How would you rate Tank DPS rotations/abilities?

Not "at least we aren't Healers", but the Tanks themselves.

Do you find your rotation consistently thrilling and exciting, keeping you on the edge of your seat through entire encounters, or do you find it kind of bland and boring? Or do you not really care much about being a "Blue DPS" and see them more as just utilitarian things to do during downtime?

Do you enjoy your burst phases and 2 min meta, or 1 minute mini-burst (or GNB's 30 sec "micro-burst") spikes in activity?

Do you think Tanks should have more of a DPS focus and more DPS actions going forward, or more actions related to threat, boss/add management and positioning, and defense going forward?

Thank you for your time.

I think Tank rotation should be a important factor going forward as current rotations kind of feel underwhelming I think DRK is a good example of what not to do on a tank, 1,2,3 with one heavy burst instead of having a consistent fun rotation with weaving throughout your gameplay, but it shouldn't be the only focus I think party wides and defensive management should play a more big focus going forward as well.

I think Tanks would fit this DPS/support hybrid pretty well as that seems the current direction going forward, But they need to lean more into that identity.

DRK is absolutely insulting regarding its rotation and abilities. No synergy, no interactions, MP management might as well be non existent, Darkside is maintained effortlessly to the point it's completely forgettable, as well as Living Shadow outside of "I need to press this every 2 minutes" which extends to literally every other offensive ability outside of its 1-2-3 and occasional bloodspiller. I've never seen more boring downtime in any videogame in my entire life outside of healing downtime in this same game which is an entirely separate discussion. Even Warrior has more engaging downtime (if slightly) and it's borderline the easiest job in the game to play.

I do think our current defensive kits (outside of DRK) are too potent but that's the absolute least of my concerns regarding the tanks. (except you Shake it Off, I hope you get nerfed back to Shadowbringers).

They need to look at the offensive kits more by far, we already fit the hybrid as Rithy stated, but they are mind-numbingly boring to play outside of Gunbreaker, which only passes because it has a mini-burst every 30s.

Warrior 1/10. This is not only what we should avoid for the job itself, but also any other job. No rotational complexity, no engagement. The only saving grace is that if you want the invincible power fantasy, Warrior delivers it in spades.

Dark Knight 3/10. It has the bones for something that could be great here, but they didn't do it in EW and probably won't do it for Dawntrail. Expanding on the Living Shadow theme not only for the window itself but for other actions are such easy lay ups, but they don't want to do anything "wacky" that the players would complain about, in their own words.

Paladin 3/10. Again, it has the bones for something here. Moving more towards state-based action priority could be good if they add more spells to use with Divine Might, and in turn those spells empower Sword/Shield skills. "I attack to cast spells, and I cast spells to enhance my attacks."

Gunbreaker 7/10. Probably the only tank that has good feeling buttons. Suffers a little from being so tightly defined that expanding the kit is tricky.

My rating on current Rotations would be
War 3/10, Boring only real thing that I like about it is the second combo. I'm fine with this being the boring tank, just dislike its aoe and healing sustain more then rotation issues... I guess add more to gauge.
Pld 5/10, pretty Boring but has some interesting things like ranged uptime or holding spirits for sustain... they really need to make goring blade do something else, cutdown on the atonements, I'd argue for more combos on PLD, I'm honestly just hoping they adjust its rotation a bit more and this could easily move up (Shb PLD = 9/10)
DRK 1/10, Somehow more boring then warrior but also feels clunky and annoying to use in burst. I rather it had more consistent OGCD usage, expand its combos... or just do something with this job.
GNB 8/10, generally fun I don't have any issues with it, it has a lot of weaving but not all of that is in your burst, I think this job feels the most polished for tanks.

Guess I'll throw in my $0.02 and put my ratings down.

DRK 3/10, not even the busy bursts are enough to save its current abomination of a state from my wrath. I've already said my piece that I would put here in my original reply to the thread. The only reason why this ranks 1 higher than WAR is because of its bursts. If they weren't busy it would've stayed at a 1/10 like it did before I edited this post.
WAR 2/10, incredibly boring but it has a second combo ender, which is why it's at 2/10 and not 1/10. If they want to keep it simple that's...fine, I guess?, but it's missing a lot of its potential staying as it is currently. Somehow even Shadowbringers Warrior felt slightly better than its current form.
PLD 5/10, boring, if Goring Blade kept the DoT it would sit comfortably around a 7 imo, the one other thing holding it back is that it's the same exact burst every minute.
GNB 7/10, I don't have many issues with GNB, it's generally fun in my opinion thanks to it having a mini burst every 30s. It's the best designed tank since Shadowbringers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zairava

I've never seen more boring downtime in any videogame in my entire life outside of healing downtime in this same game which is an entirely separate discussion. Even Warrior has more engaging downtime (if slightly) and it's borderline the easiest job in the game to play.

