Tank in the making

[Kaptin_Bluddflagg]

Hey, what's up guys, thanks for reading this topic, I really do appreciate it.
First, I'm gonna make a disclaimer here: everything in my posts in this topic will be based on my personal opinion, backed by my experience and facts (hopefully, lol). I am, however, not claiming to be 100% right, yet I'll try to speak only about things I can be sure of. I would ask other people of the same.

So, a bit of an introduction. I've been playing MMOs since I was a teen, and in all of these games I would pick myself a tanking role. Lineage 2, WoW, Warhammer online, EQ, SWTOR, GW2 (to a certain extend - the raids allowed for tanking), Wildstar, TESO, Neverwinter Online, BDO (to a certain extend), etc.
I love tanking. Since most times I've also been a guild master or a raid leader, my irl character and my role choice would only compliment these traits. All in all, I've been tanking well over ten years. That being said, I also played FFXIV for a bit. Started a gladiator, ditched him after getting Provoke, leveled up a pugilist for the Internal Release and then went all the way to a Marauder, stopping as a lvl 50 Warrior tank. I like to lore behind the class, I like the up-close-and-personal-without-any-shiny-tricks approach. My Roegadyn Warrior is The Tank, and there's no stopping him.
Problem is, I found playing it to be extremely boring, so I quit for a month or two. Now that I'm back, I know what questions I want to ask other tanks.
So let's get to it:
1)Warrior tanks. Boring. I leveled one only to 50 and I am well aware that Deliverance and attacks that require it and some CDs would spice up the process at higher levels, but... I've seen it almost every other level, when you get a new CD or a new combo skill and you're like "wooooow, now this is totally gonna change the whole tanking experience!". And it does... for a day, tops. Then you just get used to this skill being incorporated into one of your rotations and you forget all the hype. It's there, I know it and I couldn't care less. Warrior tanking is boring. There was this dungeon with dragons (Stone Vigil, I think), and I literally fell asleep on my keyboard doing yet another Unchained Berserker's Internally Released Butcher's Block combo. It feels like the devs wanted to give the class a tool for every situation and at the end just said "eeeh, let's try to overcomplicate it with lots of buttons". As a result, the class is very self-sufficient, but instead of making playing him a challenge, they made it boring. I watched a lot if vids, read guides, talked to some high-end MTs and they said that warrior is definitely the best tank in the game, but the reason people are getting bored is mostly due to the endless gear treadmill.
The class has zero mobility and is way too reliant on "by the book, according to plan" playstyle. Sure, you can get the upper hand during a sudden overpull or an unexpected damage spike, but if it happens too often, you're quickly knocked off. Screwed up those threat rotations? Don't even think about doing much damage now - go get that aggro back. Got aggro? Good! Oooh, too bad your Pacification's on now - time to spam those Flashes. Ready to secure your position? Good! That Overpower spam was really stupid though, you're out of TP and if you switch to Deliverance for that boost from Equilibrium, your healer's gonna bury you and / or you'll lose aggro again. I'm not saying Warrior is hard - you can EASILY avoid such situations and go by the book, but spinning out rotations and standing in one place is pure boredom.
I am very used to Classic and TBC WoW protection warrior tanking style, where you had lots of tools, lots of mobility, you had a very chaotic tanking style, always on the move, charging around, intervening, with LOTS of variations according to a situation, which you could swap on a go, in a blink of an eye (if anyone remembers tanking Shattered Halls on heroic or Mount Hyjal raid) but 2.0 gcd on skills here?... even with those ogcd skills and haste... man, this is EXTREMELY long, like go-make-yourself-a-sandwich-watch-a-movie-draw-a-picture-talk-to-your-woman-on-skype-and-it's-still-on-cooldown type of long. This is just horrible!
So my question so far - even with all these downsides, does the situation get better at 60? Like more challenging? Please? I really need this challenge. This is one of the reasons I'm still going for MMOs. Also, I'm seeing almost everyone claiming that warrior is THE BEST tank class in game. Do you think so? Do you think it will stay this way?
By the by, from my experience, having more dmg reduction % and more mobility looks better than having higher HP pool. Am I wrong here?
I know I may sound somewhat biased on gap closers. I understand that FFXIV fights don't really offer much in terms of complicated tactics - it's usually pretty straightforward. Heck, my guildmates claimed that as a tank you don't really need a gap closer in this game (which makes me very sad).

