Interview with xenosys-vex

[Argyle_Darkheart]

When in the history of this game did the meta ever take the highest utility tank with lower DPS than the less utility tank? Never that's when. Pld had by far the best utility in HW.

Did it though? In an expansion where WAR had Storm's Path and DRK had Delirium and Reprisal?

[Crater]

Did it though? In an expansion where WAR had Storm's Path and DRK had Delirium and Reprisal?

Yeah, I don't think that one was true at all. Warrior absolutely ruled the roost in 3.x in terms of utility, between Storm's Path, Storm's Eye, Unchained (or just a Defiance-Equilibrium) for enmity on a pull, being able to boost a Deployment Adlo to 1.44x with Conv+Defiance, and they even had a ton of mobility since Deliverance-Equilibrium gave them enough TP that they could Sprint and not run dry.

3.x Reprisal pretty much went toe-to-toe with Divine Veil in terms of party mitigation tools (another reason it should come back), but then DRK had Delirium, and Plunge for mobility.

PLD's utility basically just boiled down to Divine Veil, which is and always was a really powerful skill, but wasn't enough to carry the class when WAR/DRK had equivalent abilities and non-defensive utility and did better damage. Halone's debuff was more of a personal mitigation tool, Cover never really had any particularly good use cases, and the Shield Bash chain stun was totally outstripped by having oGCD stuns on DRK/WAR. They had a Silence, but unless you ran without a Ninja, Machinist, or Bard in A6S and A8S, that wasn't really good for anything.


You really can't overstate just how badly 3.x stacked the deck in favour of Warrior and against Paladin, in almost every single regard. We don't really know whether a "worst DPS but best utility" tank would get picked for progression, because from 2.1 all the way through to the day before Stormblood launched, the tank with the best DPS also had the best utility, and the tank with the worst DPS always had the worst utility.