Best SB Tank?

Stupid question is stupid, but...

If you were going to level a single tank class from scratch for Stormblood release, which would it be? I hear Paladin gets a lot of hate, and Warrior gets a lot of love, but I've never been clear why for either.

People still consider in their minds that PLD is bad because no parties could clear A4S with PLD before echo and nerf.
But in patch 3.2 PLD got buffed (People are ignoring this for some reason). PLD and DRK are doing almost the same amount of dps now (Check here).
The only difference now is that DRK is better against magic attacks while PLD is better with physical (PLD is said to get more love in SB with magic defense CDs).

WAR is the only tank among the three that actually has massive dps burst. They have burst as MT without enmity issues and burst as OT. Though in the live letter is was said that WAR has been changed a lot. We'll have to wait for SB and see.

Play the one that you personally are attracted to and enjoy. Look up job guides on youtube if you need to get a feel of max lvl play style, and keep in mind the re-balancing that SB will bring.

Too early to say. I main Dark Knight at the moment so I'll keep with Dark Knight while going through Stormblood for the first time; it'll be my default choice since I absolutely adored its 30-50 story, but I also have warrior at 60 so it wouldn't be too bad to switch if I need to. I'll probably also buy the job boost for paladin and then level it up so I have all 3 tanks at my disposal. Can't really say much until we can play the game, so you really can only pick one that looks fun to you and be ready to switch if you have a need to play the meta.

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Originally Posted by Niqote

Play the one that you personally are attracted to and enjoy. Look up job guides on youtube if you need to get a feel of max lvl play style, and keep in mind the re-balancing that SB will bring.

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This.

We don't know how tanks will be in SB until we actually play SB.

Thank you for the clarification on the pros and cons of the tank classes.

All of these suggestions are very prudent, and I appreciate the caution. Let's assume for a minute that you were going to level a single tank to 60 pre-SB anyway, and that you were unlikely to level another tank to deal with the meta. What would be your personal preference? I won't hold you accountable for any mis-guessing the eventual meta.

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Originally Posted by Kethic

Thank you for the clarification on the pros and cons of the tank classes.

All of these suggestions are very prudent, and I appreciate the caution. Let's assume for a minute that you were going to level a single tank to 60 pre-SB anyway, and that you were unlikely to level another tank to deal with the meta. What would be your personal preference? I won't hold you accountable for any mis-guessing the eventual meta.

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I'm biased because I play WAR, but I love that WAR plays like a melee DPS. It's currently a really good tank because it just self-heals for so much but also has CDs for mitigation. Plus WAR has amazing utility, but is losing the debuff from Path in SB.

For me, PLD feels a bit too simple. But that's not a bad thing. For people who want to play something really simple and easy, PLD is a good choice.

I haven't played DRK but I heard it's all about MP management. I'm sure that's fun in its own way.

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Originally Posted by Kethic

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Going by the video we saw and just by the speculations that are made, I would dust off my pld, loved playing that in 2.x but by the time HW came around somebody decided that it's time to screw up a very enjoyable class prior. I do have also war but I personally don't like the weapon, so it's more of an cosmetic aspect for me. But with the changes made prior I wouldn't play any tank at all, there was no reason to change STR to VIT. But I am not going to rant, to answer your question, if you're not planning on leveling a other tank for a very long time, pick warrior because you can't go wrong with that. And that's all that there is to it.

I feel pretty sold on PLD after seeing its changes.

Presently, I enjoy using DRK the most, as it doesn't feel gimped in any way like PLD does and its rotation is more flexible then WAR's.

If you're going to level a tank before Stormblood launch, it really depends on what you're more comfortable with, choice of aesthetics, even what you've played before. These three rules might help:

1) If you're a fan of playing tanks in other MMORPGs or need a stint of "tanking 101", pick Paladin.
2) If you tend to favor melee jobs in this game, pick Warrior.
3) If you've been playing healers in this game and have gotten good at MP management, pick Dark Knight.

