I agree 100% with you my friend. This is why many classes were given detaunt though. At the "core" of what you are getting at though is both Guard and Healing. I dont have a good solution for healing, but I can say that Guard is a very big part of what you are describing above. I have advocated MANY times for a guard rework that would make it both more fun for tanks, and change the meta, but was met with opposition from the "former live" players. In short, I was advocating for something LIKE:Grock wrote:IMO problems with TTK comes from lack of reliable self-defence and self-sustain on most classes, feels like 90% of all healing is concentrated within hands of healing classes, which means your life and survival often depends solely on skill and experience of healers/tanks.
My opinion is that TTK scales too much with number and competence of healing classes, making it frustratingly long in competitive environment and frustratingly short in PUG/solo environment (and if you are solo roaming dps you can die in one KD).
If the game was less reliant on constant AoE spam and constant healing/guarding to overcome it and instead was more focused on CD-based damage spikes (both AoE and ST) counter-weighted by "defensive cooldowns" and some self-sustain for everyone it - would be much easier to balance out TTK and player experience all around the table, without such drastic differences between average PUGs and coordinated skilled teams.
Imagine something like recent morale bombing meta, but with reliable defensive morales to counter it.
Furthermore there are pulls, punts, KDs, permanent snare and so on, but at the same time almost no mobility/escape options or CC protection which means even a little positioning mistake can mean certain death if your healers/tanks don't react quickly. If there were "defensive CDs" on every class they would provide guaranteed life-saving time buffer for teammates to react, mitigating effect of "too much CC in the game"
So in the end i believe WAR/RoR need big chances to its class design as a whole. Otherwise there will always be problems with something
Guard: Raise your defenses (increasing your parry/dodge/disrupt by 20%) ready to intercept 50% of all damage taken by any party member within 30 feet for 5 seconds. 10 second Cooldown.
Something LIKE this. So what it does is make this a more active ability, that must be actively used at a precise TIME, but is now AOE, but ALSO has selfish ability to it (increasing your defenses), and also has a downtime to it, to provide a skill level of "cycling guard" between 2 tanks. Maybe 5 second uptime isnt enough and it could be more like 6-8 seconds uptime with maybe a 15 sec CD or something. You could even extend the range up to 50 feet as another thing to change.
Point being: you would see ALOT more tanks using this (even the LOL DPS ones) and now it puts the "responsibility" of "getting guard" in the hands of not JUST the tank, but any party member. You want guard? follow your tank. where as right now if you want guard, /tell him and beg him to not only put it on you, but ALSO have him follow you around like a puppy (having him stay 30 feet from you).
This would completely change how the game is played, IMO being a QOL increase AND a skill increase (IMO) for all players. Rather than the clunky guard mechanic we have now (that frankly bugs out CONSTANTLY and multiple people attest to this) and frankly it takes 1-2 seconds to swap guard to an ally in which they could be dead in that time... This way its 1 button, used at a critical TIME, that impacts all allies within X feet, that also has selfish benefits for the tank to use as a defensive mechanic. Its a win all around. But this changes the game from "how it was on LIVE bro" so its met with opposition.
