What would a new tank even contribute at this point

[Katish]

I like DRK because they look cool. Not everything always has to be about the top 1% of players in the hardest content in the game.

But the original thread was against the 1% of hardcore players, what...?
This thread wants to dehomogenize where homogenization has happened because the 1% complained until they went that direction, the direction to make jobs basically play the same (to make them easier to balance). So making another of the same would just result in a different flavor of the same thing. (Although having played all jobs now, healers are the ones where this has affected the most. But it is indeed prevalent throughout all jobs on various levels and degrees.)

Although I agree aesthetics to a job are important but they shouldn't be the only defining factor for a job.

[Thurmnmurmn]

Honestly they need to take a book out of PvP here and just make every job broken in one aspect. Get some identity.
Screw easy balance!

[ForteNightshade]

First and foremost, OP, you really need to let go of this vendetta you have towards Warrior. It's not nearly the supposed god you keep insisting it is. Especially when you consider it was thoroughly outclassed for almost two full expansions.

Warrior has the best partywide mitigation in the game.

Shake it Off is not the best partywide mitigation. In fact, the whole reason they added the regen effect is due to mechanics like Styx rendering it completely inferior to straight mitigation. On the whole it's situational which is better but Paladin wins in this category by virtue of having two options. Don't get me wrong, Shake is very strong but it's not necessarily better than Missionary or Light.

Warrior has the best invuln in the game.

Holmgang is incredible. There really is no denying that. I'd argue new Living Dead is very nearly on par with it though because the Dark Knight doesn't have to invest additional resources to heal themselves. They just... do damage. The difference of 60 seconds is borderline irrelevant since nearly all planned usages will align with both, though there are some exceptions (Dragonsong comes to mind). Nonetheless, the devs have notoriously overvalued Hallowed Ground. They seem to think being invulnerable is somehow better than being unkillable. Such situations where that is true are so niche they aren't worth mentioning.

Warrior has the best sustain in the game.

No argument here. Warrior's sustain is absurd. Although, said sustain gets grossly overrated by far too many people who see it essentially becoming its own healer in dungeons and think it can perform those feats in Savage. Contrary to popular belief, Bloodwhetting is straight up worse than Corundum in a single target scenario, and while Dark Knight can't match either one for one, being able to consistently stack TBN + Oblation + Dark Mind absolutely schools both for raw mitigation potential. Speaking of which, Dark Knight has better overall mitigation than Warrior for this very reason while Gunbreaker kind of floats between both. Paladin still gets the raw end of the stick here if only because its sustain option is a damage loss.

Warrior ranks 1# or 2# for damage in almost all fights.

The irony is Dark Knight is still the meta pick because it bursts so incredibly well. Go look up any parse or speed group and you'll find they overwhelmingly still favor Dark Knight—to the point of occasionally bringing two. This has been the fundamental problem with balancing tanks the last two expansions. Dark Knight plays so ridiculously well under raid buffs that when it also boasted the highest damage profile alongside the best mitigation suite, well... there wasn't a reason to play anything else. For all your insistence of Warrior being the god king super tank, Dark Knight towered over so aggressively in both Dragonsong and Omega as to double up it up in clear rates when both were current. In fact, Dark Knight's raw burst potential was so oppressive it saw more clears of TOP than every other tank combined throughout 6.3.

It wasn't just good, it was downright incredible. At one point in time, if you aren't running Ninja, you'd Dance Partner a Dark Knight in the opener than switch to Samurai.

This is the first and only tier Warrior has even entered the conversation since Shaowerbringers. So while I agree general tank gameplay is relatively stale. Let's dial back the notion "everything is a Warrior clone cause Warrior's best!!"

[Renathras]

the reason is to play different jobs and aesthetics.

while mechanically they all play the same they look different.

we will even get more of dps/healers/tanks in the upcoming years heck the expansion after DT will be the tank/support dps expansion so honestly if you want to give suggestions now is the time for what they can be and do.

This.

And they don't even play the same. There's a split between WAR/DRK and GNB with PLD somewhere in between, and the DRKs very much think they're different (and get the short end of the stick) compared to WAR.

One could ask why ever add new DPS Jobs, but no one ever does, because DPS players are first class citizens and folks recognize that new Jobs are a nice thing to get for a role from time to time.

I'm a bit worried they might actually pull a healer split with Off-Tank and Main-Tank sub roles. Like they did for shield and pure healer. Especially when the roles sort of already exist.

Didn't they do this in ShB?

