SE must be drunk.

[Reynhart]

Maybe you should go find another MMO with the kind of tank you want instead of forcing your ideas onto the people that like FFXIV's style of tanking. You want the game to reward only one type of tank: the one that you like.

Actually, the current meta is what has been forced on all kind of tanks. Forced by blind sheep that rejected everything else because the World First race in Gordias actually required that...a raid that was acknowledged as bad design by the dev team themselves. Forced to the point that, if our gear suddenly have parry stat on it (You know, the actual mitigation stats), then people are pissed. Even back then, Vit accessories, the only one where we can actually roll "need" on, were avoided because of this meta.

And as I've said, we have 3 tank jobs, and we'll probably receive a 4th one in the next expansion. Why should all of them have to tank the same way ?

Of the two, damage is the more desirable, because surviving longer means more incoming damage means more effective HP overall needed. The shorter the fight, the less effective HP you need.

If I take 500 damage per second during a three minute fight, I'll need more effective HP than if I take 400 damage per second during a three and a half minute fight.

This isn't even going into the fact that unreliable mitigation just screws over healers, because they'll naturally always plan their heals for the case where you don't mitigate and end up overhealing.

There are plenty of ways to make Parry reliable. Make parry and block an active skill that reduces damaged base on your parry stat, make mitigation CD scale with parry, like WS scale of AP, Det and Crit...