As someone who has both leveled and still actively play all three tanks, all I could say is try all three and see whatever strikes your fancy. Once Stormblood hits, I'd guess that all three jobs would be more or less on closer footing, but I'd still go for probably Paladin first just because I prefer that aesthetic.

The one you like the most.
You can't play good something you don't like.

I currently have all my "inactive" jobs sitting at 30, among them the three tanks.
I don't like tanking but if I did and had to pick one of the tanks to level it would probably be the PLD.
... For no real reason in particular now that I think about it, it's probably just the aesthetic.

I play all three tanks. I would suggest warrior, because its the best off-tank. Chances are, we will not see that many instances where you need 2 main tanks, and the warrior offers so much more than any of the other two, its not even close. Its also easier to play when half-asleep on your 10th dungeon run of the day, its better in solo due to higher DPS, and with the new charge, it will likely feel the most comfortable.

Also, a lot of benefits of the warrior are built-in, not needing 10 different cooldowns (hi DRK) or casting times.

And then there is the PvP utility of holmgang ....

To me it'd be Paladin. There's something about the walking wall aesthetic and that it is very defensively focused that attracts me to it. I actually feel like a tank with it.

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Originally Posted by Niyuka

I play all three tanks. I would suggest warrior, because its the best off-tank. Chances are, we will not see that many instances where you need 2 main tanks, and the warrior offers so much more than any of the other two, its not even close.

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Be wary of this - while it is undeniably true now, WAR's vast superiority as an off-tank, coupled with being a perfectly viable main tank, is such common knowledge you can be certain that Stormblood is going to close the gap. WAR has been king of tanks for pretty much all of Heavensward, and SE is not blind to this. If the changes to Heavensward do not bring the other tanks up to WAR's level, then SE has flubbed, bigtime.

With shields being able to block magic damage in Stormblood, Paladins are going to get a huge jump. Especially now that we also get what seems to be a spammable AoE attack.

Samurai???

The Fell Cleave calls for you, go Warrior.

Go with the playstyle you prefer. I main a WAR and have a GLD and DRK being leveled in the background. For SB, the WAR will get maxed first for sure, but I will eventually have all three tanks maxed. I like the tanking role and every part of gameplay associated with it, and each of the three has a certain strength over the other two.

The only place I'd disagree with my fellow tanks is the lazy DF tanking being the province of WARs. Thing is, in DF groups, AE enmity is a big key for lazy tanking. WAR get Overpower ad that's cool and all, but it uses TP, and uses it fast. PLD and DRK do MP based AE enmity, and they both have MP generators. WAR don't have a TP generator until level 58, and even then, you have to drop tank stance and it is good for regen of 3 Overpowers every two minutes.

For the random jobs and skill levels you get with DF group DPS players...sometimes that AE aggro thing, if we are trying to be lazy now, does not favor WAR, and does favor DRK and PLD, who can cycle AE enmity generators almost infinitely, so long as they drop a few MP regen combos here and there. To me, that makes them better "lazy DF" tanks.

I am leveling all three, and will eventually playtest this theory in SB, with my goal to be as lazy as possible and still tank properly. It just feels like DRK will reward my laziness the most.

EDIT - saw this and it added to my post:

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Originally Posted by Antonok

With shields being able to block magic damage in Stormblood, Paladins are going to get a huge jump. Especially now that we also get what seems to be a spammable AoE attack.

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Spammable AE attack that does dmg, plus blocking physical AND magical dmg? Yeah, for lazy DF tanking, that might be a huge winner. That could be some proper "push these 4 buttons in this order...forever" style of laziness.

I'm really excited about the direction they seem to be taking paladin, so I would hop on that train if i could

The biggest change to me that will make PLD so much better is if they put the Oaths to where it does not trigger GCDs.

Since PLDs can now block magic in SB, you have to pick based on the mechanics and your play style.

