a serious attempt at getting ideas from the community for fighter balance(aka threat)

ok so it seems everytime we try and talk about balance of fighters more specifically about survivabilty and threat, the thread gets moderated and locked. so im posting this to attempt to avoid that this time.
Ideas and comments on those ideas. thats my goal for this thread. no need for flaming no need for talking down to anyone or belittling folks cause you may nto like their idea.
so this is something i posted about in the last thread that got locked on us.
Agro - AKA Threat per Second.
there is a huge glaring imbalance between threat per second amongst the 6 tanks. we have a few that cna reach 50k+ threat per second even while tanking and then we have a few that when tanking are down in the 30k threat per second area.
The Idea i posted previously is thus
Changing defensive stances to allow tanks to ACTUALLY do their jobs. we are all aware what some tanks must do in sacrificing their ability to tank efficiently jsut to maintain agro in a raid environment.
so the ideas i have for the defensive stances.
ALL UNCONTESTED BLOCK should be housed inside the defensive stance. plate tank brawler shoudlnt matter to have uncontested avoidance you should HAVE to be in defensive stance. this change would bring survivabilty among the tanks back in line when coupled with the other changes im thinking about. no longer would the crusaders have uncontested block while in offensive with a shield when in a dps role in raid.
part 2 of the change to defensive stances. Threat mods.
when in defensive the fighter shoudl gain significant boosts to threat per second. the threat of taunts would triple when in defensive, using my previous example a 4k singel target taunt woudl become a 12k single target taunt.
the second part of the threat mods change would be the following. all spells and CA's woudl produce threat at a much higher rate then in any other stance, im unsure wether we woudl want a 3 to 1 threat per dmg ratio or a 4 to 1 ratio. as an example a ca that deal 1000 dmg to the mob woudl produce 3000+ threat instead of jsut 1000.
and an extension to my idea. we all have ca's that dont work fully vs epic mobs. things with dazes and stifles and knockdowns dont usually work on them. so my thoughts here is that when using a ca that has on of these effects vs an epic mob, there would be a 5% chance to proc a percent increase to your current total threat towards the target. so in essence lets use arctic talon as an example has a daze attached to it that doesnt work on epic mobs. so vs an epic mob while in defensive stance, arctic talon woudl have a 5% chance to increase your current total threat towards the target by 2.5-5%.

we are tanks our JOB is to take the hits and keep teh attention of the mob focused on us. to do this some fighters need better tools. snap agro tools are nice and all but they dont do the job of maintaining your threat, threat per second maintains threat, positionals and snaps and such get you to the top of the list faster. every tank shoudl have both forms of agro control and maitanence available to them.

the ideas i have for the defensive stance woudl allow some tanks to throw that shield back on and actually be a TANK when they are tanking, not jsut a mele dps with enough mit to not upset their healers.

as far a survivabilty. i think its pretty balanced in that area, a tweak here and there down the road maybe to keep it so but nothing major needs to happen there imo.

thats all i got for now. remember guys no flames, ideas and rebuttals lets try and keep it civil and get our ideas into a thread that doesnt get locked down tomorrow night.

What I would like to see is for SOE to completely remove the idea of stances. It can easily be seen that the classes that are forced to choose a stance to tank or another to DPS are not happy with having to make that choice. Meanwhile the tanks that don't have to make the choice nearly as much are much happier with the playstyle.
First idea I would propose is removing stances all together and moving Brawler uncontested avoid to be innate. This would get rid of a ton of the discrepency about being forced to make a choice and would actually increase agro on Brawlers a ton while tanking. Replace the stances with some kind of offensive/defensive temp buffs or something.
Second idea I would propose is increasing the mitigation cap a good amount so that classes that have temp mit buffs or are dependant on mitigation see more of a use for them. Also it actually makes +mit useful.
Third idea is to increase Guard taunt crit bonus another 20%.
Fourth idea give Guards a true blue AE agro grabber on a mediocre recast. Referring back to my idea for the change to Recapture to true blue AE a medium CA for damage, like 5k hate, lower hate positions of all current group members by 5.

