Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
May I... dare I... ask why?
Because the current design feels somewhat backwards and unsatisfying for those who get more pleasure out of maximising their toughness.

They give us a tank stance that increases threat and reduces damage, and then the design of the game and encounters makes you feel bad and/or wrong if you ever actually use them. Turning off the damage reduction and turning on the dps stances just converts the emphasis onto the healers.

I just feel there should be no negative for using a tank stance with bonus threat and damage reduction when actually -tanking-. I know there's skill in choosing when to turn off the mitigation and go for dps, but the skill and mechanic is identical for all tanks. Why does it have to be homogenous - the Warrior is nicely designed to have stance dancing whilst tanking an integral part of the kit. It just feels clunky and horrible for paladins, and feels super dumb to have an entire threat combo and damage mitigation stance that you're encouraged to never use, and rely on ninjas to hold your threat and healers to keep you up.

There's no space for a tank that keeps its mitigation up at all times, is encouraged to minimise incoming damage, and do heavy damage via reactive/reflecting stuff. It cant be that hard to balance, surely? Lower the cooldown and increase the damage on shield swipe such that a tanking paladin getting hit does equal to or slightly more damage than one in Sword Oath, but make the Sword Oath paladin do far more damage when just tunnelling onto the rear of a boss and not taking hits. That's the balance a lot of tanks want.

That's the way all 3 tanks are designed, and the meta as a whole. And it's fun for a large number of players, and unfun for a lot of others, mostly those who came to FFXIV as career-tanks from other games with a mindset of wanting to be the brick wall. It's a design decision I don't like, and I feel there's space in a game with multiple easily-swapped tank classes to not have all 3 be so near-identical. And because I don't like the design decision, FFXIV is the first MMO where tank is no longer my primary role.