FFXIV Rocks ...

[Sapphidia]

I certainly feel FFXIV has done a great thing in making tanking appeal to players who otherwise wouldn't gravitate towards the role, as it's a very aggressive DPS-centered playstyle.

I'd personally sadly counter the OPs point and say that in its current state, tanking in FFXIV is very unappealing to me (a career tank across multiple MMOs for 10-15 years now) and I'm considering swapping away from it if it doesn't change in the upcoming raids. I do know I'm in the minority for this viewpoint, but I really detest how tanks here are forced to focus almost exclusively on improving their DPS output at the expense of their toughness. I do it, but begrudgingly.

I'm the kind of player that gets far far more satisfaction from eating a huge tankbuster and see my health bar barely move, rather than one who enjoys huge attack crits or topping DPS meters. There's very little involvement in the damage mitigation aspects of the game in FFXIV, compared to something like TERA where you were literally pinpoint-timing blocks to match ever single boss's attack animation every second or two (a good tank in Tera that was super good at timing blocks/dodges would literally take zero damage in a fight and allow the healer to focus on improving party dps, a bad tank would eat hits to the face and crumple). Obviously very different combat systems, but the feeling still applies.

I still main Paladin here, and do enjoy it above other roles, but there's this nagging feeling that FFXIV doesnt have the mechanics or systems to let me feel like I'm improving my tankiness and the meta forces me to gear up and play in a way that puts far more onus on the healers. It's a shame there's no real compromise, because if they made all the fights in FFXIV be entirely about timing mitigation abilities and gearing up to be that immortal brick wall, a lot of players would be turned off tanking because they couldn't do their aggressive DPS-stance tanking that basically IS playing a DPS class who happens to pop a tank cooldown at scripted points.

I applaud the devs for making tanking appealing to more players than the average MMO, but sadly the current state of tanks is very unappealing to a select few tank-focussed players who actually -like- being the immovable wall and punching bag. We're the minority though.