If You Were A Class/Job Designer...

[eagledorf]

DRK and WAR I would make only a few changes. DRK more so than WAR to buff its usability as OT and defensive abilities slightly.

PLD would need more changes, which I won't bother listing here (none of which are difficult). The reason isn't that PLD is so weak or anything (you could fix that by just increasing potencies or whatever), but because of how the job works at level 50 and how all three jobs work at level 60. If, for example, you want to balance hate and also have people be able to keep Halone up as a debuff at level 60 as OT, a way to manage hate will probably start being necessary or it'll force other tanks to use hate combos or turn on the tank stance, sacrificing potency or the other tank's debuff and forcing PLD out of the OT role, etc.

[Shurrikhan]

If just for the sake of balance and QoL, I'd probably make relatively few changes.

• I'd combine Skill and Spell speed into "Haste" which affects attack speed and oGCD damage (a bit higher than SS's effect on DoTs),
• reduce Provoke's CD a bit, have spells cancel combo only upon completion, change Defiance into "healing received" instead of only "healing received from spells" and possibly do the same to Mantra and Convalescence, and nerf Equilibrium's healing only enough to compensate,
• change Grit and Oaths into abilities and halve Grit's MP cost,
• increase RoH potency to 280,
• reduce DA cost to 1500 (~17%?),
• increase Fracture's DoT potency from 20 to 25 while increasing TP cost from 80 to 90,
• have Flash scale with Fight or Flight,
• allow Cover's transfer to be toggled while active, use the highest mitigation of self or target, and decrease its cooldown to 1 minute,
• have Dark Arts-Dark Dance automatically parry any attack that cannot be dodged,
• allow Soul Survivor to be used on an ally such that you increase the ally's parry and evasion stats or dodges stat by your own (base, doesn't transfer DD bonuses) and either parries or dodges performed by either to proc effects for both (allowing OT reprisal). Self-healing overheals heal the other. If either you or your ally dies, the other receives 20% HP and MP.
• have Spirit's Within generate MP equal to 50% of its damage dealt,
• and possibly allow blocks while casting
• and/or reduce Stoneskin base cast time back to 2.5 seconds, and have its trait instead decrease its mana cost by 20%. (Stoneskin II will be reduced to a 5-second cast, also at 20% less mana cost.)

If from the ground up, though... well, then there's a lot more...

[Khalithar]

A few things, though they would probably drastically change how the classes play.

Warrior:

Remove stance requirements on all the V stack moves.

Dark Knight:

Lower the MP consumption of Darkside.
Lower the MP costs of all the MP consuming moves by about 50% to give Drk more MP to play with and placing less emphasis on the MP game.

Paladin:

Give them another attack that requires MP to use on single target. On the average boss with no adds, Pld has no reason to use any of their MP at all. I'd like to give pld some sort of damage dealing move that requires them to use some MP. I don't want pld to have to play the MP game like drk does, but I'd like to give pld some other reason to use their MP.

[MoarLegion]

PLD: Potencies and the like more or less left as they are now.
Shield Block is still possible while casting and will prevent interruption.
Divine Veil: Each application of an active divine veil grants one stack of inspirit to party members in range. Inspirit: +1% damage done per stack, maximum 5 stacks.
Fight or Flight: Grants 1 stack of Inspirit to nearby party members when used.
Clemency: Your shield blocks have a 20% chance to make your next Clemency instant-cast. (On the fence if this should be on GCD or not).

The idea is to supplement PLD's turtle tank nature with more raid utility. Instant-cast Clemency helps get stacks up during burst phases and is an extra, useful button for general tanking. It's still an eZmode kit, just a little deeper.

Dark Knight: Potencies still mostly the same.
Dark Arts+Dark Dance: Adds 10% damage reduction in addition to parry bonus.
Scourge and Salted Earth: Damage from these abilities has a 2% chance to reset Reprisal.
Delirium:

DRK only needs a couple QoL changes to better equipped, but still not as defensive oriented as PLD. DA+DD becomes slightly less useless in a raid environment without letting people abuse it's short CD too much. I didn't want to change blood weapon and grit because I think they fall into the theme of drk, which involves a little risk/reward.

WAR: Vengeance no longer grants a stack of abandon(still grants wrath in defiance).
Equilibrium: Cure potency reduced to 1000.

WAR is more or less where it should be, and I wouldn't be against leaving it unchanged. I think it needs to be toned down a bit. Equilibrium I think is a little unbalanced but I wouldn't want to see it reduced to uselessness.

[shao32]

Scourge and Salted Earth: Damage from these abilities has a 2% chance to reset Reprisal.

i like this one.

[Joe_Schmoe]

Paladin: Party heals, defensive party buffs, defense.

Warrior: Enemy debuffs, offense, party DPS boosts.

