Quote Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe View Post
I'm like 99% sure the reason they removed the stuff they did like Shadewalker, Smokescreen, mits from healers like Disable or Virus, was because people didnt bother to use them. Outside of Savage, where people wiped and were asked 'did you use Disable', I assume a lot of the casual base just didn't press it. Tanks in casual content would run tankstance 100% so Smokescreen/Shadewalker/Diversion were not needed. So when SHB design time came, the devs likely looked at the data and went 'well if people dont use this stuff, they wont miss it, lets make tankstance give insane threat gen, remove the damage penalty so they dont complain about being nerfed, then we dont need these aggro tools anymore. Also, we can retune the damage of raids around the nonexistence of these healer mits, they wont miss them, they'll be cheering about how cool the Lily System looks, now that it's actually functional!'
Disuse was certainly a factor, but I think another large part has been a matter of "button bloat", and, more interestingly, how 'satisfying' a given button felt to press due to its contexts (encounter opportunities, and considerations it perhaps uniquely forces you to engage with, etc.).

Given how few add grabs were required that the tank couldn't just be prepared for, Shadewalker felt less like a unique tool (Enmity transfer) and more like just a +rDPS button for a given tank, due to needing less time in tank stance. Smokescreen was never of any real interest, as it was redundant with Diversion / Quelling Strikes and, unless you had a single melee carry who'd otherwise be forced to use ME/Purification, it wasn't enough to increase tank rDPS anyways.

Disable and Virus, as with Addle and Feint now, were too insignificant in most content to be of much interest, while any actual unique impact offered by either would cause our rather finnicky playerbase to cry imbalance (even if others could differently produce equal increased eHP by which to counter the given attack). I don't think that's necessarily a great reason to get rid of it, but I haven't much been sad it's gone or turned into a Role Action.

My big point of contention is simply "Okay, so... if Shadewalker became irrelevant and tank stances were bloat, etc., why then aren't there more sudden add spawns, and why aren't there more tools by which to deal with them? Why not simply revise Disable and Virus to be more interesting, potent, and satisfying to press?" I get why they did it, given the shift in context; I just don't get why they allowed the context to be so shallow.

/shrug