Fine, Bloodwhetting is too OP

[Lyth]

I think the OP for this thread should have been presented in a 'trade offer meme' format. Sure, you'll 'grudgingly' take an upgrade to Thrill of Battle that renders it superior to Dark Mind virtually all conditions, just like Shake it Off is superior to Dark Missionary under virtually all conditions. And all in exchange for making WAR healing actually follow the stated text description and become a bit less broken in AoE. What a deal.

This is what you actually need to do.

Removing Invulns
First, you need to get rid of all tank invulns. A three minute recast variation between tank invulns is grossly imbalanced, and you honestly shouldn't have to fall back on them in fights with 4-5 tankbusters. SE has repeatedly proven that they are unable to balance tank invulns, much like they repeatedly proved that they couldn't balance tank stances prior to them being made vestigial. It's time for invulns to go. They're also very quickly running out of unique drawbacks for these, so if a new tank gets introduced in 8.0, they're better off scrapping the concepts altogether (and possibly just replacing them with a tier of big, non-invuln mitigations).

Rebalancing Raidwide Mitigation
Next, you look at the raidwide mitigation buffs. Either they all operate on conditional damage types (i.e. Shake it Off works on physical damage only), or none of them do.

It's also worth noting that even on a fight with magical damage, in order for Dark Missionary or Heart of Light to just break even with Shake it Off, the incoming magical raidwide damage over 15 seconds needs to exceed anywhere from 150% to 190% of your WAR's total HP. And that's before we look at the heal and regen effects built into it.

Hotfixing Bloodwhetting and Nascent Flash
Both Bloodwhetting and Nascent Flash specifically state in the tooltip that they restore HP with each weaponskill successfully delivered. That should be the heal potency per action, not per hit.

Future Directions
I think if you address these three points, you'll put an end to most of the role encroachment concerns and balance concerns raised around WAR. The focus needs to shift back towards skillful execution of defensives to survive. Replace passive healing and regen effects baked into the rotation with active, judicious use of sustain effects that require good timing and an understanding of incoming damage. Perhaps incorporate a theme around temporary HP effects where you try to boost your HP totals to absorb incoming damage, as was the case historically.

Either way, the current design approach is not sustainable and will drive players out of the role in the long run.

[whiskeybravo]

snip.

This was a Bloodwhetting specific idea I thought about, not to say that other adjustments are off the table, just beyond the scope of what I was focused on here. But since you mention Dark Mind as an example, well just about everything is superior to it, so it's not specifically a WAR problem. I don't have enough experience with DRK to jump into those discussions and make suggestions, and they already have a megathread and most of the rest of the tank forum for that. All I can add is that I'd personally be as happy as any DRK main if they were having as good of time as I have on WAR, because in the end that's what is best for the game.

I agree that in a broader context invulns should be removed and replaced with a 3rd viable CD such as I've outlined herein with a change to Thrill. At which point it should be sufficient in fulfilling tanking obligations. As for all the other tanks, they'd need to have a roughly equivalent style kit, whatever form that takes. Short CDs to use for light damage, rampart/40% for medium damage, stacking CDs together for heavy damage, etc. 30 , 60, 90, 120 or 180 sec intervals respectively. It all just fits well. But again, I'm just looking at what is apparently the biggest offender on what is coincidentally my main job.

Basically the same idea for raidwides. I did originally take a look at SiO but in the end I'm just not sure what to do with it. There are situations where a duration buff such as DRK/GNB have do provide more mitigation, and other times where a shield is better. Short of giving tanks the option to pop either DR% or shield (shared recast time type action), effectiveness just boils down to encounter design.

[Shurrikhan]

This was a Bloodwhetting specific idea I thought about, not to say that other adjustments are off the table, just beyond the scope of what I was focused on here. But since you mention Dark Mind as an example, well just about everything is superior to it, so it's not specifically a WAR problem. I don't have enough experience with DRK to jump into those discussions and make suggestions, and they already have a megathread and most of the rest of the tank forum for that.

That's fair. While every other job in a given role will ultimately/indirectly be the "problem" of every other job in that role, one step at a time makes sense.

There are situations where a duration buff such as DRK/GNB have do provide more mitigation, and other times where a shield is better. Short of giving tanks the option to pop either DR% or shield (shared recast time type action), effectiveness just boils down to encounter design.

Aye, but then encounters need to be specifically designed to cause enough damage over the window for, across the whole of a tier, the %DR to provide roughly as much value as the shields. Granted, the impacts of that difference would likely be minute compared to just at least allowing Dark Missionary and Heart of Light to also mitigate physical damage (or, though it seems the much worse "solution" to me, making DV and SiO shield only against physical damage).

[whiskeybravo]

Aye, but then encounters need to be specifically designed to cause enough damage over the window for, across the whole of a tier, the %DR to provide roughly as much value as the shields. Granted, the impacts of that difference would likely be minute compared to just at least allowing Dark Missionary and Heart of Light to also mitigate physical damage (or, though it seems the much worse "solution" to me, making DV and SiO shield only against physical damage).

Well, in one sense you also have to factor in Reprisal. Every tank has that, so if every tank simply gets a party shield instead we'd still have access to staggering rep + shield mits. Just something else I considered while pondering SiO. Shields are technically built in to both DRK and GNB already, so it wouldn't be entirely without foundation. Basically spreading a TBN or Brutal Shell more or less (thematically, not literally).