What tanks can do is they can place marks on enemies which will make it harder to hit their allies and potentially have a damaging effect if they hit. It's up to the enemies to figure out if they want to attack the armored guy with 2~3 more AC than the norm or the other guy and risk retribution. Whether the enemy hits the tank or the squishy, they both get hurt equally since armor does not mitigate damage. This means the survivability of the group does not depend on the enemies bashing on the tank, but it can help. Enemies could never target the tank and the tank would still be able to do his job because it is protecting allies, not soaking up tons of damage for others.

Certainly an interesting design philosophy, but does this eliminate the need for the tank at all, or merely change the role of the tank from direct damage absorber to damage mitigator?
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That's one way to see it. However, it ends up changing the battle dynamics away from the holy trinity. You no longer need to tune your encounters to the durability of the tank and healing power of the healer, which means the damage/durability ratio remains manageable for other classes. The optimal strategy of getting the enemy focused on the tank because it minimizes incoming DPS is less effective since he's not that much better at soaking damage. Also, all the other strategies which would have a risk of him losing some agro grow in power because the tank can still do his job even if the enemies attack his group members. Other classes must now balance their defensive and offensive capabilities and can no longer get away with investing everything in damage. This opens up a lot of possibilities that were impossible because the holy trinity used to beat them all.

The hardest part would be to teach players the new dynamics. In the early days of City of Heroes, if you were a Defender and did not pick the healing power set, you were a second class citizen even though your powers were usually more effective than a healer. The holy trinity is part of the MMO culture and trying to do different is a uphill battle. People are uncomfortable when you tell them their learned skills are now useless.

Another idea to counter the holy trinity (dps, healer, tank), is to balance the healer class, as well the tank class.

Currently in most rpgs the healer can heal from 0% to 100% hp the tank, this is because the tanks are weak because they follow linear hp formulas, and a healer can easily outheal the boss. The only threat in this model is the mana pool of the healer.

Now imagine using exponential hp formulas :
1) tank with 50.000 hp.
2) boss that deals 1000 dmg every 3 sec.
3) healer that heals 300 hp every 3 sec.
4) clothies have 3000 - 5.000 hp.
Battle lasts 3 min : tank survives with 8000 / 50.000 hp.

Now increasing the total hp of the boss, you can adjust the type of battle, you can require additional melee/tank characters that will take turns tanking.

Another idea to counter the holy trinity (dps, healer, tank), is to balance the healer class, as well the tank class.

Currently in most rpgs the healer can heal from 0% to 100% hp the tank, this is because the tanks are weak because they follow linear hp formulas, and a healer can easily outheal the boss. The only threat in this model is the mana pool of the healer.

Now imagine using exponential hp formulas :
1) tank with 50.000 hp.
2) boss that deals 1000 dmg every 3 sec.
3) healer that heals 300 hp every 3 sec.
4) clothies have 3000 - 5.000 hp.
Battle lasts 3 min : tank survives with 8000 / 50.000 hp.

Now increasing the total hp of the boss, you can adjust the type of battle, you can require additional melee/tank characters that will take turns tanking.

Hard to teach people because they will feel like they are losing until "retrained". That the game will require more than one tank, it will make people scared, especially if the class is less played than others. Just a couple of things that came to mind.

I fully agree that Healers are too potent, require more "off-healers" and give healing availability to four-five classes(12-14 classes per side). Balance it so that a healer can keep someone healed, but not so that they can heal more than 1/2-2/3 health on their biggest heals. Promoting a variety of specializations between the classes is a good thing if done right. Make it so that healers themselves may not even be specialized to be primary healers. Give options. Easier said than done though. It does away with the clawing to get even just one healer in your group because they were so sought after. Spread the responsibility out. If one person has a slip up in the real world they won't mess over their entire group for one small mistake. Don't eliminate something that everyone knows so well, try to make it better.

Another idea to counter the holy trinity (dps, healer, tank), is to balance the healer class, as well the tank class.

Currently in most rpgs the healer can heal from 0% to 100% hp the tank, this is because the tanks are weak because they follow linear hp formulas, and a healer can easily outheal the boss. The only threat in this model is the mana pool of the healer.

