Tank Options

Good afternoon all! I have been playing FFXIV since near the end of AAR, just before Heavensward. I always played DPS of one sort or another. The last time I played a tank was back in WoW The Burning Crusade as a Paladin. Lately my friends have been egging me on to level a tank up and try tanking for them. I resisted at first as I've not tanked for what feels like eons, but finally gave in. I currently have Dancer, Black Mage, Machinist and Red Mage at 80 and keep going back to Dancer, been loving it.

I started with a Gunbreaker,.. it's the new pretty class and looked fun. I got it to about 74 before I resisted and went back to DPSing. Started a Dark Knight and got it to 72 then switched to Paladin at 74 now. My big question is this.. How are Tanks now days? is there one better than another? they all seem pretty balanced, just some of them better at one thing or another. Let me know what you think and who's best at what, I'm working on an answer myself but I wanted to see what you all think about the state of the tanks right now. thanks!

the balance of the tanks in terms of numbers it's pretty well and it doesn't matter wich one you pick, most complains right now are for gameplay and identity, if you wanna still know wich ones are the best of the best those are PLD and GNB but the difference with WAR and DRK is minimun.

Tank balance is arguably the best it has ever been in FFXIV history right now. Pick the one with the playstyle and aesthetics you like best and you can't go wrong. Sure, some are slightly more optimal than others, but they are really really close.

If we're talking about balance within 8-man endgame content, they're all similar in terms of DPS. In terms of defense, there's more variation based on utilities, CD lengths of invulnerabilities, and on-demand mitigation, but it's still pretty balanced and at that point the tanks are more a question of what you prefer in terms of gameplay style and mitigation flavor.

If dungeons are more your thing, WAR and DRK are the best, while GNB flat out sucks! All other tanks can grant themselves some degree of independence from healer intervention, but GNB just BEGS healers for their GCD healing. Now, if you're a skilled tank and understand how to utilize and space out your cooldowns, you might respond that you've been "doing just fine," but it's something that would be A LOT more fine if the same was done on literally any other tank job.

PLD seems best right now although GNB does deal more dmg but has problems with mitigation sometimes.
WAR and DRK aren't excatly in great states according to the community. Sure they deal enough damage to be 'balanced' but the sentiments are pretty universal they they both are fairly 'boring' especially WAR who has the worst 'downtime' of all the tanks to the point being a severe detriment to some losing focus due to boredom when IR is on cooldown.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

If dungeons are more your thing, WAR and DRK are the best, while GNB flat out sucks! All other tanks can grant themselves some degree of independence from healer intervention, but GNB just BEGS healers for their GCD healing. Now, if you're a skilled tank and understand how to utilize and space out your cooldowns, you might respond that you've been "doing just fine," but it's something that would be A LOT more fine if the same was done on literally any other tank job.

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Are you talking about from a healer perspective, a tank perspective, a DPS perspective, a group perspective, a solo perspective, or any combination of the five? Because you need to more specific than that, because healers are supposed to be healing, it's what they are supposed to do, and I do not trust a healer that's going to Holy spam because of the delay on the damage and stun from that.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Are you talking about from a healer perspective, a tank perspective, a DPS perspective, a group perspective, a solo perspective, or any combination of the five? Because you need to more specific than that, because healers are supposed to be healing, it's what they are supposed to do, and I do not trust a healer that's going to Holy spam because of the delay on the damage and stun from that.

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Holy is better mitigation than any other spell in the game that can be applied to a tank. If a tank can't stay alive for around 1.25 seconds for the first cast to go off, the problems that tank has are deeper than any pure healer would be able to solve.

Stay as a PLD brother, it's better on this side :)

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Are you talking about from a healer perspective, a tank perspective, a DPS perspective, a group perspective, a solo perspective, or any combination of the five? Because you need to more specific than that, because healers are supposed to be healing, it's what they are supposed to do, and I do not trust a healer that's going to Holy spam because of the delay on the damage and stun from that.

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I'm having difficulty understanding where the confusion is coming from given that I mentioned my dungeon qualifier. In that instance, I'm talking about a holistic perspective that focuses on mitigation and self healing.

As long as I'm alive, I want the healer to avoid a healing GCD as much as possible. I want to ensure that the opportunity for healer DPS is as available as possible. I want mobs to melt with everyone's active participation. Now, GNB was given just enough to get any job done, but if a mob isn't mostly dead by the time your defensives fall off (and lets be real, this is likely with most pugs), your healer is going to feel it harder than with any other job. GNB will be the tank job to most likely get in the way of those desires being actualized. This is why it sucks.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

If dungeons are more your thing, WAR and DRK are the best,

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I would say PLD takes number one spot here. It brings massive self-healing to the table and Holy Ground is probably the best death prevent CD for big pulls as you just stop to take dmg (and don't need to drop down to 1 HP like GNB or need to be nearly dead like with WAR. And we don't talk about DRK because it just sucks in dungeons)

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Originally Posted by Pepsi_Plunge

I would say PLD takes number one spot here. It brings massive self-healing to the table and Holy Ground is probably the best death prevent CD for big pulls as you just stop to take dmg (and don't need to drop down to 1 HP like GNB or need to be nearly dead like with WAR. And we don't talk about DRK because it just sucks in dungeons)

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Bro, are you listening to yourself? Having near-constant access to a bubble that absorbs 25% of your HP bar, that's huge. AD heals for a huge amount in a large pack. their AoE DPS is fantastic. They can do all that and don't need to stop DPSing. PLD has to stop and waste GCDs to do their healing.

