After posting some of my thoughts on the captain and their current state as a tank, I found one comment( I am not sure where) I found quite enlightening. To whoever mentioned it, thank you, and if it was multiple people (as I said I do not recall) then Thank you to you all! The point I found interesting was that there is a lack of tanks in the game, and if captain tanking were to be removed without a reasonable replacement than the shortage of tanks will be worse. Given that I have attacked the captain as a tank quite often, it occurred to me that I should also try to find a way to replace their loss. In addition to this point, many advocated for the strengthening of more classes to be able to tank to address this shortage. Unfortunately, depending on the classes whose tanking lines get buffed, this could take the few slots in groups guards have (who can only tank), and therefore I do not think too many classes should be able to tank. So I decided on a few ideas.

As things currently are, content generally requires 1-2 tanks usually one tank to manage adds and another to manage the boss. There does happen to be one strategy that I quite like doing in other games where I swap the main tank, usually when the tank is dead/dying/out of abilities or potions. The idea that I had is based off of swapping around tanking duties. Rather than designing groups/content for 1-2 tanks I would emphasize challenges such as Rakothas (tanks needed to swap before they were overwhelmed) and the Twin Nazgul (needed to be kept separate by two tanks, also seen elsewhere). Instead I would try to emphasize 3-4 tanks, so 1-2 main tanks and 1-2 off tanks, where the Guardian and Warden could fulfill the Boss or Add tank position and the Captain and Champion could fill the a Boss tank position. The reason why would be part of balancing out the tanks. As it stands the Captain is the best, followed by the Guardian, while the Warden, Champion and Beorning have the potential but cannot do it. (Although some places I have read say that the blue bear is pretty good, so I will ignore them). The Champ and Warden seem to be in a relatively good position for dpsers at the moment, but this could change. Given the fact that they are still melee when dpsing they will still suffer when compared to ranged dps classes such as the hunter. In order to help to fix this, I thought it would be good for the champ to regain their old skill "Glory". This toggle skill would increase that champion's ability to get threat and give them extra health while costing them a little damage. Although the numbers would be better figured out by someone else, I thought an increase of 30%-50% morale would be appropriate so long as the physical mastery reduction was the same or higher to help prevent its abuse. In addition I would add to the Glory stance something to change "Hamstring" and/or "Feral Strikes" (or other skills that are not part of the champs normal rotation) into a force taunt(s) so the champion would be able to sacrifice some of their damage, for the ability to tank. Given the champion lacks a proper panic button I do not think that this would render the blue champion too powerful.

I would try to change the captain similarly. I would remove Elendil's Roar so captains can no longer tank 10 targets. I would also move the shield of the Dunedain to be tier 6 trait in blue, so it can be reached outside the blue spec. I would put Stand tall in Sheild of the Dunedain's place, while putting last stand where Stand tall is. This would make Shield of the Dunedain available to a red line captain as well as the last stand/In harm's way combo depending on which they wanted. It would also make these skills available to a blue line captain if they so wished. As for force taunts there are already a number of traits in the yellow line, so if a red cappy wanted they could grab them as well. I would still make sure to limit their abilities to just one target, so they can tank 1 target sustainably or a small number for a short while.

However, all of these changes would require the Blue Warden to be updated to be able to main tank, the Guardian to be strengthened as well, as well as Oathbreaker's shame to be repeated on the same target. The point behind these changes would be to allow more classes to be able to tank, while also keeping the True Main tanks desireable, as well as providing something that champs would be able to contribute to groups in battles where they are not needed. Another point behind this is to weaken the captain's ability to tank so as to allow other classes to be able to tank as well. Hopefully these would allow the champion/captain to swap with the tank before a big hit and save their life or take over to allow some time for the Main tank's skills to cool down, or if the tank has died a champ/cap could replace them until they are rezed.

Thanks as always for reading through my walls of text! If there are some aspects that I do not know about that would not allow some of these thoughts to work, I would love to know. If anyone would like to add to my thoughts or even disagree with them I would love to read your thoughts as well. Thanks again!