2)Paladin. Like I said, I only leveled my glad to get provoke (22, I think), but so far I've read a lot of forums and guides on this class and people claim it to be the least challenging and the somewhat most boring. While your typical sword-and-board type of a fighter should be a go-to tank, I got a feeling that, even with all his immaculate defenses, people would rather have a warrior tank! The reason behind such an odd choice revealed itself as I got my marauder to lvl 30...
Groups... groups in ffxiv consist of only 4 people, meaning that literally everyone has to dps. And the best way to survive against the dungeon boss' damage is to kill him before he kills you. You can't really go full protection in this game - you have to deal damage, even as a tank. I also read up his skills. Boring combos, dps and tank stances (seen it somewhere) but maaan, this guy is a fortress! So many CDs, so much utility with Veil and all (not as much as warrior's slashing debuff, imo, but still). However, much like a warrior, this class has zero mobility, which I find simply unacceptable for a tank.
I was about to drop any ideas of playing this class when some random guy hit me up on paladins. He explained me how, despite warriors being OP (which might get them nerfed), paladins will still be the main tanks, that enrage timers are not at all that low and that allegedly almost every other person plays this class wrong... that there's a sort of an inner circle of true paladins who are so awesome in tanking that a warrior looks like just a dps class with a slightly better damage, in comparison to them. Heck, I don't know why, but I didn't feel that he was lying to me. So is it true? Are paladins somehow the best or is this all a big pile of poo?

3)Dorknights. Now this class is the reason I have my hopes somewhat high now. From what I saw, people that play a dorknight can be divided into two groups:
A) Maaan, an anti-hero class with a two hander and blackplate and an emo song on the background! He looks awesome, his skills look awesome, but his tanking is so hectic and chaotic (giggity!), his resources are very hard to manage (giggity) and some of his skills contradict his other skills (dammit)! He's a squishy tank, not as many defensive CDs as a paladin and not as much dps as a warrior. He's inconsistent, though he has some aoe skills for tanking and also his living dead sucks.

B) he took the best from both classes. His skills variety really suit him for virtually any setup or type of an encounter. He's got enough defensive cooldowns and his dps stance can be used together with his tank stance. He has a gap closer (giggity) that can be used very creatively - to supplement his pulling, to reposition the whole group and thus change the rules of the fight, to intervene an overpulled pack / overaggro'd mob, etc-etc. His resources, while seemingly scarce are easily manageable with a bit of creativity. He is the main tank hands down (possibly because of his skill that you can use once you have parried at attack, meaning that to be 100% effective a drk would need to get hit all the time) and people scorn him simply because virtually noone knows how to play him right.

Which one of these positions is right?

4) Also, a bit of a noobish question, but since I'm going to focus on one class only, I'd like to know the current meta behind stats and races. After some 3.something patch, Vitality now also gives you attack power, meaning that going full Vit (and thus Sea Wolf Roegadyn (yes, I am a min-maxer, so I'd like your opinion on races, too, please)), then getting yourself a hit cap is probably what I should be aiming at, when tanking high-end. I also heard that things like parry (at least for a warrior) are highly redundant and you would want to have as big of the HP pool as possible as your means of survivability.
What's your take on it, people? What do you think?

Like I said, I haven't been playing at all last... month or so? I believe the current patch (Soul Surrender) may have changed some aspects of tanking. Feel free to point them out!

These are all the questions that I wanted to ask for now. Once again, I very much appreciate you reading this topic and answering. I've been typing in on my phone, so there may be some mistakes in the text, but nothing too horrible I hope.

[DestroyerOfLargePlanets]

1) I think you should play both DRK and WAR -- rack up a good amount of playtime with both of these at level 60. WAR certainly deals more damage than DRK when played properly. However, DRK has a ridiculous kit of defensive cooldowns which allows the DRK to thrive in both magic AND physical-damage-heavy fights whereas WAR is at a significant disadvantage when faced with lots of magic damage. Nevertheless, regardless of how much physical or magical damage is being dished out in a fight, both DRK and WAR have the ability to tank any fight just fine. DRK deals less damage, of course. Other than that, it all depends on your playstyle.

