Quote Originally Posted by Duelle View Post
Utsusemi was a broken mechanic back then and continues to be so now. That some XI'ers are clinging to it for the sake of being different (and because they can't wrap their minds around the idea that tanking = mitigation and that mitigation can be done differently enough without having sink to the lows of blink tanking) has no place in discussing tank design. NIN tanks were an accident and a responsible dev team would have nerfed utsusemi to the ground and done what was necessary to have NIN function as intended, not sit on their hands and allow a broken mechanic to become part of the greater game.
You are the one hung up on what MITIGATION is. Mitigation simply means decreasing the amount of damage taken. Using a shadow to absorb a hit or dodging is mitigating your damage.

I can't speculate on whether or not this was the original intention of Ninjas in 11, but after 10 years of it working that way, it's pretty apparent that they are fine with it. And just because they aren't blocking an attack with a shield does not mean they are any less capable of being a "tank".