Now imagine using exponential hp formulas :
1) tank with 50.000 hp.
2) boss that deals 1000 dmg every 3 sec.
3) healer that heals 300 hp every 3 sec.
4) clothies have 3000 - 5.000 hp.
Battle lasts 3 min : tank survives with 8000 / 50.000 hp.

Now increasing the total hp of the boss, you can adjust the type of battle, you can require additional melee/tank characters that will take turns tanking.

That makes healers useless. A healer can provide a tank's worth of HP every 8 minutes. Drop the healer from the group and grab a secondary tank and spread the tanking. All that does is take the complete heal chain concept and apply it to tanks. Now, the difficulty is in how many tanks you can line up instead of how many healers you can line up.

Perhaps you could add more status effects and chaining of effects to boost their effectiveness. Then give tanks passive buff and debuff abilities. If every attack has a percentage chance of inflicted a set of stackable debuffs then it would change the flow of combat a lot more. For instance every hit with a edge weapons might have a 2% chance of causing the stackable bleeding effect that that cause .5% of health damage per second.



The tank could have a load of effects that remove and cause buffs and debuffs. So rather just soaking damage the tanks could help alter the flow of battle.

Perhaps you could add more status effects and chaining of effects to boost their effectiveness. Then give tanks passive buff and debuff abilities. If every attack has a percentage chance of inflicted a set of stackable debuffs then it would change the flow of combat a lot more. For instance every hit with a edge weapons might have a 2% chance of causing the stackable bleeding effect that that cause .5% of health damage per second.



The tank could have a load of effects that remove and cause buffs and debuffs. So rather just soaking damage the tanks could help alter the flow of battle.

With the group make-up that I have in mind, Crowd Control is going to be a task, and random percent chance of bleeds may not work well with it as it would break the CC if not managed properly. I am going to try and avoid some of the newer incarnations of abilities that have taken less control out of the players hands and give it back to them. You want to make this guy bleed? Bleed ability coming right up. Only in certain weapon categories though, I mean, I guess Blunt could cause internal bleeding =0.

I also want to bring back Hand to Hand combat as an option for players. It would have to be similar to how an Everquest Monk was handled, but turn it into a skill on it's own, rather than a class. Who wouldn't want to flying jump kick another player in the head? It would have it's shortcomings, but it would add options.

That makes healers useless. A healer can provide a tank's worth of HP every 8 minutes. Drop the healer from the group and grab a secondary tank and spread the tanking.
Working as intented : the healer is equal now to other classes (After 5-8 min fights).
1) I can drop a healer to the trash can, and get a crowd controler instead. Maybe mage, they can crowd control the boss, negating all his damage (while he is killed). So lets say my mage can Freeze the boss for 3 seconds every 12 seconds, congrats the mage is a healer now because he can "negate 1200 damage every 12 sec"=100hps.
2) i can drop the healer for a secondary tank that does the same thing.
3) i can fight the boss with 0 tanks, 0 healers if my clothie mages chain crowd control the boss. Working as intented now every class is equal.
4) i can get a warrior who is both dps and tank. He can finish the fight faster so he is equal to a tank.

Various party compositions :
1) 5 tanks, or 5 tanky dps (warriors,deathknights,paladins that dont press heal).
2) 5 crowd control classes.
3) 3 healers (total immunity to boss dmg) and 2 random.

That makes healers useless. A healer can provide a tank's worth of HP every 8 minutes. Drop the healer from the group and grab a secondary tank and spread the tanking.
Working as intented : the healer is equal now to other classes (After 5-8 min fights).
1) I can drop a healer to the trash can, and get a crowd controler instead. Maybe mage, they can crowd control the boss, negating all his damage (while he is killed). So lets say my mage can Freeze the boss for 3 seconds every 12 seconds, congrats the mage is a healer now because he can "negate 1200 damage every 12 sec"=100hps.
2) i can drop the healer for a secondary tank that does the same thing.
3) i can fight the boss with 0 tanks, 0 healers if my clothie mages chain crowd control the boss. Working as intented now every class is equal.
4) i can get a warrior who is both dps and tank. He can finish the fight faster so he is equal to a tank.

Various party compositions :
1) 5 tanks, or 5 tanky dps (warriors,deathknights,paladins that dont press heal).
2) 5 crowd control classes.
3) 3 healers (total immunity to boss dmg) and 2 random.

