Is Warrior the weakest of the tanks?

[Shinkyo]

So. Since the utility seems to not mean much to a lot of people we can just remove passage of arms, divine veil, Intervention without replacement. Shouldnt bother most of the people then

You're slightly taking the discussion off context here.
PLD utility is the very reason why if you had to choose 1 tank, you'd want to take them over WAR/DRk. Whether you use the Utility or not, it's still free extra tools to help with the content. There's no denying that given the choice, PLD brings more to the table.
Is the the utility significant enough to make WAR or DRK undesirable? Not at all.
If WAR's slightly better CD kit and dps is considered a marginal contribution, then the same should be said to PLD's Utility.
None of the tanks have significant advantage that make any of them weak.
They all perform virtually equally well in all significant content, PLD bring nice to have optional utility to the mix.

[Lyth]

I think we can extend this principle to all aspects of tanking. Do you think that having a 150-200 dps advantage over another tank at most performance percentiles is negligible? If so, you shouldn't mind the dps difference being equalised. Do you think that having access to the largest free mitigation cooldown kit in the game doesn't really give you an advantage in tanking content? If so, then you shouldn't mind if the tank cooldowns are re-balanced so that every tank pays similar costs to mitigate and has equal access to free defensive cooldowns. If you think that having an oGCD eHP-based tank stance is a disadvantage compared to %DR one that costs both resources and GCDs to swap into, then surely you wouldn't mind a bit of equalisation.

I think when you have to start prefacing your all of posts with disclaimers like this:

We do more dps, yes.
[...]
Yes, we have the best mitigation.
[...]
But...

then you probably have to re-evaluate what your core tanking objectives are (I assure you, blowing bubbles and magical girl transformation poses are not a part of this). There isn't a whole lot else that you can have an advantage in, as a tank.

Actually, in most cases, people don't actually care about the "utility", even when they're capable of defining what they mean by the word. The typical argument on this forum is "You can blow bubbles, so buff us so we do even higher dps." When you turn that around and say, "Oh, let's share the "utility" (bubbles for all!), but give us your cool stuff, like high dps numbers, free oGCD stance dancing, high mobility and enmity generation, and lots of free personal mitigation cooldowns", then you see the homogenisation card come out. It's only ever homogenisation when people lose their special advantages, though.

I kind of miss HW-era's WAR discussions. People went on and on about how "well-designed" WAR was, but at least if you were underperforming on it, it was on you and not the job.

[AziraSyuren]

DRK is easily the weakest tank in raid content. Even if WAR's utility is bad/negligible (it is, outside of mobility), the fact that it has such an overbearing amount of mitigation means you have a far larger margin of error, and the fact that it has the highest DPS means that it's still desirable in theoretical highest-level play where that extra mitigation would be irrelevant.

Meanwhile, DRK has a gap closer that requires far more planning and knowledge of a fight than anything in a WAR's kit to actually use well, TBN is mediocre and hardly worth the cost, and it has the lowest overall DPS.

Sure, both are underwhelming compared to PLD (which has no place being both the best progression tank and a surefire speedkill tank), but in higher-end content, WAR is nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be.

I still think it should do a little bit more damage, but fully progressing through savage has really made me appreciate its kit a lot more. The only reason to actually think it's bad is because it isn't that great in dungeons outside of having a lot of raw damage every three pulls and you need to not be complete garbage at the game to actually take advantage of what it offers.

[Gojin]

yes warrior is weakest of the tanks

[Hierro]

it isn't that great in dungeons outside of having a lot of raw damage every three pulls and you need to not be complete garbage at the game to actually take advantage of what it offers.

Even excluding IR hexadecimate, can you name a tank with better AoE capability? You can't! DRK's limited by grit in order to use BP and delirium, and the most PLD can achieve is FoF with their own eclipse spam which is still considerably weaker since it doesn't benefit from sword oath's bonus, and FoF is all they get.

