I enjoyed my Warrior in Heavensward.

That was the pinnacle of class design in my opinion (save for how rough some of the classes were - Drk - Astr).

But that's just me.

You mean healing a WAR in full slaying accessories? Uhh.. no thanks.

Way worse to heal than TBN only DRKs as of present day

You must've had some shit warriors then.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

You must've had some shit warriors then.

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Not to mention that Cleric Stance was still a thing back then.

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Originally Posted by rawker

You mean healing a WAR in full slaying accessories? Uhh.. no thanks.

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Yes please!

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Originally Posted by yaba_gabagool

That was the pinnacle of class design in my opinion (save for how rough some of the classes were - Drk - Astr).

But that's just me.

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I would actually have to agree if we'd throw today's QoLs into the mix.
Having tank accessoiry locks and skills being replaced on the same button when you switch stances would make the job infinitely more fun imo. Bringing back some sort of hate management by rewarding you for taking risks (in theme with Warrior/Berserker). One deliverance mode to go all out with defenses as tradeoff and one defiance stance to hold yourself back to protect others.
Also unnecessary jank like self pacification can also stay in the past.

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Originally Posted by Shikiseki

I would actually have to agree if we'd throw today's QoLs into the mix.
Having tank accessoiry locks and skills being replaced on the same button when you switch stances would make the job infinitely more fun imo. Bringing back some sort of hate management by rewarding you for taking risks (in theme with Warrior/Berserker). One deliverance mode to go all out with defenses as tradeoff and one defiance stance to hold yourself back to protect others.
Also unnecessary jank like self pacification can also stay in the past.

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I doubt we will ever see tanks doing DPS levels of damage again. The endgame meta was pretty rigid in Stormblood iirc. WAR's were high on the list due to the damage output solely for the DPS check and that's fine....If you played WAR. It broke the tank balance, and I hardly ever got invited as PLD. I'm not biter....but I found it kind of silly that the community dictated what tank I should play. I mean WAR was fun, but man...the hoops you had to jump through just to get allowed to raid. I'll admit the crazy things you could do with a DPS warrior, but it just didn't make sense to allow a tank to do THAT much damage. It hurt the tanks more then people thought.

Some people say peak job design...I say peak hindsight. If I were to look at what we have now vs. what Heavensward and Stormblood did....I would rather have what we have now. Warrior is just fine the way it is, and it makes sense from a holistic stand point with the other tanks in mind. You can now play what you like vs. what is required. I can change to w/e tank I want currently...and STILL complete DPS checks.

I suppose I am the opposite and don't care that much about damage output as a tank...but rather how much I can mitigate. Staying alive is my goal. Allowing the healers to save MP. Good mitigation is a damage increase. I know for fact my static off tank....has NO aspirations to Main Tank. He just want's to focus on damage output without worrying about rotating his mitigation like I have to. Am I 3rd on the list of DPS....yeah pretty much...but I'm a tank....My dps shouldn't be the highest....my HP pool should be. It's funny as hell to me when I get hit for 110k and the DPS are just like..."Jesus!...and you still have 32k left?" "Yeah and that was with sentinel + Holy Sheltron....You're welcome?" It's those moments that make me feel important....not being the highest damage tank.

But, alas. As long as the community focuses on damage output as a gauge of success, we will always opine for the days of "player choice and strategy". Do I miss Dark Arts...yes. Do I miss unchained...yes. Does the absence of those abilities change my job as a tank...not at all. I'm still a tank...I still have to stay alive and keep the hate on me. I despised stance dancing and it didn't make sense from a design standpoint to have tanks double as DPS when it was perinate.

My prediction for DT tanks is just doubling down on perfect timed mitigations, and tanks getting further away from higher damage. That should be a tanks playstyle of interacting with mitigation over a perfect burst, and off tanks interacting with mitigation....get them further engaged.

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Originally Posted by Sqwall

I doubt we will ever see tanks doing DPS levels of damage again. The endgame meta was pretty rigid in Stormblood iirc. WAR's were high on the list due to the damage output solely for the DPS check and that's fine....If you played WAR. It broke the tank balance, and I hardly ever got invited as PLD. I'm not biter....but I found it kind of silly that the community dictated what tank I should play. I mean WAR was fun, but man...the hoops you had to jump through just to get allowed to raid. I'll admit the crazy things you could do with a DPS warrior, but it just didn't make sense to allow a tank to do THAT much damage. It hurt the tanks more then people thought.

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The "meta" in Stormblood for tanks was utterly irrelevant if you didn't do day 1 raiding. I've omni tanked towards the latter half of the expansion, even if warrior was my main, and had no issue getting into savage parties. All tanks were completely viable, they just had different strengths.

Warrior was popular because it was incredibly easy to do okay dps on it after 4.2 and it had the strongest snap aggro with no dps loss, making it the best at starting a fight, and why it is seemingly overrepresented on FFlogs. Dark Knight also had potentially high snap aggro (after some buffs to their enmity modifiers) but needed to sacrifice some dps for it.

But once initial tank aggro was established even Paladin could hold it just fine, arguably even better because it allowed them to get more Shield Swipe procs which did increased enmity.


As for the damage output of all 3 tanks, it wasn't any worse than it is now, within a few 10s of dps from each other, and that's from back when FFlogs only had aDPS (it technically only had "DPS" which included single target padding).
This whole "WAR was totally overpowered and nobody wanted the other two tanks back in Stormblood, it was super unbalanced."-thing is a complete myth.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

But once initial tank aggro was established even Paladin could hold it just fine, arguably even better because it allowed them to get more Shield Swipe procs which did increased enmity.

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I wouldn't mind if they brought this back.

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Originally Posted by rawker

I wouldn't mind if they brought this back.

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Me neither. It was a nice bonus just for getting hit in the face and using Cover on your co-tank on pull to get some extra procs was just kinda funny.
Then again I wish they would bring a lot of those old mechanics and abilities back...like uncapped Block Rate/Strength, making a joke out of tank busters with ~32% mit on Shelltron just felt good and it played into the fantasy of Paladin being the defensive tank.