How fitting

[A-Omega]

The longer I stay in the post, the more unbelievable this becomes. I hope SE sees this. They gave PLD top tier damage, best utility, best mitigation, and the best standard single target heal…and you’re still complaining. Then when someone comes along with a tank theme post, you rush in with your torches.

“I lose SOME of my top tier damage numbers if I use this fight saving UTILITY” is an asinine complaint. You’re literally complaining about your job having an identity. Magic master of all trades, utility tank.

Clemency is like having a shotgun. It’s not as practical as carrying a handgun, but you know what. You point that thing at someone and I bet they give up that fight immediately. Using Clemency is no different then deciding to break your rotation to Cover your healer or self pop DV to mitigate a party buster, because a healer/s were down. ITS UTILITY.

I can’t count how many times I’ve clutched content using Clemency where EVERY OTHER TANK WOULD FAIL (this is were the “god” moniker comes from). Healer drops, boss at 5%, only two dps left alive…as PLD, I force the clear. Ex,savage, and dungeons. If you haven’t experienced this, you need to reevaluate your play style.

[phantomr23]

The longer I stay in the post, the more unbelievable this becomes. I hope SE sees this. They gave PLD top tier damage, best utility, best mitigation, and the best standard single target heal…and you’re still complaining.

Look, you've said a lot of very silly things in this post (WAR is a dedicated OT and PLD is a dedicated MT? That's certainly a bold new take), but I think you have a very fundamental misunderstanding of how the tanks work here. PLD's strengths are its utility, OT support skills and flexible rotation. It has the weakest mitigation, requiring more substantial planning to manage heavy damage in endgame fights - the built in block is also, I believe, less of a damage reduction than the built in heal the other 3 tanks have on their combo - and has to work exceptionally hard to optimise its rotation on a per fight basis. It's not even that high on the DPS charts, sitting slightly ahead of WAR and DRK but still fairly behind GNB. They break down roughly like this:

GNB: Highest DPS, medium utility and mitigation
PLD: Highest utility, good DPS and low mitigation
WAR: High mitigation and utility, low effort to play
DRK: High mitigation and utility, medium effort to optimise

It's an oversimplification for sure, but the point is they all excel in different areas and require different levels of investment to get the most from. Clemency is strong, for sure, but it is a hefty DPS loss and only works efficiently under our 5 GCD magic phase - WAR, meanwhile, gets a slightly worse heal but for completely free, meaning they excel at raw self sustain. You talk about how PLD is the only tank that can do this... except WAR and DRK can pretty comfortably tank for just as long under the same situations, salvaging a near wipe.

(And no, none of PLD's other utility requires you to break rotation, Cover is an oGCD, as are the Wings. That's why Clemency is unique, and generally considered a very last resort.)