Tanking

It may be temporarily more helpful to think of this as a system where having two /Tank in a party is equivalent to having one Tank/X.

This particular thing has been done before at least twice, FFXI being the main example. However, having just one /Tank is much less useful and generally not sufficient for non-specialized content.

This can be done. It's not overwhelmingly difficult, give a sufficiently talented designer a spreadsheet and a clear goal and they can do it.

The question will be balance and meta, since the way in which players will complain is likely to lead to convergent evolution back to something similar to the other two times it has occurred in a full MMO.

At the end of the day, the deciding factor will be the willingness of any particular group to make the effort to understand 'the method by which their Tank/X functions', with the 'easiest to understand' probably being the most meta unless one of the others is 20% more effective or higher.

Allow me to demonstrate then.

First assume that Tank Augments come in three forms, possibly the ability to choose one form for each primary ability of your class, "Damage Mitigation", "Threat Generation", "Enemy Repositioning".

The compatibility of certain main archetype abilities with these will not always be good for tanking, sometimes a player might even choose /Tank to get something for soloing or bounty hunting. Let's look at Ranger, because there is no current Ranger known except what is on the wiki now and that is probably going to change.

Ranger/Tank can use Bow's Combo. This ability is basic and can take any of the three augments.
Damage Mitigation causes the skill to reduce enemy Attack Power for some time.
Threat Generation does what it always does. More Threat to the Tank.
Repositioning causes the enemy to be staggered backward a little bit, giving the ability to knock them away from teammates and disrupt conal attacks.

By contrast, Power Shot isn't as good for a Ranger/Tank because you have to charge it up, but...
Damage Mitigation might still just cause Attack Down. This is decent, you could build the tank around keeping a ton of 'attack debuff' uptime on an enemy.
Threat Generation, same as always.
Repositioning, could be a much bigger knockback based on charge time, or even a knockdown.

I'd expect a Ranger/Tank who normally works in a group to take Damage Mitigation on Bow's Combo and Power Shot too. I'd expect a bounty hunter to take Damage Mitigation on Bow's Combo and Repositioning on Power Shot, making them a less effective tank by a small amount, causing them to specialize more if there are enemies that can't be knocked down.

Then it lists Snare. Still no real differences here, except that if you're slowing/rooting an enemy, you probably don't care as much about damage mitigation right then. Still...
Damage Mitigation - Even more attack down? Why not? 100% uptime here we come!
Threat Generation - This might be good actually, respond when it goes for the squishy people by Snaring it, but now it will probably head back to you and the party won't have to go chasing it. Also a good way to control adds better.
Repositioning - Either pull them in (unlikely) or just strengthen the effect outright.

Again we have a choice where a ranger whose goal is to maintank might add Threat generation, a 'person who is more aiming to offtank' is likely to choose even more Damage Mitigation. A Bounty Hunter Ranger/Tank goes for Repositioning, because he who cannot catch you cannot kill you. Synergy with Repositioning on Power Shot.

I could go on. We just have to complain about what augments each class actually gets, and they're not hard. I design this sort of thing all the time for projects. I expect the Ashes designers are at least as good as me. And if they're somehow not, I'll yell at them for everyone?

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It really just isn't that much work though. 8x8? That's like a week, tops, for me, if I only have to do it through Augment theory.

And before anyone asks I am a programmer, have been a relatively senior programmer, and still assist with certain indie stuff. Yes, the coding is hard sometimes, but it's always little fiddly things that you needed to do anyway.

The programming structure for how to do it, especially if they're moving away from UE4's Actors for abilities and such, as clarified in the last stream, is relatively simple once you have the base done.

There will definitely be things that don't work, but you need to look at it a different way.

Ranger/Tank might be Augmented to become closer to a True Tank against single targets with many smaller hits. Because that's what that Ranger player chose to specialize in hunting, and can guarantee to their party 'I can tank this'. That's different from 'Here is a swarm of adds'. The build would have to be more specialized for that.

But the player didn't decide 'I want to tank anything!' when they chose Ranger/Tank. They probably chose a semi-roleplay concept of 'what they can tank well' and built for that. And if your group, or your node, involves a lot of 'multi hitting single targets', then the Ranger/Tank who lives there... is definitely a tank. Just because random people from the Castle don't believe in them, doesn't mean that they don't get what they want out of the game.

Here's an example of what I mean. This is not what I think the augments need to be or even should be. That can't be true because we don't know how most of the classes even work. I'm doing this from just reverse engineering the names of the classes, and using them to fill in the blanks. If a name exists, and there's no Augment that would allow that name to make sense, I made the appropriate thing. I think I hit them all (some names are not well defined in other media, obviously).