---

I'd say it depends on what you find more "exciting", occasionally refreshing Eye on Warrior or spamming every oGCD you have every 2 minutes. They're equally as mindnumbingly boring, just in slightly different ways.


As for my ranking:
WAR 2/10, this job is a dumpster fire, bafflingly simplistic and boring to the point of actually becoming harder because you get distracted by everything else around you being more interesting than actually playing it. Would I rate this job higher if I had no prior experience with the job? Maybe, but unfortunately I played previous iterations and all of them had more nuance and engaging gameplay than this current travesty.

DRK 3/10, equally as bad as WAR but the slightly more hectic burst windows barely beat out hitting Fell Cleave and BIGGER FELL CLEAVE ad nauseum every minute.

PLD ?/10, I have not played the job enough after the rework to really give an opinion on it, but it certainly doesn't feel all that exciting to play from the short amount of time I've had with it.

GNB 6/10, by far the best out of the bunch but that doesn't mean much. I would've given it a 7/10 before Abyssos but the current 2.5 GCD playstyle where you constantly need to do a forced 2-cart burst and making Bloodfest another boring 2-minute cooldown simply feels awful to play to me. I would've easily given the job an 8 or 9/10 in Shadowbringers, I think outside of Heart of Corundum every addition with Endwalker has actually made the job worse.


Edit: These ratings are entirely based on their offensive gameplay, a.i. their damage rotation. I do not rate the tanks according to their defensives because those are, simply put, quite boring. Since they have become so uniform since Shadowbringers and mostly boil down to "Reduce damage taken by X% for Y seconds" they are functional, do their job, but aren't anything to get excited about or really change up how you use each individual ability.

I only really play Paladin and Warrior because I enjoy their rotations more than Dark Knight and Gunbreaker.

I'm likely in the minority but I feel that having a complex rotation doesn't make the game more fun for me. It may be dull when hitting a target dummy, but I tend to start messing things up during a boss fight when I need to focus on both what's happening during the encounter and managing my own abilities. It's probably why I tend to gravitate towards jobs that others find are too simplistic (summoner).

The game can do away with the 2-minute burst meta, I rather jobs manage their own buffs instead of trying to line everything up every 2 minutes. The only time in an encounter that everyone should be unloading their burst at the same time is on the pull.

Defensive cooldowns might be too strong, but I feel this is more of a core issue with the game itself that would require a complete rebalancing of not just tanks but for healers and how bosses dish out damage as well. As it currently stands, tanks just aren't threatened outside of tankbusters and failing 1-shot mechanics. This problem also greatly affects healers, forcing them to deal damage far more than they need to heal.

I was curious what other people's answers would be. But now that I've seen how everyone is rating them, it's got me wondering how I would...

PLD - I liked old PLD okay, and I like new PLD. I really like how flexible the rotation feels, mostly. I can move Atonements and Holy Spirit around, and it doesn't have that weird Atonement drop thing that always felt odd to me. On the other hand, FoF and Requiescat being separate abilities just makes no sense at this point, and Goring seems...vestigial. Like they didn't want to just out and remove the button/animation, but it brings nothing useful to the table other than being an easy tuning knob if they want PLD's burst damage to go up or down some (it's a consistent thing, since it will basically always be used in burst unlike 1-2-3-4-4-4-5 which players can move around more and might have reasons to do so, especially Royal/Atonement), and it's not as big a hit as Confet/Swords. But outside of "we wanted to keep the animation", it seems there's little reason for it, and "easier tuning" doesn't sound great as a reason, not to mention PLD's overall button bloat as it is. While the rotation IS simple, it's also got room for moving things around, which I really do think is a plus, even if that mostly comes down to using HS for either 3-4 sec disengages or ensuring you get at least one in FoF windows. And, at least for my part, the big attacks are pretty satisfying. And as much as I think Goring is kind of just...there...I still love the animation for it (I feel like they should just have Royal upgrade to Goring just because the animation is so much better...) 6.5/10? Nothing super amazing to write home about, but gets the job done, but also has a bit more clunk and weirdness that prevents it being a 7.

