A Long And Excessively Complicated Tanker Fix

Since it seems the thing to do these days...

1. Premise
The three largest problems with the Tanker AT are:
- DPE. Tankers have the lowest DPE of all melee ATs. This makes the levels before Stamina and SOs unpleasant, especially solo.
- Stacking. The unique contribution of a Tanker to most teams is superior enemy aggro and position control. Tankers are so good at this job that a second Tanker is superfluous, and best replaced by a different AT. Certain techniques make a second Tanker useful, but even if the second is, a third will not be.
- Lack of fine-grained aggro control. This is a less frequently encountered problem and deserves some explanation. Occasionally, a Tank will not want to gather aggro. When a Tank is playing alongside another character with superior survivability, occasionally he will not wish to take aggro on an enemy, but just attack it. However, Gauntlet does not turn off, and if the other character cannot gather aggro or the Tank deals too much damage, the Tank will get aggro.

These are the premises on which this suggestion is based. If you don't agree, then of course this suggestion will not fix Tankers for you.

2. Suggestion
Alter Gauntlet to make it function, at the player's discretion, in one of two mutually exclusive ways.
Aggro mode - As current Gauntlet.
Attack mode - Gauntlet generates no additional threat. Instead, for each enemy affected by Gauntlet, the Tanker gains a buff that increases its DPE. This can be an endurance cost reduction or a damage increase. It can be a fast-expiring buff effect (as Defiance) or it can generate points toward a critical mode (as Domination).

3. Benefits
Solo - Tanker switches to Attack Mode and benefits from improved DPE.
Teamed, Main Tank - Tanker switches to Aggro Mode and functions as normal.
Teamed, Off Tank - Tanker switches to Attack Mode and attacks with improved efficiency without interfering with aggro.

4. Issues
Coding - Turning the Gauntlet effect on Tanker attacks into a conditional effect seems likely to be nontrivial.
Complexity - Making Gauntlet into a multifunction power means one more thing players will have to learn about the AT. Forgetting to toggle it to the appropriate setting for the situation might have unpleasant consequences.
Player Behavior - Incentivizing Tanks to abandon their aggro control role for increased damage will probably lead to arguments as to the "proper role" of a tanker on a team - consider the divided opinions on "WP Scrankers" and multiply several times.

Neither wrong enough to be shouted down, nor right enough to be supported. Toss in dustbin; start over from the top.

This will only make players that love other ATs besides tanks scream for dual-inherents.

I also don't see problems with multiple tanks on any given team. Players that know their tanker's strong and weak points should automatically adjust their playstyle whenever another tank arrives on a team.

All things being equal, I don't think it's possible for anyone on a team to have greater survivability than a tanker. That's a complete red herring. It's hard to shed a tear for fully IO'd scrappers outtanking SO'd tankers, though - even then, I don't think it's likely, given the potential for team buffs and debuffs multiplying the tanker's survivability.

This idea isn't bad at all, I don't think. It's a kind of stance thing that gives tankers more flexibility solo and on teams.

I am still fond of the idea of giving tankers about 4 (ish) click buffs (either all at level 2, or perhaps spread out, 1 at lvl 5, one at lvl 10, etc.). Making them click buffs, improves burstiness, but factoring in animation times should keep DPS similar to current levels.

These would be like build up, only with a variety of animations (with the stronger buffs having a longer animation), and with a variety of upsides and downsides; making these like stances, you can buff you damage and recharge for 15 seconds, but take a corresponding hit to your mitigation for an amount of time during (and possibly even for a duration afterwards).

I made a post about it a few months ago, but it seems it has been eaten. I know I wrote up 4 buffs, starting with a small buff and ending up with a potent one, with the more powerful buffs on longer recharge.

But as an example, here is a sample of what the minor buff might look like:
Offensive Focus +20% Acc and +40% damage for 4 seconds. -5% defense and -20% recharge for 10 seconds. Recharge 30 seconds (I think I suggested these all be unenhanceable recharge), 1.5 second animation.

I'm curious how much of this is caused by tankers being imalanced with respect to the content, and how much of this is caused by tankers being imbalanced with respect to other archetypes. Do multiple tankers on a team truely need help stacking, or is (de)buff stacking simply broken? Any change aimed at making tankers comparble with a broken mechanic is doomed to fail.