Quote Originally Posted by Kabooa View Post

And most of all, certainly don't adhere to basic conventions of RPG balance.
Hate to umm actually, but umm actually you're refering to conventions of multiplayer balance and not rpg balance. RPG balanced tends towards tanks being amongst the highest single target damage dealers/ highest damge potential in their games and usually having someway to convert their defensive prowess directly into damage, in final fantasy games this usually comes from provoke/cover + counter. Examples include various final fantasy games (most notable being ff4 where cecil is the tank, the highest damage dealer in many situations and can sub in as a healer) ,various Dragon quest titles, xenoblade franchise and i could list others (i play too many rpgs).

You are correct though in a multiplayer setting they do need to balanced against dps players existing and normal rpg conventions not translating into multiplayer as well. Although that being said xenoblade basically is a single player mmo and their tanks are the crazy so who knows.