SAMURAI SHOWDOWN

[Khalithar]

Snip

Factoring in the mage tank idea above, I feel that putting them on casting gear and making their tank stats scale on Int would be the best bet. Putting three classes on "of Casting" would even it out with what we have on "of Healing" and "of Fending."

[Duelle]

Factoring in the mage tank idea above, I feel that putting them on casting gear and making their tank stats scale on Int would be the best bet. Putting three classes on "of Casting" would even it out with what we have on "of Healing" and "of Fending."

At that point it's more an issue of nomenclature. Having a tank wearing "of Casting" gear and fighting with the BLMs and SMNs in a raid over it would be weird.

If you could find a single instance of them using chainmail, I'd like to see it. Usually their armor was woven scales, the strongest being iron scales and plates.

Yes, Samurai used lamellar armor. I've never found any comparison between that and the plate armor worn by knights as far as weight. Just by the way its built and the materials used, I would assume it's arguably lighter than plate, but I've found no evidence one way or the other.

To the people saying we need a Mage tank, we have DRK. It revolves around MP management already, so making another tank revolve around that would be just as redundant as another 2-handed weapon tank. Plus, I'm not sure you've thought out the defense aspect when you say that they could just cast spells. Surely you realize how under-powered this would be as time went on. They'd have to either give lighter clothing the same defense as heavy armor or rework defense entirely.

Not really. Firstly because DRK is a knight that consumes MP for some of its attacks. The bulk of its MP consumption stems from Dark Arts and Darkside ticking away, not use of attacks.

Secondly, stances can do more than just increase enmity. Our presumed mage tank would have a stance that modifies its stats and gameplay to have the same EHP as the other tanks along with safeguards to allow it to perform its job uninterrupted. Using magic to reinforce equipment or outright reduce damage taken would be expected out of our mage tank. I'd probably have the stance reduce cast times, remove interruption chance or reduce damage taken while casting to take us further in that direction.

Even if you do this, it would mean tanking w/o tank stance becomes even worse than what tanks do now since they now have caster defense/HP without it.

That's sort of the point, and something I hope SE gets around to enforcing to all tanks. You're supposed to tank in stance and switch when you're not the tank. There may be exceptions (a tank built around swaps as part of its gameplay), but the rule still applies.

What is so wrong with a RDM healer? RDM are known to be jacks of all trades. That means they shouldn't be able to take hits like a warrior or paladin, but should have some means of shielding. They shouldn't have the dps of monk or dragoon, but have decent dps along with a rapier. They shouldn't have the healing of white mage, but should be able to heal a party. To me this clearly points to it being a frontline melee healer.

And to me it points to a melee DPS with utility and damage options via spells. "Healer" is the last thing that comes to mind when thinking of the Red Mage.

DNC should be a frontline support job in the future.

DNC would actually be another good option for a tank.