Raiding: Remove Toughness Tank

[Iiridayn.6109]

Oysters Gnashblade gives -10% Incoming Damage. This is valuable, because it protects characters without increasing their Toughness. GW2 has 9 basic stats, and of the 41 stat prefixes available in PVE, 21 of them (more than half) increase Toughness. This should not be a bad thing - an easy way to mix in some survivability to your build. However, in practice these prefixes are a bit of a trap. We should fix player choice traps as we prepare to release on Steam to minimize frustration for the expected bounty of new players.

Open world PVE is a fairly low bar; so, when gearing a character, players often focus on endgame content. Switching gear stats has a significant cost, so players want to choose gear which will be useful in as many contexts as possible. Because 9 of 25 raid encounters (in 6 of the 7 raid wings) use a top Toughness tanking mechanic, new players are strongly disincentivized from choosing gear which would increase Toughness and thereby increase their survivability, for all endgame content. This way as they work their way up to raids, they will not need to change their gear stats, which as I mentioned, has a significant cost.

A simple change to those 9 encounters to support single use assigned tanking would suffice to make gear which increases toughness an acceptable choice for learning players. This would result in the same tanking mechanics for these fights. As far as I am aware, no other content uses a toughness based tank.

 

Pre-rebuttals:

 

Assigned tank means tank can be full Zerker and have higher DPS! 

In organized groups, the tank can have full Zerker and bump toughness a tiny amount w/a consumable. The DPS difference should be negligible.

 

ANet doesn't have time for big changes!

This shouldn't be a complicated change; the AI code would need to change target prioritization to an assigned target instead of checking toughness. The interface could be a special action key, or whoever kills Xera's clone, etc.

 

This doesn't allow for fallback tanking!

Whatever interface can use a priority list - first, second, third, etc. If three tanks die, the fight is likely a wipe anyway. If the developers need a full well ordered list of players, they can assign remaining non-volunteer tanks based off their internal player ID.

 

Who cares, this is raid elitism!

I am not an elite raider, I am just learning. It is common to gear for PVE based on top tier PVE content, with the intention of eventually reaching it. This would directly impact the elite raiders the least, only making it easier for new players to join their ranks.

Edited July 25, 2022 by Iiridayn.6109
Better formatting for top bit and edit reason message, reword to "bounty" of new players

[firedragon.8953]

Personally I don't see it as a problem, and I think it adds to mechanic diversity.
Considering GW2 basically has very "short" vertical gearing progression, stats for builds/roles are one of the main reasons players farm certain content and supports the economy. It is one of the driving factors behind grinding for legendary, because yes, it is a bit annoying, but I think any good game also needs "barriers" to overcome. That's kinda the point, imo. Without such barriers, there is just simply less to do in the game...
 

18 minutes ago, Iiridayn.6109 said:

they will not need to change their gear stats

I guess fundamentally, I just disagree with this idea.

[Iiridayn.6109]

19 minutes ago, firedragon.8953 said:

Personally I don't see it as a problem, and I think it adds to mechanic diversity.
Considering GW2 basically has very "short" vertical gearing progression, stats for builds/roles are one of the main reasons players farm certain content and supports the economy. It is one of the driving factors behind grinding for legendary, because yes, it is a bit annoying, but I think any good game also needs "barriers" to overcome. That's kinda the point, imo. Without such barriers, there is just simply less to do in the game...

Ironically, this change could result in more gear changes. As things stand, players get a single set of endgame tier armor, and rarely need to change it. Allowing toughness in endgame armor would result in players who choose to use it changing their endgame armor twice - once to a survivable variant, and then replacing pieces with the full DPS build as they feel more comfortable with mechanics.

[Valisha.8650]

Yes please, remove toughness tanking.

[Endaris.1452]

It's not a raid-exclusive mechanic, most exotic gear is incredibly cheap and stat changing ascended gear is cheap too.

I mean yeah, the design is not great but I have to disagree with your assessment that it's like a huge problem cause it's not.

Edited July 25, 2022 by Endaris.1452

[Einsof.1457]

It's fine as is. 

[firedragon.8953]

11 minutes ago, Iiridayn.6109 said:

Allowing toughness in endgame armor would result in players who choose to use it changing their endgame armor twice - once to a survivable variant, and then replacing pieces with the full DPS build as they feel more comfortable with mechanics.

