Technically he is wrong, gnb also get the same invulnerability, except paladin can still die from damage on the target he covers, paladin can die from 2 sources (the others being uninvulnable things like walls or enrage) while the gbn can only die from the second source
It's actually pretty funny how that works! If I queue for something as tank, but I have a feeling I won't be 56+, I tend to lean towards other tanks more! 😅
One thing I've noticed when levelling all the tanks is how inconsistent the levelling experiences are. GNB gets brutal shell and camouflage before sastasha but paladin has to wait until sheltron on 35
And paladin has to wait until tower of babil before they get healing on their attack rotation 😅 Indeed all the tanks have particular high points in the leveling experience!
This should be one of the major points the devs work on during Dawntrail, if they haven't already. So many skills/utility are available very late, or in the case of tanks, key things about the role/job is unlocked at way different times. PLD gets their first gap closer at 74 right now as an example, the only tank that doesn't have a gap closer in 70 ultimates for instance, boggles the mind why it's like this.
@@tsjeriAu Also consider poor BLM, whose rotation changes completely, multiple times, as they're leveling up. NIN no longer needing to maintain Huton for attack speed will help them be less painful in MSQ roulette, at least...
DRK is the hardest for me. It was my main job in StormBlood/4.x when it was the Nigh unkillable drain tank. It wasn't a hard job so long as you actually read the tooltips of the job, Left both stances on when tanking, and used the correct abilities in the rotation, which was Mainly Dark Arts and Abyssal drain followed by Quietus to refill MP and use TBN, along with Salted Earth and Blood Price, to keep you Black Blood up. Then they took that level of Selfsustain, gave it WAR and left DRK out to die
Gunbreaker main here. One of the most difficult parts is with no skill speed on gunbreaker, even if you do your rotation flawlessly, your burst will drift by 1 gcd every 2 minutes after the 3 minute mark assuming there is no downtime. You will run into a situation where you are sitting on 3 cartridges with a solid barrel ready, and roughly 2 seconds left before no mercy and gnashing fang come up. You are actually forced to burst strike and then finish your solid barrel combo, drifting your gcd by one in order to go into no mercy with the 3 cartridges needed for your full burst. You will drift by 1 gcd at the 3,5,7,9,11, etc minute marks. So by minute 7, you're already 3 gcds late to the raid buffs (assuming full uptime). At that point, you need to make a choice between overcapping a cartridge on those minutes, sacrificing a burst strike inside of your burst window or drifting your gcd by 1 AND losing a burst strike in your burst window.
i find it funny how many people in the comments are saying something along the lines of "i main xyz and its definitely the easiest" like the fact that theyre maining it isnt a major reason it seems easier for them
8:31 I will admit that I'm kinda guilty of this sometimes. I learned most of my tanking fundamentals via leveling Dark Knight (and everything before that I learned via Level 50 Paladin). So things that a lot of people rightfully find difficult about the job feel second nature to me, just by virtue of the fact that I learned how to deal with them while also learning Tanking 101. I'm not trying to brag or anything - on the other side of the coin, because I learned how to play FFXIV using a job whose casual rotation is fairly freeform, I am *woeful* at my DPS job rotations. (As a Reaper, I have yet to go one trial/raid without forgetting to refresh Death's Design.)
I'm glad you mentioned how WAR and PLD have a very hard time at lower levels before they have good defensive tools at their disposal. I definitely think GNB is the hardest tank in EX or Savage raids, but leveling WAR and PLD was grueling in comparison to leveling the other 2 tanks imo
Dark knight is going to get quite a bit easier in Dawntrail. The removal of damage on their gap closer and living shadow not needing a resource will contribute a lot to that. It'll still have a challenge but I'm curious to see if gunbreaker remains the hardest.
Indeed, gunbreakers lion heart, while huge in damage, also means except the opener you actually get to keep the cartridges from blood fest in two minute bursts, so that will absolutely loosen up gunbreaker as well! 😊 I am very curious to see if something changes in the ranking too! 😁
Im a big fan of the change tbh because using Mitigation as DRK in Burst can be stressfull and tbh Plunge is for me the least interesting oGCD and most of the time is just "the animation!" but in reality you will use it almost all the time for more damage in the burst phase. Tbh its for me also funny when people say "Weaving mitigation as GNB is so hard!" i was first DRK Main and then switch to GNB and i was surprised how easy it feels to weave mitigation as GNB.. even in burst it feels easier then DRK
One thing to note about GNB is that its difficulty in raid content varies wildly between encounters and if you're the MT or not. Some fights like P4S require the MT to constantly reposition the boss, which also happens to align with the burst window. For a WAR, this is not a problem, but for a GNB that MUST weave OGCDs every minute, this can be a nightmare.
