Tank IDENTITY

[Lyth]

????

I didn't mention Bloodbath. I don't think that it makes sense as a role action, though.

I actually vastly preferred the 2.0 direction for Warrior.

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People make a big deal out of DRK being the iconic life-steal tank to-be, but they never no-healed the entirety of dungeons like WAR could. StB mass-pulls made DRK look invincible, but in single-target, their self-heals were kinda garbage, and it wasn't much better in HW, either. WAR, on the other hand? That job was popping itself from critical to full HP off meaty crits since 1.x. and... right up until they decided to copy PLD twice over instead of allowing PLD to better scale with its own gear and allow for actually distinct ways of tanking instead.

1.x Warrior was about "big honking crits" to instantly heal you to full HP along with doing some of the best AoE in the game.

[...]

...It's never not been a major part of its identity. That was originally tied hand-in-hand with self-healing/lifesteal, but even if Warrior's mostly lost the first there's no reason to claim that the other shouldn't be considered a core component.

...

It is what it is. If you want to make the claim that WAR's 'heal on attack' effects are not 'lifesteal' just for the sake of this discussion, we don't even have the starting point to start talking.

I personally feel that simply continuing to do something 'because tradition' means that you lose out on opportunities to improve. There are many, many ways that you can do self-sustain on a tank that do not involve vampiric effects. I listed out multiple examples in my last post of this.

There are certain jobs that you can get away with more magical effects without making them spellcasters. MNK, for example, has a Fire/Wind/Earth elemental motif running through the job. DRG has a blood-related magic theme. NIN invokes Wind/Fire/Water/Earth elemental effects. Again, visual consistency is key. Could you make vampiric barbarians who drink the blood of their fallen foes? Sure! But make it visually and thematically consistent across the entire job.

What I dislike is this dilettantism that we currently have. Oh, here's my lifesteal move. Here's my barrier shield. Here's my heal spell. You don't need multiple approaches to self-sustain on the same job. Pick something and roll with it.

You want lifesteal? That's great. Make that the centerpiece of its sustain. My attacks heal me. Overhealing gets converted to temporary HP. I time up my burst phases with tankbusters to mitigate more damage. Fantastic. Find some sort of a unifying concept that ties things together. And find something visually and thematically that justifies it for the job in question.