I don't follow...  How is that different from now? Doesn't this contradict your whole original premise of, "not needing to change gear stats?" If you need toughness in your open world build, you need a non-toughness dps (or whatever) set for end-game raid content... So the current iteration would be more inductive of "changing their endgame armor twice" (which you original post seems to be against). So which is it? What are you arguing for?

If you have survivability issues in a raid squad, it is unlikely to be a "toughness issue". Most likely the person is playing too far from the dedicated healer or failing mechanics and getting hit by a lot of things that basically spell instant death anyway. I'd wager that even if toughness tanking was removed, most groups would want their dps to be in berserker's, viper's, or similar offensive stat combination to effectively fulfill their role since a certain level of dps (boon uptime, healing output, etc.) will continue to be expected in most groups. Remember, "toughness" isn't a free tradeoff. You will lose dps, boon uptime, etc. You can gear yourself for solo play with toughness if you want, but there is actually no real place for it in end-game group content EXCEPT for a tank. 

Basically, what you're proposing (non-toughness-based tanking) became a thing, it would unlikely achieve your intended goal (which I quote below).

1 hour ago, Iiridayn.6109 said:

This way as they work their way up to raids, they will not need to change their gear stats, which as I mentioned, has a significant cost.

Also that "significant cost" is part of the player driven economy. That is also another whole can of worms that probably isn't worth opening here...
Let me know if I am misunderstanding your point.
 

[LSD.4673]

38 minutes ago, Iiridayn.6109 said:

Ironically, this change could result in more gear changes. As things stand, players get a single set of endgame tier armor, and rarely need to change it. 

That's literally the worst aspect of the game: you get your end-game armour, then you don't change it. You have your default storage + 1 equipment template. If you want to experiment, good luck to you.

[Iiridayn.6109]

Floated the idea by some raid leaders who've been training me. They are opposed, though their reasons appear to summarize to "you shouldn't bring Toughness into Raids anyway, unless you're the designated tank". I'd like to clarify quickly here as well that I'm focused on the effects outside of raids more than inside of raids.

[firedragon.8953]

2 minutes ago, Iiridayn.6109 said:

I'm focused on the effects outside of raids more than inside of raids.

Let me clarify, that's fine. Wear toughness outside of raids. But, if that's the case, then why make an argument for toughness-based tanking in raids? I am confusion... 😕

Honestly, this sounds like, "I don't want to put in the time and gold to gear myself for end-game content, but I want to be able to be carried in raids without any preparation (effort) and just play in celestial stats or something despite my poor performance ."
 

16 minutes ago, LSD.4673 said:

That's literally the worst aspect of the game: you get your end-game armour, then you don't change it. You have your default storage + 1 equipment template. If you want to experiment, good luck to you.

Do you know what all the stats do? If so, you can freely build anything using a tool such as this.
(Note this may need an update because of the changes made in the last patch, for exact numbers.)
Discretize - Gear Optimizer

You can also get a lot of exotic grade gear on the TP quite cheaply.
You can also stat change ascended gear in the mystic forge which is quite affordable as well.
Stat changing - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W)

Of course you can also go for Legendary Armor. But, I'm going to assume you know about that and have decided against it because you've determined it to be too hard or time consuming and want more instant gratification. (Sorry, if I mischaracterized you and am being a bit salty, it's just I've heard too many people whine about wanting "easy [open world] leggy armor" on the forums.)

Anyway...I should probably stop responding to this thread because I am either completely misunderstanding what it's about, or I'll end up falling into "another one of these" posts.

[Iiridayn.6109]

Yeah, my apologies for not replying quickly. I spawned a huge realtime discussion on the guild discord. I'll get back to your points.

[Sobx.1758]

47 minutes ago, Iiridayn.6109 said:

I'd like to clarify quickly here as well that I'm focused on the effects outside of raids more than inside of raids.

It's pretty weird your post seems to be focusing on raids then.

If your focus is on what's outside of raids then your concerns are solved by the existance of exotic gear. Cheap and easy in most cases.

Edited July 25, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Iiridayn.6109]

Okay, rebuttals from Discord explosion:

• You shouldn't bring Toughness into raids anyway unless you're tanking (and maybe not even then, a +5 should be fine). This is because mechanics will kill you dead with or without toughness, so you should focus on DPS.
• Players should focus on mechanics/visuals instead of gear stats, but should follow prescribed gear builds.
• Players should have many gear sets for each content they'd like to engage with - the gem and gold cost is not a factor (buy more character slots instead of equipment templates, and gear with exotics).
• We're used to this, and the only benefit of changing it would make it easier for new players to bring Toughness gear to raids, which would be a change for the worse.
• Toughness doesn't need a purpose in PVE if it's useful in WvW and sPVP

[Sobx.1758]

Why are you reporting back what some people on discord said?

