Let’s compare the four tanks of FFXIV, whos good at what? Whos bad at what?
Paladin Guide: https://youtu.be/hEYe8CxcP0Y
Warrior Guide: https://youtu.be/afMP3StQmPY
Dark Knight starter guide: https://youtu.be/LZq7uh2ZKOk
Dark Knight high level guide: https://youtu.be/wHFVQ7uTSD4
Gunbreaker Guide: https://youtu.be/6p04G5aXBwM
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Music Used:
FFXIV Dawntrail – Starless Skyline
#ffxiv #dawntrail
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:29 Paladin
05:14 Warrior
10:13 Dark Knight
15:12 Gunbreaker
19:04 Final Summary
20:14 Fun Fact
source
Which tank is your favorite? Personally I've been enjoying warrior and paladin quite a lot recently! Although my raid tank partner is already a paladin so I guess I will stay as a warrior!
this was a really good and comprehensive video! I would like to add that PLD, besides lacking self healing at earlier levels, also has self healing issues in savage/raid content! since your heals come up every 2 minutes, and you'll mess up your rotation if you do a Clemency GCD (using holy sheltron seems to be the best solution for such cases).
The best way to use Passage of Arms is to have it up for the full duration of a big attack to let your allies know you will keep them safe like a true Paladin
Dark Knight has always been my favorite tank ever since I started playing in Shadowbringers.
I think Dark Knight really suffers because of the changes from Endwalker (Carve and Spit sharing a cooldown with Abyssal Drain), and then suffers even More from the Delirium/Blood Weapon change that shipped with Dawntrail. We went from having a time limit on Delirium and Blood Weapon with the possibility of fitting in 5 GCDs under these windows by melding SkS in Shadowbringers to having a guaranteed 5 GCDs for Blood Weapon, but only three GCDs under Delirium.
In Dawntrail, Blood Weapon and Delirium were put onto the same action and now we only have three of both. We lost the ability to manage MP as finely as we could before and lost the potential for even more damage with the downsizing from 5 to 3 BW hits for using additional Edges. This is also not to mention the loss of Plunge, which just feels terrible as Dark Knight now only has Flood/Edge, Carve and Spit/Abyssal Drain and the two Shadowbringers available for oGCD attacks now. DRK just feels a lot slower now because of all of these changes and it feels like the devs can't settle on a design for my job. Feelsbadman 🙁
Crazy that i chose gunbreaker as my first tank to level 😅 i guess i just understood the cartridge mechanic more than the others
i played all tanks to max level (except warrior which i didn't even unlock) and all of them feels miserable to play except paladin, having so much buttons to press while also having to worry about mechs AND using mitigation skills? it's atrocious lmao, pld not only is very smooth because of insta spells and a very simple rotation, it's also feels like your playing an actual tank instead of generic dps
The more I bring Dark Knight into the current Savage tier, the more its strengths and nuances become apparent to me. It sort of feels like its quirks were designed with high-end duties in mind – particularly with how it's much easier to break TBN on autos and raidwides, which makes its burst optimization go hand in hand with its defensive toolkit. And it's still got enough survivability as a main tank, as long as you know when heavy autos are gonna hit you and you mit proactively.
I love the job to bits, and I'll be the first to defend its performance. (It has more than enough survivability in dungeons, imo; you just gotta cycle your mits well, use TBN aggressively, and not use Abyssal Drain too early.) But it does sort of feel like one of those cases where it's obvious that it was designed and balanced around high-end duties first. Since Dark Arts smuggling just isn't reliable in normal content, it makes the job feel less nuanced than it does in Extreme/Savage.
(Also Living Dead is really nice in high-end duties because of how its cooldown resets to 10 seconds when you fall to 1 HP for the first time. You don't have to carefully time it to cover all the hits of stuff like the final M3S tankbusters, you can just pop it and relax.)
Ah yes PLD… the amount of times I’ve seen a party get cleaved by autos because the pld has the “get behind me, I’ll protect you!” mentality is hilarious xD
Also rip what was it 40 second prepull fight or flight countdown?
instantly have to dissagree on how you put only 1 star to master pld pld and gnb are by far the most punishing dps loss wise if you mess up unlike warrior and dark knight
I'd say for me DRK is the most fun but WAR is the most effective – but keep in mind there that I am not yet in current content and I don't do anything especially hard – most difficult thing I regularly do is probably unsynced two person SHB mount farming with very cheap gear ^^
I like PLD as well but I can't really get on with GNB … I don't like the look of the gunblades and somehow the rotation never really clicked for me despite playing him to 100.
