PLD synergy issues

[Lyth]

You cannot balance mitigation against damage output. If you do, there will be one of two outcomes:
1) The mitigation advantage is required to clear the fight, in which case the job in question is the only one which is capable of tanking the fight.
2) The mitigation advantage is not required to clear the fight, in which case the job in question lose out to ones which provide more dps.

We saw the former with PLD in ARR and pre-Gordias HW, in which the community frequently viewed it as the only viable MT for certain fights, and we saw the latter in post-Gordias HW, where it saw much less use. Both of these outcomes are terrible. You need to balance mitigation against mitigation, and damage output against damage output. I'd really rather not see individual jobs swing from underutilised to underutilised and then back again, every other expansion. Flavour-of-the-month balancing is fake balancing.

This type of balance doesn't mean that the jobs have to end up playing the same. The end goal should be for the jobs to produce the same result in different ways. PLD doesn't need to have the same personal dps as a WAR, so long as they are capable of providing offensive damage buffs to their allies to bolster them and compensate through raid dps. PLD doesn't need to gap close back from a knockback if they can just shrug it off. PLD doesn't need a stack or MP management system to keep it interesting if you expand its repertoire of shield-based combat techniques and block proc oGCDs. Remove the MP costs and cast times from spells (PLD's MP management is non-existent, so skills that cost MP are either essentially free or rendered impractical because of the cast times), and have their buffs operate off of recasts and procs.

PLD's problem has never been mitigation. While WAR wins out in terms of recast, PLD has the most robust defensive kit in the game. This will become even more pronounced if they make good on their plan to bolster PLD's magic defense, without making corresponding adjustments to the other tanks. That being said, I would be happy if they scrapped this whole "physical defense" and "magical defense" tank system altogether and give all three tanks parity on their defensive toolkits (especially when it comes to ultimate abilities: there's no comparison between Hallowed and the other tanks' "equivalents").

The slashing debuff almost certainly will need to be addressed with the expansion. When Storm's Eye's slashing effect was introduced, there were only two jobs that could benefit from it. With Stormsblood, there will be five. Letting one job have a functional monopoly on the debuff is not gonna work.