What I see happening if these ideas were implemented is all fighter classes becoming much more enjoyable to play. Brawlers love being offensive, let them have their avoid while doing it. Raising mit cap means since Brawlers are immune to strike-thru plates will absorb more damage on hit while Brawlers avoid more. Increasing Guard taunt crit bonus by 20% means Guards see a ton more raw threat and the change to Recapture ensures Guards can grab an AE group easily...and with current abilities once an AE group is on the Guard it is easy to maintain that agro.
Forced choices in stances is a terrible idea and is why the Fighter Revamp was thrown out. Being a fighter doesn't have to mean real bad DPS to take damage. Instead it should be T2 DPS behind rogues while the utility the fighter brings is being able to help crowd control and be able to take the AEs and what not.

Bruener wrote:

Raising the mit cap is just silly and wouldn't do anything, tanks already survive fine it would just make content more trivial. Giving guards a blue AE is also a joke, that blue AE isn't going to do anything to help them with their issue of being able to hold agro over a crusader. The whole dropping stances thing is just your lastest attempt to divert from the fact that your class can go full dps and still outtank everyone, you are simply trying to keep that dynamic for crusaders which is completely unbalanced and overpowered the proper fix would be to disable uncontested block in anything but the defensive stance with a shield.

This thread is a waste of time because the game mechanics developer either doesn't care, or has more important things to do.

Honest question... Was "Defensive Stance" ever meant to be useful..?
Whether or not it IS useful is up for debate (RE: Useless) ... But just WTF was it meant to do... Did someone just say defensive stance?!?! Defensive stance is like mentoring to 30 when trying to tank a 90 level mob. Help tanks tank better? How is this accomplished?
Frankly I see three ways, aggro control, damage mitigation, and maybe some deeps. However I'm so used to DPSing things to make them aggro toward my **butt** that aggro and mit go out the window, its all about deeps... Let's put scouts in plate and let them tank, no need for taunts.

Megalith@Crushbone wrote:

your abosultely right. in the current state of the game agro is all about dps and hate xfers. but it shoudlnt be. a tank should not be so nearly 100% dependant on dps and other classes hate to do their primary job. from an outside looking in perspective defensive stance shoudl be the only viable stance when standing in front of a mob that coudl pick up a house and smack you in the face with it. my own opinion on that is that it is ludicrous that a tank coudl be in an offensive stance and have no issues tanking those types of mobs. you should get destroyed by a raid mob in offensive stance, but currently its the other way around. dps is way out of control in this game. tanks have no business being top 5 on a parse. but really what can be done about that that woudlnt be viewed as a complete nerf of an archetype. soe made that bed, and im sure they are realizing dps for fighters was not the right choice for maintaining agro.
in offensive raid buffed a fighter shoudl be able to parse right there with the bards and such. but if they have to tank the mob they shoudl not be able to do that kind of dmg but they should have the ability to maintain threat on the mob via other means.
to really work right it would require a complete overhauil of the entire stances system. non stance dmg on ca's and spells and such for fighters woudl need to be normalized. then boosted via offensive stance in which SEVERE penalties to defense woudl occur. and then swing into raw threat using the defensive stance in which actual dmg to the mob suffers but threat goes through the roof.
but i dont see that type fo overhaul occuring. they kinda tried it before and of course everyone is so over-focused on dps that its was like someone took everyones ball away and went home with all the crying that occured.
the idea a year ago was solid. the approach was a disaster though, anyway moving on.
back to your reply.
defensive certainly doesnt mean much to anyone but a brawler right now and that is jsut wrong on many levels. which is why quite a few of us think that all uncon avoid shoudl only occur when in defensive, yes it forces you to use that stance as a raid tank, and rightfully so. we are not demigods running around on norrath we're mere mortals walking up to dragons and slapping them in the face. the guy taking the hit from that mythical beast should be focusing on defensing against the attacks and maintain his threat. dps shoudlnt be a factor for that 1 spot in the raid. the other fighters in the raid would then be in an offensive stance doing solid dmg to the mob not this insance over inflated dmg that is occuring in some instances. if the mt happens to die a switch of the stance and bam fighter 2 is in business and in threat/turtle mode. which is the essence of the term tank. it makes sense. you cant look at it from a how it is in game right now point of view. you have to look at it in a how it shoudl be point of view.
not sure about you guys but i didnt make my tanks to be a dps'er i made them to be tanks. to stand there in front of super pwoered godly mob of awesomeness and smack him in the face and say bring it. taking the dmg he dishes out and pissing him off more and more for nto being dead yet whiel the rest of the raid makes a puree out of his backside.

