Tank Options

[Seabhacgra]

Good afternoon all! I have been playing FFXIV since near the end of AAR, just before Heavensward. I always played DPS of one sort or another. The last time I played a tank was back in WoW The Burning Crusade as a Paladin. Lately my friends have been egging me on to level a tank up and try tanking for them. I resisted at first as I've not tanked for what feels like eons, but finally gave in. I currently have Dancer, Black Mage, Machinist and Red Mage at 80 and keep going back to Dancer, been loving it.

I started with a Gunbreaker,.. it's the new pretty class and looked fun. I got it to about 74 before I resisted and went back to DPSing. Started a Dark Knight and got it to 72 then switched to Paladin at 74 now. My big question is this.. How are Tanks now days? is there one better than another? they all seem pretty balanced, just some of them better at one thing or another. Let me know what you think and who's best at what, I'm working on an answer myself but I wanted to see what you all think about the state of the tanks right now. thanks!

[shao32]

the balance of the tanks in terms of numbers it's pretty well and it doesn't matter wich one you pick, most complains right now are for gameplay and identity, if you wanna still know wich ones are the best of the best those are PLD and GNB but the difference with WAR and DRK is minimun.

[Tex_Mex]

Tank balance is arguably the best it has ever been in FFXIV history right now. Pick the one with the playstyle and aesthetics you like best and you can't go wrong. Sure, some are slightly more optimal than others, but they are really really close.

[Hierro]

If we're talking about balance within 8-man endgame content, they're all similar in terms of DPS. In terms of defense, there's more variation based on utilities, CD lengths of invulnerabilities, and on-demand mitigation, but it's still pretty balanced and at that point the tanks are more a question of what you prefer in terms of gameplay style and mitigation flavor.

If dungeons are more your thing, WAR and DRK are the best, while GNB flat out sucks! All other tanks can grant themselves some degree of independence from healer intervention, but GNB just BEGS healers for their GCD healing. Now, if you're a skilled tank and understand how to utilize and space out your cooldowns, you might respond that you've been "doing just fine," but it's something that would be A LOT more fine if the same was done on literally any other tank job.

[DRKoftheAzure]

If dungeons are more your thing, WAR and DRK are the best, while GNB flat out sucks! All other tanks can grant themselves some degree of independence from healer intervention, but GNB just BEGS healers for their GCD healing. Now, if you're a skilled tank and understand how to utilize and space out your cooldowns, you might respond that you've been "doing just fine," but it's something that would be A LOT more fine if the same was done on literally any other tank job.

Are you talking about from a healer perspective, a tank perspective, a DPS perspective, a group perspective, a solo perspective, or any combination of the five? Because you need to more specific than that, because healers are supposed to be healing, it's what they are supposed to do, and I do not trust a healer that's going to Holy spam because of the delay on the damage and stun from that.

[BloodRubyXII]

Are you talking about from a healer perspective, a tank perspective, a DPS perspective, a group perspective, a solo perspective, or any combination of the five? Because you need to more specific than that, because healers are supposed to be healing, it's what they are supposed to do, and I do not trust a healer that's going to Holy spam because of the delay on the damage and stun from that.

Holy is better mitigation than any other spell in the game that can be applied to a tank. If a tank can't stay alive for around 1.25 seconds for the first cast to go off, the problems that tank has are deeper than any pure healer would be able to solve.

[Hierro]

Are you talking about from a healer perspective, a tank perspective, a DPS perspective, a group perspective, a solo perspective, or any combination of the five? Because you need to more specific than that, because healers are supposed to be healing, it's what they are supposed to do, and I do not trust a healer that's going to Holy spam because of the delay on the damage and stun from that.

I'm having difficulty understanding where the confusion is coming from given that I mentioned my dungeon qualifier. In that instance, I'm talking about a holistic perspective that focuses on mitigation and self healing.

As long as I'm alive, I want the healer to avoid a healing GCD as much as possible. I want to ensure that the opportunity for healer DPS is as available as possible. I want mobs to melt with everyone's active participation. Now, GNB was given just enough to get any job done, but if a mob isn't mostly dead by the time your defensives fall off (and lets be real, this is likely with most pugs), your healer is going to feel it harder than with any other job. GNB will be the tank job to most likely get in the way of those desires being actualized. This is why it sucks.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Holy is better mitigation than any other spell in the game that can be applied to a tank. If a tank can't stay alive for around 1.25 seconds for the first cast to go off, the problems that tank has are deeper than any pure healer would be able to solve.

