How fitting

[A-Omega]

The longer I stay in the post, the more unbelievable this becomes. I hope SE sees this. They gave PLD top tier damage, best utility, best mitigation, and the best standard single target heal…and you’re still complaining. Then when someone comes along with a tank theme post, you rush in with your torches.

“I lose SOME of my top tier damage numbers if I use this fight saving UTILITY” is an asinine complaint. You’re literally complaining about your job having an identity. Magic master of all trades, utility tank.

Clemency is like having a shotgun. It’s not as practical as carrying a handgun, but you know what. You point that thing at someone and I bet they give up that fight immediately. Using Clemency is no different then deciding to break your rotation to Cover your healer or self pop DV to mitigate a party buster, because a healer/s were down. ITS UTILITY.

I can’t count how many times I’ve clutched content using Clemency where EVERY OTHER TANK WOULD FAIL (this is were the “god” moniker comes from). Healer drops, boss at 5%, only two dps left alive…as PLD, I force the clear. Ex,savage, and dungeons. If you haven’t experienced this, you need to reevaluate your play style.

[phantomr23]

The longer I stay in the post, the more unbelievable this becomes. I hope SE sees this. They gave PLD top tier damage, best utility, best mitigation, and the best standard single target heal…and you’re still complaining.

Look, you've said a lot of very silly things in this post (WAR is a dedicated OT and PLD is a dedicated MT? That's certainly a bold new take), but I think you have a very fundamental misunderstanding of how the tanks work here. PLD's strengths are its utility, OT support skills and flexible rotation. It has the weakest mitigation, requiring more substantial planning to manage heavy damage in endgame fights - the built in block is also, I believe, less of a damage reduction than the built in heal the other 3 tanks have on their combo - and has to work exceptionally hard to optimise its rotation on a per fight basis. It's not even that high on the DPS charts, sitting slightly ahead of WAR and DRK but still fairly behind GNB. They break down roughly like this:

GNB: Highest DPS, medium utility and mitigation
PLD: Highest utility, good DPS and low mitigation
WAR: High mitigation and utility, low effort to play
DRK: High mitigation and utility, medium effort to optimise

It's an oversimplification for sure, but the point is they all excel in different areas and require different levels of investment to get the most from. Clemency is strong, for sure, but it is a hefty DPS loss and only works efficiently under our 5 GCD magic phase - WAR, meanwhile, gets a slightly worse heal but for completely free, meaning they excel at raw self sustain. You talk about how PLD is the only tank that can do this... except WAR and DRK can pretty comfortably tank for just as long under the same situations, salvaging a near wipe.

(And no, none of PLD's other utility requires you to break rotation, Cover is an oGCD, as are the Wings. That's why Clemency is unique, and generally considered a very last resort.)

[A-Omega]

I should start a post…
Since PLD players hate being the most complete tank…dismantle them and give their identity to the other magic tank. Have the best standard heal in game and complain that if you clutch heal and keep the content rolling, I drop your rotation. EVERY OTHER TANK WOULD DROP.

WAR…Equilibrium/NF not as potent
GNB…no point even bringing them up
DRK…once your MP is gone, your doomed. They don’t have PLDs resource gain and nothing near Clemency in terms of heal.

None of these is even talking about PLDs entire kit. Just one skill is that game changing in the hands of a skilled player. “I lose some of my dps” in exchange for PROGRESSION OR CLEARING INSTEAD OF WIPING….and you complain????

[Ozalius]

"WAR is a dedicated OT and PLD is a dedicated MT? That's certainly a bold new take"

In case you are a new player, warrior was a OT during HW, and warrior as a MT was a huge dps loss and people were like "why are you mt lol" if you were trying to mt over a pld

SE started to put warrior as a mt mid SB because IR was a thing because pld and drk were losing dps at pull

And this is why drk were asking for the same thing

But not lucky current stance tank make it pointless now to have something like IR

[Crater]

In case you are a new player, warrior was a OT during HW, and warrior as a MT was a huge dps loss and people were like "why are you mt lol" if you were trying to mt over a pld

The more pertinent question, if we're talking about Heavensward, would have been "why do you have a paladin lol".

