Easiest rotation to maintain over a long fight

[Equitable_Remedy]

I'm not asking about openers, but rather which tank has the easiest rotation to maintain over the course of a long fight.

I'm leveling my first tank, a DRK, and I'm finding tracking mana, blood gauge, and blood weapon/delirium cooldowns to be difficult on top of tanking/mitigating/etc.—I probably just need to play more as the tanking side is totally new to me. (I also once felt the same about my current main, NIN, and now I find that to feel really good and natural over the course of a long fight. Hitting trick every 60 seconds and setting everything up to be crammed in that 15-second window flows well for me.)

I'm enjoying DRK and still interested in exploring tanking, but I'm trying to decided if I should give the other tanks a try. (I should add that I'm not particularly interested in WAR, so PLD or GNB, really.) I'm not orange parsing the latest savage content, but I don't want to be a scrub.

I'd also appreciate any insight on the topic. Thanks!

[shao32]

DRK and WAR are the most easy tanks of the moment, DRK works with 60s burst windows where they spend 10s throwing all his oGCD and burning they MP betwen soul etaer combo and then spend 50s doing absolutely nothing but soul eater with a ocasional bloodspiller and Delirium spam when it comes that's it, the MP slowly fills up on your extensive 50s downtime to be ready to the next edge spam fest so you basically don't need to look at it much, and ignore his darkside gauge it's totally useless, it's basically the most easy job of the game along WAR right now.

WAR is the same as DRK since both share the same gauge structure but WAR don't have a spam your oGCD window, they instead generate more fell cleaves during his rotation and they have the same dinamic, long downtime until burst window witch is inner release, the delirium twin brother, but WAR have some extra things to focus on it, when it's down is just boring downtime, enjoy.

[ItMe]

WAR by a mile.
I swear to God sometimes it feels like it has almost as few actions per minute as BLM.

PLD has, like, 3 different combos it changes between.
GNB is the busiest tank job to the point where it can be hard to find time to push your tank buttons.
If you're happy with DRK it's a great pick, otherwise I'd recommend giving WAR another try.

[FallenWings]

If you ever want to reach that point, GNB is the easiest tank to optimize by far with no changes in their rotation. The class quite literally plays itself every single fight and your only considerations are popping defensive before NM Gnashing Fang windows and movement during Gnashing Fang windows. It is just busy and looks intimidating at first but comparatively is the most unga bunga tank to play at max optimization next to WAR.

DRK by contrast is very easy to play if you don't bother to care about BW and burst windows. Really free flow and low stress for prog.

[Equitable_Remedy]

Thanks, this is helpful feedback!

My plan is to get DRK to 80 and keep playing it to see if I really want to get into tanking. It takes me a while of play to really get classes, and the tough part is when leveling through roulettes as you're often doing lower-level content without all of your abilities. I just need to hammer getting 4 edges (DRK so edgy!) in the BW window and not hit it on reflex. The DRK story is pretty good, I like the class design (TBN is great), and my glam is on point.

Now, I just have to learn how to tank any of these current fights

[Absurdity]

If you ever want to reach that point, GNB is the easiest tank to optimize by far with no changes in their rotation. The class quite literally plays itself every single fight and your only considerations are popping defensive before NM Gnashing Fang windows and movement during Gnashing Fang windows. It is just busy and looks intimidating at first but comparatively is the most unga bunga tank to play at max optimization next to WAR.

DRK by contrast is very easy to play if you don't bother to care about BW and burst windows. Really free flow and low stress for prog.

I don't know how it was last tier or this tier but E4S optimization was a nightmare on gnb to the point where I just gave up and switched back to warrior.

[ItMe]

[...] and my glam is on point.

Now, I just have to learn how to tank any of these current fights

... may we see it?

And good luck!!

[Equitable_Remedy]

... may we see it?

You got jokes, but don't fight this sam glam. (Not sure which glam was active when I last logged.)

[Ultimatecalibur]

PLD has, like, 3 different combos it changes between.

PLD might have the most "combos" and a burst phase that uses a different set of buttons but it is probably the most stable base* rotation that repeats every minute.

GB combo (pop Fight or Flight before hitting GB) ->[RA combo -> Atonement x3]-> GB combo -> RA combo ->[Atonement x3 -> (Requiescat) Holy Spirit x4] -> Confiteor-> Repeat from the beginning

Spirits Within gets pushed on cooldown sometime in the square bracket areas. The only real instability is Circle of Scorn with its 25s cooldown which causes it to drift out of sync with the rest of the rotation.

*This is the base rotation and not the optimized version which keeps GB up 100% and involves Atonement shifting.

[ItMe]

snip

Yup.
They're not hard.
I just find DRK and WAR have the easiest tank rotation to maintain over a long fight.