I just, um, don't really seeing it translate into an MMORPG at the very least. Why would you ever want to make classes obsolete? Everyone should have their place and from the sounds of it Crowd Control in your case WOULD be replacing the healers on class necessity list. I suppose the real concern I have is how often are you going to have fights that last more than eight minutes at a time? Would the downtime due to this design change be extreme between fights? What about non-tank, non-healer, non-mage classes?

It's balanced for this boss only. With the 5 mages group, the boss could deal infinite damage and only them would be able to beat him. The others would fail. This means the mages would be as effective against a low level boss than a high level boss without going through a power growth. All other classes would have to get better gear to improve their HP, DPS or healing to move up.

With the 5 mages group, the boss could deal infinite damage and only them would be able to beat him. The others would fail. This means the mages would be as effective against a low level boss than a high level boss without going through a power growth. All other classes would have to get better gear to improve their HP, DPS or healing to move up
like all rpg the effectiveness of what you do is defined by a stat. its "cc vs anti-cc"
Lets say that a player can have up to 1000 stat points. And a boss has 450 anti-cc. Here is my scilab code:

//Every 100 cc points you increase base cc duration by 10%(additive)
//against an 100 points guy.
//Crowd Coefficient = how much you force players to put points in pvp.
//E.g 0.3 crowd Coefficient = you must have 300 stats in crowd defense out of your 1000 you have in order to pvp well.

crowd = 1000 ;
crowdDefense = 450 ;
crowdDuration = 6 ; //hammer of justice - paladin.
CrowdCoefficient = 0.3;

crowdFraction = ( crowd / crowdDefense )
totalDuration = crowdDuration * crowdFraction * CrowdCoefficient
TotalReduction = 1 - (totalDuration / crowdDuration)

Lets see some use case examples :
a) 1000 cc vs 450 anti-cc = 4 sec stun.
combo : 3 pure crowd controllers (total immunity to boss dmg) and 2 random.
b) 600 cc vs 450 anti-cc= 2.4 sec stun.
combo : 5 mages.

Lv 1 mage vs lv 50 dragon. 20 cc vs 450 anti-cc : 0.08 stun. Mage dies.
Lv 50 mage vs lv 1 dragon. 1000 cc vs 9 anti-cc : 200 sec stun. Mage has fully reloaded his stun in 12 sec and can thus perma stun the boss. crowd control spells are stacking e.g after 12 sec the boss will be stunned for 200 sec = 200+200 - 12 = for 400-12 sec. etc. Perma stun in this game is a valid strategy.

forgot to mention combo 5 glass cannons :
Yes i can have a 100% dmg glasscannon mage, that deals 5.000 dmg in 0.1sec but then stays afk for 12 seconds ( simulates league of legends glasscannon mages). However tanks arent scared of glass cannons because they have 50.000 hp (exponential hp formulas) and can easily win in 1vs5. Glasscannon mages are op against glass cannons because they also have 2000-5000 hp so they can instant kill them in 0.1 sec. (choosing glasscannon = fast fights but tanks beat you)
You may find glasscannons op as 5 glascannons can deal 25000 dmg in 0.1sec against the 50.000 hp boss, then the boss kills 2 people in 12 sec (boss has 330 dps), 3 people left deal 15000 dmg, boss kills 2 people in 12 sec, 1 last mage deals 5.000 dmg and its a wipe. the boss survived with 5% hp what a luck [ but that was to be expected because the boss was tanky and we said tanks win 1vs5 fights]. They would have won if they drinked a single potion or had some more tankiness.

Conclusion:
1) Yes i can have a 0 dmg, 100% crowd control class, and perma stun someone for 10 seconds every 12 seconds in pvp (however i have 1/1 hp now).
2) Yes i can have a tank mage, with 100% stamina = 50.000 hp and be tank. But i will be an immobile tree that cant affect the world.


Here is how boss stat affect the fight : + this class has an advantage. - this class has a disadvantage.
Heavy hitting boss : +crowd control, -healer, -tank, -dmg
Enrage timer : +crowd control, +dmg, -healer, -tank.
Dispel cc, anti-cc : - crowd control.
big hp : +crowd control, -dmg, -tank, +healer