what happens if second half of Alex is all physical?

[Brian_]

snip

I read all this and no offense, but it just sounds like you don't know what you're saying or doing.

I've tanked AS1 with DRK, PLD, and WAR. In tank stance and not in tank stance with PLD/DRK/WAR OTs. With good healers and with bad healers. First, enmity should not be an issue regardless of your tank pairing. Second, lazy tanking is not trying to maximize your class. And, in this meta, maximizing your class means maximizing your DPS as a raid unit. So, say what you will about relying on healers. If you are turtling it up then it's the healers that should be pushing their DPS. The risk in you dying is all the same. It's just a matter of you taking that risk or the healers taking that risk. And, it's much more practical for tanks to be the ones pushing their DPS because they have better uptime, meet the ACC caps without support, can better control incoming damage with the CDs, and can just focus on themselves rather than healing an entire raid.

There is no way for PLD to cast Clemency before a tank buster because it will get interrupted by an auto attack. The same goes for SS. And, SS can also get eaten up by an auto attack. Clemency and SS are only usable during down time.

So, in terms of "way more utility." Halone is so insignificant in AS1 that PLDs don't bother. All it does is slightly decrease auto attack damage. Delirium and Reprisal on the other hand actually decrease important damage like the cleave and tank buster. Cover is useful for prey targets except with the way healers coordinate their healing for preys, it's not always good to randomly redirect prey damage to a tank. Also, because of the range restriction and CD on cover, you can't consistently use it. You also take damage based on the covered target's mitigation. Do you know what healers hate the most? Inconsistency. Stoneskin is nice during downtime but useless otherwise. Clemency is uncastable whenever it's actually needed. Divine Veil is nice but it's a weak shield on a long CD and requires an activator. HG is irrelevant because it's used in a PLD's CD rotation. So no, they don't have much utility at all. DRK and WAR utility both crap all over PLDs as things currently are. If you're a DRK that doesn't realize how much better than PLD you are, you need to be a better DRK.