WAR: Has more dps due to a better dps stance and attacks

PLD: Better defense (for party) as they are more align as being actual tanks. Can make for a little hard to maximize as some abilities require positioning such as the new wing move and the wall they can put up from time to time

DRK: Requires more control over resources, but can be a decent balance between dps and def. If done right with a 1 attack buff, can put out some nice damage and debuff

The biggest problem is that with Stormblood, we do not know all the changes. It could be that with the plan to close the gap between casual and hardcore players, that everything that is in HW will become invalid and have to learn how each tank works with the raid and party composition.

Personally, I main DRK and will continue to main DRK. I like the lore of this class, the story, and the NPCs, and I feel like it's a good balance--I can swap between main tank or off tank, not commonly assigned one side like WAR (OT) or PLD (MT) end up a lot of times. DRK has some of the best looking weapons in the game. Although also some of the ugliest; Guillotine of the Tyrant, I'm looking at you. People talk so much about MP management in this class that you'd think the only thing you do is watch your MP bar but the class has good tools for handling MP so that's really not the case.

That said, WAR is stupidly good.. In terms of being able to tank, mitigate, keep itself alive, and dish out huge damage, WAR feels like it's king to me currently. But I heard it is getting adjusted, so it might be about to get hit with the nerf bat, who knows.

PLD's new moves certainly look interesting, but unless they've made drastic changes, I'll still level this one last of the three. PLD feels too much like 1-2-3-1-2-3 to me to really enjoy.

My pick will always be DRK for my go-to tank. I love the greatsword look and it really benefits from massive pulls. A lot of people say it has a higher skill cap, and I've always been iffy on whether I agree or not. It comes down understanding your toolkit, which is redundant because that's the key to being good at any job you play. They have solid physical and magical mitigation (less physical than PLD but more magical) and their tools for mitigation are pretty unique (DA+DP into DA+DD and you might as well be in the Matrix).
Haven't played PLD since 2.0 because I deleted that character and never levelled my current PLD past 22. But the love that it's getting might influence me to buy a jump potion it to try it out. (Yes I said it. I would use a jump potion to avoid levelling a boring class, just my opinion).
WAR just never resonated with me. Don't like the axe and I don't like being responsible for the slashing debuff as a tank (lame excuse, I know).
Bottom line: choose what you think is cool and fun. Despite the conversation of PLD being the weakest tank, if it's fun for you and you enjoy it, have at it. Sword and board with the best of em, my friend.

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Originally Posted by sarehptar

Personally, I main DRK and will continue to main DRK. I like the lore of this class, the story, and the NPCs, and I feel like it's a good balance--I can swap between main tank or off tank, not commonly assigned one side like WAR (OT) or PLD (MT) end up a lot of times. DRK has some of the best looking weapons in the game. [s]Although also some of the

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Alot of warriors self healing seems to be gone so I think thats a nerf

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Originally Posted by bswpayton

Alot of warriors self healing seems to be gone so I think thats a nerf

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Yeah, like I mentioned I know they are adjusting WAR hard. Although it seems very odd to me that they would adjust the self-heals, which is one of the primary reasons WAR makes a good main tank too... I thought the whole point was to eliminate the meta of WAR always being off tank...

Then again, no one has ever accused FFXIV of having good balance between jobs, so. /shrug

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Originally Posted by sarehptar

I can swap between main tank or off tank, not commonly assigned one side like WAR (OT) or PLD (MT) end up a lot of times.

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given a drk/pld combo I'd actually make the drk mt, because they get more out of it than pld at the moment. No that anyone ever uses that combo.

On topic, I played PLD through the HW story and I will almost definitely be playing PLD through the SB story unless something changes significantly. (Although I find the wings skill to be quite bizarre - who wants to stand behind the paladin, in cleave range? o-o) I'll be doing this mostly for character reasons, because although I don't RP I have a fairly detailed story for my main mapped out in my head, and right now he plays paladin. To be honest, I'm just psyched for a damaging aoe on the gcd.

If you plan to main a tank in SB go for Paladin, they received lots of changes to become viable in parties. War is also a great tank, but they may have possibly received a nerf in terms of Fell Cleaves due to the new resource system. But again, these are all speculations and we won't know for sure until release. In the mean time, play the tank you enjoy/like the most.