WAR - I really am not sure about WAR. In theory, there's some optimization with Infuriate and it being a moving target based on how many Fell Cleaves you use, but in practice, this is just going to be normalized since you should always generate the same amount of gauge in general over time, and spend it to prevent overcapping. So in practice, it's just as if Infuriate had a shorter CD in general as opposed to some big brain "moving CD" that you would adapt to on the fly or have meaningful gameplay around. Prevent it from overcapping. That's basically the gameplay. Use it when there's 5-10 seconds left on the second charge coming off CD unless you're right on top of a burst window and Inner Release coming off CD. And, of course, you just dump everything into the burst phase and then move on with life. It has a -4 combo ender, and that stacks to 60 seconds making it flexible as to when you reapply it, so I guess there's some play there, though it isn't really...advanced. It's not terrible, just very utilitarian overall. Though I DO like that the core rotation is established by level 50 (meaning syncing keeps most of the feel and cadence of the level cap gameplay, NOT something true of all the Tanks...). I dunno, 5-6/10? Does what it needs to do, isn't terrible, but doesn't go out of its way to do more.

DRK - I can't really say since I've only leveled it to 80 for quests, and that just recently. It seems like...a more clunky WAR, though. So if I gave WAR a 5-6/10, then I suppose DRK would be 4-5/10. I like some of the animations, but the play seems to take the more boring parts of WAR and combine them with some clunk which defeats the purpose of having a simple and utilitarian rotation to begin with. I'm not even sure why DRK is trying to be a WAR clone in the first place...

GNB - On the one hand, sometimes it feels a little clunky, and I'm not sure why we bothered to get another powder gauge charge if there's no case you ever do 3x 1 charge abilities. You use two on DD then you get in a Gnashing and Burst, but that's all that fits in No Mercy. It seems we could still just have two and have Double Down only cost 1. The rotation would be identical. Or give us 3 and have DD cost only 1, which would actually mean more Burst Strikes. But...we don't have that. Continuation, though, feels really good in general, and it's nice we have one for Burst Strike now, too, even if it can make defensive weaves a bit tighter. It's also nice that it has something to do at the 30 sec marks which other Tanks do not. While the other Tanks generally have a oGCD (or two) to use then, GNB actually gets a mini-burst with an extra side-combo. It'd be like if PLD's Goring and Confetior had 30 sec CDs (but you only got Swords when using Confetior WHILE under FoF/Req), or if WAR got a Primal Rend every 30 sec. It gives something that breaks up the combo nicely from the filler. And I don't know about others, but the 1/2/3 charge gauge feels better to me than all those Jobs that have 0-100 gauges where EVERYTHING USING THEM uses exactly 50, making it a 2 charge gauge with extra steps to fill in weird increments. GNB's, on the other hand, is both easy to track and easy to understand, while giving the player that side thing to juggle, ensuring you have a charge every 30 sec for Gnashing, 3 at 1 min marks for Gnashing+DD, but also is easy to see when you're about to finish a 1-2-3 combo and overcap so you can blow a Burst Strike before finishing the combo. And Bloodfest, despite basically being a 2 min CD now, at least makes sense with the rotation and burst, what it's supposed to do, and how to use it, and the extra Burst Strikes + Continuation feel pretty nice to press. Double Down, for my issues with it (there's also that crit variance thing), just FEELS good; they nailed the VFX on it, imo. It just feels really good in general to execute. It's not quite a 10/10 because there's still a little weirdness and clunk, and I still have no idea why Sonic Break even exists other than, like Gnashing, I suspect as a tuning knob. But it generally feels good, it changes up enough to be interesting, and the gauge is simultaneously easier to manage and has more going on with it to make it interesting. I'd give it a 8-9/10.

I am with Espon in that I do like simple things. Though oddly, I find PLD easier than WAR. Not having to even think about the upkeep buff and just making my rotation 3-1-2-4/5-4/5-4/5-4/5-3 means I don't have to really think too much and have a HS at my fingertips basically any time I need one, and PLD and WAR both have a 1 min burst to track, and PLD's seems easier to me to execute, not to mention how much of it can be done at range even for bosses that have a lot of movement or disengages at 2 min marks to screw with other Melee/Tank Jobs, PLD can just go "lol, magic swords go brr" and carry on like it's nothing or with VERY minor modifications. If I extend this to include the defensive/Tank abilities, PLD just feels really good overall, and has the most party utility.

...but I also think GNB feels pretty good to play and execute.

WAR I think is Shrodinger's Easy Job, as it both has more going on than it seems, but it's also irrelevant and so not any harder to play/execute at the same time. It's...odd. But while bare bones, it's also very utilitarian, having everything it needs. WAR is the Archon Loaf of the Tanks, so to speak.

And DRK...is probably the Tank Job most in need of SOME kind of rework. "WAR but clunkier" isn't a great identity.

So I play a ton of WAR. I like how simple it is, and I do think there needs to be a simple option available. That being said, WAR rotation sucks and its kinda the baseline in my eyes on every tank's rotation.

