New to tanking. Dark knight, Paladin, or Warrior?

[TouchandFeel]

This is no longer true as of SB. DRK was made way simpler.

Sorry but I disagree. Even with the changes to DRK, I feel PLD is still more straightforward with how it works.

IMO PLD is more "streamlined" while DRK is a bit more "hectic".

[Tila]

Sorry but I disagree. Even with the changes to DRK, I feel PLD is still more straightforward with how it works.

IMO PLD is more "streamlined" while DRK is a bit more "hectic".

Lost essentially three OGCD (since DP should never be used now), no more mana management, DA almost everything.

It was dumbed down. To an alarming extent.

[Droughboi]

So... which is least played, DRK or WAR?

[Tila]

So... which is least played, DRK or WAR?

Tanks have always had about equal representation, or at least close enough to not really matter. Right now prolly more paladins, but thats because fotm.

[Aescwhisky]

Go with the one you enjoy the most. FOTM changes will impact class population each patch.

[cetrei]

PLD seems to be the recommended beginner's tank, but you can pick WAR if you really want to. The main reason why being that PLD has an enmity AOE that doesn't use TP, many straightforward mitigation CDs, stances dont affect how the job is played too much, and PLD's gauge does not have a major impact outside of tankbusters. WAR, while it does also have many CDs, are not quite as easy to use. Raw Intuition will make you take more damage if used incorrectly, and Inner Beast is tied to the Beast Gauge, which itself is quite harder to manage than PLD's Oath Gauge. Plus WAR's enmity AOE, Overpower, is a conal AOE instead of Flash's simple circular area, and can drain your TP if you use it too much. Not to mention Defiance (tank stance) and Deliverance (dps stance) have much larger and pronounced changes than Sword Oath and Shield Oath. All in all I would pick the job that seems the most appealing to you, but if you really are concerned with how difficult tanking could be I would choose PLD.

[Droughboi]

snip.

THANK YOU. This is the kind of answer I was looking for. Thank you to everyone else who commented as well, but I asked those questions for a reason lol. What appeals to me is difficulty of play, hence why I was asking before I used a character boost. If all 3 are equal them i guess it doesn\\'t matter. Ik things can change as level increases, so I was looking for information on capped tanks. Playing them at a low level won\\'t answer that question specifically.

Would you mind giving me a little info about DRK too? What you said before was great.

[cetrei]

DRK is imo the most difficult tank to play out of the three because it is the most unforgiving and has the heaviest resource management. Many of DRK's abilities require MP, and Darkside stops MP regeneration. Thus, the job revolves around absorbing MP through attacks and abilities so you can keep enmity through its magic AOE attacks, MP being something you can easily run out of if you don't watch your usage. It still has the highest APM out of all of the 3 jobs (and is probably still one of the highest APM jobs in general). Until you get to level 70 it can feel very squishy compared to the other 2 tanks, as you will only have at most 4 mitigation tools (including anticipation) for pulls, one of which blocks magic only. Not to mention DRK's invuln CD, Living Dead, will kill you if your HP is not restored by 100%. I would suggest getting a grip on tanking before you try DRK but it is very fun and fast paced, and has the best job quests in the game.

[Kazzoey]

While I can't tell you how they all play in 4.0, I can give you some ideas with PLD being my main and I can explain that one very well.

Generally speaking, all tanks are well balanced and anyone screaming "Overpowered" are talking about incremental differences. So don't worry about stats, especially since everyone's getting huge balance changes in the upcoming updates. I played all tanks to 60, with only PLD at 70 now.

-WAR: Warrior, from what I can hear and understand, is still the strongest overall tank. It USED to be about long sustains and self heals but that's been nerfed. The whole point of it now is building up guage and spending them on Fell Cleaves for HEAVY damage. They got a rage/berserker theme and is pretty straightforward to play with very little gimmicky-ness to it. From what I've seen, it's the least popular in-game due to the the whole FOTM/trends that always happen with big class changes. PLD got a lot of love so a lot of people are checking it out, but over time they'll all fall back to their other classes. WAR has a very fine line drawn through their stances and, comparatively speaking, is the middle class of difficulty (or was. But still it's not a complicated class). Can't give you any pro's and cons because I haven't played it to max yet.

-DRK: Just like Warrior, I can't give you pros or cons due to me not maxing it either. From what I've heard Dark Knight can hit really good damage (And used to be the AoE king, not sure about now). Once again, not sure if it's still the case, but DRK is pretty heavy on "siphon" attacks that drain HP or MP to help make up for the lack of the straightforward defensive cooldowns that WAR and PLD give. They have the ability called "Dark Arts" which gives all kinds of different effects for certain skills, some effects meaning damage some giving defense or enmity or whatever. It's a really cool little skill that adds a big layer of depth. DRKs are also the kings of stance dancing and were definitely the most complicated to play. I hear polarized opinions about DRK being either dumbed down and simplified, or still just as complicated. Not saying DRK is ultra-mega crazy, but there is(or was) a much more noticeable skill gap between a good and bad player. As of right now, I think DRK is in 2nd place for the most popular tank according to today's tank FOTM trends.

-PLD: Paladin used to be hilariously basic and only using oGCD flat defensive abilities and 1-2-3 combos. As you've probably heard, PLD got a ton of attention this ep to spice up the gameplay and give it identity and people are now yelling "overpowered". PLD comes off as the most straightforward tank but now have a lot more complexity to it rivaling that of Heavensward DRK if you choose to play it to it's maximum potential (Which still isn't that crazy, lol). It is better than the other tanks in pretty much EVERY category, but the problem is that they can really only do one of those things at a time whereas DRK/WAR can do it all at the same time. They do have the best potential DPS, but they have to sacrifice aggro sustain to pull it off (And their full DPS rotation is very long). They have top notch support abilities but they have to give up their damage and aggro sustain to do it (Clemency, Divine Veil, Passage of Arms, Flash, Intervention, Cover) and some of them being hassles to set up and activate. On paper, PLD is overpowered but in practice they are still bottom of the barrel as far as damage output goes. They are absolutely FANTASTIC to play now though and PLD is now the premier "One Man Army" tank capable of soloing content with their self heals. The only area they are truly OP in is solo-content. PLD now has a lot of neat tricks up it's sleave with all their pretty new support skills and oath guage. PLD right now appears to be the most popular tank, most likely due to the overhaul they got and people mostly falsely throwing the word "overpowered" around. Paladin's playstyle can get very hectic now as it is directly involved with the party member(s) just like Healers are and, in my opinion, are "babysitter tanks" as they take care of the party whereas DRK/WAR gets their tools put right into their damage rotations.

IDK if that's what you're looking for. Sorry that I couldn't give hardly any concrete info on DRK/WAR post Stormblood.

[Droughboi]

snip.

Thanks a lot for you and cetrei's input(I'd multi quote but I'm using a phone and it's just too much work lol)

I'm going to fool around with DRK and PLD and see which I like more. If DRK is harder then ill probably pick that.