@@KingCloudsCape yeah, that change was definitely made due to the feedback of P4S, which is... Concerning if they didn't think it would be a problem in the first place.
I love this video and your content in general is my favorite on all XIV guides/analysis. I always get the vibe you’re trying to be as fair as possible, and consider all options. I genuinely look forward to your uploads, thank you for what you do ☺️❤️
I almost feel like you could turn the collective opinions into two graphs. First would be a line graph that shows the relative difficulty as they level from 1-90 just doing normal content (WAR would have some satisfying drops in difficulty); Second would be a plotted graph for increasing levels of optimization (Extremes -> Savages -> Ultimates -> Theoretical optimal play). I'll have some more constructive thoughts on the other role videos as they come out. I don't play Tank enough, but wanted to leave a comment for the algorithm :D
The idea is good, unfortunately I don't think I could plot such a graph in a fair light without it getting extremely biased! 😅 That is why I have focused on hitting a few select cases! 😊 Thank you though! 😄
Really nice video! I for one started with GNB as my first tank and WAR was last I even tried, let alone leveled, so to me GNB was significantly easier than the other 3 tanks!
As someone who mains paladin, paladin is definitely not the hardest. However, in terms of full-out maximization, there's a few difficulties that paladin has that other tanks don't need to worry about. Passage of Arms is great as an extra raid wide protection but is harder to apply to the full party. Keeping damage uptime during ranged phases where you still have to move a lot can be difficult and require slide-casting such as in P12S Para3. Unlike other tanks, you can assist your party with on-demand healing through clemency so with non-DPS phases such as P9s/P12s Limit Cut, you can heal pretty aggressively but at the cost of making the mechanic harder for yourself.
another thing I'd like to note on DRK and GNB being seen as the harder tanks is the sheer amount of weaving oGCD damage buttons they require in comparison to the other jobs, so there may be times where you have to sacrifice your damage rotation to fit in a necessary mit as well, and then you have to adjust around that
Nice video with interesting things to think about. Thank you! I’m a casual player who mostly tanks but sometimes heals. For my play style easy is a good thing, so I often play Warrior but sometimes Paladin. I agree with your ranking of the two, but at max level, when Paladin finally gets its full tool kit, they become quite close. Warrior has more and stronger healing options while Paladin has more and stronger mitigation. In special cases Paladin’s mitigation is better, but overall Warrior is better off with its healing. Paladin takes a much bigger hit when mechanics force it out of melee range for more than a few seconds. Both its gauge and a large chunk of its MP come from melee attacks. Also, while its spells are ranged, it can only initiate Requiescat from melee.
It really depends on what you find harder, the nature of stockpiling or strict rotations. I have all of the tanks at 100 now, have played them all and at a base level, GNB and PLD are harder than the other two. There is a strict nature to your rotations, I would say GNB is the harder because it is stricter, and stepping a toe out of line can really be punishing with the only real variable you're allowed being where to place your sonic break in the NM. It's better to place it last in windows where you are trying to fit a burst strike in, as doing burst strike last will make continuation fall outside of the NM window. PLD has a lot more wiggle room with the ability to hold using holy spirit and the atonement combo for 2 gcd's without punishment for both lining up the atonement combo with your burst or in holding a holy spirit for movement you know is coming. This actually makes PLD a little harder when it comes to optimizing, as these are choices you do not have to make on GNB. From an optimization viewpoint, WAR and DRK are harder. WAR is honestly barely harder, but saving exactly 50 gauge for a burst window, no more no less, and having infuriate close enough to use 2 in the burst without letting it ever sit at 2 does require some planning. Fortunately, you have a lot of void time to plan while hitting 123 or 124. At a base, just spend everything, it's easy and you have wiggle room but to get the most damage you need to be saving those for the 2 minute windows. It was even harder before 7.01 where to get the absolute most you had to save your primal rend for 30 seconds, then your primal ruin so that you could get 2 ruins in a 2 min window but they removed that by lowering the primal ruin window to 20 seconds. DRK on the other hand is much harder in my opinion. Optimizing it requires using a TBN close enough to the 2 min window and not spending the proc, which can be difficult without overcapping on mana or not having as much as you'd like considering that you also don't want to just not use edge for 60 seconds. You also want to not spend your shadowbringers and I just find not pressing a button harder than pressing it sometimes especially with a high damage skill like that. DRK is easy to just play and smash everything but holding everything for burst to optimize and then getting it all in is harder than following the strict rotation, for me at least. I suppose for WAR and PLD you also have slightly more decisional optimization in that their dashes do damage still, but you will want to hold one in some cases, sometimes even have both ready to go. Big comment sorry, but anyway, I think DRK is the hardest.
