Melee Survivability Changes - Some First Steps

[lyrecono]

- One of the reasons we are considering this change is to address the community's concern that melee are not able to compete in more difficult content with their spellcasting and ranged-using friends. If there is a larger belief that this is not the case, we'd love to hear that.

It is the case but i doubt enough melees are left to pitch in.

So, it doesn't stack with Paladin/Fighter/Druid tank stance HP, but DOES stack with Paragon Body from Renegade Mastermaker and Strength of Vitality from Unyielding Sentinel?

What type of bonus is Dwarf "Child of the Mountain" hp bonus? It doesn't say.
it has always stacked with all the other stances (i did fighter and bear druid, it also stacked with the US 20% hp
How does the range reduction thing work with artificer admixtures, which have a REALLY screwy range on them?

So, basically Renegade Mastermaker Arti just became the exclusive God Tank Build and Paladin/Fighter/Druid are not tanks any more because ANY melee can more than match them with a free toggle and NOT LOSE ANY DAMAGE IN THE PROCESS. Oh, and they can benefit from rage while the actual tank trees, who give up SUBSTANTIAL dps for it, cannot (apart from druid).

This seems like a really weird direction to go and NOT well thought out at ALL. It makes high DPS melee builds into gods who don't have to give up anything for survivability, and tanks (except Renegade Mastermaker) even more completely pointless.

I mean, seriously, you say you want this to be situational, but on most melee builds I see absolutely NO reason to EVER turn this off.

If you want to make this *situational* for melee, it'd need to have further restrictions like:

You can't use tactical abilities while it's on (no stunning fist, trip, stunning blow, dire charge, shield charge, etc.)
You get -2 to critical multiplier (to a minimum of x2)
You generate 75% extra threat
You cannot make sneak attacks
Exclusive with Power Attack and Precision

And make the HP STACK WITH EVERYTHING, not a COMPETENCE bonus.

That way, it's a way for a non-tank melee to become tanky if needed (but they lose a ton of DPS potential), and it's actually a bonus for REAL tanks when they need it, but it doesn't leave your DPS completely untouched!

I'd also suggest making it give you HEAL AMP equal to the HP bonus, so 10+10 for each fighting feat, up to 50. That'll make it so that it's easier to heal you up when you're boosted. Huge wads of HP aren't worth much if they can't be filled.

I agree with the heal amp part.
The thing is, now, non tank dps melees can't take a decent hit, without deep sacrifices. compare that with heroics, where your barbarian could tank trash without problems (sure, some bosses were always a pain like ETK), on reaper a barb should be able to take a few arrows or a melee hit from a trash mob. or be as capable of avoiding enemy AoE like a ranged character, since we can't, this is a nice buff.
i do hope they add shield feats to the list (and maybe add a epic shield feat to complement the heroic ones, "Perfect shield mastery", fixing the ED enh so epic tr-ing doesn't alow you to pick those without the shield feats).