Build up resource. (in this case Beast Gauge, but its also GNB Charges and DRK Meter)
Deal Extra Damage using Hard hitting action(s) with resource. (Fell Cleave, Bloodspiller, Gnashing Fang Combo/Burst Strike)
Use minute (or so) cooldown that gives access to burst damage. (FoF and/or Requiescat, Inner Release, Delirium, Bloodfest & Double Down)
Weave in dashes at melee range for free extra damage.
Repeat forever.

Its really dull.

I feel like I should mention too, that (aside from The Blackest Night) all of your mitigation abilities are like a pocket of stuff you use separate from the rest of your kit. I mean one of them, Rampart, is given to every tank. Shadow Wall, Sentinel, Nebubla, Vengenace (aside from the thorns effect) are all the same ability, Reduce damage taken. Wow, so deep. Vengance used to atleast combo well with Bloodbath with it healing off the thorns effect, which was great for Wall to Wall pulls by refunding some of the damage taken, but now we have Bloodwhetting which does either is pretty nice, but completely busted in dungeons. Just feel like there needs to be more interconnectivity throughout all of the kit, and rewarding tanks with more mitigation before rewarding more damage.

Also, I really think doing your rotation correctly should reward more mitigation, not damage. Not that we cant have burst abilities, thats all well and good, but I feel like doing your rotation should be rewarding you with what your role is supposed to do, and that is taking and mitigating damage.

Edit: Btw, I dont really want them to be super complex when it comes to doing a rotation necessarily, but a lot of their kits is just building toward doing big damage (for tanks), while the actual tank abilities are just slapped on. Making tanks (as they are now) just simple DPS with big HP pools and mits in their pockets.

DRK: Nothing to do between 1min and 2 mins. Same boring, ugly 1-2-3 combo from 30s to 90s. Aoe stuff needs shorter cooldowns except shadowbringer. TBN doesn't actually proc until a whole tick unlike other tank shields Same with Living Dead. Too much other crap I've bellyached enough in this forum. Literally WAR but worse.

Kusoge/10.

I don't find the tanks all that different from eachother in terms of damage rotation.

WAR feels like a slower, more boring Dark Knight that centralizes entirely on one attack. People like it, I only think its a fun job defensively, offensively its very boring.
GNB feels really strict for the sake of it, it feels a bit clunky to me, and I've generally disliked super rigid rotation jobs. Continuation is fun to press though.
Can't give much feedback on PLD, I didn't enjoy how the job played before with how many hoops it had to jump through to do basic things, and I havent bothered to try it now.

Dark Knight is a weird one, and the one I've put the most time into. I like its completely flexible rotation mixed with high apm gameplay. I like how it mits in savage fights, how much power comes from its flexibility in mitigation there.
I do not like how dull it is post burst windows, I dont like how overly centralized it is around Living Shadow, that skill drifts like nothing else, and is already "late" to any buff that only lasts 15s. I dont hate it like others do, but it definitely needs something to round it out. I don't agree that MP management isn't a real factor at the highest end, it definitely is, and I'd argue that DRK has to watch its gauges harder than any other tank.
Its not just a factor of don't overcap, its find a spot before the next burst window to pick up a Dark Arts stack, and still have there be enough time to generate the mp you spent on TBN back before the burst window, without overcapping.
Similar situation with the blood gauge, you need enough to mash living shadow on cooldown, but not enough to cap but still can bring an additional Bloodspiller into a burst that way. Darkside is the only resource that isn't really notable as a thing you have to really try to upkeep.

Its AOE game is also a mixed bag, I like the fact its the only tank thats frequently mixing AOE types (Lines for Flood/Shadowbringer, Circles for everything else). But then you get issues like Abyssal Drain, which is just comically underpowered for the role its trying to fill. It either needs a shorter cooldown or 2 charges, but now that its stapled to Carve and Spit, its very hard to buff it. Honestly that skill needs to be reworked entirely, probably back to a GCD.
Living shadow is also really awkward in AOE, its borderline not even worth using, as it only has 2 aoe attacks, takes forever to get out, to the point where mob packs are usually dead by the time that it does, or in the best case scenario it gets its aoes off then burst down one guy, who would have died with the rest to the aoe spam anyway.

I like how it plays more than the other tanks at the very least.

Talking purely about their offensive kits... And for reference, I haven't tanked much this expac due to my distaste for tank changes in 6.0/6.3.

PLD 4/10. I preferred it before the rework, though I don't hate post rework PLD. Most of my problem with it boils down to how burst focused it is and how resource management is nearly nonexistent. Divine might in principal isn't a bad idea but in practice it just ends up with PLD's filler being 1-2-3-4 instead of 1-2-3. If Atonement and DM could be spent on something other than atonement and HS respectively that would be nice. I'd also like changes to how you access BoV combo and confetior but idk what exactly.

