CD is deceptive. Becuase all you're saying is "Hey I mitigated all that damage, Go me". When in fact you could have face tanked it and the healer could heal you up in seconds.
almost all end game is about "critical moments" That's when everything happens, a wipe highly possible, no errors etc. That's why pld get the fancy duty because they have the fancy CDs.
negating 1k damage from 5k is good and all....yaa...kinda good, but really, does it even matter? The next attack is 10 seconds away, both healers are bored and spamming cure1/phys you're getting 5k heals np. You must feel so good to pop a worthless CD
now when shit hits the fan, and stuff blowing up, the whole group is getting hit by aoes, you're beeing smacks constantly for 3k-5ks....That's when you sink anything and everything into it.
and foresight is the only one on the list not placebo. It's crap, but it's still physical def (around 5%)
If you're punching primal and say oooh woah is me, foresight worthless. Fine, but for stuff we're tanking, we're super super glad it's there. Cause we got nothing. Nothing at all.
Let's take ifrit extreme as a basic example of end game tanking. You're getting stacks, 1-2-3 swap 1-2-3 maybe 4. 1st phase. zZZZzz 2nd phase.... ya maybe pop one at 3 or 4 just to keep the heat off, 3rd phase.... now comes the crunch....super nail does 3k damage, and ifrit has a leash on you to make stuff that much harder, and both tanks are hitting up high stacks with constant 1k damage aoes.
Those 2 minutes, and in those 30 seconds... is the entire fight. Everything. Right there. All your CDs and "Oh I'm negating damage yay me" is compressed into those 30seconds.
Now running a pld is nice, because a pld can HG on 4 stacks, get 5 or 6 stacks before another tank swaps, allowing a full 20 seconds to tank it for almost no strain. then after passed back, you have another set of CDs all ready and able to soak 60-80% and a stoneskin buddy if need be.
A war...got nothing. sure you can infuriate, for 2-3 IBs, but that's not a very long time or a very high reduction. Foresight wil help with a few swaps. and thrill of battle will do all of... 1.5k heal because the chances of you having full hp is almost nil with the constant aoe... that just leaves vengence...
If you're good, you can time your IB/vengence/thrill like a HG..a getto HG. and then face tank the rest hoping RNG doesn't screw the other tank over, and stack him high as well.
Not quite pld but that's the best wars can do.
Generally rotating CDs to save mana is good because the content is scripted, but then that a pld with HG.
But realistically healers don't really spend much mana anyway until way into the fight. If you ever notice healers MP, then you know that most of the MP comes in very fine bursts.
Go talk to your healer. heck just look at your top off hp times. There's only so many phases that require high outputs of mana. Sure the medica/succors drain on healers in the long run, but the wipe almost always happens at key points.
Wars don't have that option depending on what they are suppose to do. They need to make sure they have those CD or sets of CDs on certain cues.
On the healer side, I will get annoyed you're constantly getting hit for 3/4 of your life, but I'm much more annoyed if you can't keep yourself alive when crap hits the fan based on the script.
You can sprout T9 stuff, but in the end on something as simple as a levi ex fight. One defining moment : 2 bubbles, 3 waves, and a cleave from the head...omg wtf, stupid war where's your vengence CD. And just to make it worse right after that phase change, into spashes, and dives. Stop being useless.