Unchained. Seriously, why are we not abusing this skill?

[Shurrikhan]

I'll come back to this thread the day that I actually see a War volunteer to actually "TANK" something ... ANYTHING. I can't imagine that will be anytime soon, though. Seeing a war in Defiance is about as rare as a purple spotted unicorn. I don't think I've seen one since the Coil days ... God I miss the Coils ...

In DF 8-man content with a swap and where Path is at all useful, the usual assumption is that I, the WAR, will pull, and then the Sword Oath / no-Grit PLD/DRK will take it off me. Sadly, with no swaps, they tend to just pull even if I'm already in Defiance, despite that I could have allowed them full Sword Oath if they were to swap in on Pacify. "I'll be like, want to Sword Oath?" and they'll be like "That's okay, I'll just MT," and I'll be like "that's my point..." and they'll be like /confused...

Also tend to just MT fulltime as WAR if I'm with a PLD. If they let me. ...They rarely do.

That said, I'm no WAR main. I tend to PLD anything that HG or Cover can cheese, DRK if I'm with a NIN or WAR friend, and WAR the rest simply for the guaranteed NIN-ish tools (threat, slashing) when queuing solo. No-Grit DRK MTing is my preferred gameplay, if my internet can handle double-weaves, and stance-dancing WAR my second favorite.

[Februs]

Also tend to just MT fulltime as WAR if I'm with a PLD. If they let me. ...They rarely do.

Sadly, it's a side-effect of the prevailing mentality. Even I have pretty much given up on the idea of Off Tanking anything as Pld, because the general attitude of the majority of War's since 3.0 is that they are a Dps class, not a Tank. I can't count how many runs I've done where I entered the instance in No Oath or Sword Oath, and the War just stood there picking their nose while they waited for me to pull. Worse yet is the Wars who run head first into a mob encounter (typically the early entrance mobs of A2 / M2) with Deliverance on and get their shit kicked in and lose enmity to the Dps. I end up having to swap Oaths and do damage control just to cover for their mistakes, so there's not point to even considering not being the MT. It's not like anyone trusts them to do the job after they've already cocked it up once. No one wants to be stuck in a dungeon all day while the War tries and fails to prove how hard they are.

The same goes for Proxy pulls. Firstly, the fact that people use War as a surrogate for generating enmity is a testament to how utterly broken Pld's kit is. That's sheer lunacy, and SE isn't kidding anyone if they try to say otherwise. Secondly, It's not a tactic that I trust when In DF. I could just be super unlucky with the parties I end up getting, but there is no way in hell I'm going to trust the other tank to even know or understand what a proxy pull is, let alone successfully do one.

Most of this can't be faulted to War's though. If I'm going to point a finger at anyone, the first people to fall under blame is the folks working at SE. I love Pld as a job. I like what it could have been, and the sword and board is still my preferred style of combat. I just wish that SE had taken the same time and consideration when making Pld as they did with War and Drk. The fact that Pld's most useful utility comes in the extremely rare instances in which they can cheese mechs with HG is more than enough proof that SE just didn't put enough thought into the job, and their current idea of a Tank balance is a humorless joke.