soe doesnt really have too many options next time they look at tanks. in all likelihood nerfs to dps are going to occur, cause there are large variances in dmg potential between tanks but not so large variances in survivabilty and due to the dps differences there are also large agro differences. the two are directly related. im attmepting to come up with ways to UN-relate them. giving the cuirrently lower dps fighters the tools they need to out threat the dps of the other fighters on the raid when they are in defensive and tanking the mob.


to Bruener. I appreciate the input, but moving brawler uncon avoid to innate will seriously overpower brawlers in non raid content and even in some raid content. it woudl be a quick fix to brawler raid agro capability that wouldnt even really be used by a tanking raid brawler, the mit boost from the defensive stance is jsut as important(if nto more) to a brawler as the uncontested block. and also ironically im actually quite happy that i have ot make a choice, its not liek eq1 where you mad ea tnak mashed your taunt and kick button and autoattacked the mob. you actually have to think when selecting a stnace to be in(as a brawler anyway) and the other 4 tanks shoudl have to make the same decisions. when dpsing offensive stance shoudl be your bread and butter, when tanking defensive stance shoudl be your go to tool. the game is easy enough as it is. removing the few choices we actually have to make woudl pretty much push me out of the game entirely. my own desires are that the choices we make on gear and casting orders and stances and buffs shoudl be even more important then they are now. it brings another level of gameplay to it when the choices you make have a large impact on your performance in your chosen role.

I'd be fine with getting rid of stances and lowering fighter dps if I thought it would make any difference in fighter balance, but it won't. If anything it will lower brawler dps and we (monks especially) bring so little utility, a big reason we are accepted is that we can dps well when needed and tank decently when needed. We just don't have enough utility to nerf our dps when not tanking and still warrant a spot in raid. (also i would want my plat back for my monk stances red adorns lol)
Stance dancing is part of playing a fighter (well brawler) well. Getting rid of that would ruin the class imo. Better to give other tanks reasons to actually have to use D stance than completely alter the game by getting rid of stances all together.

Offensive stance = A times more damage, 1/A threat. All uncontested avoidance for ALL tank types is switched to contested while in this stance, has additional chance to hit with melee attacks, increased accuracy, decreased mitigation.
Defensive stance = A times more threat, 1/A damage. Some type of link to the major anti-spike damage abilities in addition to the uncontested avoidance only being available while in d-stance, increased taunting skills, increased health, defense, physical and magical mitigations.

Then, all you need to do is tack on the same amount of threat as damage to each of the fighter's abilities and balance accordingly. There you go. Now a fighter can hold equally as much agro in offensive as defensive, but the main difference is how much the fighter needs to be able to take the hits. The stance becomes purely offensive or defensive; not you can keep agro stance or you can't stance.

I am having trouble trying to understand why you think a fighter doing T2 DPS while tanking or not tanking is a bad thing. I mean other classes bring a ton to the table while still being able to do that DPS. Look at the amount of raid utility rogues/chanters/bards bring AND they are doing good DPS.
Fighters SHOULD be doing decent DPS while still doing their role of tanking. They should do the same good DPS while not tanking as well and the only difference would be when switching to DW or 2h for a lil more DPS. Its not like you are going to bring a fighter for any other reason than the possibility of tanking. Even with how good fighter DPS is now if it came to just worrying about DPS you would be dumb to not bring a T1 DPS class. Or making sure you bring another rogue for those great debuffs or an additional Bard for even more VC DPS.
All Fighters should be parsing behind Rogues but ahead of Bards and ahead of Healers. This ensures the playability of the class and actually wanting to have more than 2 around in raids without just camping out to an alt like in previous xpacs for those few encounters that actually required 3 tanks. Unless they are going to design 90% of the content to require 4+ fighters simply for tanking ALL fighters have to do decent DPS to not be considered a burden.
It shouldn't matter whether or not the fighter is tanking the mob or sitting behind like a scout class. All those other classes either bring A LOT more DPS (T1) or they bring a lot more in utility (rogue debuffs and Bard/Chanter buffs).

