Tank preference question

Are there tanks that are preferred currently a lot more and if yes, which ones and why?

Depends on content. If you are talking exclusively dungeon runs, Warriors have the advantage, while Dark Knights are slightly disadvantaged.

Anything beyond that tanks are too homogenized for it to truly matter. Paladins are very slightly disadavantaged whenever multiple possible invuln moments come up (long invuln CD), in return they have +1 group damage reduction, so it's mostly a wash. There are minor differences, but they're far too small to have a measurable impact.

Just play whatever you enjoy. No one's going to bar you from content based on what job you're playing. Sure, a Warrior or Paladin might play slightly better in 4-man dungeons and a Gunbreaker might do slightly more DPS, but the differences are really minor. At the end of the day it's always better to play something you enjoy instead of struggling with something you dislike.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Paladins are very slightly disadavantaged whenever multiple possible invuln moments come up (long invuln CD), in return they have +1 group damage reduction, so it's mostly a wash.

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Paladins also have their ranged combo. It's maybe the last significant "unique rotation" leftover remaining after the homogenization.

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Originally Posted by Mukuku

Paladins also have their ranged combo. It's maybe the last significant "unique rotation" leftover remaining after the homogenization.

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I'd argue the "unique" part of their rotation is Atonement. The blade combo is just Inner Release Fell Cleave spam but at a distance.
Atonement however is a standalone combo the other tanks don't have and comes with a lot more optimization potential.

I personally prefer dark knight just because of aesthetics. Sometimes it's fun to try and do the same attacks as the simulacrum when they're out.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

I'd argue the "unique" part of their rotation is Atonement. The blade combo is just Inner Release Fell Cleave spam but at a distance.
Atonement however is a standalone combo the other tanks don't have and comes with a lot more optimization potential.

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"At a distance" is not an insignificant detail: it can have an impact in how you deal with certain encounter mechanics to the point that you would deal with them differently on other tanks.

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Originally Posted by Mukuku

"At a distance" is not an insignificant detail: it can have an impact in how you deal with certain encounter mechanics to the point that you would deal with them differently on other tanks.

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I guess it technically has an impact in that you don't have to deal with that mechanic, but it's more incidental than anything. Not insignificant, but also mostly out of your hands.

As long as you are bound to raid buff windows there is little wiggle room in how you can use your ranged burst to deal with certain mechanics. Not like you really want to delay it for something if that means drifting out of buffs.
You're just kinda lucky if a mechanic that forces distance happens during your blade window, you don't have to do anything different while the other tanks need to work around their uptime issues.

You're probably getting more uptime optimization out of Divine Might procs, since you're a lot more flexible on where you can use your Holy Spirit to disengage.

Yeah the only difference between my Paladin being able to simply run 2-3 steps of the ranged combo during an M12Sp2 tankbuster orb drop versus if I want to play it ultra-safe my Gunbreaker doing 2-3 ranged attacks is a fixed-value loss of self-healing. The potency in damage I don't do is balanced into the overall kits of the tanks so it has 0 impact, and the self-healing is of contextual value only, as not all tankbusters/damages line up to be healable from the swordgasm-combo in the first place.

Is the default ranged attack bad at 150 potency? Of course. But it's no different gameplay-wise than any other damaging GCD, so it has no bearing on how you play. It's not like our filler ranged attacks run on a 1.0s GCD and hence force a difference in player-side gameplay performance.

Depends on the content and level range. If we are talking pure dungeons only, outside of criterion it would be WAR. If we are talking criterion/deep dungeon it would be PLD.

PLD is generally desired for all content and I believe it might still hold the top spot for most tank played. GNB and DRK while not the most desired tank for dungeon content they do have high player counts for high end content.