My take on Samurai as a tank

[Velhart]

I thought Samurai was just a possible tank, before they had decided to give Dark Knight that honor. Meaning when/if we do get Samurai, it's a safe bet it's going to be dps. o.o;

Chances are it will be a DPS. It could easily go the other way. He had a hard time deciding to let DRK or SAM be the next tank but ultimately pick DRK. Logic says he would give SAM the DPS role, but who knows truly how SE thinks over there.

[Bulwyf]

I do not want the Samurai to be a tank. We have zero sword DPS classes. I want the Samurai to be a DPS class.

[Reignald]

I would have been okay with samurai being a tank before we got dark knight. While the style and skills are different between warrior and dark knight, having a third 2-handed tank is just silly at this point. I'd like to see a new tank that is thematically and visually different.

[Welsper59]

I would have been okay with samurai being a tank before we got dark knight. While the style and skills are different between warrior and dark knight, having a third 2-handed tank is just silly at this point. I'd like to see a new tank that is thematically and visually different.

There really aren't a whole lot of options left that wouldn't be overlapping at this point. I guess they could try to utilize a force/magic shield type of character where the weapon/source of power is a magic infused orb and gauntlet. Think Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet. It'd essentially be like an Archon from Starcraft, Master Chief from Halo, etc. The mechanics would be unusual in this case though, as they'd have to develop a shield gauge to measure (not just the blind way it works now with jobs like WAR, AST, and SCH) and low actual HP. I suppose they could just set it as a generic buff, like current tank stances, but that sadly removes a lot of the unique functions. Although, coupling that with unusual stat focus like MND for the shielding strength would be a little too out there too, especially when you consider role competition for the same drops.

[Shippuu]

But some people are really hurt that not all SAMs in FF wear Heavy Armor.

Or it could be people bothered that you're being disingenuous at best. You don't get to sweep the RPG mechanics of past FF games and this one when it comes to equipment types to the side just because they don't fit your narrative. You're only viable argument for samurai in past FF games not wearing their usual heavy armor is a game where there was no armor equipment itemization or classification and thus only the visual look of the job could matter, and even then their design is a questionable, being not solely light robes/clothe, but not entirely heavy armor, but a mixture of both. It doesn't change the fact that Samurai in every FF game wore some kind of heavy armor, from a visual and game mechanic standpoint. No job looked like it's FF equivalent in FF12 on top of the fact the samurai in the game isn't even technically called a samurai going back to what I've said before in that jobs in FF games that don't generally have the iconic samurai armor are deliberately not called Samurai. And even most of those that aren't called samurai and don't have an armored appearance still equip heavy armor from a gameplay perspective (Swordmaster from Bravely etc.)

Chances are it will be a DPS. It could easily go the other way. He had a hard time deciding to let DRK or SAM be the next tank but ultimately pick DRK. Logic says he would give SAM the DPS role, but who knows truly how SE thinks over there.

Logic stands that SAM would still be kept as a tank option since it wasn't used as a DPS option in the same expansion where they chose DRK as the tank. I don't know what kind of logic this is: "We have two jobs that would be perfect for the next tank, we picked one of them for this expansion, so let's turn the other one into a DPS for the next expansion." That makes zero sense logically.

[Kazrah]

If you can't seem to think of how vastly different a Samurai could be then that's on your lack of imagination.

I can think of a few ways:

1) Lose the dumb armored look by making it tank in monk-level STR armor while giving it half the buffs it needs to tank as passives and the other half as something they'd have to juggle in their rotation along with a threat rotation.
2) Give it means to have some other stat increase how much damage is reduced by Parry.
3) If it's going to counterattack, set it to a cooldown that would also parry all attacks (spells and melee, including AoE), increase it's Parry amount by some bonkers number and have that as their panic button.
4) A spell reflect with a cooldown along the lines of Sheltron.
5) Have them use the Iaido style with most of the attacks using just the katana and have attack combos end with dual-wielding.
6) Lastly, make the overall goal of Samurai as a tank being a "high risk, high reward" tank instead of just another tin can with a fresh coat of paint.

Have to remember it's not about just imagination. It's about practicality in understanding what SE can do with the systems it has in place as well.

Again, this thread is about Samurai as a tank so your yammering about SAM dps overlapping with Ninja is pretty moot.

This just seems to me like an excuse for not knowing. Sure, you could put it in that stereotypical heavy armor or have it in something lighter, have it just using a katana or have it dual-wield and give it a saboteur style of attacks with a series of small debuffing strikes followed by one massive hit. In the end though, no matter how much you dress it up, it's still just another fast Japanese-themed job darting around with curved blades.

Oh right, and devs mentioned Samurai will likely be DPS. The end.

[Beetle]

No to tank Sam.

Have nothing against tanks, just sam can't be one.

[Reignald]

There really aren't a whole lot of options left that wouldn't be overlapping at this point.