PLD by far is the best dungeon tank in terms of you getting a random healer. Large pulls you can Hallowed Ground the first big pull and last big pull. And if your healer is bad you can Requescat and clemency for 70- 90k health instantly. DRK is second with TBN being so powerful but cant fully save you if you have a undergeared healer, with WAR falling to 3rd and GNB last for dungeons.

When comparing tanks for dungeons you have to look at both healing side and tank side.

However i have noticed if you are in a group without a WHM dungeons become slightly more challenging without the stun from Holy Spam.

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Originally Posted by BloodRubyXII

Holy is better mitigation than any other spell in the game that can be applied to a tank. If a tank can't stay alive for around 1.25 seconds for the first cast to go off, the problems that tank has are deeper than any pure healer would be able to solve.

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Holy has a delay for both damage and stun to take effect. 2-3 seconds of delay by the looks of it, and if I have to choose between Holy spam because "mah deeps" and Cure spam because "I don't want to people to think I'm a bad healer for keeping them alive during big pulls" I'm going to choose the safer option.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

I'm having difficulty understanding where the confusion is coming from given that I mentioned my dungeon qualifier. In that instance, I'm talking about a holistic perspective that focuses on mitigation and self healing.

As long as I'm alive, I want the healer to avoid a healing GCD as much as possible. I want to ensure that the opportunity for healer DPS is as available as possible. I want mobs to melt with everyone's active participation. Now, GNB was given just enough to get any job done, but if a mob isn't mostly dead by the time your defensives fall off (and lets be real, this is likely with most pugs), your healer is going to feel it harder than with any other job. GNB will be the tank job to most likely get in the way of those desires being actualized. This is why it sucks.

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Okay so you are basically talking "all of the above" perspective but you are mostly looking at it from a solo perspective. If you don't healers to waste a GCD on healing you, and you die, you have no one else to blame but yourself and you might as well play PLD at that point if you don't want healers to use GCDs on you, but then you will complain about "mah deeps" if you did that in which case you might as well be talking about a DPS perspective...

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Are you talking about from a healer perspective, a tank perspective, a DPS perspective, a group perspective, a solo perspective, or any combination of the five? Because you need to more specific than that, because healers are supposed to be healing, it's what they are supposed to do, and I do not trust a healer that's going to Holy spam because of the delay on the damage and stun from that.

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From tank perspective, Warrior and DRK are better at dungeons.
Warrior has 6 seconds full hp heal (combine it with Thrill of battle and you could kick healer from dungeon xD) and giant amount of aoe dmg, DRK has comparable aoes but has TBN which is super cheesy in dungeons, because if your dont take damage, your healer could spam holy and stun mobs and its only adding up to the speed overall.
DMG alone does not matter if you cant stand your ground, dungeons are all about taking damage and sustaining it.

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Originally Posted by Derio

PLD by far is the best dungeon tank in terms of you getting a random healer. Large pulls you can Hallowed Ground the first big pull and last big pull. And if your healer is bad you can Requescat and clemency for 70- 90k health instantly. DRK is second with TBN being so powerful but cant fully save you if you have a undergeared healer, with WAR falling to 3rd and GNB last for dungeons.

When comparing tanks for dungeons you have to look at both healing side and tank side.

However i have noticed if you are in a group without a WHM dungeons become slightly more challenging without the stun from Holy Spam.

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Warrior could heal for about 80-90k on 6 mobs with his AOE and he deals damage as well.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

Bro, are you listening to yourself? Having near-constant access to a bubble that absorbs 25% of your HP bar, that's huge. AD heals for a huge amount in a large pack. their AoE DPS is fantastic. They can do all that and don't need to stop DPSing. PLD has to stop and waste GCDs to do their healing.

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I was talking about the death prevents. I didn't said DRK sucks, I said "Living Dead" sucks in dungeons.

tanks are pretty much balanced as well as humanly possible at this point. It really doesn't matter at all and anyone who says any tank "Straight up sucks" in any content is way off base.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

From tank perspective, Warrior and DRK are better at dungeons.
Warrior has 6 seconds full hp heal (combine it with Thrill of battle and you could kick healer from dungeon xD) and giant amount of aoes, DRK has comparable aoes but has TBN which is super cheesy in dungeons, because if your dont take damage, your healer could spam holy and stun mobs and its only adding up to the speed overall.
DMG alone does not matter if you cant stand your ground, dungeons are all about taking damage and sustaining it.

