Which Tank is Better Off MT?

[Lyth]

It doesn't matter how much a DRK loses, PLD mitigation helps the healers a lot more if the fight is suited to it. Fights like Thordan and Sephirot (synced) stand a lot to gain from having PLD MT because their tank busters and mechanics can be handled far more easily with moves like sheltron and hallowed ground. DRK being a bad OT is not a reason to disqualify PLD from being the better MT, because the fact of the matter is PLD is far better in some fights, and the real problem is that PLD/DRK setups are just bad in general.

Mitigation advantages only matter if they can be translated into increased time out of tank stance. Most competent tanks are capable of designing cooldown rotations that are capable of handling the opposite damage type from the type which they specialise in. Nobody cares in the slightest if you mitigate 4k additional damage on a tankbuster as long as you can survive it and still push your dps. The mitigation requirements on extreme primals are so trivial that double WAR is probably the optimal comp for most if not all of them. In fact, I suspect that the erroneous assumption that A9S-A11S were "PLD fights" simply because they involved physical damage was possibly one of the deciding factors in the world-first race this tier.

This is one of the reasons why I think that PLDs who push for their job to have an even bigger mitigation advantage instead of seeking out dps parity are making a really big mistake. You either need a fight that is so physically demanding that only PLDs can MT it effectively (thankfully non-existent this expansion), or it's not going to make a difference and people will go with the MT which offers the most dps. It makes much more sense to completely scrap the idea of PLD being the "defensive tank" and balance mitigation and dps independently of each other.