Personally I'd love to see beastmaster as a tank. Not sure about the logistics of it but having the beast and the beastmaster having linked hp etc would be different and interesting enough for me, although I could see some people just writing it off as a summoner tank. But they need to do a lot of work with pet AI and such before something like that would be good enough as well.

[Shippuu]

1) Lose the dumb armored look by making it tank in monk-level STR armor while giving it half the buffs it needs to tank as passives and the other half as something they'd have to juggle in their rotation along with a threat rotation.
2) Give it means to have some other stat increase how much damage is reduced by Parry.
3) If it's going to counterattack, set it to a cooldown that would also parry all attacks (spells and melee, including AoE), increase it's Parry amount by some bonkers number and have that as their panic button.
4) A spell reflect with a cooldown along the lines of Sheltron.
5) Have them use the Iaido style with most of the attacks using just the katana and have attack combos end with dual-wielding.
6) Lastly, make the overall goal of Samurai as a tank being a "high risk, high reward" tank instead of just another tin can with a fresh coat of paint.

Before i dive into this list, I want to point out what you said after it:

Have to remember it's not about just imagination. It's about practicality in understanding what SE can do with the systems it has in place as well.

You're exactly right, which is why your #1 is absolutely pointless.
1) You're either giving it an entirely new set that isn't shared by any other job, or you're making it share gear with a DPS job. While there's some benefits to the latter, it has some major downsides. Firstly, adding more unique types of armor is bad for the already polluted loot pools so that shouldn't be broached at all. And having a single tank share gear with a dps while the other tanks all share their own kind of gear is problematic. While it makes it easier for a DPS player to break into the tank role, it alienates the existing tank players and provides a problem with them having to select which tanks they want to gear, instead of being able to gear them all at once because of their shared gear.
SE's decision to have tanks and healers share gear is not only one of convenience for developing armor, but also for convenience for these roles. With healers and tanks often always in demand it works as a better incentive to allow them to gear multiple jobs in the same role simultaneaously. This is why adding a new tank that breaks this mold is less ideal. Also, having tanks competing with dps for gear on loot rolls is also another somewhat problematic idea and should generally be avoided.

2) This is fine and something I've talked about before with potential things like a tank stance that allows the tank to parry 100% of all attacks (Resulting in a 20% damage mitigation) and then applying the actual parry stat to something like an "over-parry" which would act like a normal parry mitigation-wise on top of the tank stance parry. i.e. they proc an over-parry and they take 40% less damage from the attack (20% from stance parry + 20% from over-parry). This keeps parry as a stat relatively the same.

3) This is fine too.

4) I've had similar ideas for this as well. Active parry/counters that would work on attacks/magical attacks.

5) This is fine too, I've advocated for dual wielding Samurai myself, and my ideal Tank Samurai would be dual wield in tank stance, and single wield/iaido for offensive stance. Unrealistic though because of animation reasons alone.

6) It can still be a high risk, high reward styled tank while wearing fending armor like the other tanks.

Oh right, and devs mentioned Samurai will likely be DPS. The end.

Back to this again. One, only Yoshi P said anything about SAM potentially being a DPS. He's also not the end-all, be-all to what happens to this game. Look back a few pages to see what he really said as to why he considers SAM for the DPS role. He has never had an interview where he talked about SAM as a DPS where he also didn't mention it as a potential Tank either.

No to tank Sam.
Have nothing against tanks, just sam can't be one.

SAM most certainly can be a tank. And very likely will be one.

[Shippuu]

Personally I'd love to see beastmaster as a tank. Not sure about the logistics of it but having the beast and the beastmaster having linked hp etc would be different and interesting enough for me, although I could see some people just writing it off as a summoner tank. But they need to do a lot of work with pet AI and such before something like that would be good enough as well.

I feel like everyone who mentions BST for a tank never actually thinks about the full rammifications of such a job. Not even touching how much additional work would need to be done just to have a pet AI that isn't total garbage that makes the job being added pretty much an impossibility.

If the BST and his pet have linked health, then what happens if they're both standing in front of an enemy and eat cleaves? Do both targets get hit thus the tank takes double damage? On top of that, the tank is now potentially 2 targets to heal instead of one? Why would healers want to bring a tank that requires additional healing? If the pet doesn't take damage from cleaves/attacks/mechanics then that opens it up to plenty of exploits. Does the pet tank? Or is it just an accessory to the actual tank? Microing pet actions while tanking sounds like something a lot of tank players and potential tank players would find problematic and get in the way of them using appropriate cooldowns or handling mechanics. We have enough problems with people playing the tanks we have poorly like DRK, adding a much more complex tank to that mix isn't the best idea from a business standpoint.

Not to mention BST isn't anywhere close to being as popular or requested as other options. It'd just be a bad business move all around. It doesn't mean it's impossible, and it could be done. But it's just highly, highly unlikely.