WAR 3/10. First job i played fun fact. Inner release being 1 minute and pressing fell cleave 6 times a minute makes it feel less impactful than it did when I mained war. I don't like how upheaval doesn't consume beast gauge anymore. Also don't like the level 90 capstone (idr the name) being tied to inner release like it is. If it were the type of thing you'd gain access to after maintaining storm's eye for X amount of time or Y uses of fell cleave or... anything else. Generally I just really hate abilities like it or starfall dance or ogi namikiri where you get a heavy hitting skill for free for using a CD and under no other circumstances.

DRK 1/10. It's warrior but edgy. It's nearly as boring as healers' dps kits. Resource management is gone, delirium is more boring inner release, darkside is effortless to maintain, living shadow is a 2 minute press and forget. I want a full rework in 7.0.

GNB 6/10. Though GNB isn't my cup of tea, I think it's the best tank rotationally. Double down sucks and sonic break is one of the most meaningless buttons in the game, but other than those I have very few complaints. I also don't play GNB enough to complain about it though.

In general they aren't much fun imo. Side note, I'd love more combo's to come back. 1-2-3 and always 1-2-3 (or 1-2-3-4 for PLD and the occasional 1-2-4 on warrior) is just boring. Tanks really need some spice in dawntail.

Paladin:

• I'm impressed with how much I like Paladin's rotation right now. Getting a quick spell cast at the end of a combo feels like a fun reward, and all them magic swords feel like a great bit of power to drop once a minute. If I wanted to really nitpick, I'd say that I think Atonement is adding more clunk than fun, so maybe toss it out. Also Requiescat and Fight or Flight should be fused into a single move, since you're always going to want to cast them at the same time.

Dark Knight:

• It's not great. Probably the worst of all the tanks, and that's coming from someone who dislikes Gunbreaker. Needs pizazz. Needs buttons that are fun to press, that feel cool to do. Dark Knight's biggest moves unfortunately don't feel cool, even when they're doing big damage. And you only do them once every 2 minutes, because you want your Living Shadow (conceptually neat, but doesn't feel like doing a cool attack) to do 2 Shadowbringers. It's a shame that Shadowbringer isn't remotely as cool as any of Paladin's magic swords, especially when DRK seems like it should be the one of the pair to be going more all-out when it comes to offense.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Paladin:

• I'm impressed with how much I like Paladin's rotation right now. Getting a quick spell cast at the end of a combo feels like a fun reward, and all them magic swords feel like a great bit of power to drop once a minute. If I wanted to really nitpick, I'd say that I think Atonement is adding more clunk than fun, so maybe toss it out. Also Requiescat and Fight or Flight should be fused into a single move, since you're always going to want to cast them at the same time.

---

If you removed Atonement PLD wouldn't really feel better, It would be 1, 2, 3, 4(holy spirit) which isn't really much better from how PLD feels now. I've played stormblood dungeons as new paladin it just feels about as unfun as current PLD.

I think the baseline of Paladin works, Gaining holy spirits through combo but their needs to be more Varity in GCD actions, such as a alternative combo... Almost like goring blade sort of broke up the same cycle and made paladin less clunky rotation wise.

Should we add old goring blade? No. but I do think goring blade needs to be reworked though as another Combo finisher with some sort of benefit. It's current form serves no real purpose other then to be pressed once every minute, which mind you is the entire point of Req, with FOF? again fof feels a bit out of place. Almost like they could give you 5 stacks (one for a empowered req HS, rest blades) and just remove Goring blade in its current form and no one would really notice.

I think I'd love current PLD if it focused more on having different combos in down time (even just a goring blade finisher would be nice), with Divine might HS being your option you can hold for ranged/sustain during down time. I'd like to Keep Atonement, Unsure if they should rework "sword oath" and how you get atonements but I just like the idea of PLD having fun sword play followed by magic burst.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rithy255

Should we add old goring blade? No. but I do think goring blade needs to be reworked though as another Combo finisher with some sort of benefit. It's current form serves no real purpose other then to be pressed once every minute, which mind you is the entire point of Req, with FOF? again fof feels a bit out of place. Almost like they could give you 5 stacks (one for a empowered req HS, rest blades) and just remove Goring blade in its current form and no one would really notice.

