Has SE screwed itself?

[Gamemako]

As I said, you only have to increase def/mdef by 90% and the hp increase it would require would be nowhere *near* 150%.

You're 1000 base HP behind plus 25% of total. At level 50, that's at least a 50% advantage, plus equipment discrepancy.

The positioning, enmity, and "anything else obviously missing" (like... what? tank CDs? PGL already gets 3) aren't even really issues. The devs have explicitly said that they can change the secondary effects of abilities with job changes.

So all it would require is a complete design 180, removing all positional and combo requirements (can't have stance requirement on enmity generation), completely redoing Greased Lightning (can't have warm-up on enmity generation), vastly boosting HP, giving an boosted AoE enmity generation (50 potency means you'll be permanently reliant on cross-class Flash), adding ranged enmity somewhere (not enough ability slots), adding a tanking stance (not enough ability slots), etc. All this so you can what, use 25% Featherfoot against trash mobs and still get stomped by every single opponent of consequence?

And those are actually pretty rare.

Full sets at 23, 32, 38, 46. Rare compared to what, now? You can't even get any asymmetric pants until ilvl40 Paladin set. There's no pre-15 tank gear, so if we neglect the ilvl8-12 asymmetric stuff, then you have all of 10 pieces of pre-30 asymmetric armor. If you wanted to extend up to ilvl50 (excluding DRG AF), you have:

Feet -- 4 tank, 3 asymmetric
Legs -- 4 tank, 2 asymmetric
Waist -- 0 tank, 2 asymmetric
Hands -- 4 tank, 9 asymmetric
Body -- 6 tank, 9 asymmetric
Head -- 6 tank, 10 asymmetric

Total: 24 tank, 35 asymmetric

If you exclude pre-30 equipment, the count would be 18 tank, 25 asymmetric. I would hardly call that "rare" in any case. You're really just not paying any attention. Better still, it's the asymmetric sets which are random as hell. Leg and foot pieces are rare -- there are all of 3 pieces which are not random dungeon drops (Boarskin Skirt on legs, Mythril and Cobalt Sollerets on feet). Tank stuff mostly comes in complete and craftable sets, with just two chestpieces (ilvl40 Kokoroon and ilvl50 Mosshorn) and two helmets (ilvl22 Doctore's and ilvl44 Reinforced Mythril Elmo) orphaned. The only reason you think that asymmetric equipment is "LNC" is because of endgame DRG equipment. That exists because DRG is a DPS job and is the only job from the class at this time.

Hell, PGL actually has a better native CD suite than LNC does which gives them a leg up right off the bat.

Featherfoot vs. Keen Flurry, Second Wind vs. Life Surge. Not really compelling. So what does PGL have? A gimped version of Convalescence for itself (20% over 15s compared to 30% over 20s) that comes at level 42 and is pretty much useless before 48? That's your killer cooldown?

You don't have to make a concession for anything for the 15-30 dungeons when they level sync down. Whispering Dawn has a 60 sec CD so it's nowhere *near* Medica on effectiveness.

AoE isn't a frequent need, but that doesn't suddenly make it a non-issue. As for the "big heal", that's level 30 for both existing jobs, and cleanse is level 40 for SCH (Leeches).

Because, you know, the "squishiest melee", as you call it, would still stay squishy if given the proper tank changes.

Changing that requires a fundamental class design change. You call flat-out redoing every single ability such that it bears nothing at all in common with the base class. Snap Punch combo has to lose all positional bonuses and all combo requirements, making it... well, absolutely nothing like the original. Greased Lightning goes out the door completely, replaced with an entirely separate mechanic. Arm of the Destroyer needs a redo to fix balance -- can't have Silence on primary enmity generator, potency is far too low. Steel Peak requires a redo just as Brutal Swing does (though this issue is shared between LNC and PGL), but Steel Peak comes way too late for a tank. What do you have left? Twin Snakes, Demolish, and Touch of Death as random and irrelevant damage abilities, and then everything else is completely and fundamentally changed. The class has an even weaker CD suite than MRD, meaning key survival mechanics have to be stuffed into job abilities. WAR does this at level 35, throwing everything into 1 ability, while coming with a tank design out the gate (HP, enmity, defense, appropriate abilities). PGL not only needs some absurd stance which increases HP, defense, and enmity by huge amounts, it also needs a ranged pull ability just to have the most basic of functionality. This can't be cross-classed, either. So now you have to grab something like Touch of Death and turn it into a completely unrelated and new ability as well. There's nothing left of PGL at this point except for a few animations.

LNC would require reworking or adding a large amount of gear thanks to existing inconsistencies.... [etc]

• LNC gear is, as I showed previously, fine already. Only thing you'd need to do is add AF and endgame stuff, plus a belt or three.
• Yes, both require tank stances -- no way to avoid it for any DPS-turned-tank.
• Your claim about PGL CDs is still rubbish.
• LNC positional requirements apply only to two DPS-boosting abilities (Heavy Thrust and Impulse Drive) and could be handled a number of ways -- a one-off ability or a stance or whatever. PGL requirements apply to every attack in the main combo plus Twin Snakes and have no way to be addressed except to be completely thrown out and a new, unrelated potency number assigned to each attack.
• LNC has a normal combo in Full Thrust. PGL does not. PGL will need to boost the potency of attacks to keep up with enmity needs as well as boost potency of DoTs to address damage issues.

10k gil is nothing so I'm not even sure what you were trying to say with that bet.

Mitt Romney joke.

Also, I never said that PGL would be guaranteed to get a tank job, simply that I believe that it would be much more likely to get one than LNC. If you want to make a bet that PGL will get a tank job before LNC, I'll take you up on that, mainly because I honestly think that they'll bring in a light armor tank before they bring in another heavy armor tank. The fact that, from a developmental standpoint, PGL also presents an easier target for "tankification" is just icing on the cake.

You're on.

For the record, I'm pulling for PGL healer.