Enough is enough

[Phoenicia]

Snip.

The only time you'll give PLD self heals is if you give the other two tanks block and fix the disparity on WAR's received healing (Defiance is 20% heal increase, not 25%, and only affects spells, not abilities like Assize and Lustrate). WAR self healing is a compensatory thing as it receives less effective healing and has no passive mitigation from a shield. DRK has self healing also to cover the lack of shield, but to a lesser level than WAR because DRK receives the same effective healing as PLD. As far as self healing is concerned, it's quite balanced.

In my post, I was pointing out that WAR has all it needs to tank and all it needs to DPS and all it needs to switch between. Not only that, it has great synergy with other classes (other tanks and NIN). WAR doesn't care what the damage type is, it can mitigate it.

On the other hand, PLD has most of what it needs to tank (most power defensive CDs in the game) but suffers from aggro issues. It also has some of what it needs to DPS (Sword Oath is the most potent offensive stance), but has major TP issues and does not provide its own damage type resistance down (slashing debuff). It also has to deal with lots of "clunk" when it needs to switch between due to unnecessary MP costs on stances and them being on GCD. PLD also has the lowest aggro of the three tanks. As a matter of fact, PLD DPS potential suffers because of its aggro issues, having to use more Rage of Halone (weakest potency combo of all three classes) to compensate. PLD's "synergy" is with the healers but not to a noticeable extent. PLD has no particular synergy with the other tanks or DPS. PLD also has a whole set of "situational" CDs that may or may not see use.

DRK is a whole different can of worms. Its tanking suffers from self-conflicting tools. Evasion and Blind (while they reduce more damage than parry) conflict with DRK's parry as it has a lot of "procs" from it. Evasion and Blind also conflict with the MP regen of Blood Price. DRK has no reliable way of mitigating physical damage. And if tank busters are physical and frequent, DRK will incorporate LD into its CD rotation (Like how PLD uses HG), which is fine... but it puts additional stress on healers and forces ANOTHER "oh crap" button.

Now that we see how DRK has an "inconsistent" tanking set, let's look at its DPS tools. DRK has no "DPS stance" unlike Deliverance and Sword Oath. But it has a buff like Maim in the form of Darkside. Which is fine and dandy. DRK, like PLD, does not provide its own damage type resistance down either. DRK, even more so than PLD, suffer SERIOUS TP issues. DRK, to a lesser degree than PLD, also suffers "clunk" when it comes to stance switching.

DRK has absolutely no synergy with ANY other class. It actually has disynergy (if that's a word) with other classes (MNK just doesn't work with DRK). But then again, the class has no synergy with itself lol.

So yes, warrior, right now, is "how a tank should be". The other tanks should be raised to WAR's level, and not to take WAR down to PLD or DRK levels. To fix this, you don't have to slap what is on WAR to the other two tanks (self heals, SE/SP), homogenizing them in the process, but to have a broader look at their toolkits and what they offer the raid as a whole.

While you talked about the difficulty "ladder" of the three classes in comparison to "bikes", balancing a class based on difficulty is not always a good thing. Because people end up taking the most skilled players in the best performing class. Even though a high risk - high reward design is fun to have and gives incentive to have people try to master the harder classes. Basically, unless it is really difficult to get the perfect performance where the harder class performs much better than the easier one, where you are guaranteed that even the most skilled players will make mistakes, it is unhealthy to have performance tied to difficulty. Due to this game's nature, balance based on difficulty is really unhealthy. It was bad enough when MNK sat as the top DPS class for over a year and a half because SE considered it the most difficult class, even though many MNK players would tell you the rotation sinks into muscle memory VERY quickly and that "optimal performance" is commonly achievable. But this is not a post arguing/discussing MNK's difficulty.

A good example on difficulty ladder performance would be TERA. TERA had two tanking classes. They had varying difficulty and optimal performance. Lancer on average outperformed the warrior, but warrior "optimally" leaves a lancer in the dust.

The pure "shield" tank, the Lancer, and the "evasion" DPS hybrid, the warrior. A lancer is much easier to tank with as it has better aggro and defensive tools (A skill set dedicated to tanking). A good lancer will take minimal damage but because it is restricted to blocking attacks, they end up taking damage as some of the damage can go through the block threshold.

On the other hand, a warrior has a myriad of offensive and defensive skills (since it's a hybrid), resulting in more tank DPS, and if played perfectly, 0 damage taken as the warrior will block with "Cross-parry" most week attacks and completely evade any big hitters that may pass through the "block" threshold.

However, performance varies a lot based on player's reaction rather than a set scripted dance like FFXIV. Bosses in TERA, unlike this game, had no set "rotations" but had certain CDs on their abilities. The boss may throw any ability at you at any time, but once it is used, that ability won't be used again for a while (Minimum is the "CD", but can take longer). Bosses also "reacted" to players. For example if you have aggro but end up behind the boss somehow the boss will do a tail swipe. If you stun a boss AoE attack, it will do a breath attack instead. Or if an aggro switch happens, boss reacts with a spinning AoE attack. So the game was "less predictable" than FFXIV.

However, because there are no "set boss rotations" and there are many other elements like human error and resource management (block and dodge used an "Endurance" resource), it was almost impossible for warriors to reach that point where they deal more damage than lancer and still take 0 damage in return. In the end, even though warrior is a "better tank" in theory, it was never considered a better tank and, given the option, lancer was always taken over warrior for the tank spot.