Tank IDENTITY

[Lyth]

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In HW, PLD/DRK was one tank slot and WAR was the other, much like WHM/AST was one healer slot and SCH was the other. It wasn't a deliberate design decision, but it happened as a consequence of the fact that ARR had so few tanks and healers. If you contrast this with DPS, you never really saw the same problem because the job pool was fairly diverse from the outset, such each job had a relatively narrow but clearly defined theme.

By the way, Steel Cyclone didn't have any self-healing on Stormblood's launch. You can see that if you pull up an older version of the job actions page circa 2017. That was only added later following complaints over Bloodbath's removal from WAR.

ARR's mistake was to try to set up PLD as a 'defensive tank' and WAR as an 'offensive tank'. Tanks need to be able to mitigate, do damage, obtain enmity, position and move, and you could argue self-sustain fits in there as an optional fifth category. You can have a small degree of variability, but large discrepancies lead to power imbalances. The way around this is that you just find alternative ways of achieving the end result. We saw this to an extent with Shield Oath's %DR vs. Defiance's %HP boost + %healing bonus, or even in Plunge vs. Tempered Will as anti-knockback tools. I don't think that there's any category of tank actions that 'has to be' done one particular way.

And that's where self-sustain comes in. I can think of many ways of doing self-sustain on a tank. PLD's classic spellcasting approach with Clemency has its issues because of the opportunity costs in cast time and resource costs, which makes it a dps loss. But that wouldn't be an issue if you had a way of generating a swiftcast proc that lets you cast healing and defensive spells instantly and for free. You wouldn't need a lifesteal effect built into Holy Spirit/Circle. Need some spot healing? Just weave in a Swiftcast Clemency. Done.

GNB has Aurora, which isn't all that interesting on its own. But what if you tapped into that 'soldier' design a bit more and gave them a Stimpack effect to boost their rate of regeneration along with other temporary bonuses? I've mentioned before that a lifesteal or the more lawful good approach of 'heal yourself on hitting the enemy (wink wink)' job like WAR could expand that same concept into mitigation by turning overhealing into temporary HP. And there are other unexplored options as well. Could you heal yourself on taking damage? Rewind your HP back to a previous timepoint? Could you convert unused shields into healing? Could you airdrop some health pickups for your party to grab? Could you build a heal-over-time effect into a stance or aura? Could you place down a support puppet that acts as a personal healer?

You can basically do this with any of the tanking 'categories' that I mentioned earlier. But it does require buy in from the community. If your tank with stimpack and regen mechanics turns around and starts demanding lifesteal as well as cure spells as well as HP rewind effects, then you end up with a bunch of identical tanks that all have way too much self-healing and defensive bloat.