WAR will always have eye+zerk for their OP spam, along with at least one decimate/steel cyclone, and of course you can always use more than one gauge AoE. But that alone is enough to make WAR that great, especially when you consider their mitigation is on par with every other tank.

[Tridus]

From a strictly healer PoV... not really. I do tend to have more problem with WAR than PLD, but I think its less about the job itself and more that it just seems more folks get trapped in the "I'm a Blue DPS!" mindset while playing it than the other tanks, and forget that mitigating damage matters... which of course makes my job harder. The ones that are doing smart cooldown usage and not using 270 STR accessories? An utter pleasure to heal.

If it's the tank job that you like to play, ignore your friends and play it. You'll do just fine.

[Inuk9]

Shake it off is useless, besides that War is fine.

[Aana]

War:
Pro: Highest personal DPS. Highest overall mitigation. Sacrifices the least to maintain agro in DPS mode.
Con: No ability to help someone else besides slashing which is usually covered anyway.
Result: Its the Sam of tanking. It doesn't help anyone, it just does its core function better than anyone else. The selfish version of its role.

Most people seem to think the lack of raid support makes it inferior. But the truth is that, even in savage, it is not very important outside of world 1st groups that are way lower ilvl.
Alternatively anyone left seems to think the self mitigation/DPS war gains is the end all be all. But the truth is that 100-200 dps when groups are doing well over 20k makes virtually no tangible difference either.

You wont miss the utility. You wont feel the damage/mitigation advantage. Its a tank. It does the job its designed to do. If you aren't a world 1st group then all tanks are viable, and bring a slightly different set of tools, but still get the job done. Is raid mitigation you don't need more important than self mitigation/DPS you don't need? People act like there is some dramatic world shattering problem or issue. There isn't. Play what you like. Play what you are good at. A good tank that enjoys their work is better than a being a 'meta' tank. The meta is world 1st. The scrubs on this forum and reddit just parrot what the pros do and think it matters. Most of granular differences that affect what they do doesn't apply to us. This applies to every game. The META means nothing if you aren't at the top pushing the limits of what's possible. Its just a pile of internet guys quibbling over 1-2% differences and pretending it defines their play in bronze league.

[Wyndam]

snip

Harsher than I would have been, but yeah. If you aren't beating your head against a boss wiping at 1% or something similar then you probably aren't going to notice the difference.

To me, warrior is actually in a way better place because of the plethora of quality of life changes. Berserk no longer pacifies. Unchained no longer costs resources, it's just a cooldown. Wrath stacks always felt gross to me. The beast gauge allows you to pool resources so you don't have to use it right at five stacks or lose potential additional stacks. DPS stance abilities transform into Tank stance abilities and vice versa so they can be the same keybind. Warrior went from something I leveled out of a sense of duty and completionism because it might be useful later to something I think I could actually enjoy as a main.

[Aana]

snip

My thoughts exactly. Ever since 2.1 (Original War overhaul), War has been a very solid job. Fluid. Effective. High DPS. With Heavensward it gained some nice additions. A great new defensive CD, equilibrium, and a true offensive stance that made the job more solid using deliverance to maintain stacks and flowed even better.

At stormblood launch, war lost all those years of fluidity. It was clunky. Frustrating. Lost its raid utility. Did not play like the last few years of war at all. The only real improvement was stacks going past 5. But since the recent updates, its now regained its fluid nature with free stance dance again AND its ability to bank stacks, removed any cost to their offensive abilities (pacification, cost for Unchain/Release).

War fluid nature and gameplay has returned and is now stronger than ever in that respect. The loss of path was painful, but so was the int/str down loss of drk/pld. We didn't get anything to replace it and pld got raid support out the wazoo, so it stings the ego a bit. But from a practical perspective, war has survived a rocky transition to stormblood fairly well in the end. I was really concerned at release while playing it. But it ended up fine after minor tweaks. They are even redesigning shake it off at 4.1. War is in a pretty good spot.