A history of our beloved tanks, and moving forward. [5.0 wishlists]

[Saeno]

Well I would mostly agree with your WAR chart, except that WAR has Godlike Aggro Generation and Excellent Utility as of right now. My snap aggro gen as a WAR is so high that I only need 2-3 entire GCDs at start of pull to get my aggro lead and keep it for the entire fight, as I do with my raid static every week.

I mostly agree with your DRK chart too, though WAR should probably be at Godlike Single Target Damage and DRK be at Excellent. This may sound weird, but DRK actually has better single target DPS than PLD by the same margin WAR has better single target than DRK. If you don't believe me just check FFLogs DPS for this tier right now.

Hm, Alphascape isn't a good place to look at raning currently because some players have weapons while others do not. It's way too early to look at Alphascape. Let's look at Sigmascape. It turns out that the average is the same for both PLD and DRK with PLD being consistantly at 5k on God Kefka where DRK is roughly the same if not a little less.

Paladin is where I disagree completely. I love Paladin, but I would like to point out a few things;

Paladin now has the worst aggro gen of any tank. Rage of Halone does not have the massive aggro lead of using a Dark Arts Power Slash, and PLD in general does not have anywhere NEAR the Snap Aggro of WAR.

I originally labeled PLD as "Decent" for enmity, though after careful consideration, I found that PLD's enmity is acceptable because even though they have the weakest after the DRK buffs, there isn't a difference between having a giant aggro lead or a slight lead, because you're still holding aggro. With PLD's enmity as is, PLD can hold bosses well enough. The main issue is that PLD should never pull in Shield Oath or ever enter Shield oath outside of prog because of how penalizing leaving and entering different stances is for PLD. Also, with all DPS having no excuse not to carry aggro tools, it's hard for every tank to not be at least "Good" in enmity. Im willing to back down on this however.

PLD also has excellent utility, not godlike. I would like to explain this further below.

Paladin has poor AoE damage. Matter of fact the only class that might have worse AoE right now is AST, and I only say that because I do not know the class well enough to say one way or another. Both SCH and WHM can easily out DPS a PLD in an AoE situation. If you are a tank and are losing in DPS to a healer in any category, that category MUST be defined as poor. Their GCD for AoE damage is also extremely TP hungry, and unlike WAR or DRK does not generate aggro.

I can't disagree with anything that you say. PLD not having enmity on Total Eclipse is a bummer and running out of TP is a reality, however I do think PLD is still above both AST and SCH while only losing out to WHM. I think it's hard to call it poor because really I don't think any job has poor Aoe realistically so long as they have a button they can use for Aoe. Finally, I considered the fact that PLD can double dot targets with Goring blade, and that is actually significant for their Aoe output on two targets. It's much better than what the other tanks can do on only two targets. Niche, as it's only applicable to Nael + Twin from Ultimate, but it is something PLD has access to.

PLD also has Very Good mitigation at best. While I saw you mention that Blocking becomes stronger as a patch goes on so does health scaling, which both TBN and WAR benefit from greatly. Sentinel, as pointed out by Dzian above, is overkill for anything you would need it for save maybe Suzaku's TB this patch, and even this DRK and WAR both handle that TB fine. The longer cooldown only hurts PLD overall. But speaking of cooldowns, let me explain what I meant by saying PLD Utility is not as high as is first perceived by players.

Divine Veil is considered good Paladin utility, but it requires you either Clemency yourself or you get a tick of healing from a healer to use it, which makes it difficult to use compared to Shake it Off. Additionally cooldowns in a savage environment (where they actually matter) tend to get pre-planned. Veil is good, but clunky. It is going to be hard to use it in a way that saves your Healer or yourself a GCD, which is what would make it good utility. Shake it Off is basically superior in all ways. As such it is a niche cooldown.

Cover is also considered good Paladin utility, but the higher level of content is starting to reinforce the tank swap which makes this less than viable. You NEED to swap your tanks to get best use of both of their cooldowns now. Cover also has to be paired with other cooldowns. If cover was on a much shorter cooldown it might be better, but the last time it was really useful was letting DPS meditate in Tsuki Ex during transition phases. As such this is a niche cooldown.

