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

[Lyth]

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I think arguing that WAR's advantages are the natural result of historical precedent isn't a good justification for future design. ARR was developed at a point in time where they weren't really sure if there would ever be another expansion, so the design wasn't about future proofing so much as it was about desperately staying afloat. Both tanks and healers suffered from the legacy of this as a result of having only two jobs on release. The end result was that the support roles each ended up with a 'vanilla' job, and then every possible theme that they thought of was stuffed into the other. The problem is that burning through so many design directions at once on a single job limits your creative options when introducing in new jobs.

Lifesteal
Lifesteal is not the only form of self-sustain that exists. WAR currently straddles several styles of self-sustain between instant heals, barriers, regens, and lifesteal. None of these make any thematic sense as far as job fantasy is concerned. This in turn creates a push towards homogenization, because every tank job now needs all of these things in order to remain competitive. The solution is to separate these out on to different tanks, and it's relatively easy to do if they actually invest some effort into the role. A lifesteal tank doesn't need an on demand instant heal. If they want to burst heal, they line up their healing with their burst window. You don't need a barrier shield if your lifesteal can push out into temporary HP. You can achieve similar effects with the other mechanics in a way that develops job identity in unique ways.

And this is the point people have been making for multiple expansions now - it doesn't really matter 'who' the lifesteal tank is, but one tank shouldn't contain all those distinct themes at the same time.

Role Actions
The 4.0 role action system definitely impacted DRK more than other tanks. DRK had Shadowskin in Heavensward, which was a much better looking version of Rampart that did the same thing. Dark Dance was nerfed into Anticipation and made available to all tanks. Reprisal and Low Blow were nerfed and made available to all tanks. The net result was it went from having the most number of actions out of any tank to having the least after the transition. But the main problem with the change was that utility was distributed unequally. The lack of knockback mitigation was especially bad, especially given that arena-wide knockbacks was Stormblood's favorite raid gimmick.

The decision around Reprisal was probably the strangest one in Stormblood. If you wanted to consolidate Reprisal as a universal tool, why would you keep DV and then add in PoA? And this lends itself to the mitigation inflation issue. Tanks won't be balanced until every tank has Reprisal + two job-specific raidwide mitigation tools. If you wanted tanks to rely on a standardized tool, just delete DV/PoA/SiO/Missionary/HoL. If you want tanks to each have their unique tool, then give each tank one raidwide mitigation tool out of the six that exist. They clearly ran out of ideas by the time they came to Missionary/HoL.

Mobility
Mobility is an interesting discussion point. DRK definitely had a mobility advantage prior to Stormblood, and WAR after Stormblood. I think part of the problem is that the movement tools on tanks are fairly boring. If you look at melee dps, there are definite differences in movement toolsets but none of them feel particularly disadvantaged. I still think it's hilarious that the WAR playerbase had a SAM style on-demand gap closer and squandered it out of utter greed. What they should have done instead is just asked for an on-demand gap extender to consolidate their advantage, but that's like expecting the average WAR enthusiast to understand Uptime 101. I think the bigger problem though is if you add movement tools like Shukuchi/Raiju/Ingress/Egress/Thunderclap into the mix, tanks will likely complain until each type of movement tool is on every tank, rather than appreciating the differences and letting every job have its unique upsides and downsides.

I think it's completely bizarre that anyone would claim that 'doing the most damage' is part of a job's identity. That's a bit like claiming being the most powerful job is part of the job's identity.

Incidentally, the reason why SGE has so much overlap with SCH was that it was designed to split the SCH playerbase. That's likely what's going to happen to WAR as well. They'll release a hammer tank that is very similar in design to WAR. Once the playerbase is split, then you can make the appropriate balance adjustments that should have been made expansions ago without community backlash.