Bruener wrote:

Sorry matey, but this makes no sense at all. Behind all that big ol' text you're not proposing any change at all, yet say that your 'idea' would make tanks viable raid members when not tanking. Despite already telling us at the beginning that tanks would not be desirable raid fillers if they do less dps than T2 DPS classes you then assert that a tank doing 'dps between a rogue and bard' would have a non tank place in a raid?

At the end of the day, consider this:
Would you bring a Healer if they could not heal?
Would you bring a chanter if they used no buffs?
Would you bring a Sorc if they did no DPS?
If the answer to all those questions is 'No' or 'No, [unless/but]...' then the answer to the following question should be fairly self-evident:
Would you bring a tank that will not tank anything?

steelbadger wrote:

Pretty sure you mis-read what I typed, or at least misunderstood. I said that Fighters should do T2 DPS all the time, period. You nerf fighter DPS lower than that like some suggest and it is very hard to justify bringing more than 2 fighter anytime...unless camping an alt in for the very few fights that are scripted to require 3.
At the same time allowing ALL fighters to do roughly that T2 DPS even while tanking means less gap between some for agro. Most people, especially DPS, don't want to have to worry about agro.

I see what your getting at here bruener. I'm not sure i completely agree though. I do however agree that a fighter should be capable of bringing some pain.
i think a few of us are pretty much wanting the same end result. a more balanced picture between all 6 fighters. its jsut how to get there that we go back and forth on.
in the current state of dps in the game I find it hard to say that getting there through dps is a good idea.
now to append that statement. in offensive stances yes i think fighters shoudl be doing solid dps, but in no way at all shoudl they be capable of tanking raid content in that offensive stance. my opinion is all. i agree that we shoudl dps behind rogues when in a dps role, but im not sure if i can agree that we shoudl be ahead of bards, ive always thought we shoudl parse right there with bards not neccessarily ahead or behind them when in offensive.
like i said earlier though, when tanking it shoudl be a different story. our dps shoudl drop off a little bit and be repalced with huge threat capability when using our defensive stance which would house our mit boost and raid avoidances along with that huge threat capability. i jsut cant justify a fighter doing huge numbers on dps when tanking a raid mob.
we do also have to consider utility potential. i think that all 6 fighters should be brought up to the level of utility the shadowknight has right now. cause lets face it even if the SK lost half their dps they woudl still be a fighter of choice to bring to a raid because of the utility they can bring to the raid. re-use, potency, group ward, offensive skills boost, spell potency, etc. the class has a solid utility set, and all 6 tanks shoudl have the ability to bring a comparable amount of utility as the sk.
for fighter dps to be placed firmly above a bards after any changes made we would have to lose utility for some fighters, something none of us want to occur, which is why i think right along with a bard shoudl be our goal and for all 6 to have a utility suite comparable to the sk(and to a lesser extent the pali even though the sk has the pali beat as well, although pali does have a killer temp buff so its debatable), the reason i say bard level dps is with sk type utility, the ability to swap right into defensive to turtle up, and the fact that all of our survivability temps woudl still work while in an offensive stance too much dps would unbalance the fighters vs everyone else. we need to think of it like this when we are in a dps role at teh raid, even with sacrificing defense through gear we as fighters can still snap the mob and swap stances through up some temps and live through it saving teh raid form a wipe while the mt is rezzed rebuffd in the event of a death. when your there as a dps/tertiary tank that is your job and for that specific role in a raid being able to do that counts toward huge utility if you look at it from an outside the box angle. now that doesnt mean you always get to excersize that ability but its there and its always there and needs to be counted even while in a dps role.