Another factor to consider with regards to War being "harder" to optimize at lower levels, due to needing to stockpile gauge for berserk, is that optimization in lower level content is far less important (or at least you're far less likely to be doing something where optimization does matter at those levels). So players are more likely to think of that as something that's annoying rather than something that's difficult.
Im kinda surprised gnb was the winner. I was always told it was hard so i personally resolved myself to not touch it till i was "ready". Then one day i looked at it and read all the tool tips and realized it is paladin with an extra button similar to how sage and scholar are also kinda just the same job. Dark knight has no analog, it really is its own thing so i assumed it was drk
I personally find dark knight to be like warrior with more buttons in terms of attack rotation, similar to how gunbreaker can come off as "stricter paladin" 😊 but it at least didn't surprise me we had a close first and second place!
u will feel satisfied as GNB when u can finish the full combo during the no mercy period (and having Camouflage for defensive early for pve) DRK wise, after getting TBN, normal pve is easy coz u can spam with it/rampert afterwards, but the long cooldown for DRK, u will feel bored during the off burst time lol...but u can throw TBN on other tanks when u are an off tank, dats one of the merit for DRK when doing late game content i play both DRK and GNB, but playing GNB feel more satisfied coz the combo
With DRK it’s always been the defensive CDs for me. Dark Knight was the tank that I originally wanted to learn, but I was still new to the game and had never tanked. It was Dark Mind specifically that spooked me since I had no clue how to tell the difference between physical and magical damage. I had just thought that DRK wasn’t tanky. Plus tank anxiety and all that. I never touched a tank again until GNB was released. Kinda ironic that the 2nd hardest scares me the most, but the hardest I am all in for 😅
GNB is the tank for DPS mains that want to try tanking. They really should split the tanks for high end content into MT/OT like they do for shield vs normal healer. DRK and GNB as your OTs, PLD and WAR as MTs.
@@1337penguinman I would highly disagree with that, having that distinction makes it so unnecessarily restrictive. This is already the case for healers, if you play SCH in a static your only other real option is SGE, whereas if you play WHM in that static your options are all 4 healers, since double barrier is viable but double pure is not viable.
This really does come down to what content you're doing. For general roulette content, who cares they're all easy. For Savage I'd say it goes to either DRK or GNB but is pretty interchangeable depending on the fight. GNB's rotation can be pretty hellish to get back on the rails in P12S P1 if you get unlucky during Para 3, and DRK just gets pummeled in P10S. But for Ultimate, it easily goes to GNB, and it's not even close. Sure, PLD has to deal with basically being a troll pick in TEA because of how long their invuln timer is and how much damage they take, but far and away GNB takes the cake because of how hard it gets screwed over by one simple thing that is ubiquitous in every ultimate: downtime. GNB gets negatively effected by downtime more than any other JOB in the whole game, with the possible exceptions of RPR and DRG. GNB is so supremely cursed in TOP and DSR because of this that playing it is basically an extra ultra-nightmare difficulty modifier on top of the nightmare difficulty of ultimate. Your burst windows will completely change depending on how many carts you go into a phase with which is dictated by kill times, so your re-opener during the DSR intermission will be entirely different if you had 2/3 carts going into it compared to having 3/3 carts going into it. It also has to contend with having the 2nd longest invuln cooldown in the game, which means it has the most awkward time adjusting to different mit plans that some tanks might have. The literal only positive to playing GNB in TOP and DSR is that you're on the absolute bottom of the LB3 priority list, meaning that during the DSR intermission and TOP P6 Cosmo Memory, GNB will never have to LB3 (although it still has to LB3 during Magic Number at the end of TOP P6). For the other ultimates it's a bit more lenient, mostly because you don't have to worry about and play around Double Down, but the cartridge system still means you can get screwed by downtime and wonky kill times and is why I'd still call it the hardest tank in those ultimates as well But again, for roulette stuff/dungeons/full uptime encounters, who cares, they're all easy.