I have played both DRK and WAR in Alexander Savage and I can say that I prefer DRK because to me, it's much easier to max out my dps with DRK than it is on a WAR. No matter what tank I play, I always try to max out dps without placing too much strain on the healers, but the problem is that in order to max out dps on a WAR, you must very effectively plan out when you'll use Berserk. I'm not the best at planning, so WAR does not suit my playstyle.

2) Secondary stat priority is Crit > Det > Skill Speed for all tanks. For primary stats, you'll want to max out your Vitality. Vit and Str both give you the same amount of attack power per point. Use this https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...YcA/edit#gid=0 to calculate how much attack damage you'll get from any one piece of equipment.

3) My idea of the best in-game tank has nothing at all to do with the class (DRK, PLD, WAR) being played. In my raid group, I play DRK/WAR with DRK as my main. My co-tank plays PLD/WAR with PLD as his main. I consider my co-tank to be ridiculously good regardless of what class of tank he plays because he pays attention in raid, has great raid awareness, barely makes mistakes, and he constantly looks for ways to improve his game.

4) The post limit can be exceeded by editing your post and adding more to your post.

Sorry if my reply is not so coherent or easy to read... I'm sleepy lol.

[Kaptin_Bluddflagg]

Thank you, DestroyerOfLargePlanets! This will add some food for my brain! Also, I've edited my post to fully reflect my thoughts.

[PrincessNuri]

I almost never get bored of my warrior. Love her more than my paladin and darkknight. But sometimes I do switch it up when I do Wondrous Tales. Different styles give great fun during matches. Real tanks play and have all 3 geared up anyway ^_^

[Launched]

However, DRK has a ridiculous kit of defensive cooldowns which allows the DRK to thrive in both magic AND physical-damage-heavy fights whereas WAR is at a significant disadvantage when faced with lots of magic damage.

You don't seriously believe this, do you? WAR has Inner Beast for every single tankbuster they ever have to take. Vengeance and Thrill are both only on 2m cooldowns. Holmgang is only a 3m cooldown. There will never be a tankbuster where WAR can't have tank stance + 20% damage reduction minimum.

[MerleSirlos]

My first advice is for you to play the 3 of them at 60 and get a feel at each of them for yourself. They all have their own playstyle and it is better for you to play the one that suits you better. I believe you can get the full potential of a job if you like how it plays and be better with it than if you were to play a job you don't like.

Second, regarding race and stats. STR and VIT give the same attack power, but VIT gives extra HP, so you want to max VIT and then STR. So going with that your race choice should be as follow: 1) Sea Wolf Roegadym (22 STR, 23VIT), 2) Highlander Hyur (23 STR, 22 VIT), 3) Xaela Au RA (23 STR, 21 VIT). Note that current stats are between 1400-1500, so those 1 or 2 points difference are ridiculous in comparaison, but if it"s for the sake of min-maxing, this is it

[Kaptin_Bluddflagg]

Thanks for you answers, folks! Waiting for more to come!
Also, MerleSirlos, that stat comparison is awesome, now I won't race-change my Freeboter Ork!.. I mean, Roegadyn.

[Dement]

I main WAR so that's the only one I can really react to. I think you may have missed what makes WAR fun. You can sit in Defiance non-stop and spam Butcher's Block and Overpower until the end of time. You will never lose aggro but you will never really push the job either. The power of Warrior is the synergy of its toolkit and dancing along the edge of how much time you can spend outside of Defiance to maximize your DPS. Maintaining aggro, keeping Storm's Eye up and using cooldowns appropriately while in Deliverance or with Defiance turned off (until you get Deliverance) usually always gives you room to improve upon your skill in the class. The skill ceiling for WAR is extremely high.

