Are tanks a scapegoat for performance issues?

[RopeDrink]

In fairness to the nicer DF folks out there, I have now run Vault 4 times in my pursuit of dinging 60, and have gotten 9 comms out of 4 runs. And to be honest, I don't think I was doing much besides normal bread and butter tankin

Not to be mean, but my post referenced people commending for a reason. If you've no idea 'why' then you can safely assume people just default-commend the tank (or the Healer) - whoever is earlier in the alphabet. I'm under no illusions that the only reason I have as many commendations as I do over my short career is because I primarily Heal or Tank when running content - NOT because I Healed or Tanked particularly well. That post of mine you're referring to was the first time someone actually typed out why they hit that commend-button - and what made me laugh is that the reason given was something I would have expected ANY Paladin would have done in my shoes. Take whatever commendations you can - just don't be shocked if the reverse sometimes happen (getting none, ever, for prolonged periods of time).

EDIT:

As for the Vault, I loved it when I went there for the first time. Whole place gave off a Dark Souls kinda vibe (all the giant armours and giant knights in a dimly lit cathedral etc). I assume you're on about the last boss, though I'm not sure which mechanics you're not getting for any of them - they're pretty self-explanatory for the most part. Other reason I loved vault was the fact it had a noticable damage spike (the first time this happened was entering level 50 Hard dungeons for the first time), whereas going from the 50's to Vault stings pretty hard if you've not been maintaining your gear while levelling. Hoping we get that in Stormblood so even the overgeared folks get some kind of challenge.