[Discuss] Bringing back mitigation-damage interaction

[Shurrikhan]

Again, missing the forest for the trees. You have assumed the defensive stance only affects one GCD on the healer side, but not how it affects the tanks. First we would need to determine whether it's a GCD swap or an oGCD swap, is there any recast and if so, how long is it.

You're again responding to largely the wrong person. I'm not the one advocating for the return of a "tank stance", only for at-cost sustain options less or not limited by CDs and certain changes to the balance of damage intake and healing output.

A "tank stance" is a means of at-cost sustain (that can nonetheless be a net increase to party dps when used effectively); it is not the only means of doing so.

It was implied that, the only time you would go into it was when you had no other options

Which, again, would be wrong unless the tank stance were specifically made to be useless for skilled players, which would be a complete waste and clearly not something almost anyone would intend or ask for. That'd be at least as bad as the button-waste of GCD healing in the present state of the game.

You're effectively claiming that if the mechanic is self-sabotaged, it'll be bad. But neither needs to be the case.

Why do you want to force the tank to do something that feels bad to use. Ignore DPS, just concentrate on how it feels.

Does it "feel bad", though, to occasionally have it be more optimal to spend your gauge on Inner Beast (for its healing and mitigation) than on Fell Cleave (for its pure damage)?

Would it actually feel bad to have flexible control over one's outputs, instead of solely their timings, and to be rewarded for knowing when opportunities afforded to others (e.g., your healer) will outpace the opportunities you can gain for yourself? Would it feel bad to have significantly more access to active mitigation? Would it feel bad to have a higher skill ceiling accordingly, even it may slightly lower the floor by giving players fallback options?

First we would need to determine whether it's a GCD swap or an oGCD swap, is there any recast and if so, how long is it. With a GCD to swap, you are effectively making the potency for that GCD 0, of which you might need another one to swap back, so if a healer can save 1 GCD of healing, it needs to outweigh the 2 GCDs the tank loses at minimum and this is before we talk about how it affects the burst phase.

It's not all that hard to balance, but neither is it my idea, so I don't know why you're demanding these answers of me. Again, I'm not the one asking for tank stance.

It's fully viable, and when done right would be a boon, but I do not think all tanks need to have an identical sustain-option mechanic (i.e., for all to have a tank-stance, or any other single mechanism), and I do not think a stance toggle is typically the best way to cover that purpose anyways. Find the person who actually wanted tank stances to get these responses from.