Tank IDENTITY

[Shurrikhan]

Trying to base PLD and WAR's identities rigidly on what they were in 1.x/ARR is an incredibly bad idea, because their design was based on them being the only two tanks ever in existence. It took over an expansion after DRK's release and a lot of complaints from here for it to stop it from being treated as a second-class 'PLD/WAR' hybrid.

HW DRK was more of a PLD-like + gimmicks, but that's not because of how PLD and WAR identities were split; it was simply due to Shadowskin being literally identical to Rampart, Shadow Wall just being a Sentinel with a 30s longer CD, etc. A lot of things were simply tossed in as "good enough" on DRK, unlike the original attention given to PLD and WAR's identities. It had fun gimmicks in a then-unique gap-closer, split defensives (DM, DD), and Dark Arts, but the job as a whole was unnecessarily short-changed.

Same problem existed with healers, and they still haven't quite gotten over the 'pure/shield' duality of ARR. Not every healer job needs to be designed as a WHM-replacement or a SCH-replacement.

I don't think anyone's recommended that jobs need to take on a A|B discrete categories, only noted that a job's apparent theme will to an extent be dependent on their differences from the other jobs in its role. For instance, it makes little sense to make Warrior the super-mitigation tank... if it's to stand right next to Paladin, who wears full plate, has a shield, for whom healing better fits thematically as a discrete and support-capable choice, etc.

The one feature of WAR that was fairly unique back in ARR/Heavensward that hasn't really seen much exploration since is the relationship between defense and offense. Historically, certain defensive abilities like IR and Vengeance gave you resources, such that it was beneficial to sync up periods where you were tanking with your burst windows.

There's an element of this with IR's knockback prevention, but it would probably make sense if you had some sort of a defensive bonus while in IR, or even something that synergistically boosts your defensives if you use it in the window. It certainly would fit with that 'too angry to die' aesthetic.

Agreed. Sadly, "streamlining" has mostly gutted that thematic connection.

That's why we have the current setup as a compromise of sorts - they did tip the balance of lifesteal briefly in DRK's favor in early Stormblood, but then backpedaled on feedback. For that matter, it took about two expansions worth of feedback to convince everyone involved that 'doing massively more damage than everyone else' was not acceptable as an identity-defining trait of WAR.

It'd take an extreme number of mobs for "lifesteal" to have been tipped in DRK's favor in Stormblood, especially early. Steel Cyclone and Inner Beast both healed and Bloodbath was available a third of the time. BW-Quietus offered DRK a lot more MP to work with and funnel into DA-AD, but it's hard to say that that actually put it ahead of DRK.

Either way, those were fun times. Well, pre-unga bunga Warrior and the other Stormblood tanks, at any rate.