Tank choice

I've been tanking for many years now and have GNB, DRK and PLD at 100 (not a fan WAR). PLD is my favorite because of the esthetic, the mitigation, Divine Veil, 1 min burst windows, healing on quite a few abilities, clemency, Hallowed ground and it never gets old hearing enemies bounce their heads off my shield. So I'm just curious as to why you chose to main a certain tank?

Paladin for a lot of reasons.
1. It's the first job I started off with, I've always liked Sword and Shield users with magic elements, so I vibed with paladin throughout my first playthrough. I always loved how my character feels as a paladin... It's ingrained to me that they are a Paladin.
2. I love the protector/guardian aspects, other tanks don't really hit that same vibe, sure you take aggro, but with paladin I've always felt like a guardian, which backs up with having extra utility and even niche abilities that can carry such as Clemency.
3. Gameplay wise old shadowbringers/starting Ew paladin was great, while I have some issues with its current rotation (I do not like having no alternate ending ability), other tanks also sort of have the same issue.. warrior the only job that has a different finisher doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. I do also think PLD's still got more interesting gcd gameplay then something like DRK.
4. Last off I'd say I'm a support player at heart, usually leaning towards the more healing side of things but, I do not really like how all healers a full on mages and have one button rotations so Paladin feels like the next best thing in comparison.

I do like GNB and DRK in general too, I'm not a fan of warriors current design.

I agree completely. I forgot to mention i love the flexibility of our rotation if you have to use support abilities etc. I also forgot to mention passage of arms which I get a lot of love for using properly.

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Originally Posted by RinaB

I agree completely. I forgot to mention i love the flexibility of our rotation if you have to use support abilities etc. I also forgot to mention passage of arms which I get a lot of love for using properly.

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Passage feels so nice ontop of having veil and reprisal you can almost always mitigate some sort of aoe damage even double dip into mitigation if needed.

So nice to have magic ranged attacks, I really liked how divine might was implemented so you could have moments mid rotation where you can disengage from bosses, even choosing when you need that small burst heal, leads to a lot of creativity.

I do wish goring blade was different which is my main issue with Paladin right now, I dont think we need a button that exists for burst when we already got serval massive burst buttons in the holy blade combo... I'd love to see goring blade a GCD, just not a sctrict Dot like it was as that would ruin the current flexibility of Plds rotation

Yeah, I've been thinking about goring blade....it honestly just feels like a gcd I'd rather skip and continue on with req...I'm gonna think about it more because you're right about how it would ruin our flexibility. Maybe it could reduce the armor or attack speed of the current target by X % and all other enemies in a frontal cone by Y % regardless of whether it's a boss or not

Gunbreaker cus gunblade lol I'm a fan of gunblades and ff8 xD

I tend to play healers primarily. This has over the by now ... 26 years of MMO gaming led to me usually preferring healing centric DPS and Tank (and CC, Debuff and Buff in older games) characters.

So for my tank, I naturally prefer Paladin with Clemency and Passage of Arms and Cover. And Red Mage for my DPS.

I prefer DRK and GNB because I enjoy doing burst windows with lots of inputs, keeping track of resources, and strict rotations in the case of GNB. Although I’m probably going to lean more towards GNB for the forseeable future, because I feel both GNB and DRK were made less interesting in Dawntrail but DRK was downgraded more of the two (I only enjoy doing its 2 minute burst now, but for GNB I still enjoy both the 2 minute and odd minute bursts).

As someone who only got to the endgame in Endwalker it feels the devs just want to make DRK and GNB simpler/easier more than they want to add anything interesting to compensate. So I’ll have to see what they do in the future. If DRK and GNB keep getting made simpler I’ll probably change to having a different role be my main.

Dark Knight because I can kind of greed my MPs and that feels like the only choice I can make playing a tank. I'm not a fan of the edgelord design but the audio effects are very cool and I like the idea of a mixed physical/mage tank (even though as usual it means nothing in this game).

Class fantasy wise, Dark Knight and Warrior appeal to me the most, but their slow animations of heaving a weapon around look strange as a Lalafell. Paladin and Gunbreaker more deftly moving their weapons around looks more appropriate, but I do not like their class fantasies as much, particularly paladin which feels lame. Dark knight has the best lookimg armor set (Endwalker), so I play that when I need to tank.

Mainly, I like the Paladin aesthetic and have always liked the sword and shield as a weapon. I do also enjoy the gameplay, both before and after the rework.

At this point, my character is a Paladin and that is how I go through the story, anything else would just be...weird.

Dark Knight.
Oblation and Dark Mind at 60s is broken
TBN being on 15s instead of 25 is a lot stronger than people give it credit for.
Being stronger than DPS jobs during burst windows is very applicable to this game, and DRK has been the #1 tank in content that matters since 6.0, likely wont be changing in 7.0

Big sword - long. Big axe - sharp. Hit hard. Do brrr!

Paladin is my main. I love the aesthetic, the armor, the sword/shield, the holy knight concept. And the Confiteor blade combo is my favorite of all the tanks, and Passage of Arms is my favorite ability in the game.

Dark Knight. Back in 2.5 I was struggling to find a class that really suited my style. In 2.0 when the game launched on ps3 I loved SMN, but I always like to be in the face of the boss, that real main character energy. I tried PLD to get used to tanking before 3.0 and when DRK was released I fell in love with the DRK theme. The job quest for DRK was fantastic and made me love the class even more.

DRK has had its ups and downs and to this day nothing beats HW/SB versions of DRK. But there is nothing like classic RPG fantasy of having a greatsword in your hand.

WAR specifically for the Dwarven Mythril Hammer. Wish it was dyeable.

Aesthetic wise I'm drawn to WAR more than any in the role. Axes are awesome. It also has the most rowdy aesthetic of 4 tanks, which is one of the biggest soft spot in my book. I'm also usually "60% aesthetic 40% gameplay"-kind of player ;)

Gameplay wise DRK probably takes the cake ever since they give birth to Bloodwhetting. But before that, WAR was the top contender. I do dungeons way more than anything else in the game. Having at least three different AoE shapes made maneuvering trash mobs very satisfying when I'm able to strike all targets. TBN, like Oizen mentioned, is also an absolute bonker provided we don't forget about MP (oh wow, a job that wants me to watch my MP lol).

Oh yeah, also because we've lost Bolide meme, Living Dead is the only remaining tank skill that has any capacity to scare uninformed healers... xD +1 for giggles & sh!t point.