Tank homogenization

[Bhearil]

As far i see nobody is asking to give tanks specific and unique traits that can be a potential imbalance on the future, nope they are asking to make tanks rotations be way more diferent from each other, aka not having for example 3 of them inner release, or the same gauge system working exactly the same way like WAR and DRK, and mitigate the damage on diferent ways but all of them mitigating the same amount of damage and not being literally all rampart+sheltron variant and sentinel+shelltron variant and then invul witch is tanks today 99% of the time.

This kind of mitigation and dps rotations use to be totally diverse and diferent from each tank back in HW and SB and tank inbalance where totally done by pasive traits and numbres more than anything else, aka slashing debuff, PLD phisical exclusive mitigation and DRK overall lower numbers wich have nothing to do with the gameplay of each job.

then we have stuff like anti knockback wich in the past use to be DRK using his gap closer to catch up and PLD use tempered will to stay on his place, this bring unique gameplay options to dealt with anti knockbacks, in resume even back in HW where the balance was more rough no tank was actually excluded and all of them where viable to complete every kind of content and i personally want back HW tank diversity back but without the problems that make his balance rough wich doesn't exist anymore wich are the slashing debuff and PLD physical mitigation only.

I agree with what mostly of what you said, aside the fact that on HW PLD was shafted due to entire Alexander being almost everything magic damage and was being unable to block that (which should have been fixed in the very same expansion honestly) , because it turned on the weakest tank defence and damage wise by a considerable ammount (WAR was really strong there and DRK basically had the words "magic tank" painted all over when it was released during a magic metagame dealing very respectable damage as well to boot which sealed the deal)

Seems that SE saw FFXI where every class had a complete personal flavour that made certain classes must have while others being absolutely waste of space in a party on a game you NEEDED to play in party and wanted to avoid that no matter what. Problem is that the are going the complete opposite which has its own issues as well due to making jobs clones of each others with very minor differences being aesthetics the biggest one.

On FFXI they went for the "fun" part ignoring the "balance" part, here on FFXIV they are obsessed with keeping a perfect balance by sacrificing the fun factor of every job on the pool of the "tank" or "healer" archtype making them almost equal aside animations, when they can and SHOULD aim for a middle ground where "fun" and "balance" try to coexist as much as possible instead of denying one or another because is easier to design jobs that way

Heck, despite not liking how RDM was developed on ShB (barely added anything outside of fixing things like having a proper aoe rotation etc) they managed to add the dual cast system on FFXIV, so it is possible to add exclusive flavours without breaking the game