Besides that, this is a pretty misleading post. The idea of having a dedicated MT and OT, rather than voluntarily swapping tank duty throughout the fight to maximize cooldown usage, was already on its way out in Heavensward - the real DPS loss was making your healers cover for holes in one tank's mitigation while the other tank's cooldowns rotted on the vine.

But if you insisted on sticking to outdated MT/OT strategies, the "DPS loss" incurred by having your WAR hold the boss was not the Warrior's damage. Warrior did much more damage than either of the other two tanks, whether they were taking hits or not. And just like now, Warrior did slightly more damage when they were the one tanking due to the counterattack on Vengeance. The difference was that if you had your PLD (if you had a PLD) be the "OT", they lost out on Shield Swipe procs, so PLD's damage went from bad to worse. And DRK lost out on not only a whole bevy of extra damage options, from Blood Price MP to Reprisal to Low Blow cooldown reset procs, but also lost out on a huge amount of personal and party mitigation by losing the Reprisal debuff.
Speaking strictly in terms of tank damage, and arguably in terms of tank mitigation, the best composition in Heavensward would have been WAR/WAR. The main reason you didn't see a lot of it was because you lost out on tons of party mitigation (Storm's Path alone for a 10% damage down on the boss, versus Storm's Path + Reprisal + Delirium for 10% + 10% + 10% INT down, or Divine Veil shenanigans with PLD), plus you lost LB generation and potentially had to deal with trying to get two Axes instead of one.

I don't care all that much about any of the current tank issues because the whole situation seems a little beyond hope to me, but I do care about what the game was like in Heavensward, and the idea that Heavensward WAR had, really, any deficiencies at all compared to the other two tanks is some extremely revisional history.

[Shurrikhan]

"WAR is a dedicated OT and PLD is a dedicated MT? That's certainly a bold new take"

In case you are a new player, warrior was a OT during HW, and warrior as a MT was a huge dps loss and people were like "why are you mt lol" if you were trying to mt over a pld

Which has what, exactly, to do with ShB?

Heck, the relationship was reversed only an expansion prior, in ARR (post 2.1). Are we going to use HW as some sort of origin myth that must not betrayed, all while ignoring their actual initial relationship?

[A-Omega]

"WAR is a dedicated OT and PLD is a dedicated MT? That's certainly a bold new take"

In case you are a new player, warrior was a OT during HW, and warrior as a MT was a huge dps loss and people were like "why are you mt lol" if you were trying to mt over a pld

SE started to put warrior as a mt mid SB because IR was a thing because pld and drk were losing dps at pull

And this is why drk were asking for the same thing

But not lucky current stance tank make it pointless now to have something like IR

Thank you! These people commenting have no idea of the history. They came in Stormblood and suddenly know everything and feel obligated to debunk anything they feel is contrary to their belief.

Some WARs weren’t happy being turned away as MT so they complained and SE made some QoL changes to give us natural mitigation, so MTing was easier. That was in Stormblood…also when they started changing WAR for the worse

[phantomr23]

Right, that's cool and all but it's not my point. There's no such thing as a dedicated MT or OT now, some tanks are slightly better in one role but you can't stick to that in high end content and it's just the end result of them equalising the playing field across the board. It's not some targeted attack on WAR, lmao.

[Kabooa]

The thread that just keeps on giving.

[A-Omega]

Right, that's cool and all but it's not my point. There's no such thing as a dedicated MT or OT now, some tanks are slightly better in one role but you can't stick to that in high end content and it's just the end result of them equalising the playing field across the board. It's not some targeted attack on WAR, lmao.

Who said WAR was being targeted? No one. You just made that up to fight for your point based on false information.

Two tanks got trashed for the sake of “balancing” WAR and DRK. That’s been said several times already so this comment is as pointless as your last post.

I’m an OG WAR talking about how my job changed for the worse. It’s an opinion piece, based on facts. You made a mistake…it’s ok, no one is perfect. You don’t have to defend your failed point…just let it go