I don't know specific numbers of the top of my head. I'm only posting this because I'm currently on my daughters' computer installing updates and bored, but...
Brawlers' uncontested avoidance is tied into their defensive stance. So when they swap out of defensive (if they ever go in) most of their avoidance is now contested which is garbage in a raid setting. Not to mention that extra ~10% avoidance they get for strikethrough immunity.
Warriors uncontested is tied into their shields. So when they drop their shield to duel wield and deal comparable DPS to crusaders, they lose all uncontested avoidance and only have their contested which is garbage in a raid setting.
Crusaders uncontested avoidance is built into a shield. With knight's stance, their autoattack damage is increased. Procs may or may not do more dps than their autoattack, but autoattack is still around 30% of their overall damage. One of the single largest contributors to their total dps. So keeping offensive stance, and a shield, crusaders get to keep their uncontested avoidance and do maximum DPS, making them extremely viable to pick up the mob and get it back to the MT without having to swap stances or pop in a shield.
IMO, uncontested avoidance should be tied into every fighter's defensive stance. Shield or no shield equipped. It would equalize uncontested across the board (minus gear and myth buffs). A shield, then, should be a damage reducer, comparable to it's rating. Once Sf came out I pretty much switched to my monk and then my pally (locked at 39) so not sure what current shield ratings are, but IIRC Savage Wall was around 1700, with fabled heroic being 1500. The buffs on the shields (shield effectiveness) +5-15% would add to damage reduction either .5% or 1% for every 5% shield effectiveness. That would bring crusader's survivability up a considerable bit still.
It was just a thought, not fully formed or worked through, maybe some ideas or suggestions to go off, or heck, even some rebuttals would be nice.
Next question, should the programming have gear do a buffs check? Such as "If class x is in stance x, then add x% increase to uncontested avoidance(defensive buff), else add x% accuracy (strikethrough/offensive buff chance). Or would that muddy the mechanics too much and make things more complicated than necessary (not necessarily a bad thing IMO)

Bruener wrote:

This is the reason that I proposed that while you're in offensive you're doing noticeably more dps, but not pushing more total hate and while in defensive you're doing noticeably less damage but an equivilantly increased threat. (This of course assumes that all fighters have equally as much overall capable threat as dps capabilities. Increasing 500 dps by 2 fold and decreasing 500 threat to 1/2 or the other way around both = 1k. In no stance where both are multiplied by 1 {no bonus} it will also equal 1k. All three methods of tanking; defensive, offensive, and non-stanced all equal the same hate generation. If you make fighter's damage and threat determined by the same stat/bonus, you all of a sudden don't have to worry about itemizing both threat and damage, and both modes become equally as viable gear wise.)
If you're in defensive, you should be defensive and not able to bring on the large orange numbers nearly as much as you would be able to in offensive or even in No stance. If you're in offensive stance, you should see your life getting chopped at much easier, but you should be chopping the enemies life in respectively just as large of chunks.My proposal means agro stays pretty darn close to the same all the time, BUT the dps and survivability does not. That is what the tanking community has been asking to see in stances and where most of us are pretty much on the same boat. The other reason for the equal hate output is that it means that a tank can't just carelessly start spamming damage in offensive or they'll gank the hate, and it will make either method more active and engaging than the proposed scenario by some of "you hold hate and stonewall damage in this mode, you dps and eat mud if you pull the agg in this mode". It's not fun to just hammer all your buttons and not have to worry for a second if you're going to pull hate, you can stick tuna on your keyboard and let the cat do that for you while you play another game on a console.
As long as there are minor differences between the stances in terms of survivability and the stances are not all equally as viable in hate, there will be no meaning behind stances and it's wasting a valuable balancing tool for the developers AND a valueable tool for players to utilize to make a noticeable change to their dps and survivability as needed (assuming that the stances will someday mean something again other than in terms of mit and avoidance and that threat and tank damage share the same or similar modifiers which imo is ideal.)