Dark Knight: Greatly enhanced damage, self-healing, and defense that damages/debuffs both allies and enemies, if only to break out of the "hybrid tank" mold.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Keeping it as simple as possible:

PLD designed around shield blocks and cooldowns.
WAR designed around ignoring pain/mini-stoneskins with a focus on active mitigation.
DRK designed around self heals, reactive leech effects and preventative damage shields.

Warrior Designed Around DPS Tanking/Stance Dancing.
PLD Designed Around Typical Mitigation Tanking/Holy Magic/Auras.
Dark Knight Designed around Lifetap/Leeching/High Damage Melee DOTs that can be spread.

[bbrooks189]

Class changes would be nice, but one thing I've seen a lot of other games do and would like to see in Ffxiv is they break up attacks into smaller parts.
So for example if a tank buster hits for 21K, instead of 1 21k hit, it would be broken up into 3 7k hits. The outgoing damage is the and but if would be a buff to parry and block. Parry isn't used because it isn't reliable (plus it scales terribly) but with this you'd have three chances for parry to work as apposed to one. You sort of see that with holy blade dance but it would be nice to see more attacks work that way.

[WolfKid]

Class changes would be nice, but one thing I've seen a lot of other games do and would like to see in Ffxiv is they break up attacks into smaller parts.
So for example if a tank buster hits for 21K, instead of 1 21k hit, it would be broken up into 3 7k hits. The outgoing damage is the and but if would be a buff to parry and block. Parry isn't used because it isn't reliable (plus it scales terribly) but with this you'd have three chances for parry to work as apposed to one. You sort of see that with holy blade dance but it would be nice to see more attacks work that way.

I wouldnt mind if busters were more like that...... Unless they start CRITing...

[Februs]

Fun topic lol. Completely disregarding current issues of balance and whatnot for the sake of having some fun with this, my re-designs would be:

Dark Knight:

Changed to actually be a DARK FREAKING KNIGHT. This means HP management, rather than MP management. Drk offensive moves would burn Hp to deal additional dps, rather than Mp. Defensive utilities would be tuned to siphon hp from enemies or regain hp based on dmg being absorbed. They would have the biggest Dps package (sorry to you War's out there), but at the cost of possibly killing themselves if they used it too much (ie: instead of running out of Mp, you can flat out die if you're not managing your abilities correctly).

Their ultimate offensive strategy would be to sacrifice party Hp for increases to party offense (ie: Party Hp is reduced by 10%, but Party Dmg output increased by 10%) It would be the riskiest tank to play as, and healers would utterly HATE it, but it would be super fun.

Warriors:

Self healing is fine, I guess. War's are already the most realized tank in the game and have a pretty strong identity, so it's hard to come up with anything knew for them. If I wanted to change something about them, it would probably be the way their "wrath" works. Berserk, in particular, would be changed.

I'd make Berserk a Wrath related ability that completely rages the War (ie: War goes Berserk). All defensive moves are locked (and canceled if Berserk is activated), and they can only use Wrath/abandon moves (ie: Fell cleave could be spammed for the entire duration of Berserk). Using Berserk would basically be: RAGE MONSTER ACTIVATED. Which could be offensive or Defensive, depending on if you are in Deliverance or Defiance (Inner Beast could also be spammed). Fun times, but, again, would probably get you killed a lot if you used it incorrectly...

Paladins:

This one is tricky. Personally, I would have wanted them to stick with the Gladiator roots a little, because I really like the idea of being a sword master. This means that Skill Speed needs to be jacked, like, astronomically jacked. I'm talkin' on par with Monks kind of jacked, and their job needs to be all about Tp management.

Pld is the clunkiest tank, at the moment, when it should be the fastest tank out of all 3. they have a one handed sword with the fastest auto-attack. Their skill speed should reflect this. Because they use a sword and shield, they should be about give and take. Block mechanics for Tp regen. Attacks for Tp expenditures. This would probably mean more Defensive/offensive moves involving their shield, to allow for greater Tp regens. I'm thinking an alternative combo to GB which uses a tp regenning shield move instead of Riot Blade, or just changing Riot blade's effect depending on what Oath the Pld is in. Another alternative is to change Pld combos to have positional requirements when in Sword Oath (when Off Tanking, basically), which provide different effects.

Further, to keep things smooth and fluid, all of their current casting abilities should be oGCD (Clemency, I'm looking at you), and their attack effects should change depending on Oath. For example, Hallowed Ground makes target invulnerable to attacks when in shield oath. In Sword Oath, Pld loses invulnerability, but gains the status of "save the queen," which increases Pld skill speed and potency while removing all Tp costs. It would also allow change their party support abilities. For example, Clemency (if it's up) would have a reduced potency, but be party wide. DV would be a regen instead of shield and increase the skill speed of all party members in range, etc. It would be the fastest and most mobile tank of the 3.

Again, none of this considers any balancing or whatever. Just a bit of fun.