Incremental Steps Towards Something New: What Should Be Gradually Prototyped?

[Shurrikhan]

This may sound like a nitpick, but I'd love to see what would result from it: Removing unnecessary hidden or constant modifiers.

By this, I mean removing the hidden wonky Attack Power formulations, making it simply and purely based off of primary stat, removing the likes of Maim and Mend and providing the damage increases through potency boosts, the Job Action Damage traits and likewise giving those damage amps through potency increases.

From that, under identical stats and before adding in any buffs, the output of 300 tank potency is that of 300 melee potency is that of 300 ranger potency is that of 300 caster potency is that of 300 healer potency.

And... just as crucially, this means removing Tank Mastery. But that one, to be honest, I don't want to see made up for by any passive means. Instead, I'd rather just see the active mitigation increased to provide about the same net mitigation per use as before:

At a rounded 7k Defense, Fending Gear [38%] + Tank Mastery [20%] + Rampart [20%] was 60% mitigation, multiplicatively. Now, Rampart would be, say, 30% mitigation, bringing total mitigation still to 57% mitigation during Rampart without Tank Mastery, but passive mitigation would fall from 50% to just 38%.
(As all is tuned basically around Striking armor anyways, this really puts tanks at only about an extra 18% passive mitigation over anyone else instead of 34% more, making the passive durability feel about halved.)

The net effect of this would be a decent bit more white damage which, frankly, we could really use to feel that bit more like tanks instead of DPS with some scheduled auxiliary CDs. Granted, we'd still want more active mitigation and kit interactions, etc., anyways, but it's at least a start in (imo) the right direction.