With FFXIV Shadowbringers being almost 2 years old and Endwalker still many months away, I figured now was a great time to look back on the tanking meta in Shadowbringers and how it impacted the rest of FFXIV.
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0:00 Intro
0:22 The removal of stance dancing
3:51 The devaluation of enmity
5:46 The introduction of active mitigation
7:30 Gunbreaker in Shadowbringers
9:41 Paladin in Shadowbringers
11:13 Dark Knight in Shadowbringers
13:18 Warrior in Shadowbringers
15:35 Closing thoughts
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Hey everyone, thanks so much for all the kind words and warm welcome back on my last video, it means a lot to me. I'm really excited to be making videos again and want to make them the best they can be, so uploads might be a bit slower this time around. I'm aiming for 1 video a week but like I said in my last video, I'm trying to maintain a healthy balance of creation and a personal life, so that might not always be achievable. These videos take a long time to make, from coming up with the idea, to the script writing, to the recording, getting in-game footage, the editing and so on. I want to be proud of my videos and will be spending extra time on them so that they can reach their full potential; I don't want to rush out videos every 2 days like I used to. I hope you are okay with this slower schedule. I think it will make me happier and less likely to burn out, which is important! Much love and I hope you enjoyed the video.
This is my first time hearing "circle shirking" and damn did that give me a good laugh 🤣 ty.
Welcome back lynx!
On the topic of active mitigation I pretty much agree with you. I do think using active mits on autos is cool and can show a noticable difference between a good and great tank. I mean a good drk can take almost 0 damage from auto attacks on e12 if they use tbn well. I do still agree with you tho and wish bosses auto'd more and hit harder. E12 door boss really gets the closest to fulfilling this imo.
Good video, but I'm still a warrior main lol
Also I kinda disagree on warrior. I think they were amazing for prog in the most recent tier. Being able to invuln every giga slashs in 10 as well as both black halos in e12 part 2 was pretty valuable imo.
Thank God you're back. I really missed the no-nonsense pro-improvement point of view you bring that other FF youtubers definitively do not have.
Man your videos fill an empty gap in FF14 content, thank you!!!!!
Clicked this video so fast. Welcome back!!
Bro i miss tanking i like tanking back in storm blood being able to swap from sword outh or shield outh
Got a question popping into my head: When a War has the most self heal, wouldnt it rise the dps of the healers? Maybe you can clear this out to me ^^ thanks for the good content!
oh warriors how the mighty has fallen 🙁
Shit Kameli at it again with 4 year old VODs. You literally can't make this shit up…
i do miss warrios stance dancing. having said that, i just started playing again after 2 years. and instead of going right away to my main and repractice rotation, i made a paladin on another server and relearning everything again. im having a great time. and when im ready, i will come back to warrior for endwalker.
Seems like the warrior niche is in dungeon content.
I’m trying to beat the tank anxiety and jump in. I’ve gotten a dps high enough I can choose any of the tanks. Gunbreaker has my initial love but maybe dark knight would be better for a first timer for the same reasons is good for progression. Any recommendations?
Warrior feels more like a berserker class than what it used to be. It can withstand so much while still pumping out fell cleaves.
I wish they divorced that gameplay from DRK's delirium move. I feel like that just doesn't fit its kit very well.
meanwhile: warrior is meta in pvp.
tbh I'd love to switch between WAR and GNB, but the melding issue is so bad my GNB isn't busting out those nice dps numbers it should with determination instead of direct hit
Why do you exaggerate the dps difference between the tanks, sure GNB is higher but its not that huge? It's really close. Like 5%. As for Warrior dps, it's real rDPS is not factored into correctly by fflogs for this key reason: WAR self heals often and for a LOT. That's HP that healers don't have to waste time healing, hence, giving them extra spell attack opportunities through the entire fight. ie, 2-3 extra casts for each healer would already make WAR's rDPS higher than other tanks.
Great vid king. I agree with basically everything you said here, and would like to see warrior to get some additional depth and love in 6.0
So warrior ended up like paladin in early Heavensward.
Your ARR stuff on tanks doesn't sound right. Warriors didn't have a DPS stance in ARR. Only paladins did. Their DPS stance came with Heavensward. Warriors didn't "stance dance" in ARR. They put up tank stance to get threat on enemies, and then turned tank stance off to increase damage because tank stance penalized your damage output. Warrior tank stance was also fairly worthless, as it only increased max HP and healing received, compared to the paladin tank stance that reduced damage taken. Also, paladins only had a single attack combo: increase threat combo.
Edit: I don't feel any sorrow for warrior. Since half way through ARR, Warriors have more or less had a complete kit that made them *the best tank*. There were groups in ARR that did coil 13 with 2 warrior tanks, because 2 warriors was significantly more DPS than a warrior/paladin combo. Even in ARR, Warriors had high damage output, active mitigation, and decent self-healing. Warriors finally sitting last in an expansion isn't a surprise, it's expected after them being the best tank for the base game and two expansions, much like scholar, which was by far the best healer class for the base game and 2 expansions. The problem now is that warrior needs a niche. If you make two types of tanks into DPS tanks and utility tanks, the DPS tanks will be meta, so that can't be how the tanks are split.