Intervention and the use thereof is a DPS loss. This is because you need shelltron to proc your shield bash. Additionally Intervention is generally not needed. It, like sentinel, is overkill. It is also like Cover very clunky to use especially for anyone on controller. This becomes an ability that rarely if ever sees use in play. It is a niche cooldown.

Clemency costs you a GCD, and therefore DPS, to heal yourself and potentially another. Healers have tools in their kits to avoid this situation though, and since Tank single target DPS is higher than Healer single target DPS, it is crazy to use Clemency in almost any scenario. Clemency is VERY useful when questing in the overworld, but it just really falls flat in raids. Perhaps if it where moved to be an oGCD and gave it an AoE healing effect akin to how Holy scales downward for extra targets it would be better? But it is not currently.

I feel like you're only looking at these skills from a farm perspective but not a prog perspective. You also missed out on passage, further making me believe this is the case. While these tools might not seem overly impressive, I think that when you combine them all into one job and also use them as a means of seeing more into the fight to further your progression, or use these tools to save a pull, it is a huge gain for the party. Being able to save people and move forward into your prog thanks to these tools is what makes jobs like RDM so good even though that job only has Verraise and Vercure. I also want to challenge intervention being a DPS loss, because that isnt true. Yes, not getting a shield swipe is bad but you dont need sheltron technically, you just need to block.

Finally lets talk about Hallowed Ground. Many regard HG as the "best" tank immunity at first look. This is wrong, and I would go as far as to say it is actually WORSE than Walking Dead. The cast time for it makes it impossible to use in emergencies, the cooldowns insures you are only getting one cast a fight. Compared to Holmgang which has use as simple knockback prevention, or Walking Dead which has a faster cast time and a longer "Grace Period" it doesn't work. We are seeing now in EX and Savage that failing almost ANY mechanic results in a Vulnerability Stack. If HG made you immune to these it would be useful to prevent an unwanted tank swap, or to save you from messing up a mechanic. On a 7 minute cooldown this ability does NOT do enough to make up for what little it provides. It either needs it's CD halved, it needs movement effect immunity added or it needs it's duration extended substantially (20s) and be made an instant cast for it to be on par with the other immunities.

I agree that Hallowed is the weakest of the three, especially compared to Holmgang. There are however things that Hallowed can do that Holmgang cant, like take 4 Akh morns or simplifying a mechanic like the wave cannons in O11s post second Pantokrator where 3 magic vuln markers appear in two sets. You can Hallowed that mechanic to ignore healing on one of the two tanks while also only dealing with two of the three beams. In cases like that, HG has a lot of value. In every other case, yeah HG is much worse than Holmgang. Holmgang is a very overpowered skill that I personally think is the reason for WAR having Godlike mitigation.

PLD has a LOT of niche use cooldowns. It has a lot of buttons in general, but not very many are applicable in most situations, and this severally cuts it's actual utility in a given scenario.

I disagree. The only two buttons that shouldnt see play during farm are Passage of Arms and Clemency and even that is arguable. In content like Ultimate, you can use Passage as a CD for certain parts or use Clemency to help the healers catch up when things go south. These tools are not meant for abuse, but they are there to help recover a run. For that reason, I think PLD's utility can't be ignored even when it's sleeping.

To take a look at some other cooldowns and problems currently in the PLD kit;

- FoF feels bad to use and does not have a noticeable performance enhancement like it's cousins in Bloodweapon and Inner Release.
- PLD is punished in the extreme for needing to extend their combos, with no way to do it. Performing Bloodspiller does not break DRK combo chain, performing Fell Cleave/Inner Beast does not break WAR combo chain, so why does using Clemency or Holy Spirit break PLD combo chain?
- PLD is extremely reliant on Goring Blade for damage.
- PLD has arguably the most static rotation of any of the tanks, and struggles to try to work with it. This goes back to the above combo chain issues.
- WAR has basically a better PLD Rotation.
- PLD does NOT have Slashing Debuff, which is key utility in the current tank meta.
- Building gauge for PLD can be awkward especially in tank stance.
- Aggro generation can be an issue for PLDs.
- Holy Spirit GCD still scales with SPS for whatever ungodly reason.

