Tanking in FF14 question

[Maeka]

I was never a fan of DPS having to slow down because of poorly balanced aggro management systems.

That just doesn't seem like good game design to me, to be honest. DPS jobs should be about being the best at your game to put out the best DPS you can... except..... you can't.

It's like buying a Ferrari to drive it on roads that have a speed limit of 35MPH. What the frick is the point in that, really?

And yeah, not trying to do a WoW vs FFXIV either, but WoW is relevant to the discussion since it's the game you came from. So no problem on that!

Different dungeons have different degrees of how many mobs can and should be stunned, whether or not you have a WHM in the group (they get AoE stun that they will spam and it makes mobs immune to stun) and IMO, they needed to add more interruptable attacks.

What will pick up, is the sheer tools you get as a Paladin to help your teammates. You are almost to the point you get Cover which lets you take damage for someone else near you (target them, use Cover, make sure to stay close to them) if you know someone is about to take a mechanic to the face and die. Saving someone's life with Cover feels great. I love it.

Passage of Arms, which comes way later, is a reverse cone of damage reduction; anybody standing behind you while you use it (you have to stand still and not use any abilities or it wears off immediately) takes less damage from anything in front of you (usually used when a boss does a big AoE that hits the whole group, or a stack mechanic).

Clemency, I know a lot of people go 'meh' at Clemency but nothing feels better than to dump a Clemency on a healer who's about to die before the healer can even heal themselves, lol.

You likely have Reprisal (I forget what level that is)... a lot of people spam Reprisal anytime it's not on cooldown. IMO, I think this is the wrong way to use it. I like to save Reprisal for certain times. You definitely want to use it at the beginning of large trash pulls where it can have the most effect, and during bosses, you either use it on Tankbuster attacks, or large AoEs when you know one is coming. It's that "active mitigation" that WoW Devs were talking about a couple expansions ago and how they wanted to do that.

Turns out FFXIV PLDs do pretty well at that, too!

Also on that note, Sheltron. I love Sheltron, it lets me choose when I want to guarantee a -20% damage for 6 seconds (obviously for Tankbusters and the like).

It does get more fun later as you unlock more tools. And also the boss fights are going to get more complex as you get further on, especially in the late 50s, they start adding more diverse mechanics, and bosses will start to mix mechanics, and do them simultaneously. You'll find a boss has like 2-3 mechanics that seem so simple... until halfway during the fight, the boss decides to do 2 of those mechanics simultaneously that trips people up the first couple times they do a boss.

EDIT: Also Keeper of the Lake (Lv50 dungeon). I'm kinda of curious as to what you'll think of the last boss in there after you've done it (trying to avoid spoilers). There's quite a lot of dancing to avoid AoEs because they're just everywhere in that fight, tends to trip newbies up. Also the instant death if you miss the shield generator or mis-time it.

[BarretOblivion]

I was never a fan of DPS having to slow down because of poorly balanced aggro management systems.

That is/never was a thing ever. Shirk existed, diversion existed, Lucid dreaming existed. DPS have hate dumps and ways to drop you. You just didn't like DPS having responsibilities other than 'ME DPS ME HIT THING DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRR"