Why Blue Mage should be a new Tank job [Magitek Knight]

[Shurrikhan]

But if an Evasion tank doesn't use the current "evasion" mechanic...then it's not really an Evasion tank.
And if Evasion is gutted so that it only reduces damage instead of negating it, what makes it different from Defense or Parry ?

The aesthetic. Or is there no difference between a block-centric tank and a parry-centric one -- if one still existed to equable levels -- since they're both non-entire percentile mitigation? Sword and board vs. magicked greatsword, but nah... they share similarities in their RNG mechanic that has some interactions with their toolkit, so surely they're the same thing despite it just being a part -- as integral as it may be -- of their whole job-ness

If it's centered around whatever the game at that time calls evasion, it's an evasion tank. Are people really looking for a chain of 100% mitigation, 0%, 0%, 0%, 0%, 0%, 100%, 0%, 0%, 0%, etc. mitigation specifically, over any aesthetic that might make for satisfying gameplay out of interacting with matters of momentum, stagger, impredictable action, and, insofar as animation is concerned, evasion? Couldn't it just be that they want a lightly-armored, agile, tricky, and aesthetically distinct tank?

Heck, it could even use the current evasion mechanic as long as it is appropriately limited by additional resource systems and the implementation finds some complementary way to even out eHP concerns from more sustained damage.

You build up a job gauge for Florish, then burn it on Phantom's Retreat, consuming some flat + percentile (of current) amount of job gauge to guarantee (yes, 100%) evasion of a proportionate AP or (e)HP-based amount of damage (i.e. to a cap). This alongside a self-heal Flourish and whatever backing auras or recovery mechanics one (say, a Dancer) might have make up the bulk of your sustainability over time. In the meantime, your "tank stance" gives a bulk dodge chance that delays critical damage by auto-dodging, but afflicting "Dancing with Death" or "Imbalance" or what have you, making it so that successive dodges increasingly and granularly eat away at your dodge chance until the eHP that was covered for is overhealed, etc.

The larger issue is not going to be evasion, in whatever form it may take. If anything, it will be gear sets.

Something would have to first take a turn for a lightly-armored tank to fall evenly into existing norms for gear progression, whether it be the same <awkwardly "role-based, unless you're a Ninja or Dragoon">, all jobs separate as with Mythic and then Esoteric gear, purely based on armor class, truly role-based but with currency spent on the right to receive items of x type (e.g. a melee chest, of any of its three varieties for Striking, Maiming, and Scouting, or tank chest, of Fending or Flourish), or whatever else.