What if we designed other Tank's abilities like they were made for WAR?

[Shurrikhan]

Can't be any damage reasons, its currently doing the most damage, so...why don't the other tanks get perks like this? Not saying they need to be copied 1:1, but this could be a way to help make the tanks feel a bit more unique from eachother.

Could you give some examples of what you're imagining could be changed?

At first glance it seems like you're saying, "Making the Tanks more similar would make them feel a bit more unique from each other".

Given that the connotation seemed clearly to be that they should each get their own unique little perk atop the base form, instead of all but WAR simply getting a basic 30%, etc.... I don't see how having more variety across them could possibly be making them more similar. You might as well say that "only one tank is different from the rest, so if we were to dehomogenize all of them, none would be special and therefore all would be homogeneous." ???

And while I can't answer for Oizen in terms of examples, I can at least give some spitballs pursuant to that same goal (though in this case just playing around with effects reminiscent of their names and not at all tuning-checked):

For instance, Shadow Wall may cause temporarily increase your Defense and Magic Defense by a portion of your Edge/Flood of Shadow damage dealt, with each addition fading linearly over 7 seconds.

Sentinel can grant each ally nearby "Watcher's Vigil" or "Awareness," causing them to take less damage from the next physical or targeted magical attack (by an amount equal to, say, 15% of the PLD's HP).

Nebula might augment heal over time and damage-absorbing effects on you, refreshing any currently active and spreading them at half value to all allies within 12 yalms. Etc., etc.

The core issue isn't really the dps balance, because that can be changed on a whim. It has to do with the number of beneficial effects attached to a given action. Consider the following:

• Grants 3 stacks of Delirium, each stack allowing the execution of Quietus or Bloodspiller without Blackblood cost, restoring MP when landing either weaponskill.
• Grants 3 stacks of Inner Release, each stack allowing the use of Fell Cleave or Decimate without cost and guaranteeing they are critical and direct hits. Increases damage dealt when under an effect that raises critical hit rate or direct hit rate. Grants Inner Strength, nullifying Stun, Sleep, Bind, Heavy, and most knockback and draw-in effects. Extends Surging Tempest duration by 10s to a maximum of 60s. Grants Primal Rend Ready.

While I completely agree that WAR's kit is overly flush on the whole... insisting that every skill be have perfect parity is begging for homogeneity. You could as easily make the case that Inner Release is worse than Delirium because it doesn't come with the latter's side-dish of Shadowbringer, Carve and Spit, Salted Earth, and Living Shadow as compared to a mere Upheaval.

Moreover, an effect like "Increases damage dealt when under an effect that raises critical hit rate or direct hit rate" is obviously just a fix for something that should be universal (ALL auto-crits should exchange their excess chance for proportionately greater bonus); it's not a bonus so much as a clause that just reads "Doesn't arbitrarily face anti-synergy with raid buffs."

The core difference in design philosophy is what happens when you press a button. In most jobs, just one thing happens.

Which is, in itself, fine. Just like Requiescat being both damage and a buff is fine. Just like a gap-closer having damage is fine. It just means that they might occasionally face priority conflicts, since multiple functions are funneled through the same ability.

The issue is solely when the total number of functions and/or practical access to those functions (e.g., not so unresponsive as to lose value in practice) are out of balance.

But jobs providing their variety of functions through different routes would be a good thing, I would think, as then at least we're not just each working with a different name each for skills identical in use case and with no distinguishing idiosyncrasies for "CC immunity," "raid miti," "30% miti", etc., and we're thereby able to develop themes through those tie-ins.

This is an ongoing trend in MMORPG design (WOW has been the same way for a long time, and only quintupled-down on the idea in the newest expansion).

Basically, this is the result of something like... "Healers are the only people who really enjoy it when players have to rely on Healers to survive, and Tanks especially hate it."

The idea that a Tank can play "perfectly", but still splatter into a smear on the floor just because they get paired with an inexperienced Healer — maybe this worked in an era where almost all content was manually-recruited, and you just ran with your friends and buddies.

But in the modern, paradoxically "antisocial" MMORPG design, where you only know other people for ~20-40 minutes, and then never see them again... Tanks relying on today's mystery surprise Healer to be equally-skilled in order for the Tank to survive creates a lot of frustration and friction.

So, the newer trend is that Tanks are just "immortal" if they play correctly, and the Healer focuses on keeping everyone else alive through all the intermittent mechanical damage, or stray errors.

I get that, but it still feels to me like we're (or, WAR, especially, and then PLD > GNB > DRK) is getting way too much survivability for what little effort is (available to) put in. That's not to say that healers are putting in some huge amount of effort, either, but there just seems to be very little room for skill expression in the actual tanking/surviving aspect of tanking in XIV.

In WoW, if I wanted to be immortal, I'd have to be dodging, weaving, charging, CCing, kiting between short-CDs, focus-targeting, interrupting some more, target-marking, managing the space, etc. Here, I can just hit a single button to restore all my HP and become effectively unkillable for 4 GCDs.