Concept: Heavy Machinist Tank

[Makeda]

It's a neat piece of artwork, but my brain is breaking while I try to figure out how it would work mechanically. The minigun suggests high damage output, but I don't see how easily that could be balanced with the need to mitigate incoming damage.

The picture is basically the Engineer - a ranged tank class from Wildstar. Even has more or less that weapon. Only thing missing is the optional pets Engineers can summon to do side DPS or off-tanking (they can 'slot in' a skill that gives them a pet similar to the Titan-Egi of a summoner, only it is a 'gun turret on spider legs').

How it works is basically just a high aggro hand held cannon, with the engineer wearing heavy armor, able to put up various shields and field effects. You can either use your 'tank bot' to position mobs, or let them approach you. I actually used a build with no bot, letting me slot more mitigation skills instead (In Wildstar you can slot only a few skills on your action bar, 8 if I remember right, but as you level you end up with a few dozen of them - so everybody ended up basically playing very differently even on the same classes, except for the people who just followed guides). It was a particularly good tanking class against ranged mobs like casters and gunners because it had a lot less need to 'gap close' compared to the game's two melee tanks.

The concept isn't new, just not in FFXIV.

Just think of a tank that could go into the middle of a room that had mages standing around the edges in a semi-circle... and not have to panic about figuring out how to group them up - just keep them facing your general front.
(The other tanks they had were a warrior that played a lot like FFXIV's warrior, only with a sword instead of axe, and a stealth tank called the 'stalker' - basically imagine if the ninja class was a tank, able to pop in and out of stealth constantly (up to almost every other GCD), and used wolverine claws). It was actually the stealth tank that ended up feeling the most unique... tanking at range seemed 'weird' until you did it a few times then you just started feeling like a 'generic MMO tank' most of the time... just at range...

Of course... Wildstar is a Science Fiction / Fantasy blend game. You start out in a spaceship... but you have magic. 'Engineer', as other people have pointed out - doesn't fit the genre here.

That said... if you took the MCH Job, swapped the guns for a single two-hander gun, removed about half of it's DPS skills and replaced them with the damage reduction abilities of the PLD and the AoE field of the DRK, but kept the turrets as an option to use INSTEAD of some armor ability (like: Defiance stance, Gunner Stance, or Turret Stance) - then gave it the armor of the PLD, Warrior, DRK... you would have the Engineer... It kinda played like that...