[Iiridayn.6109]

1 hour ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Why are you reporting back what some people on discord said?

I thought it useful to provide additional perspectives which might not have been realized here. I'm honestly surprised at the question.

 

2 hours ago, firedragon.8953 said:

Let me clarify, that's fine. Wear toughness outside of raids. But, if that's the case, then why make an argument for toughness-based tanking in raids? I am confusion... 😕

Honestly, this sounds like, "I don't want to put in the time and gold to gear myself for end-game content, but I want to be able to be carried in raids without any preparation (effort) and just play in celestial stats or something despite my poor performance ."

1 hour ago, Sobx.1758 said:

It's pretty weird your post seems to be focusing on raids then.

If your focus is on what's outside of raids then your concerns are solved by the existance of exotic gear. Cheap and easy in most cases.

I briefly stated here in response to a common theme I saw in the Discord conversation, that "I'm focused on the effects outside of raids more than inside of raids." See also my last pre-rebuttal: this shouldn't impact elite raiders at all.

 

My goals, restated from the OP:

1. Make Toughness not a trap stat. Yes, it will never contribute to top DPS. However, it should not actively interfere with multiplayer group content.
   • This matters because 21 of 41 stat combinations available in PVE include some toughness
2. Provide a gearing progression for new players moving from strikes to raids as they are more confident they can handle mechanics.

 

2 hours ago, firedragon.8953 said:

I don't follow...  How is that different from now? Doesn't this contradict your whole original premise of, "not needing to change gear stats?" If you need toughness in your open world build, you need a non-toughness dps (or whatever) set for end-game raid content... So the current iteration would be more inductive of "changing their endgame armor twice" (which you original post seems to be against). So which is it? What are you arguing for?

...
Basically, what you're proposing (non-toughness-based tanking) became a thing, it would unlikely achieve your intended goal (which I quote below).

"This way as they work their way up to raids, they will not need to change their gear stats, which as I mentioned, has a significant cost."

Also that "significant cost" is part of the player driven economy. That is also another whole can of worms that probably isn't worth opening here...
Let me know if I am misunderstanding your point.

If players want to start with gear including toughness and swap out for Berserker as they grow, then yes, it contributes to the player economy. If they would like to go straight to Berserker and not contribute to the player economy, then yes, they also have that choice. Currently, yes, you could feasibly use gear including Toughness all the way up until you start raids, at which point there is a sudden hard cutoff. My proposal would make that more mild, that players can swap out their Toughness gear as they go all the way.

 

2 hours ago, firedragon.8953 said:

Let me clarify, that's fine. Wear toughness outside of raids. But, if that's the case, then why make an argument for toughness-based tanking in raids? I am confusion... 😕

Also, the way things are now, Toughness has a special place of hate because it disrupts tanking mechanics. When this hate effects more than half of all equipment drops, there is a problem in the game design. Using Toughness to tank was clever, but had the undesirable knock-on effect of (as explained in the OP) making it undesirable for all PVE content.

 

2 hours ago, firedragon.8953 said:

 Honestly, this sounds like, "I don't want to put in the time and gold to gear myself for end-game content, but I want to be able to be carried in raids without any preparation (effort) and just play in celestial stats or something despite my poor performance ."

 ...
You can also get a lot of exotic grade gear on the TP quite cheaply.
You can also stat change ascended gear in the mystic forge which is quite affordable as well.
Stat changing - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W)

Of course you can also go for Legendary Armor. But, I'm going to assume you know about that and have decided against it because you've determined it to be too hard or time consuming and want more instant gratification. (Sorry, if I mischaracterized you and am being a bit salty, it's just I've heard too many people whine about wanting "easy [open world] leggy armor" on the forums.)

You have indeed mischaracterized me :). I am one Gorseval kill away from completing the first part of the collection, and it is exactly because of (what I feel to be) the high cost of stat swapping ascended and buying multiple sets of exotic armor that I am so focused on getting legendary armor. I have been learning exactly how the game as a system works, and as someone who knows a little bit about game design, have noticed the problem of the Toughness stat because of this.