I agree with everything but the slashing debuff, goring blade being your primary dps output and the gauge building in Shield oath. I think SLashing debuff, piercing debuff and blunt should all be removed from the game. They serve absolutely no purpose except force some jobs to be part of all parties due to how mandatory these debuffs are. Queueing into expert as a PLD or DRK without a slashing debuff provider is awful because you're going into a dungeon missing 10% damage. Which is just dumb. I dont think PLD lacking slashing is a problem as much as slashing debuff being a thing is the problem. As for the gauge in Shield oath, Holy spirit gives 20 gauge per cast. That is a LOT of gauge. Finally, your Holy spirits should deal your highest amount of damage. Maximizing Holy spirits is what nets you the highest DPS, even higher than Sword oath.

Mark my words; if DRK was not such a pain to play and had a single movement immunity on something like Dark Mind DRK would be heralded as a symbol of balance in the community and all the DRK threads would currently be about how trash tier PLD is. PLD is literally propped up on the fact that Dark Arts spam makes people's fingers hurt, and the numbers data for current DRK supports that.

Hard disagree. I dont think people find DRK hard to play and I dont think a knock back immune would fix DRK's issue. Theres only one thing that matters for meta comps after prog and that's damage. If DRK outdamaged PLD considerably, you will always take DRK without question. Maybe in a lower level of play, DRK might feel challenging but that could be because people dont play DRK enough. Which is shown from logs.

[Speaks]

Snip

I suppose we will see how Alpha develops over time and if we see DRK remain above PLD for damage this tier or not. SKS on everything arguably hurts PLD the most too, so we may see DRK pull ahead in damage yet. Time will tell.

While it is true that you can stay ahead with RoH on PLD for aggro though, it is the pulling in shield that is the real culprit. It takes a full GCD to get into offense stance if you are forced to pull, and if your co-tank dies and you need to generate snap aggro you are beyond out of luck (as I have had the misfortune of experiencing in a couple Suzaku runs this week.)


About the AoE though; SCH does pull ahead of PLD right now. SCH still has their arcanist DPS tools, and that includes miasma. While PLD can probably out-DPS in 3 or fewer targets, SCH progressively pulls further and further ahead the more targets you have. PLD really needs it's AoE looked at. It is less than half the damage of others tanks while also sacrificing what little damage they have to hold aggro.

I was looking at the skills from a prog perspective too. I didn't mention Passage because passage is actually good, and is more of the utility I would like to see for PLD with 5.0. I never said PLD had poor utility; I said it had excellent. Passage is a big part of that from my perspective. But right now I can get my static further in prog with WAR than PLD, simply because WAR has so obscenely much mitigation. People also underestimate DRK's new mitigation since it was buffed. TBN every 15s and a Dark Mind perma DAd with only it's 60s buff is huge. Intervention is still really not necessary though. I mean you will pretty much 100% be co-tanking with a WAR.

Slashing debuffs, and debuffs in general aside form things like Trick Attack, are something I too would like to see removed going forward. I like playing WAR, but I do NOT want it to be required. We only have 3 tanks, but you basically only have to choice of 2. As for Gauge gen in shield you CAN Holy Spirit, but it would really be better if Tank Stance only reduced physical damage output too. Also this does not solve the issue of Gauge Gen in groups. Shelltron should probably just block hits for like the next 4 or 5 seconds giving mana on the first, this would both help gauge gen and increase adds mitigation. PLD unfortunately has a very strict rotation though, you cannot just throw Holy Spirit out whenever you feel like to generate gauge...

Finally, I never said DRK was hard to play. It is extremely simple. I said it was a pain to play. As in my fingers actually get tired playing it. Besides all that DRK really has good enough self mitigation to already be a good prog tank. I really do think DRK right now is balanced, just not fun.