How is late game tanking and breakdown of each?

[Maneesha]

I'll give a very simplified review, since i don't have all tanks maxed and wont include any optimizations.

War - became very easy and less complex, imo, in comparison to hw. no slashing de-buff anymore, no dmg reduction de-buff, no dot to pay attention to, just 1,2,3 combo (3 is a different finished, either eye or path). things to pay attention to are not over-capping on gauge and to not use infuriate and inner release at the same time. you have your inner release burst(5x fell cleave) and outside of that you spam the 1-3 combo with occasional upheaval, inner chaos or fell cleave. has a very good personal and good party cd's.

Drk - plays similar to warrior because of inner release and delirium similarity. thou contrary to warrior it feels like you have a few more ogcd skills to press (thou 1 of those is going to be used the most,edge of darkness). similar to warrior outside your burst window you will be spamming 1-3 a lot because there is only 1 combo. you need to manage your mana which is used for dps skills and for tbn (defensive skill). the magic defense skills are a bit odd and polarizing, some feel they are fine as they are, others dislike them and would rather see them changed. still he isn't lacking in personal or party cd's.

Gnb - imo it shares similarities with paladin, but not a lot. mostly the way it plays the invuln skill and the dmg buff. it has far more skills to press then warrior and drk at the moment (a certain combo could be made into a macro to simplify things if one wishes to) similar to paladin. the novelty gives it a extra edge in the fun department, but even without it, its a very well rounded and fun to play. personal and party cd's are on par with all the other tanks, so he isn't lacking there either. also his style is more sustain and not pure burst like drk/warrior. he still has a burst rotation for burst windows, but you are not restricted by a 90sec cd.

Pld - used to be the least complex of all the tanks, at least in hw. while he is very straight forward, i think he got a bit more complex over the expansions. they changed him a lot with sb and it was not only needed, but also the changes were amazing. he is really well rounded and similar to gnb focuses more on sustain instead of pure burst. has the most party utility skills (party cd's) but he gives me the impression in dungeons that he lacks 1 personal defensive cd. other then that he is really great and fun to play.

Overall i think all the tanks have their interesting aspects, they are close in dps and while i am sure you will be able to clear content with all of them, i cant predict the "meta". All of them have good party support and their defensive cool-down's got streamlined, so none of them is really lacking. You might feel like a "blue-icon" dps thou, since you could say there is no enmity anymore as long as you press on this "def-stance" button and because other then the occasional defensive cd activation, you will spam your dps combos.

I hope this was somewhat helpful and i wish you best of luck and fun with whichever of the tanks you might choose to play.

[Abomination713]

Pld - used to be the least complex of all the tanks, at least in hw. while he is very straight forward, i think he got a bit more complex over the expansions. they changed him a lot with sb and it was not only needed, but also the changes were amazing. he is really well rounded and similar to gnb focuses more on sustain instead of pure burst. has the most party utility skills (party cd's) but he gives me the impression in dungeons that he lacks 1 personal defensive cd. other then that he is really great and fun to play.

While it is true that PLD have 1 less defensive CD compared to the other tanks (ironic since SE stole Rampart and gave it to everyone and PLD are suppose to be the def tank) we make up for it by having Sheltron which lets up block all damage for 6 seconds and you can do this every 16ish seconds which is great! However, in lower dungeons before the Sheltron upgrade, we do get screwed in the def department cause SE took away 4-5 def abilities this expansion. We should have at least kept Convalescene (Increases own HP recovery via healing magic by 20% for 20 seconds) considering that it's been with us since like level 6.