Thread: A touch of concern from a would be tank main.

Hiya, so I've been back and forth on tanking and dpsing since I've come back to the game, but as I get more adjusted to tanking and with the upcoming general tank changes I've decided to really commit to being a tank main. My problem though is that I leveled Drk and while I enjoy it, everyone seems to be having negative opinions of it for ShB. I also plan to level Pld, but that also seems to be getting negative opinions and I just can't bring myself to level War as it just doesn't click with me like Drk and Pld do. Should I just go against the flow and keep on as a Drk or maybe as a Pld, or would it better to just try war again when ShB drops? I'm trying Gnb regardless since it does look fun lol.

I don't know DRK well enough to comment.

Paladin however, I think is looking to be much improved.

Yes, we lose a couple tools like bulwark. Yes, cover costing oath gauge is a little sad. But what we're getting IMO far outweighs the few negatives. I'm personally excited to get my pld to 80 with the full new rotation. I don't know where PLD will fall in the meta, but all tanks should be perfectly viable at 80.

What? Paladin is looking great.
From the raw numbers we've seen so far, they appear to have highest PPS from all four tanks.

As for mitigation, it's not any worse.
The only time I remember Cover being useful in the entire expansion was during O4S and Ultimates. Plus now we don't have to proc Shield Swipe so Gauge cost is less of an issue.
Sheltron is a straight up upgrade from Bulwark thanks to blocking 100% of the time.
Clemency is supposedly the "worst" of tank healing tools, but hey, if you ever need to take care of yourself because healer died or something, it doesn't matter if it's inefficient.
The weakest part of the mitigation kit would be Passage of Arms, and I'd like to see it give people a 5-10 second buff, similarly to AST's bubble.

Don't worry about what Warrior mains say. They claim to be the best, but guess who'll be the first to beg for buffs in 5.1...

Originally Posted by Beefslab

What? Paladin is looking great.
From the raw numbers we've seen so far, they appear to have highest PPS from all four tanks.

As for mitigation, it's not any worse.
The only time I remember Cover being useful in the entire expansion was during O4S and Ultimates. Plus now we don't have to proc Shield Swipe so Gauge cost is less of an issue.
Sheltron is a straight up upgrade from Bulwark thanks to blocking 100% of the time.
Clemency is supposedly the "worst" of tank healing tools, but hey, if you ever need to take care of yourself because healer died or something, it doesn't matter if it's inefficient.
The weakest part of the mitigation kit would be Passage of Arms, and I'd like to see it give people a 5-10 second buff, similarly to AST's bubble.

Don't worry about what Warrior mains say. They claim to be the best, but guess who'll be the first to beg for buffs in 5.1...

I don't now if this happens in savage or not, with enrage timers it may not matter anyway, but there have been plenty of normal mode or dungeon bosses where I've saved a run with clemency when the healer(s) go down. It has its time and place for sure.

Go against the flow? Um yes? If you want to. Come on now. Its your life. Be who you wanna be. Forget what everyone else wants.

Honestly, I'd just see what jobs you enjoy in ShB. All the tanks will be viable. And likely still in demand once the initial rush of new GNBs plays out.

All the tanks will be viable, and unless you're looking to really push savage in the first groups or something you don't need to worry too much about which job is in the meta or not at the moment.

Become what you must.

And thats what you want to play. Changes will be happening right up until the first tier of Savage comes out so even if Dark Knight isn't too great changes can happen pretty quickly.

I mean aside from a few posts here on the OF and on the subreddit i've not really seen anyone complain about PLD or DRK, both still look extremely fun, and DRK got a lot of QoL skills. Neither job will be unplayable or anything like that at content, and probably much of what you see are just people being salty for no reason whatsoever. So play what appeals most to you, and have fun with it

Basically play what you think is fun or looks fun to you

Its a good thing with FF14 that your not locked to one job so really not end of the world if you feel like swapping between tanks

And really no need to worry about "the meta" not as big of a deal as people make it out to be

For what it's worth, I believe that in terms of "Meta" the tanks will be categorized in the following way: Paladin > Warrior > Gunbreaker > Dark Knight.

But what do I know? I haven't played with them, neither has most other people. I'm just going on "Yet to be finalized" information from a build that media outlets tried.

In practice things could be different.

As it stands, most of the qualms with DRK come from concerns about the gameplay changes. So it's hard to say how much stock to put into them, maybe the new DRK will be fun for you? No-one knows.

Personally, I'm going to look into playing GNB, it looks to be quite fun from what I can tell (Despite maybe not being the top of the meta, I don't particularly care about that facet as much as I do having fun gameplay) while I'm not personally a big fan of the direction they're taking WAR with the continued reliance on Inner Release being FC spam as a large portion of the gameplay focus, to say nothing about the completely lacklustre recycled animations for Inner Chaos and Chaotic Cyclone...

In short, I don't think any Tank is going to be unplayably bad. So don't fret too much about it and just play around with things once ShB drops and see what clicks for you.