Mage Augments :
Meteoric Impact - Mostly makes skills AoE or increases AoE, even healing
Dimension Slip - Movement skills, add teleport. Attack skills, increase range
Lingering Element - Burn (or whatever)! Or put up an element shield, enemy takes damage on hit
Mana Control - Draining enemy mana on attacks, transferring mana on buffs/heals

Cleric Augments :
Lifeforce Control - Attack skills, causes Castigate's effect. Def skill - Healing increased.
Holy Ward - Attack skills lower enemy attack, buffs and such raise defense
Life's Passing - Attack skills add DoT, much more special stuff like Necromancy
Linked Fate - Causes health absorb on hit for attacks, mild healing for those around for buffs

Bard Augments :
Rhythm Emotion - Increases damage of combo attacks for a period after a skill.
Enchanting Voice - Various smaller debuffs based on the ability attached
Rallying Call - Various small buffs based on the ability attached.
Tale Weaving - Weird custom stuff based on how long something is held or channeled

Rogue Augments :
Misdirection - Debuffs enemy accuracy or drops hate/threat
Nimbleness - Buffs evasion or increases certain attack range
Seeking Eye - Crit bonuses, backstab damage, on-hit effect chance up, etc
Shroud of Darkness - Shadow stuff. Lots of shadow stuff. Sometimes similar to others

Ranger Augments :
Keenest Sight - Accuracy bonuses or range extensions
Trap Master - light CC augments, usually slows, sometimes rooting
Disruption - more light CC, moreso knockback, bleed, etc
Flicker - Adds backward movement to certain skills while they are happening or similar

Summoner Augments :
Externalization - depending on class, summons a wisp/weapon or something for a bit after a skill
Copy Form - sometimes 'shadow clones', sometimes summoned weapons for damage or lingering DPS
Spirit Call - Depends on environment, still summons something short lived, might depend on area or class
Soul Cage - Obstacles and containment, causing enemies to need to leave, or things like DoT Crystals

Tank Augments :
Mitigation - Lower enemy attack or raise own defense
Threat Generation - it's on the tin
Armor Boss - CC resistance usually during the augmented skill, a few others
Repositioning - Yank or push the opponent depending on the skill

Fighter Augments :
Martial Master - Increases weapon proficiency or STR/relevant stat during skill use
Charge! - Gap closing, some knockdown, some 'charge past/through' augments
Critical Eye - Raised critrate on skills (yes this is probably the meta)
Berserker - Sacrifice HP instead of/in addition to MP to empower skill

From the programming side, I can tell you that only 8 of these, at maximum, have any obvious problems or conflicts with skills. About 12, when combined with likely or obvious skills, are unbalanced (in the sense that they're the obvious meta choice for that skill). About 40 skill-augment combinations would be considered 'useless' by the community, guessing at obvious skills (having no use in nearly any form of content).

The thing you have to ask though, is, if you're a Bard/Summoner and you have a 'performance' skill and you choose to put Spirit Call on it instead of Copy Form (duet!) what made you feel that was necessary? It's usually not that the player 'wants to do the thing that ends up happening'. Most of the time they're just 'suffering from a compulsion to be original', or they wish that the Augmented skill did something different , and if it's useless and no one cares, they can easily ask for a change to it.

In all arrogance... this is easy. I'm sure that they have these already mostly blocked out, given those Class names, and if they don't, the great Intrepid team can have anything they want from the above list for 'free'. All ideas in this post are either already, or hereby transferred by me to be, the property of Intrepid Studios in perpetuity.

Have faith. It's fine. You might have to wear some really 'interesting' gear, but most X/Tank will find different ways to 'tank'.

Tanks do almost precisely two things.

Mitigate damage. Maintain more hate/threat than anyone else in the party more or less consistently.

The tank abilities themselves, interestingly, so far, are not strictly based on 'tanking' at all.

That is, the actual ability does not usually do this, it just usually 'naturally generates more threat'. There are some good damage mitigation ones, but what if, for some reason, that's not what you need, or what if someone else is providing that, and you're free to not do so?

In FFXI, the Ninja class and Monk class are 'not supposed to be tanks (specifically Ninja). The playerbase just 'found a way to mitigate damage and still maintain threat' and then they became so. The main class considered to be 'Tank', the Warrior, actually got relegated to DPS because their main way of tanking doesn't mitigate enough damage and still keep up the DPS required to have hate at the same time, for a lot of content.

Tanking is often a lot more about how supportive your team is of your method of doing it, than about the class choice. Obviously there is one that is 'the best', but sometimes 'the best' is overkill and giving up a benefit you could otherwise get, at the same time.

Also, a point that i think isn't clear for those who haven't played the Alpha. You don't just 'instantly have the listed abilities when leveling' and you're not even intended to be able to learn all of them.

So Tanks have entirely different styles before you even start considering archetypes and augments. You can spec into holding hate via DPS and wearing heavier armor to keep your defense up, or you can spec into holding hate by damage mitigation and augment your DPS. You don't even have to unlock every ability, you can, in the current system, save your points for maxing out something you like more.

The current tank abilities are moreso the 'easiest' way to do things rapidly, and they're currently quite rudimentary. I'm assuming you've seen the Tank Class preview so far, right? "Hit thing" "Hit multiple things" "Hit this thing, but differently". I'm reasonably sure that at least Rogues and Fighters can handle that, the only difference right now is 'generate additional threat' and all that takes is one Augment.