Favourite Tank Incarnation?

[Arcalithe]

ShB Paladin is arguably the best designed tank in ShB. It's pretty great. Lots to do, and the most pivotal change over the course of its minute-by-minute rotation.

I started with GLD/PLD in the beta for ARR but never really played that much since I was deep into WoW at the time. Then I came back in like 2018 and started playing semi regularly for Shadowbringers, and I have to say that PLD has one of my favorite rotations in the game, period. It's just fun to keep GB up within FoF windows and smack things around with giant Confiteor crits. I'll take ShB PLD over ARR PLD any day.

[Anienai]

I'll take ShB PLD over ARR PLD any day.

Would you trade ShB PLD for Flash?

[Shiroe]

imo Warrior is fun in harder endgame content.., but gets stale fast on easy normal & easy content..
Gunbreaker remains the most engaging on all types of content..
Pld & Drk somewhere inbetween..
Most fun & engaging tanks imo:
1) Gunbreaker (by far)
2) Paladin
3) Dark Knight
4) Warrior (by far)

[Shiroe]

in "aoe" situations, the list changes a bit
1) Dark Knight
2) Gunbreaker
3) Paladin
4) Warrior (though the going full out "berserk" aoe moments, are fun :3..)

[Kyser96]

4.X Dark knight.

I loved the management of two stances with the speed from Blood Weapon. It felt so damn good to play, and I gotta admit that I actually liked using Dark Arts.

Legit the only thing it missed were the animations from Scourge and Delirium

[Arcalithe]

Would you trade ShB PLD for Flash?

Nope. I never really liked not having any damage in my AoE rotation. I much prefer Eclipse/Prominence.

[Vyrerus]

Realized I still had the 3.x version of tanks gameplay to an extent in the form of Turn 4 solos during HW circa Midas as the endgame.

3.x DRK solo for Turn 4 circa 2016

3.x WAR solo for Turn 4 circa the same time

3.x PLD solo for... you get the idea.

[Steinar]

5.3 Warrior — It's the most fun I had tanking in a long while. It's simple, comfortable, and allows me to pay more attention to other people and do callouts.

3.0 DRK — I miss having to keep darkside up and the old quietus combo.

5.3 PLD — Feels very good and very complete to me, though sometimes I feel like it requires too many keybinds.

[shao32]

3.0 DRK — I miss having to keep darkside up and the old quietus combo.

In HW DRK didn't have Quietus, you mean Delirium combo perhaps? ^^

[Naoki34]

Historically, the unit used to tank depends on what it has to defend against.

- A sword: a shield or a blade composed of a guard and a hook.
- a rider: a spear
- archers against a foot or horse charge
etc.

But let's come back to FFXIV...

The image I have of a tank is a heavy armor with a sword and a shield, so the PLD. Except that it sucks at ShB by its gameplay.

Don't like the GNB style that only speaks to Squall Leonhart fan, FFVIII is my favorite FF, but a guy in a furry jacket and a T-Shirt, that doesn't make a tank. And its gameplay with ammo doesn't make me think of a tank : Wait I reload and then I start again.
Even though, blah, blah, blah. Mostly, I don't like his gameplay.

WAR is a berserker in armor, a berserker historically is a guy in leather armor, often represented shirtless. And it's more of a 'glass cannon' than a tank.
For the gameplay, it seems slow to me and the axe as a weapon does not speak to me.

So my next tank after PLD is by default a DRK, not because it's too dark.

It would be nice to have a tank with a shield and a spear, too.

Understand that my point of view is more historical than Japanese heroic fantasy, where the tank could be a woman in a leather or plate bikini jumping around at the speed of sound.

Tanks with naked swords and shields or in T-Shirts don't work in real life, your attacker is not going to aim just at your sword and shield, to please you.