How to make tanks more fun to play (devs please read)

[saber_alter]

What does that even have to do with the frustrations of new players leveling a Gladiator, which causes them to drop the class and reroll as a non-tank?

It took me about 100 hours of game time to take a Gladiator from 1 to 50, without any of the 50% XP bonus from already having a lv50, and while doing the story mode. During that entire time, it was boring and felt slow as hell fighting. Sure, I only had to kill 5-10 enemies per quest but that is beside the point. It's not a very fun class to play leveling up, at all, and the low DPS is part of why its not fun.

You keep missing the point of this thread. Are you just here to troll or what? I mean really, your only examples involve characters who have 20-30 item levels above the content.

gld was my first class as well. I'm pretty sure it took me not even half that time for one to 50. i didn't find the dps to be terrible, i was willing to sacrifice damage for mitigation and health. i didn't find it too difficult to learn how to effectively rotate cooldowns, keep up AOE hate, stun mechanics, etc. i even leveled cnj to 34 just to improve.

but pld is boring. mostly because its too simplified, basic tank archetype. you have your tanking stance, a few mitigation moves, an aggro building combo, an aoe aggro ability, and a invincibility button. thats it. not really that fun. i really only take up the sword when it is necessary for me to (like when someone needs a tank badly).

i don't want a tanky dps. i don't want a jack-of-all-trades. i like paladin, but in terms of entertainment it's boring. i just want something that is more than a mind-numbing do this rotation over and over to hold hate class with a mitigation tack on.