@@aphelion888 Yes actually, and even if it doesn't completely solve the issue it will alleviate a lot of that stress. However Lionheart is unlocked at level 100, so every ultimate prior to FRU will still be very cursed for GNB.
That’s why I was hoping they would add someway for gnb to generate cartridges without hitting the boss. Something like you have to stand still and load cartridges maybe 1 every 3 seconds. Now this isn’t the perfect solution especially in mechanic heavy downtime like p2 of DSR, but there are parts where even generating 1 extra cartridge would be such a game changer for gnb. It would lead to less aoe combo spam just so your burst alignment doesnt get absolute butchered. Lionheart will be a godsend on the 2 minute windows but I’m still worried about the 1 minute window, especially if we get more fights like top and DSR with the way double down works.
@@Firewolf161 100% I've been saying for a long time that GNB needs some kind of reload mechanic for downtime. In regards to mechanic heavy downtime, it will kinda depend on rng but for P2 DSR at least you could use it in similar timings that SAM players use Meditate. For Strength your only opening to reload would probably be when you're waiting for the dragoons to dive at the start since tanks have a lot of movement because of the tethers afterwards, and for Sanctity it really depends on if you get meteors or not, although if you're OT and get meteors you'd end up North anyways so you can maybe get a cart or two.
@@Spiritchuckpvp That’s good thinking and that would be the fun part of an ability like that, trying to find good openings to use it would add a lot of fun to prog/optimization. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like we are getting anything like that soon if at all. We can dream tho right lol?
i would love to see pulls from other jobs perspectives: healers vote which tank they prefer to see in roulettes, tanks vote with which healer they feel safest when get paired etc
I feel like the problem with DRK is that, for a casual player, it rarely feels like you're really doing well. Whether you focus on damage or TBN, it's unavoidable to wonder if you should have done the opposite. Magical shields add even more uncertainty. If you're doing content for the 1st time, its basically a gamblewhether youll be using them all the time or never touching them. Add in the limited self-healing, and you start to wonder if its worth it to queue with this class...
it'll be more of the same in DT where DRK is mostly the same. They have alleviated the ogcd burst by shifting blood weapon and removing plunge but does nothing to fix the job identity. No blood gauge on living shadow helps... I guess. It will still have issues with sustain despite the buff to shadow wall
DRK is probably hardest for me because of ping and weaving which is super subjective. The removal of damage from the gap closer might make it more manageable.
It's hard to say. What we know for certain is that the new disesteem attack will add in an ogcd where the two plunges remove two, so it helps a bit, but I could imagine latency will still cause trouble!
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Yeah. Meanwhile the beast combo on GNB combined with velocity having no damage means GNB will become even more managable for me, making it possibly easier than PLD XD
Paladins difficulty to optimize increases dramatically compared to the other tanks when a boss fight has transitions. They have even more spreadsheets then blackmages...
With gunbreaker, during standing rotation, non bursting, in some places you use burst strike to prevent overcap, these are points of realignment I found. Another trick to get back on if you are behind a GCD, (I've done this when lost a GCD and need to get back to max carts for next burst phase), is to use the AoE rotation once. This helped me alot in P12S, just before she jumps away for limit cut - especially if stuck in the corner on lightning shot duty baiting the + with sadness and tears.
The need to get a rotation JUST SO - not just for tanks, but for DPS too - is exactly why I'm so reluctant to try current raids and especially Extreme/Savage content. Especially as someone who likes dabbling in many different jobs (leading to muscle-memory confusion), and who fat-fingers things now and then as it is, I have a lot of trouble nailing them down precisely.
