After 1 (arguably 2) expansions what is square trying to achieve with WAR (and PLD)?

[Absurdity]

I think the idea with WAR is that it's supposed to be a bit more squishy than the other tanks, but compensate with self healing... Rather than having as much defensive options as other tanks, they'd have more ways to heal themselves. But aside from dealing with magic damage, they basically have as much defense as DRK or GNB does.

Once upon a time they did actually have weaker mitigation. But as Lyth said, mitigation is just binary most of the time, either you survive or you don't, and we can't require our poor little tanks to actually have to think outside the box and coordinate with other players to make up for their weaker defenses.

Funnily enough in the few cases where it isn't binary WAR does actually still have weaker mitigation, Abyssos' bleed busters showed how mediocre both Thrill and Bloodwhetting can be when it's not just a singular pass/fail check.
It always had and still does have weaker % mitigation, but there are so few fights that actually punish it for it that this flaw might as well not exist.

You know what else Warrior gobbled up from Dark knight? Reprisal and low blow.

Let's not conveniently pretend like Warrior was the only tank that got those two.

And in EW, Warrior also needed Dark knight's damage apparently. And now there's literally nothing left to take, Warrior is just flat out better.

Not like it could've stolen DrK's damage in ShB, they were both at the bottom lol.