Leveling all three tanks side by side...

I currently have War 55, Drk 55 and Pld 54. I had pld and war at 50 before HW... my thoughts so far.

Warrior: This job looks great, plays great and is very well balanced. Never left feeling like someone is wrong with an ability or the class has issues. A little slow for my tastes because of limited off GCD abilities but not every job can be made just for me.

Drk: Many of the animations look way to much like other animations. Many of the abilities conflict with other abilities which is odd.... biggest problem being Blood Price since using defensive abilities/dodging aoe/stunning reduces MP return. That doesn't seem like something a tank should ever think.

With those issues the Drk is still lots of fun. Very fast paced with some thought required but not as much as the Warrior.

Pld: Let me start of by pointing out I played Paladin in FFXI and WoW. Paladin was my first job to 50 at ARR release... I want to love paladin and with that being said...

Trash and bosses where the pld toolkit can be used to its fullest is the most fun I have while tanking. Blind, spamable stun, pacify, and silence... it is possible to lock some bosses down for long periods of time. The problem with all of this is the second you step foot into anything serious you lose all of that utility.

For the pld overall there is several issues. No real way to regen TP short of standing around. Threat output is bad. AoE threat and damage is bad. The main combos require almost no thought which leads to a very boring class to play.

The one place I have found that paladin really shines over the other tanks is when you have a bad or slow healer in the group. Paladins damage intake is much smoother and controlled which really seems to help healers that have issues. However being easier for a healer to deal with isn't really a good way to sell a tank.

Possible solution. More threat... a lot more threat. A little more damage would be nice but that isn't as big of an issue as threat is. I feel that paladin should be unmatched in threat generation.

I think shield swipe is the solution to a lot of the paladin issues. If it was removed from the global cooldown that would make the class way more fun. Change TP cost to a TP return and now we have better single target threat, less tp issues, and the job just became way more fun while interacting with our new ability sheltron.

That leaves AoE threat and damage issues. For this it would be nice to see Flash and Circle of Scorn via proc of some kind. Like flash has a chance to reset Scorn cooldown and increase its damage... or scorn increases and adds damage to flash.

TL;DR

Warrior is great and should be left alone. Probably overpowered in a hands of a few people but the skill level and risk included with that will keep it from getting out of control.

Drk is great for a new job. With some minor tweaks to how certain abilities conflict with each other and maybe some extra flare to some skills this job would be on the same level of balance as Warrior.

Paladin... zzzzz... woah.. what was I saying? Oh yeah pld needs some help.