------------------------------ On a side note:
As for crusader dps, paladins and shadowknights do noticeably different amounts of damage. It's like saying both warriors can push equal dps. While paladins may be gifted with amends, it's no where near as useful as it once was, and even then, if the paladin's amends target dies, with all of our combat arts having base damages at lvl 90 of about 300-600 damage and our power guzzling habbits not to mention the loss of most of holy ground's purpose which now gives us effectively one of the lowest numbers of rescue abilities if not the lowest, what does that really leave the paladins with to pick up hate?
Theres a very good reason paladins have evolved into the mold of pushing their auto attack damage as high as possible. As for the reason almost all crusaders sword and board, how many viable 2 handers do you see out there? Do they stack up to being anywhere as good as a sword AND a shield's bonuses? Not even close. Without dual wielding, it pretty much leaves crusaders the option of sword and board, or half gimped and for paladins that is on one of the last viable options of hate generation we have left which is even now being cried about. Seriously, the paladin really does not have much left to lose, and if anything they are a little bit behind now if you look at the entire picture objectively.

Bruener wrote:

I believe they should. I used to play a HC raid assassin and I have to say that without having to worry about aggro everything becomes a boring clickfest. I know it's an oft overused term but 'Easy Mode' comes to mind. Where is the skill if anyone with half a brain can hit the same buttons in the same order and get the same results? Skill has to come from Hate balancing.
And on the origional point;
A tank simply cannot compete with true DPS classes for raid slots and never should be able to. As soon as a class can do x DPS and something else if necessary then a class that just does x. T2 DPS from a tank is not enough to warrant brining them in the place of a real (T1 or T2) DPS class. The tank brings no Utility besides the ability to tank, while the T2 DPS brings Utility with that DPS and the T1 class doesn't bring Utility but brings 20% more DPS. It's a no-brainer. Pure DPS simply is not enough to secure raid spots for tanks outside of tank roles. To get tanks given DPS roles in raids would require T1 DPS equivalent, but then you'd just bring tanks as DPS because of their greater survivability.
Of course, you're thinking about this as an SK; who does bring a little to a raid besides DPS and Tank (a nice raidwide). I'm a Guardian. Our 'utility' is completely worthless. Our raidwide buff does nothing in a raid thanks to raid mob accuracy buffs.
I really don't want to see tanking become the snorefest that DPS is. I made a Guard because I knew their aggro generation was supposed to be poor and that holding aggro was meant to be a difficult job. And I would be completely fine with the current situation if other tanks were not encroaching on my specialized area of expertise: Survivability. As it is I'm fairly sure that the Pally myth buff makes them more survivable than a Guard, while also generating more aggro and bringing more to a raid when not tanking than almost any other tank.
I want tanking to be an engaging experience, as it is I already AoE timers on raid mobs just to spice it up a bit, it's already a bit too simplistic for my liking.
Maybe I'll go back to my healer, maybe there's still some vestige of skill involved in playing them.

in nearly 99% of cases I would venture to bet that those dps'ers that go all out without a thought about agro spent ALL of TSO with an SK tanking for them. they are SPOILED. personalyl i think nearly every single one of them prolly doesnt ven remember how to manage their agro. I see it everyday. people assassinating on pull, fusion on pull, IC on pull.
I mean seriously what is going through their mind when they do this?
but now we as tanks need to deal with it. because these dps'ers out there cant and most often WONT control themselves and manage thier hate,(cause all they are doing is cycling their casting order and not even looking at the screen). now we need tanks with 6 snap tools 2 of which are burned nearly at the beginning of every pull. with few tanks that can actually get the hate right through those big hits without using snaps or special agro skills. this is something that requires changes.
If I had my way the tank community as a whole woudl agree to let every singel one of them die for the next 30 days when they were stupid enough to use a big dmg skill in the first 5 seconds of a fight. maybe that woudl teach them to pay attention to more tehn their cooldowns. but thats kind of evil and ive already betrayed my sk to pali hehe. have to be good now i guess.
so what do we do. well one option is what ive been talking about super powering tank threat per second. lets face it everytime these dps'ers get more gear they are getting more and more super powered dps. but what are the tanks getting most of the time? increases to mitigation/block and stuff that helps us live longer. so why shoudlnt we have SOMETHING that is jsut as superpowered as everyone else. i woudl jsut choose to have it as threat.
it is a problem for some tanks. dps going all out from the first second of the fight without a single glance at their agro meter (IF they even have it up on screen) and here I thought the hate meter was gonna be like gods gift to tanks, but no its not, dps dont even bother to look at it. dps has the tools to never take hate form a tank but like a fruit cake given to you on the holidays thsoe tools sit on a shelf collecting dust.
this all being said I still maintain that this additional threat I'ld liek to see shoudl absolutely not be in the form of DPS. RAW THREAT thats what we need. in defensive stance we should be capable of producing enough threat to out threat the dps of the t2 dps'ers. add in hate mods and xfers and blam tank is now beyond the t1 dps'ers capability of agro.