---

I agree that Goring Blade is a bit odd at present, as it could be baked into Req+Friends, or removed entirely, and it would probably feel about the same. This is just my personal preference, but I've never been a fan of branching combos, so I am actually a much bigger fan of Goring Blade now than I was previously; since one of my biggest struggles with the game is button bloat, combos are my bane! One of them is fine for me, as I understand that it gives us something slightly involved to do when nothing else interesting is happening, and I get that every second of play can't be the coolest parts. But at least for me, more combos would just make my experience worse. So if combo time does feel too spacious and dull — which it sounds like it does for you, and that's completely valid! — my hope is that they can address that by giving us something more interesting to do to break that up. Like if Req is now on a 30-second cooldown, but on the 30 second mark it's doing Big Magic Swords while on the 60 second mark it's doing something else, kind of like how Bahamut toggles into Phoenix. Or heck, I'm not entirely opposed to more combos, but I need them to consolidate or remove plenty of the other buttons so that I have hotbar space! I'm already using so many macros to try to keep it all comfy and reachable...Anyway! all of that is just to say that I want your problems to be solved and my problems to be solved, and hopefully the devs can find a harmonious way to make us both happy ^^

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

I agree that Goring Blade is a bit odd at present, as it could be baked into Req+Friends, or removed entirely, and it would probably feel about the same. This is just my personal preference, but I've never been a fan of branching combos, so I am actually a much bigger fan of Goring Blade now than I was previously; since one of my biggest struggles with the game is button bloat, combos are my bane! One of them is fine for me, as I understand that it gives us something slightly involved to do when nothing else interesting is happening, and I get that every second of play can't be the coolest parts. But at least for me, more combos would just make my experience worse. So if combo time does feel too spacious and dull — which it sounds like it does for you, and that's completely valid! — my hope is that they can address that by giving us something more interesting to do to break that up. Like if Req is now on a 30-second cooldown, but on the 30 second mark it's doing Big Magic Swords while on the 60 second mark it's doing something else, kind of like how Bahamut toggles into Phoenix. Or heck, I'm not entirely opposed to more combos, but I need them to consolidate or remove plenty of the other buttons so that I have hotbar space! I'm already using so many macros to try to keep it all comfy and reachable...Anyway! all of that is just to say that I want your problems to be solved and my problems to be solved, and hopefully the devs can find a harmonious way to make us both happy ^^

---

I love branching combos maybe that's where we can just agree to disagree on as I think as a "old pld player" why I get bored with new PLD is the lack of combos during down time. I think Branching combos add a lot of fun during downtime. but I don't want the game to feel worse for others, This is why I think auto combo is good if it's optional, because it allows everyone to be happy.

I just want the job to feel a bit more interesting outside of burst windows, I'm not really a fan of pressing the same DPS button even if it's flashy, I think it's fine for bursts... but I like pressing a lot of different buttons personally.

I think in terms of PLD Bloat issues we can change a few things

• Merge Holy Sheltron/Intervention into a targetable defensive on self or others, reduce it's cd to 1s (as its on gauge and for double tank busters) and add that effect cannot apply (will be cancelled) to players already under the effect of Holy Sheltron.
• Merge Holy Spirit/Holy Circle Into a Cleave attack
• Fof removed, move Req and magic to be eariler (both serve very similar purposes).
• Circle of scorn removed, instead you have Expiacion every 20s and make Shield bash a 20s 150 potency attack off global that stuns, all enmies in a cone 2 stacks (remove gap closer Damage and let you charge to allies).

I'm sure theirs plenty more that you can do aswell these are just the common skills I'd see changed

I haven't played WAR or DRK enough to give meaningful feedback.


PLD pre-rework (6.3): 8/10
PLD post-rework (6.3): 7/10

+ Small optimisations with Holy Might is a welcome change, as well as the potential to go into single either Holy Spirit or Holy Circle.
+ Still has the class fantasy of protecting your friends with various tools (Passage of Arms, Intervention, Cover)
+ Ranged combo still feels very good and has good skill expression in finding how to ensure uptime on a fight alongside some raid buffs (e.g. P4S P2 Act 2 towers, P10S worm turrets)
~ Divine Veil rework reduces skill expression as it no longer rides/requires a healer GCD. Would prefer a middle ground where it functions as a variant to AST's Horoscope: A shield when used, and if a GCD heal is performed on the player who received the Divine Veil within a set time period, also provides extra healing. I feel this would give an accessible skill floor of proactively shielding the party and buffs the next heal that comes after. The skill ceiling is that the ideal timing would be different per fight, as healers do not use GCD heals on every raidwide. The current skill expression is to have it after a raidwide/instance of party damage but within 30 seconds of another raidwide/instance of party damage, which is almost always.
~ Button bloat on PLD is still quite high. Because I mostly play Savage/Ultimate content, I don't actually have my AoE spells on easy to access buttons anymore as I just don't use them enough.
- Rework homogenised the overall feel of the job to be a 2-minute meta job. I personally consider it GNB-Lite, but I've heard it called WAR-lite as well. I personally liked the consistent damage output (but I'm under the impression that with recent savage/ultimate fight design where the boss goes untargetable for set periods of time, they may have felt it too punishing for the PLD or too difficult to tune the damage to still be relevant. Any problems I had with clearing content before were not related to the damage output of PLD.)
- Boring Blade
- Shield Bash should be wrapped into something else at this point.