 

As an aside, not related to the main point of the post in any way:

I have heard multiple times from multiple sources now, "exotic is cheap, character slots are cheap, stat swapping ascended is cheap, equipment templates are cheap, you should have a lot of those". I'm sorry, but at 2 gold a day, the cost of 1 g per piece of exotic armor + weapon and another ~6 g per trinket means it takes around 22 days to afford to gear a character for a role. For full Diviners, last I checked (around a month ago) it was around 100g for exotic alone - that's almost 2 months (50 days). I'm sorry, the cost may be "cheap", but it remains "significant", as I state in the OP.

That said, I am in no way talking about the cost of gearing a character; as you noted, my proposal may in fact increase interaction with the player economy. That is not my focus - just a side note in response to frequent feedback. My focus is on allowing Toughness gear to not impact raid tanking mechanics, which would allow it to compete with other gear sets on its own merits (or lack thereof) instead of having a special position of interfering with tanking mechanics in raids.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Iiridayn.6109
Rushed the post, fixed two typos. Extra space and "my" -> "may".

[Sobx.1758]

14 minutes ago, Iiridayn.6109 said:

I briefly stated here in response to a common theme I saw in the Discord conversation, that "I'm focused on the effects outside of raids more than inside of raids." See also my last pre-rebuttal: this shouldn't impact elite raiders at all.

Yes, I know that's what you mentioned, notice how that's the exact sentence I've specifically quoted in my previous post. The mention of the goal being "what is outside of raids" is what I'm commenting on. And the comment is: if that's your goal then people are perfectly fine with getting -in most cases- cheap and easy exotics for whatever they want to do in OW when they start playing the lvl 80 content:

1 hour ago, Sobx.1758 said:

If your focus is on what's outside of raids then your concerns are solved by the existance of exotic gear. Cheap and easy in most cases.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Linken.6345]

6 hours ago, Iiridayn.6109 said:

Okay, rebuttals from Discord explosion:

• You shouldn't bring Toughness into raids anyway unless you're tanking (and maybe not even then, a +5 should be fine). This is because mechanics will kill you dead with or without toughness, so you should focus on DPS.
• Players should focus on mechanics/visuals instead of gear stats, but should follow prescribed gear builds.
• Players should have many gear sets for each content they'd like to engage with - the gem and gold cost is not a factor (buy more character slots instead of equipment templates, and gear with exotics).
• We're used to this, and the only benefit of changing it would make it easier for new players to bring Toughness gear to raids, which would be a change for the worse.
• Toughness doesn't need a purpose in PVE if it's useful in WvW and sPVP

Agree with all of these only exception is point 1 if the tank is learning its better to go highetr toughness but when you know the encounter and what to do drop down to as low as 1005 if no for example power soulbeast or catalyst is around.

[Linken.6345]

5 hours ago, Iiridayn.6109 said:

I thought it useful to provide additional perspectives which might not have been realized here. I'm honestly surprised at the question.

 

I briefly stated here in response to a common theme I saw in the Discord conversation, that "I'm focused on the effects outside of raids more than inside of raids." See also my last pre-rebuttal: this shouldn't impact elite raiders at all.

 

My goals, restated from the OP:

1. Make Toughness not a trap stat. Yes, it will never contribute to top DPS. However, it should not actively interfere with multiplayer group content.
   • This matters because 21 of 41 stat combinations available in PVE include some toughness
2. Provide a gearing progression for new players moving from strikes to raids as they are more confident they can handle mechanics.

 

If players want to start with gear including toughness and swap out for Berserker as they grow, then yes, it contributes to the player economy. If they would like to go straight to Berserker and not contribute to the player economy, then yes, they also have that choice. Currently, yes, you could feasibly use gear including Toughness all the way up until you start raids, at which point there is a sudden hard cutoff. My proposal would make that more mild, that players can swap out their Toughness gear as they go all the way.

 

Also, the way things are now, Toughness has a special place of hate because it disrupts tanking mechanics. When this hate effects more than half of all equipment drops, there is a problem in the game design. Using Toughness to tank was clever, but had the undesirable knock-on effect of (as explained in the OP) making it undesirable for all PVE content.

 

You have indeed mischaracterized me :). I am one Gorseval kill away from completing the first part of the collection, and it is exactly because of (what I feel to be) the high cost of stat swapping ascended and buying multiple sets of exotic armor that I am so focused on getting legendary armor. I have been learning exactly how the game as a system works, and as someone who knows a little bit about game design, have noticed the problem of the Toughness stat because of this.