and as a side not, jsut because people dont WANT to worry about agro. in no way means they shoudln't have to. they absolutely should be having to pay attention. but 90% of them all they wanna do is button mash huge dmg skills never once thining of what possible consequences it might incur, and then when they do rip agro off the tank and die all they want to do is complain and yell at the tank cause they coudlnt hold the agro. well let me tell you im sick to death of idiotic dps'ers doing whatever they want whenever they want and me having to take the heat for their ineptitude. so hence the thread and my ideas for threat.

Nulgara@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I am curious to why you guys keep shelving yourselves into additional threat coming from raw threat and not DPS? There is no good reason to not have fighters do decent DPS while doing their role of tanking..meaning getting rid of the stances and making fighters do T2 DPS period. As somebody pointed out a couple of posts up the T2 DPS alone is not going to secure a raid spot for a fighter, but the additional utility of being able to pick up mobs or hold mobs and take a hit does with the T2 DPS. There is no good reason at all to switch to a stance that will **** you DPS wise period.
Agro has become a snooze-fest a long time ago. DPS classes in EQ2 have never really had to try to throttle their agro because classes were designed to shed agro easily and to transfer it. Groups were made to build up agro so that DPS'ers didn't have to worry about it at all. They could easily just mash their buttons to maximize their DPS while leaving all the responsibility on the tank to snap it back quickly if he happened to lose it.
Now if you guys really want to shelve fighters into less choice than DPS'ers, healers, and everybody else should be shelved back into that same role. Roll it back to old EQ1 style where as a wizard dropping one nuke could mean you pull agro and die wiping the raid. No more hate buffs, no more hate transfers. And than wind hate way back so that a lucky flurry attack will pull it off the best tank. Can any of you see this happening? Do you think all those people that play all those other classes want to back off entirely? Heck no. Its because SOE has made this game about not worrying about agro very much at all. Without having to worry about agro they can make encounters strategically much harder involving people in other ways. Imagine doing 3 rune RT where every couple seconds somebody is pulling agro. Or trying to burn all the mobs on Munzok with everybody going less than half bore because they are afraid of pulling. It won't happen which is why tanks really need to get out of trying to shelve themselves into that mentality of sit there and tank. Raids shouldn't have to feel **** by bringing a 3rd fighter because their DPS blows. And those ones that are tanking what is the point of having their DPS go thru the floor....less raid DPS?
The fact is tanking is a utility that other than 1 class in raids or groups is rarely used. Even an OT for the majority of content is sitting there DPS'ing right along with the other classes. Now the T1 classes obviously should be way up on the parse. But than you get down to the T2 DPS classes and you see utility that is constantly being used through-out an entire zone along with their good DPS...and that utility comes at exactly the same time their DPS does, its not like they sacrifice DPS to do more utility.
There really is no good reason to have fighter stances since they have always been a fail and the last thing the majority of the people want in this game is forced choices...which ultimately means less choice.
EDIT: Oh I wanted to add that survivability should come more in the choice of gear rather than being reliant on stances because it adds much more choice to the game. BTW this seems to be the way that SOE is going in todays game.

