Quote Originally Posted by kingfury View Post
The only true validation for this huge amount of work would be the possible fix to how PLDs tank and control enmity.
I don't think this would fix anything and I'm going to explain why later.
But even if for a second we suppose it would, it would make other people angry.
We all know how hard it is in this game to balance different jobs for the same role like, say, tanking.
If this new tanking style would prove to be more effective, EVERYONE would swap to this and you would see people refusing to do content unless you have a dualshield Paladin tanking.
This would also make people who like classic PLD angry. SE already showed many times that they are unable to balance out a set of options.
In the opposite chance, if this new style would be less effective than the standard PLD one, then almost nobody would use it, and we're back to square one.

Furtherly exposing my point of view now.
I think it wouldn't fix the current issue with PLD being useless because that's not happening due to any faults or issues in the current JOB.
The problem is in the Content.
It's the content that promotes for several reasons either DD tanking style or just pure zerg, and when you have content like this of course PLD cannot possibly have a role.

To fix this they need to nerf certain buffs that are currently making alliances of DDs semi invincible, they need to avoid making people abuse of Atmas, powerful temp items and similar buffs, and they need to add different content that actually requires a tank to be killed.
Done this, PLD will become useful once again.

The issue with hate is another story. First there's the lame cap thing that fucked us up all through the abyssea days.
Then there's the issue with the damage/enmity conversion ratio (those formulae are balanced for the average numbers this game produced 8+ years ago) and then there's the issue with enmity generating job abilities which do not scale with level/job/traits but produce a fixed amount of volatile enmity.

Seeing at the picture with 2012 eyes, there are several stupid things in FFXI tanking mechanics that would never happen in other modern 2012 games.
I'm not championing the idea of making tanking trivial as it is in nowadays' wow for example (where you don't even have to bother about holding damage or stealing the tank's hate) because that would be lame.
But at the same time FFXI's standards need some major updates.
For instance if developers judge that some traits/ability/skill is FUNDAMENTAL and MANDATORY to allow a PLD to succeed in the role of tanking, then they need to make so those things are NATIVE to the job itself, and do not come from other subjobs or from specific pieces of equipment.
Things like these (subjobs, equipment, merits) are part of what should make your job easier and more performant, they should not be the mandatory minimum level to even be allowed to start doing your job.
I mean, up to a certain degree it's no problem, but I think sometimes these requirements are a bit too strict for PLD.

Like for example, in the past we had PLDs who had to focus on doing more damage because that was the only possible way they could efficiently hold hate efficiently.
That's wrong imho.
Doing damage should be the purpose of DDs. For instance SE could have easily fixed that, without making PLD do too much damage, by using a different conversion ratio for Damage/Enmity.
Like giving an additional multiplier to that conversion rate and that's it, 100 damage done from a PLD will generate much more enmity than 100 done from a DD, problem solved.
I think it's pretty much demonstrated that while the + and - enmity bonus are very much welcome and useful, they alone cannot be enough to achieve that (especially because of the lame caps and inventory woes we all have these days)


Anyway, wasn't attempting to dig your idea down. As I said I reeaaaaaally love it, I just think it's not bound to happen and it's sad because it would be really awesome.
Keep your fingers crossed for FFXIV? They might add a job like that in the future, who knows.
I personally am not a big fan of the current FFXIV core game system, but it seems to me the majority of FFXI players or ex-players like it a lot.