 

As an aside, not related to the main point of the post in any way:

I have heard multiple times from multiple sources now, "exotic is cheap, character slots are cheap, stat swapping ascended is cheap, equipment templates are cheap, you should have a lot of those". I'm sorry, but at 2 gold a day, the cost of 1 g per piece of exotic armor + weapon and another ~6 g per trinket means it takes around 22 days to afford to gear a character for a role. For full Diviners, last I checked (around a month ago) it was around 100g for exotic alone - that's almost 2 months (50 days). I'm sorry, the cost may be "cheap", but it remains "significant", as I state in the OP.

That said, I am in no way talking about the cost of gearing a character; as you noted, my proposal may in fact increase interaction with the player economy. That is not my focus - just a side note in response to frequent feedback. My focus is on allowing Toughness gear to not impact raid tanking mechanics, which would allow it to compete with other gear sets on its own merits (or lack thereof) instead of having a special position of interfering with tanking mechanics in raids.

You do know that you dont have to pay gold for exotic armor since you can use the stat selectable ones instead.

The first video deal with the trading post the following ones dont.

+ you can get alot more gold then just the daily doing world bosses, fractals, dungeons etc.

And since you dont seem to craft you can raid your material storage to sell materials you dont use

And even with this change toughness gear have no way to compete with dps gear in raids in anyway.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Linken.6345

[Cyninja.2954]

Pros and cons of toughness tanking:

 

Pros:

- most obviously it's that players have gotten used to it. People are usually pro status quo unless convinced otherwise

- it flows better with the idea of "no trinity" while also offering just 1 more way to discern this games encounter from other games where you simply dedicate the tank (which you essentially do here to, just via different means)

- it's very useful in letting new players know: get rid of that toughness. Something learned very fast after being unwillingly the tank 1nce or twice. This in turn reduces undesired stat allocation to some extent

- it prevents high toughness non tank roles, say unkillable healers, by forcing at least the tank to take more toughness. Which in turn leads to the common healer/tank role compression or offsupport/tank compression.

- once understood it's rather easy to achieve and as experience of the tank grows the necessity on relying on to much toughness.

- swapping tank roles mid fight, while uncommon, is possible in setups where all members are around a similar toughness (aka the tank runs only slightly above). Simply have someone else consume some food or effect which provides toughness

- toughness amount can provide a natural scaling if multiple toughness users are required/desired (see Deimos)

 

Cons:

- it is not intuitive and new players will have to adapt to it

- as individual and unique open world builds develop which are often designed with more survival in mind, toughness on gear becomes an issue essentially leading to requiring multiple equipment sets (though this is not only due to toughness but also sigils/runes/infusions/etc.)

- in a PUG setting or less organized squad setup, tanks are often required to go beyond the toughness they would desire to use simply to ensure they out-scale all squad members

 

Overall: it's fine as is. Gear should hardly be an issue and the benefits imo outweigh the detriments. It is something additional to adapt/learn about but that goes hand in hand with acquiring better understanding of game mechanics, which many players need desperately.

[firedragon.8953]

6 hours ago, Iiridayn.6109 said:

You have indeed mischaracterized me :).

Although not so important, I just want to clarify that that comment wasn't in response to you, but the other poster (who I quoted) mentioning that stats and gearing were the "worst part of the game." So I was offering them some tips to make it "better." As far as I remember, gearing and builds have been one of the core aspects of RPG games (vs. let's say action-adventure games).
 

6 hours ago, Iiridayn.6109 said:

I am one Gorseval kill away from completing the first part of the collection, and it is exactly because of (what I feel to be) the high cost of stat swapping ascended and buying multiple sets of exotic armor that I am so focused on getting legendary armor.

Congrats! That's no small accomplishment! 
(Also, see... The current implementation is motivation to go for legendary. "Working as intended" if you ask me. xD)

 

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

20 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Pros and cons of toughness tanking:

 

Pros:

- most obviously it's that players have gotten used to it. People are usually pro status quo unless convinced otherwise

- it flows better with the idea of "no trinity" while also offering just 1 more way to discern this games encounter from other games where you simply dedicate the tank (which you essentially do here to, just via different means)

- it's very useful in letting new players know: get rid of that toughness. Something learned very fast after being unwillingly the tank 1nce or twice. This in turn reduces undesired stat allocation to some extent

- it prevents high toughness non tank roles, say unkillable healers, by forcing at least the tank to take more toughness. Which in turn leads to the common healer/tank role compression or offsupport/tank compression.