I have my bias and am more critical towards PLD because it's been the main job I fell in love with since I started playing. My feedback is also biased towards Savage/Ultimate content. I find most content easier than normal raids to be a complete snoozefest at this point, but that's not a class criticism, just giving context.


GNB: 8.5/10

+ Excellent skill expression in managing abilities alongside mitigation, feels constantly active
+ Filler abilities are good as it mixes normal Gnashing Fangs and Burst Strikes and are not reserved exclusively for burst windows, so you need to manage cartridge stacks.
+ Great animations
+ Interesting mitigations and friendly support with Heart of Corundum + Aurora
~ Some skills aren't as visually interesting as the others (e.g. Sonic Break)
- Due to tank homogenisation, doesn't stand out as much amongst the rest.

Whilst I still prefer playing PLD due to personal preferences, I consider GNB to be the best currently designed and complete job in the game.

Dark Knight 9/10 - I for one love the resource management as it is. constantly throwing Edge of Shadow and Bloodspiller to prevent overcaps, and both buttons feel great to press so often, and look and sound great. Dark Knight has the best SFX for my ears. saving up your Shadowbringers and Plunges... how the job goes from relaxed to busy. A lot of GCDs to press and they all line up very easily. I don't know how it could be clunky as I find it the most smooth as it is more flexible, Dark Knight is awesome for packing most of its damage into OGCDS, your gcd just goes from combo to Bloodspiller, but I love that. No dumb "you got to press this" one offs like Goring Blade, Storm's Eye, Primal Rend, Sonic Break.. I like the important stuff on the ogcd because it makes timing easy and not having to worry about 'roll'

Kinda lackluster. I mostly play Paladin, and I love the Confiteor combo (don't take away my massive shiny blades!), but the overall rotation is really basic, and Atonement doesn't feel very good. Feels weak and monotonous.

I don't have GNB at 90 so can't comment on that, but I find Paladin a bit more enjoyable than Warrior or DRK - the mix of magic/melee is fun, I just wish there was more to it and less atonement spam.

At least Fell Cleave and Primal Rend feel good. Nothing about DRK feels impactful. Bloodspiller doesn't have the same powerful feel as Fell Cleave, and Shadowbringer is the weakest 90 ability of any of the tanks.

I cant speak for Paladin much, so I'll be leaving it out.

Gunbreaker is a blue DPS and is easily among the top 5 most fun jobs to play in the game. In fact, competes for the top spot overall.

Warrior is horribly designed, its job makes no sense. The level of healing it has, be it self healing or otherwise, doesnt really fit the Guy-with-giant-axe motif, but then neither does being a tank at all. However, I'm about 11 years too late with this complaint
Its fun to play, and Thrill of Battle is a great designed ability, but Warrior just has far too much, while ironically having the least damage despite 7 back to back C+DH

Dark Knight is a fun wizard tank that should have the kind of healing Warrior has, but its the ideal tank job design. The only reason its not my favorite tank is because Gunbreaker is officially a tank, despite not playing like one at all.

Paladin: 7.75/10
Warrior: 4/10
Dark Knight: 8.5/10
Gunbreaker: 11/10

Overall, though, I feel like tanks (that aren't Warrior) should have more defensive abilities going into 7.x, taking warrior's focus on guaranteed crits away and just giving them additional damage abilities, having no need for any further tank actions. That, and retooling existing ones to be more mitigation and less self-healing. Or just gut the healing from Bloodwhetting to something a little more reasonable in dungeons. The general design philosophy for tanks is good, and I hope it stays going forward

My vote is

WAR 3/10: Its boring and needs more OGCDs. It is the WHM of the tanks in terms of rotation to where if you want to do your entire rotation using one hand while playing controller then WAR is for you. WAR is very very simple to where storms eye at this point is just a chore to not make the job completely brain dead.

Paladin 6/10: Its solid. Not great but not terrible. The biggest problem is PLD has button bloat and needs consolidation or combo system. Goring blade is awkward and the rework did help alot, but it also showed that PLD has some issues at its core that most likely will only be made worse in DT.

DRK 8/10: While DRK is very brain dead similar to WAR. It has the most flexibility in rotation in terms of the order you do your OGCDs and not be penalized as heavy. While the rotation does want for more and can leave you with hand cramps after a long prog session, the job still provides a fun experience despite it being a clone of WAR with more buttons.

