Reminder that war is still good.

[Saeno]

Huh? What dimension were you playing in? In hardcore groups PLD was almost always OT - Sword oath made PLD top dps tank, and back then magic attacks couldn't be blocked or parried. WAR was almost always MT. Im not sure why you're making mention of agro concerns - PLD in an OT role used Sword oath, not shield oath. Agro was not a concern, if it was then the WAR was bad.

To get more information of what people did back then, I skimmed through many different clear and speed kill videos on ARR and all of them had PLD pulling. I myself have rarely seen WAR pull. If you wanted to maximize DPS on tanks, you could just have the PLD pull in Sword oath and now both tanks are doing their top DPS. I still think it was better for WAR to pull with Unchained and have the PLD voke after the WAR used their cooldowns so the WAR didnt have to fight for aggro. WAR out of Defiance did comparable numbers to PLD in Sword oath. PLD may have not been able to block magic at the time but their mitigation was similar because WAR did not have Raw or Rampart at the time. Also, most hard hitting attacks in 2.x were Physical damage. Things like Flare breath were scary, but not so bad with a MNK and apoc.

PLD in sword oath still spams Halone. WAR does not spam Butchers block. It should be obvious why aggro is an issue. I've played a lot of WAR in 2.x and I always disliked trying to beat the aggro generation of PLD while also staying out of Defiance. Unchained helped but this was when Unchained was on a 2 minute recast and cost 5 wrath stacks.

Back then Path had no benefits other than the heal, so it was Eye in to BB, path was rarely touched and only used as OT while defiance was on, allowing for wrath accumulation and reducing agro concerns.

Path also reduced all damage dealt by 10%. Path was the single greatest skill in the entire game. If you didn't have Path up you were actively making things harder for your team only for a 30 potency gain over 15 seconds.

I'd argue that RI is one of the best - Sure, TBN is the best but it can be put on other players, it isnt limited to the caster like RI, and so that comparison only works in a vacuum. RI can literally be used on cooldown to make WAR the tank that takes the less damage overall through the whole fight - affording healers more time to do damage. Rampart and Vengence can be used on tank busters, and TBN, HOS, Intervention can all be cast by the other tank on a WAR MT. Sure, Thrill is nice, but i dont agree with "no other tank can do what equilibirum does" - It has the same potency as Aurora. Also, both Celemency and aurora can be cast on other people, equilibirum can not.

Using Raw on cooldown does not make it the best. In fact using a Cooldown just for the sake of putting it on CD is bad practice because you will then not have it for when you need it. This is what makes Sheltron for example better than Raw. On top of having basically the same effect on a 1 second longer duration, you can also keep it on standby for when you actually need it and then have another sheltron ready sooner than later depending on your gauge. Raw is good, but it's not the best. All of them are around the same power level. Raw intuition does not push WAR to be the MT over the other tanks. I also don't agree with Raw being limited to the caster as Nascent Flash is also pretty good. It lasts 1 second longer than Raw but it also has a better effect than intervention in most cases. It benefits both tanks where all other short CD's benefit just 1.

All the facts point to the effect that SE WANTS WAR to be the defacto "Main tank", all its cooldowns are selfish and plentiful, and the only tank that has a healing received increase.

None of the tanks in this game are pushed to be a main or off tank. Main or off tank should be determined by strats and tank invul placements.
WAR also only has a healing received increase if you use Thrill. Thrill needs that healing increase attached to it because otherwise it is a much weaker CD than most others in terms of effective HP.
All tanks have a lot of CD's and WAR isn't exactly selfish. It's selfish with Equilibrium but that's about it.