Holy has a delay for both damage and stun to take effect. 2-3 seconds of delay by the looks of it, and if I have to choose between Holy spam because "mah deeps" and Cure spam because "I don't want to people to think I'm a bad healer for keeping them alive during big pulls" I'm going to choose the safer option.

I'm having difficulty understanding where the confusion is coming from given that I mentioned my dungeon qualifier. In that instance, I'm talking about a holistic perspective that focuses on mitigation and self healing.

As long as I'm alive, I want the healer to avoid a healing GCD as much as possible. I want to ensure that the opportunity for healer DPS is as available as possible. I want mobs to melt with everyone's active participation. Now, GNB was given just enough to get any job done, but if a mob isn't mostly dead by the time your defensives fall off (and lets be real, this is likely with most pugs), your healer is going to feel it harder than with any other job. GNB will be the tank job to most likely get in the way of those desires being actualized. This is why it sucks.

Okay so you are basically talking "all of the above" perspective but you are mostly looking at it from a solo perspective. If you don't healers to waste a GCD on healing you, and you die, you have no one else to blame but yourself and you might as well play PLD at that point if you don't want healers to use GCDs on you, but then you will complain about "mah deeps" if you did that in which case you might as well be talking about a DPS perspective...

[Nedkel]

Are you talking about from a healer perspective, a tank perspective, a DPS perspective, a group perspective, a solo perspective, or any combination of the five? Because you need to more specific than that, because healers are supposed to be healing, it's what they are supposed to do, and I do not trust a healer that's going to Holy spam because of the delay on the damage and stun from that.

From tank perspective, Warrior and DRK are better at dungeons.
Warrior has 6 seconds full hp heal (combine it with Thrill of battle and you could kick healer from dungeon xD) and giant amount of aoe dmg, DRK has comparable aoes but has TBN which is super cheesy in dungeons, because if your dont take damage, your healer could spam holy and stun mobs and its only adding up to the speed overall.
DMG alone does not matter if you cant stand your ground, dungeons are all about taking damage and sustaining it.

PLD by far is the best dungeon tank in terms of you getting a random healer. Large pulls you can Hallowed Ground the first big pull and last big pull. And if your healer is bad you can Requescat and clemency for 70- 90k health instantly. DRK is second with TBN being so powerful but cant fully save you if you have a undergeared healer, with WAR falling to 3rd and GNB last for dungeons.

When comparing tanks for dungeons you have to look at both healing side and tank side.

However i have noticed if you are in a group without a WHM dungeons become slightly more challenging without the stun from Holy Spam.

Warrior could heal for about 80-90k on 6 mobs with his AOE and he deals damage as well.

[DRKoftheAzure]

From tank perspective, Warrior and DRK are better at dungeons.
Warrior has 6 seconds full hp heal (combine it with Thrill of battle and you could kick healer from dungeon xD) and giant amount of aoes, DRK has comparable aoes but has TBN which is super cheesy in dungeons, because if your dont take damage, your healer could spam holy and stun mobs and its only adding up to the speed overall.
DMG alone does not matter if you cant stand your ground, dungeons are all about taking damage and sustaining it.

So you like dying because of the healer just Holy spamming because of "mah deeps" good for you. Also saying that the most boring tanks are better in dungeons is basically setting a very low bar from a DPS perspective but from a tank perspective, yeah you could could have picked way better choices, because of how gimped Nascent Flash is, because why can't I use both Nascent Flash and Raw Intuition at the same time? The answer is balancing the tank and healers but devs have proven they don't tanks and healers to actually have fun and have to make them the most boring and miserable roles to play in the game when BLM is just as miserable and boring to play, yet BLM can do more DPS than all of the other jobs in the entire game combined. Yeah sounds completely balanced and not totally not game breaking in the slightest(sarcasm). And then Yoshi-P starts asking the devs to buff the other other jobs because too many BLMs are clearing legitimately more than any other job in the game because everyone is getting carried by 4 BLMs in the group...