Tank=doodoo gorilla mindless job. Pls yoshi, make tanking fun again
Cannot believe it took this expansion for PLD to get its gap closer.
I started as paladin and play every other tank class more. it's beefy but bores the hell out of me
Sorry I don't get all of this complains about WAR this expansion, especially now that it has his 1,2,3 combo buffed. First of all, it has good mitigations, and shields doesn't even have diminuishing return when stacked. So instead of having a % Mitigation that decrease the more you stack it, you just have a big flat shield. It has a good damage, dps difference beetween tanks doesn't even exist anymore for 99.9% of players so what are we talking about? It has healing, party mitigation, simpler optimisation, lowest cooldown on invuln. Maybe is not the best tank in shb, ok. But I don't get all of this bitching about WAR. It surely NOT sucks.
I would look at Warrior with their insane healing considering you can nascent a party member, as a dps increase for healers
The loss of Enmity tools was a huge loss for the game. Shadewalker/Smokescreen on Ninja, Lucid Dreaming reducing Enmity for healers, Refresh/Tactician doing the same for ranged, and Diversion for DPS were all skills that added a lot of resposibility to each party member.
The talk on emnity i really dont agree with, since it actually almost never had to do with you "competing with DPS". It was always just DPS not hitting their emnity reduction abilities.
It feels more like a false thing you personally saw as happening when in reality, all i saw were Black Mages who understandably, were going to hit Lucid Dream to reduce aggro when theyre constantly casting. It was a contrived system, and it barely mattered how good of a tank you were, and "doing more damage to compete" isnt a thing either.
Youre in DPS stance and hitting your rotation… theres nothing youre doing that anyone else wasnt. Arguably it was even worse, since the real differing factor would be Crit, Direct Hit, and Crit DH chances giving you "more emnity" so it was almost completely RNG as well.
Tbh I think the people who enjoy current paladin are just the min/maxers that jumped ship from warrior/drk to Pally because it does more damage now. I've been a pally main since 2.0 I love the aesthetic, I love the support kit, and I love the concept for magic phase and physical phase, But, out of all tanks this expansion is the most boring one to play. With varely any skills to weave or diversity in your rotation that allows you to maybe move things up and down while keeping your rotation, it feels so slow and restrictive, I hate how much we spam 1 single skill so often, feels like half of our tool never gets used in most fight and while every tool is great it feels like it cuts gameplay flow most of the time.
Its the only class in the game where I really feel the long global cooldow. GnB really fuck me up because its so fun to play in contrast. Theres just no hype in Paladins gameplay, nothing that makes you feel that BOOM moment, confiteor feels like a wetnoodle that occasionally splashes some crit but the sound and animation and feedback are so weak.
I wish they would just make pally fun.
Another reason Gunbreaker is good that I don't see implemented too much is that Superbolide placing them at 1hp means Limit Break will generate quicker when they're healed out of critical health. The increase to Limit Break meters passive generation is HUGE and when combined with White Mage's Benediction, it can be used even outside of dangerous situations purely for the Limit Break meter buff.
out of curiosity whats the 2nd best tank for level 70 ultimates? I know GNB is the best atm but i'm curious what the #2 is
I always love listening to your tanking videos. Since its always so accurate to hardcore tank mains.
Swapped from War to Gnb this expo. Been a one trick Warrior pony since Heavensward. Not really looking back tbh 😅 war felt really braindead this exp
the title was a bit confusing… I thought it was about reviews that were "tanking", as in, overall rating in terms of reviews was lowering xD..
I'm a returning player and I didn't understand why people kept saying you can stay in tank stance. This video gave some very useful perspective on what I've missed. Thank you.
I played tank since realm reborn and I never thought to much about the meta. I just really enjoy tanking.
Is warrior still not good tank?
Good video, I agree each one of your view except about warrior is the worst. I personally think WAR and DK are good but in different way. DK is super strong when boss has a very long auto attack phases like E5S, small but very frequent shield really keep DK in a good health. Other than that, I think WAR is not that bad. Just like you said in video, WAR is really strong in self healing and very short invincible ability, which I personally feel really give teams more tolerance for team members making mistakes. WAR-main players I know and I feel really enjoy doing more work ourselves and let healers and another tank to do more dps and save resources for any accidents may happened. I think WAR now is not about doing more damage, is all about let other team members do less. My team use less time to clear raid for the first time when I switched to WAR. Healers are great, another tank is great, too. They all cleared at least one ultimate. It’s all about care one less members in the team and when it’s in the first-time run, it really makes healers feel more handy (and do more damage).
Real tier list coming through:
TBN is the ultimate crutch so all the smooth brains play DRK. PLD and GNB have tiny swords. 🤏 WAR has a big axe and big pp. 😳
I'm going to assume that most of what you are saying applies to the higher end content.