WAR is considered the BEST tank in the game because it can easily handle a main tank role because of Inner Beast and low CD times of Vengeance, Thrill of Battle, and Raw Intuition as well as Unchained and Berserk for aggro; but is hands down the best offtank you can have due to Storm's Eye (no matter what this needs to be up 100% on bosses) and Storm's Path (mostly for progression) along with it's ability to pump out the highest burst DPS. Pair a WAR with a BRD or a competent healer and you can completely bypass the Pacification debuff from Berserk. Like you said with PLD, most of it's toolkit is built around mitigating damage or healing and as an offtank, you don't need to mitigate very much and the healers typically have the healing covered because it's easier to plan for themselves to do it; Sword Oath does do decent damage though. Dark Knight is very similar due to the need for Parry procs and its toolkit. It is unlikely to stay this way after the expansion, though, due to the incredibly high viability which WAR has benefited from through all of Heavensward. I hope that they will bring the tanks closer in line, but I can see them being overhanded, as usual, and accidentally making WAR weaker than the others for a few months until they get it balanced right.

[Kaptin_Bluddflagg]

I main WAR so that's the only one I can really react to. I think you may have missed what makes WAR fun. You can sit in Defiance non-stop and spam Butcher's Block and Overpower until the end of time. You will never lose aggro but you will never really push the job either. The power of Warrior is the synergy of its toolkit and dancing along the edge of how much time you can spend outside of Defiance to maximize your DPS. Maintaining aggro, keeping Storm's Eye up and using cooldowns appropriately while in Deliverance or with Defiance turned off (until you get Deliverance) usually always gives you room to improve upon your skill in the class. The skill ceiling for WAR is extremely high.

WAR is considered the BEST tank in the game because it can easily handle a main tank role because of Inner Beast and low CD times of Vengeance, Thrill of Battle, and Raw Intuition as well as Unchained and Berserk for aggro; but is hands down the best offtank you can have due to Storm's Eye (no matter what this needs to be up 100% on bosses) and Storm's Path (mostly for progression) along with it's ability to pump out the highest burst DPS. Pair a WAR with a BRD or a competent healer and you can completely bypass the Pacification debuff from Berserk. Like you said with PLD, most of it's toolkit is built around mitigating damage or healing and as an offtank, you don't need to mitigate very much and the healers typically have the healing covered because it's easier to plan for themselves to do it; Sword Oath does do decent damage though. Dark Knight is very similar due to the need for Parry procs and its toolkit. It is unlikely to stay this way after the expansion, though, due to the incredibly high viability which WAR has benefited from through all of Heavensward. I hope that they will bring the tanks closer in line, but I can see them being overhanded, as usual, and accidentally making WAR weaker than the others for a few months until they get it balanced right.

See mate, that's the problem. I am using all of his available combos and yet it's boring. I'll surely level him to 60 to see what Deliverance combos can bring to the table. By the way, did I get you right? Warrior is the best MT and OT at the moment?

[Sarcatica]

DRK and PLD are preferred more in the Main Tank group mostly due to the procs you can get, you lose the access to the procs if you have DRK/PLD as the OT. I consider both DRK and PLD better at taking damage while pushing DPS in Grit-less or in Swo due to the amount of on-demand CDs you have to cycle through tank busters (in endgame contents, you will keep hearing this phrase), WAR will generally run out of CDs if you stay in Deliverance for the long amount of time VS DRK/PLD tanking. WAR is best used when your group plans out specific time of tanking before swapping to be effective in the CDs cycling instead of having 1 fixed job do the whole tanking for the most part.

It's also generally accepted that WAR is the best OT due to the utility the job can bring to raid comp (and the huge DPS and burst), much like how NIN is almost auto included. So you currently have DRK/PLD as the "MT" and WAR as the "OT" in the best and ideal raid comp.

PLD and WAR are the 2 tanks that need to pay attention to their Offensive CDs (FoF and Berserk), maximizing damage on these 2 jobs requires in-depth knowledge of the fights, much like how the DPS roles should think. How long is the fight? How many FoF/Berserk can I fit in the duration? Do I use FoF/Berserk now or should I keep it, and for how long? Will the boss jump for a long time? Are there any adds to get the most total damage (aka padding ehehe)? On the other hand, DRK is the controlling job due to how Darkside (drains mana time to time for 15% up damage), you are always adjusting to how much mana you ideally want and how to maximize your damage primarily through your mana and your excess amount of oGCD to weave into your combo.

All in all, it's all about how much you are able to milk from the jobs. Skill > gear by a long shot.