ill put it simply.. you wanna do rogue dps.. walk around a metal plated juggernaut.. by having capped mit and uncontested avoidance ALL THE TIME..
umm tell me why whoudl you bring a rogue if all fighters where are that level? and if you say debuffs im gonna laugh at you cause the healers and mages can debuff plenty.
you cant have the cake, eat it, request more, get it, eat more, and then ask for even more on top of that.
your obviously completely unwilling to accept that fighter dps is out of control. you jsut happen to be playing 1 of the strongest ones right now so i dont actually expect you to change your position in that regard. but in the lines your pitching, rogues do indeed become COMPLETELY superfulous. at that point you woudl simply bring 6 fighters all doing 50k+ in top end gear all the while all 6 of them being fully capable of jsut ripping agro off each other and not caring.. umm no thanks. ive heard of a game that is that pathetically easy but i dare nto mention its name.
your idea of acceptable dps for a fighter is completely unbalancing. and massively unfair to DPS classes. if you wanna do rogue dps (well you already do cause of the tank your playing but im willing to bet your not gonna stay that way) you shoudl have rolled a rogue.
Bard level dps is where we shoudl be when specced for offense.
and,, since you like to ask questions in your post.. heres one for you
Give me ONE GOOD reason that a fighter should be doing rogue level dps and ill shut up?

Bruener wrote:

If I understand the argument correctly, it goes like this:
While tanking, if we survive and hold aggro, DPS is a secondary concern at best. If all else is equal, then one tank being ahead here is a problem, but by and large, if a fighter is tanking, he'll be in the group for that, so there.
While not tanking... Fighters should be able to change to offensive stance and push out decent DPS - but survivability should go down by a lot (so remove uncontested avoidance while in offensive, possibly provide even further detriments). It may be viable in some situations while tanking easy instances - but never in raid content while tanking.
I have absolutely no problem with seeing tanks push swashbuckler or brigand levels of DPS if they run purely offensive gear and specs. They don't get the debuffs, so the rogue still wins out.
So: The stances should matter. At the moment, you see this trend with brawlers.
Why doesn't that work? Two reasons:
1: Every other tank gets the best of both worlds in offensive with a shield. That should be changed.
2: Threat generation goes down when changing to defensive stance - this should also be changed.
This is just me trying to summarize what I remember of the arguments running back through tSO. I guess some are now looking at fighter stances making this kind of radical difference as a negative thing - but there's the argument.
On a final note, if the aim here is to secure a third fighter spot in the raid, then I don't think the above will work too well. We can bicker endlessly about who's overpowered this expansion, but it won't solve the two-slots-for-six-classes issue.
There's one kind of role we should aim to push out of a raid force in that case: The support classes (emchanters/bards). They take up far too many of the spots already. If bringing them was less of a no-brainer, then some semblance of class viability might be attainable.
Obviously, though, that's going to require some major re-thinking of class mechanics, going well beyond the scope of this discussion; it's also something the mechanics team has, in the past, proven that they're simply not ready to do (afraid that they will scare away players with this kind of change, even at the launch of a new expansion). In spite of this, it has been officially acknowledged as a balance problem in the game.

Nulgara@Antonia Bayle wrote:

You are extremely ignorant to pass by Rogue debuffs. No other class debuffs like them. Furthermore I said Fighter DPS should be right behind rogue DPS all the time....it shouldn't matter whether the fighter is tanking or not. There is usually only 1 person tanking.
Whats funny is you guys keep putting out ideas that limit fighter DPS a lot while tanking but keeping DPS right where it is when not tanking. Do you honestly think that keeping DPS the same will change anything. I mean taking 4 spots up in a raid for Fighters seems that absurd to you guys?
A raid will always want a Brig for their big DPS increase to the raid and the decent DPS they do. A raid will always want a Swash for their great damage debuffs to mobs along with the great DPS they do...not to mention the superior agro transfer to a tank.
As for T1 DPS, the gap between T1 DPS now and T2 is pretty large and substantial enough to make sure you definitely want a few T1 DPS floating in the raid.
Really the only thing you guys are doing is trying to limit play-style for fighters and in doing so limiting their usefulness as well. On the surface the idea I put forth does nothing but increase how fun a fighter is to play since as you guys put it in offensive they would do the same DPS they do now in offensive....and its not like you see raids taking more than 4 fighters ever. Get rid of the stupid stances and move uncontested avoid to built in for Brawlers. Bump Guard ST DPS up some to be equal to the other fighters and the game just got way more enjoyable for the other 3 fighter classes that seem to be craving it.