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Originally Posted by sarehptar

PLD's new moves certainly look interesting, but unless they've made drastic changes, I'll still level this one last of the three. PLD feels too much like 1-2-3-1-2-3 to me to really enjoy.

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PLDs main problem was its lack of a personal mechanic to manage, WAR has wrath stacks, DRK has darkside/dark arts MP management, PLD has nothing. Now we have the Oath gauge, which should add a lot more depth to the job if done right.

I have all three tanks at 60. Here's my opinion, if it helps.

Keep in mind, these things will probably change a bit at SB release.

Warrior is the king of off-tanking because of the raw damage it outputs. It sacrifices a lot of defense for this though. Whereas paladin has a handful of defensive cooldowns, Warrior has next to none.It tries to make up for this by having a huge HP pool. If you want your character to look like a raging beast and just cleave all the things and leave a path of bodies in your wake, go Warrior.

Paladin is great for defense-oriented tanks. If you're concerned about your team more than yourself, and you want to make their jobs easier (especially healers), paladin could be the class for you. Hallowed ground is easily the best "oh shit! button" ability of the three tanks. Paladin used to be best at mitigating physical damage attacks but in SB they're going to shore up its magic defense too (this was previously Dark Knight territory). If you want to be a stalwart defender of all that is good and holy in this world, go Paladin.

Dark Knight's "gimmick" used to be magic defense, but SB is throwing this into the air. To me, DRK is more of a jack of all trades, master of none. It has the ability to regain some HP/MP through its attacks. Living Dead, DRK's "oh shit! button" is one of the weirdest contrivances I've ever seen. It essentially doubles as a healer panic button because they have to heal you for a certain amount or else you die. You have to manage your MP carefully on this class. You don't have as much HP as WAR or as many defensive cooldowns as PLD but you do have other abilities that try to make up for this.

Of all the classes, I'm going to focus on DRK for Stormblood. I like my tank to be somewhat balanced and not skewed too much one way or the other. Also I loved the aesthetic and grittiness and loved, loved, loved the questline.

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Originally Posted by Stormfur

Whereas paladin has a handful of defensive cooldowns, Warrior has next to none.

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Vengeance. Raw Intuition. Thrill of Battle. If you're using Defiance then you have access to the most versatile defensive CD in the game, Inner Beast. Dunno how this meme of "WAR has next to no defensive CDs" still exists.

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

Vengeance. Raw Intuition. Thrill of Battle. If you're using Defiance then you have access to the most versatile defensive CD in the game, Inner Beast. Dunno how this meme of "WAR has next to no defensive CDs" still exists.

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Toss Infuriate, Equilibrium and Holmgang in there. I have plenty of defensive CDs on my WAR, and with the healers I get sometimes in DF roulette...I am well versed in using most of them. =)

[QUOTE=Venjenz;4156650]Toss Infuriate, Equilibrium and Holmgang in there. I have plenty of defensive CDs on my WAR, and with the healers I get sometimes in DF roulette...I am well versed in using most of them. =)
well thats if you are tankin in tank stance, the way it looks now is that bloodbath is gone, so if u are in deliverance you only have thrill as a self heal, and would have to be in tank stance to use equilibrium for the heal, and use inner beast. I consider the lost of bloodbath on warrior main tank as a major nerf for mt, I just dont feeel that rampart is gona do as much justice as bloodbath will. Pali on the other hand it seems that with clemency only cost about 1040 mp and yosi had 7080 mp so it seems that pali will have much better self healing than warrior moving forward

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Originally Posted by Venjenz

Toss Infuriate, Equilibrium and Holmgang in there. I have plenty of defensive CDs on my WAR, and with the healers I get sometimes in DF roulette...I am well versed in using most of them. =)

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Sorry, I meant to imply with Stormblood coming out, some of those might disappear.