- once understood it's rather easy to achieve and as experience of the tank grows the necessity on relying on to much toughness.

- swapping tank roles mid fight, while uncommon, is possible in setups where all members are around a similar toughness (aka the tank runs only slightly above). Simply have someone else consume some food or effect which provides toughness

- toughness amount can provide a natural scaling if multiple toughness users are required/desired (see Deimos)

 

Cons:

- it is not intuitive and new players will have to adapt to it

- as individual and unique open world builds develop which are often designed with more survival in mind, toughness on gear becomes an issue essentially leading to requiring multiple equipment sets (though this is not only due to toughness but also sigils/runes/infusions/etc.)

- in a PUG setting or less organized squad setup, tanks are often required to go beyond the toughness they would desire to use simply to ensure they out-scale all squad members

 

Overall: it's fine as is. Gear should hardly be an issue and the benefits imo outweigh the detriments. It is something additional to adapt/learn about but that goes hand in hand with acquiring better understanding of game mechanics, which many players need desperately.

The last con is a big one in training raids. I've gone into these with my full Minstrel+Giver's mix Healbrand build and still found the boss attacking someone else. I asked someone what their armor was and they said 3700.

 

I can't reasonably tell this player "please go change all your gear for a training raid".

 

I don't get why players are opposed to changing it. The Commander-assigned "scout" system already works well for WvW and would work just as well for tanking. At the very least, we need a purple icon above the head of the player who is tanking which would be a massive improvement I think.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Cyninja.2954]

16 minutes ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

The last con is a big one in training raids. I've gone into these with my full Minstrel+Giver's mix Healbrand build and still found the boss attacking someone else. I asked someone what their armor was and they said 3700.

 

I can't reasonably tell this player "please go change all your gear for a training raid".

 

I don't get why players are opposed to changing it. The Commander-assigned "scout" system already works well for WvW and would work just as well for tanking. At the very least, we need a purple icon above the head of the player who is tanking which would be a massive improvement I think.

Yes, you can because this player is so far from any useful build that he is a liability at this point both to the squad as well as to himself.

That's exactly what I meant with:"it leads to players acquiring better game understanding". That amount of toughness is pretty much useless in almost all parts of this game bar some very specific roles.

It also goes hand in hand with:"this player did absolutely 0 preperation before hand". Exotic gear is dirt cheap for most builds, worst case he has to spend a few gold to swap a few items (ideally all of them) and actually start playing on a semi useful build.

 

EDIT:

Training is not only carrying players though content. It is actually educating them on how this game works, ideally with enhancing their understanding of stats and which and how stats interact in reasonable manners. Explaining to such a player that this amount of toughness is useless in PvE will do far more for his game experience than any boss training.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Vilin.8056]

15 minutes ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

The last con is a big one in training raids. I've gone into these with my full Minstrel+Giver's mix Healbrand build and still found the boss attacking someone else. I asked someone what their armor was and they said 3700.

 

I can't reasonably tell this player "please go change all your gear for a training raid".

 

I don't get why players are opposed to changing it. The Commander-assigned "scout" system already works well for WvW and would work just as well for tanking. At the very least, we need a purple icon above the head of the player who is tanking which would be a massive improvement I think.

Or to ask the question the other way, why must he insist to go extreme cases on toughness in a training raid? My WvW Full-Minstrel Firebrand don't even have 3700 armor.

 

A simple character swap will easily solve this.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Vilin.8056

[Will.9785]

OP is right.  Every fight that currently uses toughness tanking should be like MO or SH.  Have someone click on something just outside of the arena to receive a buff and they are the tank.

[Zaxares.5419]

Honestly I'd be in favour of removing Toughness tanking too, yeah. It was basically a quick and dirty solution for trying to create more roles in raids back when GW2's design largely revolved around a "we don't care what build you run" mantra. As time went on you can see their tanking mechanics became more complex and precise, with things like Fixated, or MO or SH's tanking mechanics. Using either of those two methods has one big benefit, which is that the player who picks up the tanking mechanic must know what they are doing. It promotes player knowledge/experience, rather than gearsets. (And in the case of Fixated, it means that EVERY player must know what to do if they are forced to become the tank, a goal which ANet seems to be leading towards with EoD strike design emphasizing that all players must be very familiar with the encounter mechanics.)

At the same time though, it would require more work on ANet's part, so I have low expectations that we'll see any major changes when the current system is "not broke, so why fix it?"