Quote Originally Posted by Khalithar View Post
Snip.
While I'm all for non-plate wearing tanks, historically, Samurai wore heavy armor (plate).

However, I love thematic job designs.

We have middle ages European jobs in Knights (Paladin which is called Knight in the JP version, Dragoon which is also a knight, and Dark Knight), Wizards (BLM) and priests (WHM) and archers (BRD).

We can have a far eastern model too, let's have Samurai (tank), Ninja , Monk and add some healer that fits the far east theme. Shintou priest?

Kinda too bad that jobs in this game pick one weapon. A samurai class that could utilize katana and bows (Samurai were excellent archers with the Yumi bow) would be so interesting to play. In FFXI SAM used to skill chain with itself utilizing Katana and Archery weaponskills and was one of the two reasons they nerfed pointblank archery (The other reason was rangers dual wielding axes and wailing at the targets during the ranged attack recast lol).

Beastmaster or Puppermaster tanking with their pets would be interesting but I fear it would be as clunky as Titan-egi tanking even if they had better aggro. The most realistic way a pet class can tank is if they shared damage with their pets and had CDs where the pet absorbs the damage for them or they absorbed HP from the pet.

The main problem with the FF series is that they never had non-heavy armor sturdy classes outside of the monk. And since FFXIV doesn't want hybrids, MNK won't tank. Which is why I would suggest a Disciple of Magic tank.

RDM comes to mind, but they can make it anything really. A mage that amplifies its DEF and M.DEF through a trait or just has a much higher damage reduction multiplier on their tank stance. It tanks by applying debuffs, magical barriers (directly reduce damage or adds HP) while using magical attacks (Foe Requiem buffs them) for damage.