Quote Originally Posted by Jeeqbit View Post
The uniqueness is still there because no other class uses cards like that. You still have to memorize what role each card is for, and when to use Lord/Lady instead. Someone who has no idea what they are doing and no knowledge of who is melee or ranged would still play it wrong. It still involves more thought than the other healers.

By that logic tanks have always played the same... they are fundamentally tanks, with mitigations and a tank stance. They achieve their tanking differently though.

Warrior focuses on taking the damage, but then healing it back up. Paladins focus on mitigating the damage... usually by just 20%. Dark Knight focuses on mitigating it entirely with its shield. Gunbreakers settle for a balance of shields and self-heals.

Another difference between the tanks is that Warrior and Paladin are GCD tanks, while Gunbreaker and especially Dark Knight have lots of off-global attacks making them a lot more fast-paced to play.

Yes, Dark Knights have been made simpler for a casual player to take up. That's not necessarily a bad thing if it's still fun to play. It's nice for a class to be difficult enough that there is a way to become "good" at it but even with 3 GCDs to press there are people who won't play them well, so that is achieved already.
Pressing a single button then receiving less damage is tank design from 20 years ago, we need active mitigation baked into offensive or proc based tools. Individuality and class fantasy, not homogenization.

Everything you mentioned basically boils down to the same thing, try to compare the 4 tanks to the 4 melee dps. Tanks just don't have the same type of variety they should have, on top of that we have 3 sword using tanks and in the past 6 years they've added only GNB.

To me, I feel like we're at a point where they don't even pretend to care about other roles anymore.