Tank Fantasy that you want to see in the future

A tank idea that's been rattling around in my head is an interpretation of the artificer class, but as a 'mage' tank that uses a transforming weapon, and gauntlet with a techno-magic aesthetic. Their weapon can transform into various weapons like a bow, a sword, and a cane to suit their needs, and it can also transform into forge hammer so they can forge various other spectral armaments as well.

Squex, I think Yoshida himself, have said directly that they will never make any more healer or tank jobs after Sage because they are apparently too hard to balance and make unique from each other.

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Originally Posted by Wildheaven182

Squex, I think Yoshida himself, have said directly that they will never make any more healer or tank jobs after Sage because they are apparently too hard to balance and make unique from each other.

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It is designer problem not player base

Players always suggest changes but dev refuses to listen

There are room for new tanks but not healers in the current design scheme

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Originally Posted by Tunda

It is designer problem not player base

Players always suggest changes but dev refuses to listen

There are room for new tanks but not healers in the current design scheme

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The design scheme is a problem too. It's arbitrary like the idea of pure and shield healers. It also homogenizes them and prevents originality and creativity to the point where they say they cant make any more.

I’d love a nature themed tank. Lots of vines, leaves, briars, and other plant elements. We don’t have a good druidic class since WHM is mostly lillies, light, and minor elemental themes now. Make it the Green Mage since that was one of the speculations of the DT casters. Give it a mace or hammer or quarterstaff and it’d be cool.

Reaper could have been a very cool tank based on blocking and biding up to big nuke execute attacks.
But that would require creativity.

Beastmaster would also be a very cool tank by proxy, where your pet does the tanking. But the technology to implement pets in video games doesnt exist yet.

I don't recall Yoshida ever saying that there won't be any new Tank or Healer classes, that and he rarely ever says "never" for anything in regards to this game.
So I would require verifiable evidence over hearsay for such a statement.

In terms of potential new tank jobs, I would really prefer if they stuck to building off of an established job that already exists in the franchise such as Mystic Knight, which is what Rune Fencer was basically based off of. Essentially a knight that can empower attacks with elemental aspects, which they can simply expand on to provide other elemental abilities for defensives, buffs, etc. Asides from that, I can't really think of other recurring classic jobs that would easily be classified as a tank. There wasn't exactly a weapon that was really associated with Mystic Knight, maybe just swords in general, so whatever weapon could be used in a FF14 interpretation. Although if I really had to push for a single weapon that I think would be cool to match with the job it'd be some sort of "whip sword" akin to Ivy from the Soul Caliber series.

Alternatively it could be a job that is based more off of a beloved character(s) from the franchise like Gunbreaker was. To me this one is a little tough since so many characters either fall into an existing job or could change jobs as part of the game's mechanics.
Probably the best one would be something based off the "Judges" that appeared in the FF games that took place in Ivalice. However "Judge" just doesn't have a nice ring to it as a job name, so maybe change the name to something other than "Judge" but still essentially the same, like "Arbitrator". This is the job that could use the big warhammers and mauls, because you know giant gavels or whatever.

I think the most likely outcome is going to be a hammer tank. WAR will be the dominant pick for this expansion, and then they'll create a split similar to PCT and BLM. Aesthetically, there are a few directions they could go with this, but a Magitek Engineer inspired design inspired off of Nero and his gunhammer would be a really good pick. It might even be a good excuse to play around with deployable defensives that mitigate damage when placed in line of sight between a player and the target.

The job aesthetic that I would most like to see would be some form of Shapeshifter, especially one that uses partial transformations (i.e. limbs/hair into weapons or shields) like Emeralda from Xenogears. That's essentially what I had originally envisioned for a BLU tank, prior to its announcement for Stormblood.

I think there's probably a better niche for a gish knight on the melee DPS end of things, that would cover the Mystic Knight/Rune Knight/Sword Saint category (and maybe even include a variant of Celes' Runic). There's definitely demand for a more traditional 'knight sword' melee DPS variant that's currently missing in this game, especially if you went the Corvosi Unyielding Blade route with it and add in Orlandeau's classic moveset. You'd just have to find a way to make the weapons visually distinct (which might not be that difficult, given that a surprising number of current FFXIV swords/greatswords have either spikes or cutlass handles for some odd reason). I'd probably save that type of design for whenever we end up going to Corvos, though.