Not sure how relevant this will be for the wider discussions, but I'm currently a Lv. 54 Dark Knight and yeah, once opener is done I kinda feel like I'm just hitting my 1-2-3 combo over and over, and occasionally tapping one of the Darkness buttons. And I kinda love that tbh??? I greatly appreciate being able to take my eyes off my hot bar and actually look at the boss, and considering that my main DPS job is Bard…y-you can see where I'm coming from right?
"Makes paladin the closest to both a mage tank and a ranged tank". Blue mages who tank in shambles. 😆
i love how confident and outspoken you have become with the narrating. its a stark contrast to some of your older videos, and i must say its a great improvement. well done!
GNB and PLD for me. In levelling the tanks to 100 I came to really enjoy them both so I can't really choose which I like more. I will say that GNB's new Continuation off it's AOE combo is quite possibly by favourite new button the game though. So satisfying to press with that animation and sound.
DRK just feels too weak to me in standard play. Not saying it's a bad job or anything, but it's lack of self sustain is so obvious, especially before you get your big cooldown upgrade. I'm sure it's mostly fine in organized group play but when you're just out there alone doing random stuff it's kind of painful in a way that none of the other tanks are.
WAR.. well, I've never liked WAR at all so yeah, not getting my vote lol
This is a great guide. Want to say that first. Clear and concise with charts. You can't go wrong watching this.
But after sitting through it, man, the 2 min meta makes everything both robotic and if you aren't the type to like that type of gameplay; very unfun.
So much of this game is tied around this very rigid system of lining up your burst or having your biggest hitters up in that window, that even tanks have to be thinking about this in everything north of dungeons.
I just, speaking for me, I can't. It makes vast swathes of the game's content, unfun. Has nothing to do with if it's doable, of course it's doable, but contorting each job into a line of on demand attacks and pot usages or else you fall behind while also balancing all the mechs and phases of a boss fight just unfun.
I'm speaking from stock console play here. This tier of savage and even the ew raid has been some of the most unfun content I've played in an mmo. Enough to make me question why I'm even bothering.
Yes, it's off point from your vid, but with each explanation of each tank it just made me think about the whole endgame design here. I'm probably done with savage raiding after this tier. It's just been really unfulfilling for me.
An interesting thing about PLD is that in order to maintain a 1 min rotation, you NEED to drop 2 GCDs somewhere. For perfect damage its better to drop 2 Holy Spirits outside of burst, but that then reduces self sustain. Or if you need to step away, you can drop one or two of the atonement combo, which results in 50 lost potency, but allows you to maintain optimal uptime. I really enjoy this flexibility and skill expression, as annoying as it is to watch the Divine Might debuff overwrite itself.
BUT WHO CARES WARRIOR GO BRRRRRRRR
I loved the transition lmao, to put it succinctly, in terms of what tank I like the most…probably drk for its damage rotation and PLD for its defensives.
I do like GNB's damage rotation but only sometimes, you need a LOT of skillspeed to feel comfortable in fitting everything inside your No Mercy window. Its defensives are pretty good overall, and heart of corundrum + great nebula is kind of crazy.
Drk on the other hand… Yeah I know we all complain about it not having any identity (and the identity it DOES have sucks), but it could be worse; it could be black mage levels of bad. From having played this game for nearly a decade, Drk feels more similar to Ast in the sense that the devs keep simplifying the job (usually) to its detriment. Its burst is one of the most satisfying things in the game to line up, but outside of that, it's boring…very boring. Even worse; it has much less advantages than the other tanks at lower levels.
Can we also talk about TBN being unchanged for years? It really doesn't feel good to use anymore. I'd rather eat potential damage than use it to mitigate a buster that may or may not break it. And you don't even get a bonus for having it break, you get it refunded for edge of shadow – but Afflatus Misery this is not.
I've been having the mildest crisis ever over choosing a tank main.
when I first started out, the choice was clear. Paladin was a lot of fun, and I didn't want to play anything else. Then 6.3 hit.
It's way easier now to the point where it just feels boring most of the time. What really sucks is that Paladin still has my favorite aesthetic and mitigation by far.
I decided to try Gunbreaker, but was kind of put off by the rigid and difficult rotation. I tried Dark Knight and loved the way it plays in terms of damage, but hated it's mitigation.
I really want to like Paladin again, and even trying it in a few Extremes and savage, it's not terrible. But I just can't stop thinking about what we used to have, and how much better it could be.
Maybe it's because I picked GNB as my first Tank, but I picked up on its rotation rather quickly. I hit the wrong input during the Burst sometimes, but it's easily one of my favorite Jobs in the game.
I play on controller and found the perfect crossbar layout for my 123, burst combo, and my AOEs.
why were you weaving shadowstride, then 3 seconds later you say it doesnt deal dmg anymore. 💀
am i tripping…