Block has been changed in SB so that it also blocks Magic attacks so Paladin now can block both Magic and Physical attacks along with Paladin is also getting a Defense boost to have Higher Defense than Warrior and Dark Knight in both Magic and Physical Defense.

This change is made to make Paladin focus on being the Heavy Defense Tank.

Excellent. This was the conversation I wanted to see. Personal Biases are welcome and encouraged.

Currently:

WAR - 5
PLD - 7
DRK - 4

I suspect I'll end up with PLD, since it matches with my WHM / Gatherer Main persona, but I'm still interested in hearing other peoples choices and why.

edit: also, yeah, what's up with the wings? everyone should be behind the boss, yes?

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Originally Posted by Kethic

Excellent. This was the conversation I wanted to see. Personal Biases are welcome and encouraged.

Currently:

WAR - 5
PLD - 7
DRK - 4

I suspect I'll end up with PLD, since it matches with my WHM / Gatherer Main persona, but I'm still interested in hearing other peoples choices and why.

edit: also, yeah, what's up with the wings? everyone should be behind the boss, yes?

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It's probably just for boss ultimates (it honestly feels like what they wanted Divine Veil to be, wouldn't be surprised if it was a reworked Divine Veil), or the PLD themselves can just face the other way and use it to turn it around or move themselves. According to an unofficial translation it also increases block rate to 100% with a 2min cooldown, so could be used for mass pulls if you have solid hate. Who knows.

I'll probably play them all, gotta get all them mounts.

WAR finally got a charge, been waiting for that, too bad it uses IB gauge.

I'll stick with Warrior because, I always enjoyed the damage they dish out but also their overall theme.
Time to unleash that inner beast now in Stormblood!

I'm happy that PLD finally get some love after that whole magic damage ordeal they went through in Heavensward.

War here for me also.
We will see what the changes bring and can decide then.
I will level tanks after my dps though

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Originally Posted by bswpayton

well thats if you are tankin in tank stance, the way it looks now is that bloodbath is gone, so if u are in deliverance you only have thrill as a self heal, and would have to be in tank stance to use equilibrium for the heal, and use inner beast. I consider the lost of bloodbath on warrior main tank as a major nerf for mt, I just dont feeel that rampart is gona do as much justice as bloodbath will. Pali on the other hand it seems that with clemency only cost about 1040 mp and yosi had 7080 mp so it seems that pali will have much better self healing than warrior moving forward

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One, stances switch. I can tank in Deliverance and if I need a Defiance based CD, I swap to Defiance. You don't currently lose your stacks. Not sure how SB will deal with all that, but I doubt WAR are just getting straight nerfed on defense, while PLD are getting buffed on both offense and defense.

Two, until premade 8/24, most tanking occurs in tank stance, at least in the places where defensive CDs are needed, and then the switch mentioned above occurs. I do stance dance, but in the spots where I know defensive CDs will be needed, chances are good I'll already be in Defiance when the need arises. I'll grant that on those encounters where Deliverance can be used almost the entire time, the defensive stuff is way less, but those fights don't tax defense anyway.

Point being, WAR have plenty of defense if they want it.

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Originally Posted by Venjenz

One, stances switch. I can tank in Deliverance and if I need a Defiance based CD, I swap to Defiance. You don't currently lose your stacks. Not sure how SB will deal with all that, but I doubt WAR are just getting straight nerfed on defense, while PLD are getting buffed on both offense and defense.

Two, until premade 8/24, most tanking occurs in tank stance, at least in the places where defensive CDs are needed, and then the switch mentioned above occurs. I do stance dance, but in the spots where I know defensive CDs will be needed, chances are good I'll already be in Defiance when the need arises. I'll grant that on those encounters where Deliverance can be used almost the entire time, the defensive stuff is way less, but those fights don't tax defense anyway.

Point being, WAR have plenty of defense if they want it.

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In stormblood switching stances costs about half our current wrath.
You can see it in the job trailer when he switches, he goes from 80 to 40 so it's asumed it either costs half our gauge or fixed 40.