And it kind of went down in flames, causing them to revert it? (Which kinda begs the question why they tried it with healers in EW, which also seems to have failed since SGE can outheal WHM/AST if it needs to in a pinch and AST is half-barrier healer anyway, leaving WHM out in the cold since it has only Temperance for mit, which is less mitigation per time than BLACK MAGE via Addle...)

.

OP: Not everyone likes WAR's aesthetic or rotation. That's why. You're a DRK so you think all tanks are WAR clones because DRK has kind of become one. PLD and GNB aren't, and GNB in particular plays very differently than WAR with all the oGCD weaving, rigid rotation, and no upkeep buff (PLD doesn't have an upkeep buff, either).

Try some of the other tanks.

I feel like this is less a "Why even add more tank Jobs" thread and more a disgruntled DRK complaining about how DRK is a worse WAR...

[Thurmnmurmn]

I wish they would stop making new jobs for one expansion and just focus on the combat for the current jobs we have.

Adding more and more is just going to make them feel even more same ish and add to the problem.

[ForteNightshade]

Didn't they do this in ShB?

It was prior Shadowbringers, actually. But yes, they did. From ARR through to Stormblood, they were pretty set on the notion of an "main" tank and "off" tank. They scrapped the whole thing because it caused players to lock specific tanks into those roles and caused several balancing problems. Both Dark Knight and Paladin wanted to MT due to having procs which triggered off auto attacks yet Paladin was straight bad at it, especially since their stances were on the GCD. Cover back then just made them a much better OT. Meanwhile, Warrior with Unchained was so hilariously good at MTing, you'd be crazy not to make them do it.

They pretty much acknowledged the system didn't work going into ShB. So there's zero chance they'll even consider bringing it back around.

[Avoidy]

Fun part is, the dps they added is in the same boat. It looks just like reaper but with two daggers. Aesthetically different, mechanically similar. 123, fill gauge, do cool looking burst only this time it's blue.
And it's even worse for healers, because our damage dealing kit is so stripped down at this point that every healer is just "1 dps button 1 dot and then a bunch of healing spells that are way overtuned for 95% of the game that isn't hard raids."

In order to address -any- of this, the devs would have to take an actual risk in changing things up. Since risks are dangerous and people eat up "nEw" classes that are just reskins of existing content anyway, we will probably never see any deviation in this regard. "Please look forward to it!"

[MsMisato]

They could have simply done away with job stones and tied your abilities to the weapon. this is what happens with the dev lacks foresight also a skill they took away. BUt this is the result of lowering the skill ceiling on essentially all jobs and we get what we have homogenization.

[Colt47]

They killed diversity for the sake of end game.

[Kranel_San]

I think FFXIV dev team should learn more from WoW on how to design tanks and make them feel and play uniquely than each other. So far WoW has:

- A tank that relies on and increases both the "Armor" and "Block" values. Basically the tankist of tanks
- A tank with healing and supportive spells that is our FFXIV Paladin equivalent. Perfect for all situations
- A tank that turns the damage received into DoTs that are delayed or negated. Great for massive pulls.
- A self-healing tank that is our FFXIV Warrior equivalent

If we simply analyze WoW's tanks' design, then we can find that they share a common but obvious theme. "Survival" but in a different way for different situations.

We could follow a similar mindset when designing and reworking how tanks function here in XIV. For example;

Paladin: A tank with support spells such as group mitigation, group shield, with some healing spells that could turn him into a demi-healer when the situation demands it. Perfect when the healers aren't very reliable or not there but isn't good enough to replace them. Damage is slightly below moderate and armor is slightly above moderate (We can't forget it's the only tank with a protective shield, so armor value being moderate or less is ridiculous)
Warrior: The self-healing tank we all know and love, but with less than moderate damage and armor.
Dark knight: The tank dps. High dps but moderate armor (Dark knights wear full metal clad armors, so they should have more armor value than warriors RPG-wise). Great pick for people who want to feel the weight of the greatsword but on the account of being the least tank to be able to survive due to the focus on dps. Basically hardcore tank
Gunbreaker: Parry tank. Second highest tank dps but the least with armor value. However, gunbreaker rely on high parry rate to avoid getting damaged in the first place.


I understand the proposal I made is not great, but I tried to re-purpose all tanks in FFXIV without making them feel totally different, because if I had the option to erase them and re-build them from scratch, then I'd have went with different tank jobs and mechanics that are similar in design to that of WoW and some old-school MMOs.