in LIFO order.

If we fold role specific bonuses into the 3 universal substats of haste, critical, and determination, I agree that putting some valuable auxiliary effects works best. I do think assigning retributive bonuses to Critical would just serve to drive everyone to that stat anyways.

Perhaps Determination increasing duration of effects, Critical increasing Potency of Effects, and Haste being Cooldown Reduction?

For example, if we implemented that critical rework you post every now and then, and using Inner Release as an example.

Inner Release granting +100% critical chance and 100% resource reduction for 10 seconds at 90 second recast.
Haste reduces its Cooldown
Determination increases its duration
Critical would (I guess triple dip) and increase the Critical Chance and Resource Reduction bonuses.

Likewise, current Blood Weapon, Critical would increase blood and MP generation.

Adding a secondary tuning lever to each substat. The "potency increase" might scale from 0-20% over an expansion while Duration and CDR might scale 0-30%.

[Shurrikhan]

With a robust enough sub-stat rework, I'd be pretty okay with relegating "Role specific" attributes folding into the base three.

While "X Shield is active" effects can be tricky, because then it brings about nesting concerns. What shields get hit first, should shields apply by priority or by order of application?

I imagine we'd just go with weighted treatment: additional effects while active > on-consumption effects (so, avoid stacking them, rather than always stack them) > rest by duration.

Perhaps Determination increasing duration of effects, Critical increasing Potency of Effects, and Haste being Cooldown Reduction?

Personally, I prefer more or less general uses, but with the way a tank would use that affect inherently being fit to what they do. For instance, allow for "critical" mitigation. The actual mitigation bonus may be small, if even present, but it could have crit procs, just as many dps skills could. Determination would always be about using a hidden resource to meet a particular threshold (and granting pure bonus potency only when that hidden resource remains maxed/untapped). Speed will always be about... Attack Speed, with MP (which I'd like to make a thing again for those who currently just leave it as a useless blue bar graphic or generally a non-mechanic) ticks ticking per GCD.

Just as a point of comparison, Determination increasing durations acts exactly as a balanced form of Speed would, but without offering any control over gameplay pace. Critical increasing potency would play exactly as Determination does, ignoring any potential for gameplay adjustments except where it precisely makes or breaks a breakpoint (which then would largely overlap with your Determination, at -say- X additional gauge per Blood Weapon). Haste being solely a cooldown reduction doubles down on the balancing issues of Speed without, again, offering as much player-chosen gameplay variation. I'd want to double down instead on player choice, possibly even having players choose which, or what combination, of the two secondary stats present by default on their gear they want to use. That requires balance, but also some gameplay variation consequent to their decisions, and perhaps even some auto-adjustment (e.g. as a player I say I want to prioritize X GCD speed, Y Crit chance (and/or effect), and then dump the rest into Z, and my secondary stats will be chosen accordingly, similar to setting weights and minimums on ffxiv.ariyala).

[Kabooa]

Personally, I prefer more or less general uses, but with the way a tank would use that affect inherently being fit to what they do.

Generally speaking, sub-stats should be passive boosts that, at most, encourage angles of play.

Gameplay adjustments itself should primarily be the focus of kit interaction. Gear enhances the kit through bolstering passive effects. Unless i'm misunderstanding, giving specific interactions greater interaction through the stat itself (For Example - The auto-block when shield is present, with Determination granting the shield) seems the sort of thing stepping out of its lane.

Passive benefits might not directly change your gameplay, but it does adjust the relative value and weight of the decisions you can make, or enable some scenarios that you otherwise didn't have access to.

The offered attribute adjustments aimed for that, though admittedly as a spitball it likely misses the mark.

[Deceptus]

Tanks need to loose Determination and basically replace it with Tenacity. Tenacity should be the go to stat when you don't know where to meld next.

[Ekimmak]

Have thing I want to talk about in regards to the Tank's role in raiding, but not sure if I can get my point across without being mocked for being a below-average Savage PUG'er.

I feel like the Tank's role of positioning has been so phased out of savage content that when it actually became a thing again in E2S, it throws me for a loop where I'm supposed to hold Voidwalker.

[Shurrikhan]

Well, had my first run on a tank alt where I survived by the grace of what little Tenacity I couldn't shed. At one point, with no CDs left to pop without screwing me over later I ended up at 28 HP even after popping an HP potion (left on my auxiliary bar from HoH). Tenacity mitigation at the time... .9%. A few other blows dropped me to <1600 HP, so that was probably more than just the Tenacity difference, but still...

I don't think my subconscious will be dismissing mitigation stats from here out.