GNB 9/10: In SHB it was perfect. In EW the added cartridge made it clunky but overall the core is still great and SHB gunbreaker is what should be the formula going forward.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Renathras

I was curious what other people's answers would be. But now that I've seen how everyone is rating them, it's got me wondering how I would...

DRK - I can't really say since I've only leveled it to 80 for quests, and that just recently. It seems like...a more clunky WAR, though. So if I gave WAR a 5-6/10, then I suppose DRK would be 4-5/10. I like some of the animations, but the play seems to take the more boring parts of WAR and combine them with some clunk which defeats the purpose of having a simple and utilitarian rotation to begin with. I'm not even sure why DRK is trying to be a WAR clone in the first place...

And DRK...is probably the Tank Job most in need of SOME kind of rework. "WAR but clunkier" isn't a great identity.

---

I'll say it loud and I'll say it proud, I miss heavensward DRK so much. Power slash was hands down the best attack animation in the game, so of course they took it away from us. Yes the kit was hectic, yes it wasn't optimal, yeah we were probably the worst tank in the game, but you know what it was...... FUN TO PLAY!!!!! We had our own style we tanked we had unique move sets, then the dev team decided we were having too much fun and completely destroyed all joy in the class.

Warrior 2.5/10
PLD 3/10
DRK 4/10
GNB 4.5 or 5/10...

But that's if I'm being nice, or only if already considering the most fun XIV rotations (to me, Triple Kick or Optimal Drift Monk and late-Shadowbringers high-SkS [3-GCDs-overclocked] SAM) a 10 instead of a 8 or 9, etc. (i.e., only if leaving no space for those, imo, best rotations' further potential). Still, will reserve 1/10 just for SCH/AST "rotations", so even WAR will have to be notably above that.

As sad as DRK's GCDs are, at least it has some bankability and oGCDs, and generally flows quite smoothly (and not just due to its simplicity), and that dense rush of oGCDs at least does something for me, more so than GNB's Continuation or the like.

Before the Bloodfest change, I would have given GNB a 5 or 5.5, but now there are fewer deviations shaking things up (just full bursts and off-minutes, instead of BF-bursts, lulls, non-BF-bursts, and BF-lulls).

Warrior is just DRK, but with less going on outside of a somewhat interesting GCD gap-closer-as-bonus-nuke.

Before the revision, PLD's rotation would have been a little higher for me. That's not to say the change was for the worst on the whole, even to me, but its charms aren't in its rotation (instead, in situational delaying of Divine Might and other things basically only relevant to dungeon chain-pulls.

Gnb>Drk>Pld>War

Gun breaker keeps my attention throughout an entire fight, because it's on a 30 second loop.
Drk has the most impressive burst phases, but unfortunately a lot of downtime inbetween the 60 second loops it has.
Paladin feels kinda slow but it has some standout moments, being able to cast your gcd from range without a real damage loss feels nice.
War is slooooooooooooooooooow, it's booooooooooooooooring.. The entire War shtick is just.. you're immortal, can do everything and you have your one over centralising ability that reminds me of why i quit playing healer. (Fel cleave) And the people playing this job have a chokehold on tank balance.. So i highly doubt tanks can ever really have rewarding and fun mechanics integrated into their gameplay loops as long as this job exists. All other tanks are just slowly turning into War because they're not allowed to do anything better.

It went from PLD > GNB > WAR > DRK, to PLD being dead last so fast with the last rework it's ridiculous. I'm glad I at least decided to give PLD a chance at EW launch when it was comparatively at its prime, before this "streamlining" nonsense that left a baffling gutted mess. Why the do we need the Expl and Scorn as separate abilities now? Why do we need any DoTs, actually? Let's be honest, the only reason those buttons even exist anymore is because someone doesn't want to waste the animations. The 60s GCD button for a completely superfluous reminder of actual DoT management is just sad. It's a perfectly good job mangled into the 2 minute meta mold right now. Because it's not about making fun gameplay, it's about easier balancing since Square can't be bothered to hire more game designers to manage the extra workload from 4 expansion in their one inarguable and ongoing flagship success in the last 10 years.

PLD: 8/10
GNB: 7/10
WAR: 6/10
DRK: 5.5/10

PLD is still my favorite to play, really they just had to adjust some things on the old rotation, but honestly I like where the new rotation is going. They just need to clean up some things: goring blade, cover, shield bash etc.

GNB while not being my favorite rotation, it feels like it has the most clear and distinct rotation/identity. The 3 cartridges does feel strange at times but that just might be a skill issue

WAR while I don’t hate that the rotation is simple, it feels like it needs that extra something/mechanic to added rotation, and obviously the healing needs to toned down a bit

DRK is WAR with more buttons and none of the healing the burst can be fun at times, but this job is definitely the one that needs the rework hammer that most right now