The focus on getting the rotation exactly correct is overblown. If you just focus on getting your 2-minute burst mostly correct (and make sure you pop your 2-minute raid buff on cooldown, if you have one), you'll be fine. The only time damage matters if when you're dying to the enrage, and that means you need to already get through all the mechanics. The most important thing in Savage/EX isn't your rotation, it's doing mechanics correctly. Doing your rotation perfectly only matters if you're trying to clear the entire tier in the first week; after that, getting additional Tomestone gear makes the DPS requirement pretty lenient, in most fights. EDIT: The current patch is the best time to dip your toes into EX/Savage. With the final stage Manderville weapon, 650 Tomestone gear, and Echo, you can pretty much freestyle your rotation and not worry about hitting the enrage- especially since this tier's enrages were generous to begin with. In the current patch, if you wiped to enrage, it's because there were multiple deaths throughout the fight. If the group does the mechanics correctly, you'll clear.
@@WingsofAges In the case of GNB, having so little slack... well, I guess that's what "mostly correct" is for, but it's still not exactly reassuring! ^^;
You will be surprised how some of the BEST raiders, day ONE, NO gear, mess up their combos. Once you got crafted gear, youre pretty much set. At this point, you try to do your best :)
WAR: What is that? I only know level 5 MRD and a bit higher leveled MRD when I started PotD. PLD: Just burst every minute, use the 30 second cooldowns on cooldown and keep the gap closers for the 1 minute burst. Might be a bit biased here, I play PLD the most out of any tank. DRK: I leveled it in Bozja and actually never played it at 90. So far, it felt fairly similar to PLD to me in terms of rotation. There are a few 60 second cooldowns, use those as an indicator for going all out, possibly without spending all MP to have some for TBN and to make sure MP are at least at 9k for the bigger burst every 2 minutes. Never let Darkside expire. There's likely some room for MP optimization with Blood Weapon, but I won't math that out. For Blood Gauge, I need to keep in mind to avoid overcapping it when I have Delirium. For Salted Earth, I use it on cooldown. But the only difference seems to be 2 Shadowbringer uses and Salt and Darkness between 80 and 90. Shadowbringer lines up with the 2 minute burst naturally and Salt and Darkness will be used whenever I have it. It's a bit more complex than PLD, but still feels very doable overall. GNB: I was able to play it at some point, well enough to almost beat O12S phase 1 solo, but somehow unlearned quite a bit. So now quite a few skills drift. Especially in dungeon content. Idk about raid content, might be better when I don't have to run from pack to pack. Maybe I should do an EW Alliance Raid or some Pandaemonium or EW extremes to figure that out.
What people never talk about with paladin is optimizing cover/ passage of arm plays in a raid like setting. Having to know when you can intervene someone and still have gauge for your sheltron when you need it. Having to weave in passage of arms during your burst can be intense. But a lot of people dont even know you can do that without losing dps. The fact you not only hsve to weave it but also position yourself so that you are in front allles during busy stuff can be hectic. Yeah you dont need to do it for a clear but it does separate the skill gap between a paladin that can only focus dps vs a paladin thats insane in prog and makes healing a bit more comfortable.. hell even just practicing doing so on normal content can be chaotic but it is satisfying. Personally though i really wish pld had a 120 sec burst too
Gunbreaker is definitely gonna get easier in Dawntrail. Adding the lionheart combo to bloodfest and removing rough divide is gonna make burst windows so much easier. At least the 2 minute ones. You're still gonna need to stockpile for the off minute bursts. But they're essentially removing 5 ogcds during the 2 minute burst.
Looking through these comments and seeing how tank players seem to center their entire rotations about their self heals... I get the healer strike now. I first I was thinking "bah, healer babies" but now, reaching some of the thoughts from the tank side of that argument, I find myself firmly on the healer's side. What's the point in even having the trinity if the healer is completely surplus to requirements, because the tanks can pretty much just take care of themselves? How is that fun for healers to just cast glare over and over again because nobody needs you? What is a modern healer, except a babysitter for DPSs that messed up a mechanic?
GNB has definitely been the hardest to learn and optimize, but I think because it feels like a Ferrari, while PLD is a Corolla, WAR is that rusted Ford up on cinder blocks, and DRK is a Tesla cybertruck.
