What would a new tank even contribute at this point

[CKNovel]

WAR may have had a big too much love especially in those last patches.
But I play for Aesthetics and gameplay, not for meta.

I'd like to see tanks with different aesthethic, be it gunlance, flail... You see.

Dark Knight was very strong at the beginning of the expansions and had a few buffs but it's true it needed a few more helping hands.

[fulminating]

I find it hillarious that you constantly jump to the defense of the best tank in the game and now have the audacity to talk about favouritism.
With Warrior in it's current state there might as well not be 3 other tanks.

I mean honestly your arguments just aren't very good, I wrote a more reasonable response but it basically boiled down to combat design as a whole has kind of sucked since shadowbringers started. Oizen for instance is a lot better at articulating and understanding the issues and surrounding context, but the chip on your shoulder about xenos and being a middle of the road savage raider just makes you incredibly frustrating to talk to.

There was a sort of template left in my clipboard, but whatever you'll just get the wrong end of the stick.

dark knight plays best into raidbuffs in the game
dark knight benefits most from forced downtime of all tanks
dark knight is best in frontlines of all tanks
dark knight has the most magic mitigation

You probably do not remember before gunbreaker if you did not play before shadowbringers launched. Incidentally dark knight was not a dps tank in shadowbringers, paladin and gunbreaker were. (Shadowbringers's dark knight was where they introduced "warrior"-lite. Warrior itself being forced into the requiscat shaped burst when the 4.0 version flopped.)

The reason different tanks can't be good at different things - mitigating magic for instance - is that people will whinge incessantly when there's an all physical raid floor and need to swap over to paladin or have your party revolve around their inability to take physical hits. The move from job to encounter complexity is the final nail in that coffin, most jobs are only really allowed their identity in pvp kits.

It is clear that you don't like xenos, but you shouldn't let him live in your head rent free. He's not in every shadow.

Dark knight could probably do with a small buff to shadowbringer or living shadow, but given how hard it plays into raid buffs at the top end it would be incredibly difficult to balance- see the top adps tanks for both ew ultimates and pandaemonium floors prior to 6.4 (The 6.4 tank buffs even all say they're to bring them in line with "other tanks"). That being said, the only acceptable solution is to revert the whole game to 4.55 and pretend the last 3.5 years never happened. This would also address the healer issue and wipe the endwalker summoner from existence. A solution with no downsides.

[Musashidon]

So tanks are different animation packs for Warrior then?

i mean if you want to ride warrior that hard you are free to see it that way.

the way to see it is actually you choose the tank you find interesting and play it as they are all viable in all content if you dont want to play anything else cause you find warrior best in everything you are free to limit yourself.

[Absimiliard]

What did Gunbreaker and Dark knight bring? Damage. To make up for their weaker defensives and utility. But apparently we can't even have that. So what's the point of these tanks? Are they going to turn them even more into Warrior clones in the next expansion just to be safe?.

Bold of you to assume DRK isn't already a WAR clone. It lacks the healing, but the gameplay loop is far more similar than anyone should be okay with.

The only thing we as a community really value is damage. Jobs with low damage are naturally going to be filtered out during the curation process of most groups. Leaving WAR's damage in the gutter would ultimately have left them in the same position as rez mage, if not worse. In fact, almost definitely worse - a tank's damage, not its sustain, is valued in progression. In other words, gimping damage as a tax for some form of utility, sustain in WAR's case, will only result in that job being excluded. WAR was the "dungeon tank" before its damage caught up, and it will again be relegated to that when its damage inevitably gets hamstrung again.

I would much rather see DRK's self-sustain (and only its self-sustain; its party utility should remain untouched) raised to equal or slightly exceed GNB's. A nudge to its sustain would go well toward equalizing things since it already has incredibly powerful mitigation tools.

It's fine for tanks to have similar defensive and sustain tools so long as their offensive kit isn't too similar. Problem is, everything is so homogenized at this point that one can scarcely argue the offensive kits are much different. We've got a bit of a self-perpetuating cycle, I think. People won't play/recruit jobs with low damage output --> SE improves those jobs --> people complain about X thing being unfair because X can do Y when Z can't --> SE hands out some nerfs (or sometimes not) --> people begin favoring the jobs they snubbed before --> repeat ad infinitum.

[Teno]

I don’t want to make every tank thread i see about healers but at least healers actually have defined strengths and weaknesses and in general their damage is proportional to how easy they are to play and hard they are to optimise

I have no idea why we even have 4 tanks anymore; we may as well have 2- WAR and kick them for a WAR

Have you mixed up tanks and healers ? Because healers literally do the same mindless thing with a different coat of paint.

[Poporito_Popoto]

FFXIV need multiples jobs because :
-you need to exp them and gear them -> more playtime -> more subscription time -> more money for SE
-people see more different aesthetics -> more likely to be interested and subscribe -> more money for SE

FFXIV need multiples jobs to be the same because : less dev/balance time -> more money for SE (unless the time goes to one of their flop)

Yes, how dare an organization in a capitalist society earn money! The shame of it all!

[Oizen]

WAR's sustain should probably be nerfed come DT imo.
Remove the Overtime effect from Shake
Set BW to only heal per GCD
Have Nascent only heal your target

probably give it more standard mitigation in exchange for this. I just think if we keep down this mass sustain creep on tanks we're going to see more and more content get cleared healerless/with one healer whenever its able.

[Absimiliard]

WAR's sustain should probably be nerfed come DT imo.
Remove the Overtime effect from Shake
Set BW to only heal per GCD
Have Nascent only heal your target

I can agree with most of this, but I do think making Bloodwhetting heal once per GCD is excessive. Having it heal per hit mostly affects dungeons, which are already inconsequential content.

[Oizen]

I can agree with most of this, but I do think making Bloodwhetting heal once per GCD is excessive. Having it heal per hit mostly affects dungeons, which are already inconsequential content.

Its also an overwhelming majority of content that healers are already powercrept out of, only kept in because the duty finder forces it.

[Boblawblah]

I like DRK because they look cool. Not everything always has to be about the top 1% of players in the hardest content in the game.