As someone who was a WAR main in ARR, I can tell you for a fact that even back then, WAR was not exclusively OT. Not in good groups, at least. The main advantage of a PLD MT was if you were planning on skipping forced swaps using Hallowed cheese so that you could run a solo tank comp. But for the most part, a lot of the PLD MT mindset came out of ignorance of what was optimal (I mean, when we started out, people were debating about Parry being good for tanking, come on). A lot of that was already starting to change by Final Coil (WAR MT was preferred in 7p T13 clears), if it wasn't stamped out in Gordias.

And in Heavensward, it's worth remembering that WAR gained stacks from RI and Vengeance, so they were part of WAR's triple cleave opener/burst. It made sense for WAR to be tanking during those portions rather than let those cooldowns be burned for offense alone. Even in a fight like A12S which is very much designed for DRK's toolkit, I would still much sooner take advantage of WAR's cooldowns with intelligent swaps than burn DPS on DADM. And if there was no NIN in the group, forget it. You can unchained pull into the first TB swap, I won't be caught dead using PS. Crater is right. What you wrote is revisionist history.

Either way, I'm struggling to see what the main point of this thread is.

If it's about damage, it's worth noting that tank damage output has a lot less impact across the board. And if you look closely, there is relatively little variation in damage output between jobs in the same role. That's deliberate. WAR was a dps powerhouse in previous expansions not only because were they the highest damage tank, but because you could also do competitive damage in relation to real DPS players. That second point is the critical part.

Now, even if you're the 'big damage tank', it's not going to be by anything much. And the 'big damage healer' is probably going to be on par with you. You're just fighting over last place, if that's the hill that you want to die on.

If it's about self-healing, I'm not sure what the issue is. WAR has amazing lifesteal. So much so, that Holmgang should be the 'fight for your life' invuln, rather than Living Dead. I'm not sure why Clemency is entering the discussion at all. Players dislike situational actions because you can't swap them out for situationally appropriate alternatives. It's nice that Clemency can be clutch, but I wouldn't begrudge PLD players wanting to make it more consistently useful, possibly through procs or changes to resource costs (perhaps stick it on the Oath Gauge and make block procs act as a swiftcast?)

If you wanted to make WAR's defensives more interesting, the best way to do this is to just focus in on the lifesteal theme. Just change it so that overhealing gives you temporary HP up to some maximum total, and double down on the theme by replacing any vanilla %DR or bubble shield cooldowns with temporary HP boosting effects. The main thing that historically made WAR interesting was lining up your offensives with your defensive moveset. Might as well line up your burst for big lifesteal and big HP.

If it's about losing actions to gain new ones, everyone has this problem. There's finite hotbar space. Short of an skill tree system like Warcraft's or a dev team that's quick to make action changes, you'll always have some degree of frustration over the reworks. Especially since they generally only revise things for expansion launches and you're stuck talking to a wall for the next two years until the next release.

The main reason why you notice a decline in power on WAR is because the most of the things that made WAR mandatory were addressed. Remember 100% uptime buffs like Slashing Down? Gone. Remember how certain people used to insist that PLD and DRK had to have clunky GCD stances that cost dps to swap because poor old WAR lost HP on stance swaps? Stances are gone as well. Bring the player.

I am watching the reactions to this new benchmark WAR action with interest, though. Shake it off was the first action to be reworked mid expansion on player demand. I'll be even more amused if you manage to get an action reworked before it's even released. That's some dedicated catering right there. New action: I WIN punch. Kills the boss instantly and even sheaths your weapon for you.

The reason why WAR is so unsatisfying is because players keep demanding more power for less effort. Gauge management is frustrating. Crit/DH RNG is frustrating. And you wonder why you don't get any satisfaction. Satisfaction comes from effort.