Most popular tank at endgame

[Ilan]

Just for the record saying that something has an higher skill ceiling does not equal saying is harder, I went into details into explaining why the fact the war having higher skill ceiling is true twice already and twice I deleted it by mistake trying to copypaste it because my work keyboard has a weird layout and I ended up pressing fn+v leaving me with my reply consisting in a single lower case "v" and a lot of rage, I'll see if I can find the time and the mental strenght to do that again

A higher skill ceiling does make it harder for the majority of the players to play a class properly.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

My main class is the hardest because I play it.It is also the hardest because if it wasn't; it wouldn't validate my skill and experiences being higher than yours.

On a serious note, as far as rotations goes, tanks have always been 'easy'. Staying in tank stance and pressing fewer buttons in coil has never been any more difficult than it is now. It's just a false perception of difficulty stemming from the tank anxiety that plagues the role.

Looking at OGCD's and MP? Timing Berserk and Stacks? Easy.

The truly hardest class is PLD.

Because you're fighting the monotony and simplicity of the class. And that is the hardest, most soul sucking hurdle you'll ever face.

Or you look at their actual toolkits and realize just pressing buttons doesn't make you a good tank. None of the tanks are necessarily hard to play, but there is a noticeably ceiling curve on how to play any of them well. Dark Knight is the highest because you have to constantly monitor when you can safely turn off Grit. In Savage, messing up your timing or staying out too long will likely wipe the raid. If you're cheating too much and the Black Mage or Machinist crit? They'll pull hate almost instantly. Warrior follows because just based on timing. If you know the job well enough, you can squeeze three Fell Cleaves in your opener, and like Dark Knight, spend a large amount of time in Deliverance even while MTing. Paladin lags behind since it lacks the burst potential of Warrior or the complexity of Dark Knight. It has nothing to do with "I like this job best!" That's just how all three work. It's also why Paladin generally lags behind in progression content.

[ZioSerpe]

Dark Knight is the highest because you have to constantly monitor when you can safely turn off Grit. In Savage, messing up your timing or staying out too long will likely wipe the raid. Warrior follows because just based on timing. If you know the job well enough, you can squeeze three Fell Cleaves in your opener, and like Dark Knight, spend a large amount of time in Deliverance even while MTing.

I'd still say warrior stance switching is harder because of the 8 seconds cooldown, nothing major though, the turning on and off of grit is easier per se since it has no CD, the hard part of it is fitting it in in between all the other button pressing, but it is less punishing in itself since it can be turned on and off at will.
The skill ceiling of the warrior is given mostly by the fact that all of the cooldowns can be used for defense and offense and mixed and matched in multitude of ways, literally making the skill ceiling higher.

[aleph_null]

War's cd being used for defense and offense doesn't really make the skill ceiling much higher though, since in raids you should be planning your cd usages for everything instead of deciding it on the fly, thanks to the fact that these fights are very scripted. It may sound complex and intimidating but once you've mapped out your possible berserk windows and the incoming tank busters and cleaves, it's quite simple.

Drk's complexity seems to come from the number of off gcd skills and mp management. It kind of feels like playing a tank with the dps rotation of a melee dps class, while still having to manage your defensive cds. More off gcd offensive skills also means less wiggle room for weaving defensive cds without clipping gcds. Turning grit on/off or switching shield/sword oath is indeed easier due to the lack of cd, but they cost a lot of dps, so in a raid situation you should plan around those very carefully.

[Ilan]

I'd still say warrior stance switching is harder because of the 8 seconds cooldown, nothing major though, the turning on and off of grit is easier per se since it has no CD, the hard part of it is fitting it in in between all the other button pressing, but it is less punishing in itself since it can be turned on and off at will.
The skill ceiling of the warrior is given mostly by the fact that all of the cooldowns can be used for defense and offense and mixed and matched in multitude of ways, literally making the skill ceiling higher.

Warrior stance switch is the easiest since it is a off global cooldown. It has 10 seconds cooldown but it doesn't cost anything.

[Cursling]

For the original topic, from an image i think PLD is most popular but for end content WAR is the most sought after. For that reason alone I main DRK as I prefer it, but I'm also leveling PLD for whatever content that comes up and the other tank in our FC is a WAR so we generally have all based covered.

[Brian_]

From the latest official Eorzea Census:



Quite a turn around from 2015:



RIP PLD.

Dark Knights not so edgy anymore.

[aleph_null]

I was pretty damn surprised with drk at 47% since that's the general population, not even talking about popularity in savage lol.

[Miaa]

47%+29%+34%=110%

I think its a typo and drk is really only 37%.

[Lyth]

Numbers are based on jobs that have been levelled to 60. If you levelled a tank job to 60 between the 2015 and 2016 Census, the percentage of that job would have gone up, and the other two would have gone down. Many active tank mains would have had their tank jobs levelled to 60 prior to Gordias, if not soon after. A relative percentage drop doesn't reflect a reduction in use, as you cannot unlevel a job that you have already levelled to 60. Players are also going to be in the process of levelling jobs to 60 that they've barely touched, in preparation for the expansion.

A further translation on reddit has the overall level 60 job percentages for PLD at 7%, WAR at 8%, and DRK at 8%, so the tank percentages probably do involve a typo, as above.