Aha, Titan-egi, yes, that's the thing I had wondered about last night and forgotten. Agree wholeheartedly with the leveling concern. The barrier... I'll be optimistic and hope it's sufficient. Maybe it's tuned well. But. It also doesn't sound really quite the same as wee SMN (or even Arcanist with Topaz) effectively safe from harm while the pet takes a beating. Plus, surely we've all got stories of tanks dropping or otherwise failing, and Titan stepping up to lead a party through without.

Also makes me curious about the Chocobo companions. You've had the option to level their tanking tree, any of that going to get tweaked, or do these changes not apply to that case? (obviously they never tweaked the Accuracy buffs in the tree when that stat was removed, so it wouldn't surprise me if they negated 1/3 of the skill tree without caring to do anything about it)