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So you like dying because of the healer just Holy spamming because of "mah deeps" good for you. Also saying that the most boring tanks are better in dungeons is basically setting a very low bar from a DPS perspective but from a tank perspective, yeah you could could have picked way better choices, because of how gimped Nascent Flash is, because why can't I use both Nascent Flash and Raw Intuition at the same time? The answer is balancing the tank and healers but devs have proven they don't tanks and healers to actually have fun and have to make them the most boring and miserable roles to play in the game when BLM is just as miserable and boring to play, yet BLM can do more DPS than all of the other jobs in the entire game combined. Yeah sounds completely balanced and not totally not game breaking in the slightest(sarcasm). And then Yoshi-P starts asking the devs to buff the other other jobs because too many BLMs are clearing legitimately more than any other job in the game because everyone is getting carried by 4 BLMs in the group...

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Originally Posted by Katie_Kitty

tanks are pretty much balanced as well as humanly possible at this point. It really doesn't matter at all and anyone who says any tank "Straight up sucks" in any content is way off base.

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And that is the most baseless counter-argument you could even make because if people are saying "x sucks because of y mechanic in the toolkit and my GCD rotation is just spamming 1-2-3" you should probably look into it and make sure the problem doesn't get progressively worse to were the problem causes a regression in the system that will cause players to leave for good.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

So you like dying because of the healer just Holy spamming because of "mah deeps" good for you. Also saying that the most boring tanks are better in dungeons is basically setting a very low bar from a DPS perspective but from a tank perspective, yeah you could could have picked way better choices, because of how gimped Nascent Flash is, because why can't I use both Nascent Flash and Raw Intuition at the same time? The answer is balancing the tank and healers but devs have proven they don't tanks and healers to actually have fun and have to make them the most boring and miserable roles to play in the game when BLM is just as miserable and boring to play, yet BLM can do more DPS than all of the other jobs in the entire game combined. Yeah sounds completely balanced and not totally not game breaking in the slightest(sarcasm). And then Yoshi-P starts asking the devs to buff the other other jobs because too many BLMs are clearing legitimately more than any other job in the game because everyone is getting carried by 4 BLMs in the group...

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You are not dying on DRK and Warrior if healer is spamming holy if you time your skills in right time.
Those two tanks are not boring for everyone, and boring does not mean weak, both DRK and WAR are effective in what they are doing in dungeons.
And its not like gunbreaker is any more "funnier" to play in dungeons, his single target rotation is good thing, but on AOE all he does is 1>2 combo and fated circle along with two CD skills to use from time to time.
Paladin does not play different too, same boring 1>2 combo and aoe damage windows with few CD to push here and there. How is that different to DRK with delirium or WAR with IR? Same old stuf, even the amount of GCD they use in their damage windows is exactly the same, which is 5. xD
All 4 play similar when facing a group of enemies, thats why balance between them is so good, because they are same job with some flavour added to them.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

You are not dying on DRK and Warrior if healer is spamming holy if you time your skills in right time.
Those two tanks are not boring for everyone, and boring does not mean weak, both DRK and WAR are effective in what they are doing in dungeons.
And its not like gunbreaker is any more "funnier" to play in dungeons, his single target rotation is good thing, but on AOE all he does is 1>2 combo and fated circle along with two CD skills to use from time to time.
Paladin does not play different too, same boring 1>2 combo and aoe damage windows with few CD to push here and there. How is that different to DRK with delirium or WAR with IR? Same old stuf, even the amount of GCD they use in their damage windows is exactly the same, which is 5. xD
All 4 play similar when facing a group of enemies, thats why balance between them is so good, because they are same job with some flavour added to them.

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1. Server ticks and delay combined nearly gave me a heart attack when I tried to Holy spam once, and I just Cure spam to get Freecure proc+Regen+Medica 2(generally when I have no lilies but still)

2. "Boring does not mean weak" is the weakest argument anyone can give...

3. Have you tried using Gnashing Fang combo in AoE to single out a target?

4. Every PLD from ARR, HW, and StB will look at you from a distance and shout "PLD AOE!!!" in excitement(Also Clemency is OP and more optimal than WHM Holy Spam or just green DPS in general), heck using a single target rotation just to make sure to kill the hardest hitting trash mob is more optimal than Holy Spam for tanks(or the trash mob that has the most annoying mechanics because melee DPS)

5. Only WAR and DRK play similarly in terms DPS rotations, which is a lot of people's complaints are coming from, which are people started in ARR/HW/StB, but my issue is that WAR got basically Bloodbath back but DRK didn't. So I have ask "What about Nascent Flash makes sense to have on WAR, from it's effect to actual application? And why wasn't this put on DRK since Living Dead is still garbage?" (Trick question; it doesn't make sense, because green DPS could care less and that's useless information to them so long as they can keep DPSing)

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Originally Posted by Hierro

Bro, are you listening to yourself? Having near-constant access to a bubble that absorbs 25% of your HP bar, that's huge. AD heals for a huge amount in a large pack. their AoE DPS is fantastic. They can do all that and don't need to stop DPSing. PLD has to stop and waste GCDs to do their healing.

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While I agree with you about TBN, AD got a massive nerf this expansion mainly because of CD and the way it currently works (not saying it didn't possibly deserve a slight nerf). I wish SE would work it to make it viable in single target but not OP for dungeon content.