Quote Originally Posted by AnotherPerson View Post
The reason why SE avoided this is because in the past, people who plays certain tanks/leveled up certain tanks would get excluded from certain fights entirely since they simply can't offer to the table what other tanks can (ex: DRK being only good at magic mitigation wouldn't work well for a boss that does only physical damage). This is very poor design choice in accessibility and ShB did it right to remove that part of the requirement with role actions since it would lock certain jobs to be 'meta' for doing certain fights and exclude the rest out.
The reason why this was a problem was because not every job brought something unique to the table. What's the point in having a "physical only" tank and a "magic only" tank when there's a tank who can do both, and better? Likewise, what's the point of giving every tank a 30% DR cooldown when there's one tank which has the same effect as everyone else, but better? When players can set abilities side by side, make direct comparisons, and see one job consistently come up on top, then you have a problem. That was the issue with both Heavensward and Stormblood.

The way around this is to provide alternate approaches to achieving the same result that are not directly comparable. How does %DR compare to a barrier shield, or to max HP buffs? How does a gap closer compare to a draw in effect, or to movement speed buffs? How does a single buffed big hit compare to an ability that makes you hit multiple times? How does lifesteal on doing damage compare to shielding that damage and restoring what you shield? How does debuffing a mob compare to a party wide bubble?

The problem is that the game designers don't understand what makes tanking fun.