Samurai, why Tanks?

[Duelle]

I dont know what version of 11 you played but these were never things.

Only because people refused to adjust. SAM was designed with the highest parry rating out of the jobs. Its weapon skills had easy-to-stack mods and their gear originally leaned towards high parry with STR supplementing. Since parry mechanics in FFXI were garbage people used it as DPS, taking advantage of the easy mods on their weapon skills (the design combined with gear swaps meant SAM ended up doing a ton more damage that other jobs, specially once people discovered how store TP worked). It was easier to veer it towards DPS over having to fix how parries worked, figuring out a better mechanic for SAM tanking AND admitting they were wrong. This was Tanaka's FFXI, and at that time they never admitted they were wrong, much less clean up their own messes.

-----------

That said, I like the idea of a SAM tank. I'd probably base it off the WoW Monk's stagger mechanic (basically damage taken is split by half into direct damage taken and a stacking self-DoT called stagger. The design revolved around parrying stuff and managing your stagger stacks so that damage taken would not overtake heals tossed at you by the healer).