And that's all I was trying to draw out, was some discussion.

Nobody wants to go back to 2007 tanking because it sucked just as bad back then lol. I actually enjoy the faster paced combat and I think the game was never really designed to work with the slower paced combat to begin with - we and the devs both clung to that fallacy for too long. That is the real reason PLD has fallen behind.

It all comes down to this, in my eyes:

PLD has enough self-survival tools per se. They don't have hardly shit that mitigates damage to other players, and it was our mistaken assumptions so many years ago that it was "the tank's job" to hold hate so that other players couldn't receive damage. That isn't and shouldn't be PLDs job.

And yet SE has refused for years to do anything about that or give PLD any kind of damage increase or alliance damage mitigation tools. That's really all PLD needs to be relevant. Even if PLD COULD mitigate some damage, and even hold some hate, would you use that for anything other than the most difficult battles? You wouldn't use them for Legion still, because that would cost you a valuable Jesus wielding a 2h relic slot. They're still great for gathering mobs and doing the 'ol Kirin kite.

So PLD needs, simply, some new traits/abilities that enhance cover, cure enmity raised, recast reductions for existing abilities, and for F*** sake can they get a 200-250% damage increase on Atonement?

None of that fixes RDM, which I was also taking into consideration when I was toying with the idea of artificially slowing the pace of battle. RDM.. I don't even know what to do there. Make debuffs more potent and longer lasting - and fix silence so that it works for a set duration like it does on players. And stop making every mob in the game immune to.... everything?