I have an idea of boos + tank rework it goes as follows: Rework tank busters: Tank buster will have 3 types: Slash, smash, pierce, magic Let take example we are in raid and the boss will have 4 tanks busters And tanks have 4 main tank busters which will be each tank buster will have the same effect but with additional one of the 4 tanks buster type example: rampart will have magic mitigation, blood spitter will have smash mitigation If done correctly it will mitigate 80% dmg and give effect as follows: Magic : will give team support buff Paladin : defense Warrior: Heal Gunbreaker: regen Dark knight: shield If fails it give 20% mitigation Nd lose the effects Smash and slash and peirce will give tank specific rotation that have big damage as a reward for done mechanic right Effects will be randomize each time but with very hard moments will give magic effect tank busters Please give me your thoughts
I mean, you can't say Warrior is difficult at higher level casual content, at all. The fact that a lot of your videos include 'did you know that Warrior can solo (insert duty name here) sync'd?' shows how much survivability the job has.
Well, being able to solo all that content says more about what the job is capable of. All those dungeons warrior can solo, many of them require you to actually play the job really well to do it! 😁 Although yes, in terms of survivability warrior is definitely the easiest. I don't feel like I gave the impression warrior had much to worry about from a casual perspective, but maybe I did! 😅 It does explain how few votes the job did get!
@@CaetsuChaijiCh I find Warrior's the hardest to heal (healer main) in dungeons, since they pop Bloodwhetting and heal themselves so much they 'take no damage'. But then it falls off and their hp drops like a tonne of bricks. A very volatile tank I find.
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Warrior CAN solo the first lvl90 Dungeon. With that in Mind, i guess almost 80% of all Warrior Players cant do that because the Dungeon is pretty hard (These Trashpacks lol) when synced.
@zordiark9673 Indeed. Just to take an example, the first boss in said dungeon will use craven companionship (friend tacos) and since you're alone the hysteria that follows is unavoidable. However you have about half a second before the follow up donut aoe lands, and you can just barely fit a gap closer and run in before it resolves. Getting hit once by that gives you doom. And you have to time that perfectly every time about 4-5 times if I recall correctly 😊 That's of course just one example. The trash packs in the dungeon are mostly melee so understanding how to kite optimally is also needed. And so I could imagine a lot of warrior players simply won't know the tricks for soloing! It is sort of like it's own sub category of dungeon running! 😁
@@henryhunter9643 This is a hallmark of someone who's bad at the job, not an issue of Warrior itself. Bloodwhetting lasts 8 seconds on a 25 second cooldown, that makes them immortal for practically 1/3 of all time spent in AOE situations. But for the other 2/3 of the time, they need to mitigate. Some Warriors just don't, instead expecting the healer to keep them alive until Bloodwhetting is up again. 17 seconds is more than enough time for a large group of enemies to just melt through the Warrior's HP if they aren't using other cooldowns, so the healer can feel like they're desperately scrambling to keep them alive. Not only should a good Warrior should not feel difficult to heal, but you shouldn't really have to heal them... at all. Use your free oGCDs like Celestial Intersection or Haima for added security and because when the heck else are you gonna use them, but if the Warrior knows what they're doing, they can mitigate their way from Bloodwhetting to Bloodwhetting and never actually need additional healing.
I’ve played every tank in both casual and extreme/savage settings I main GNB so I have some bias here, but I was surprised to see GNB voted as the hardest tank. GNB is hard in the aspect of how rigid the rotation is and having to pre-plan your mitigations unless you wanna die to a tank buster (in savage at least) but I feel like it’s not too bad once you know the rotation of the class I personally have found DRK to be harder than GNB specifically because of how many oGCDS it has alongside the lack of self heal compared to the rest of the tanks as well as having the same issue with needing to pre-plan mitigations for tank busters PLD being second easiest makes sense, PLD is my 2nd go-to tank after GNB and my longtime friend back from when we met in Guild Wars 2 mains it (previously mained DRK) WAR is my go-to tank for anything dungeon related, I like to make the healers job easy while also getting to do tons of damage and not having to worry about a rigid rotation like with GNB Overall, great video, wasn’t surprised with the two easiest tanks, but was surprised with GNB being voted as the hardest tank
Yeah tbh DRK and GNB are pretty interchangeable in savage and it really depends on the fight. For ultimate however, GNB is the hardest tank to play in the game and it's not even close.
Ah ok, I wouldn't know that one for sure yet just cause I haven't played Ultimate quite yet but I've been wanting to run some ultimates so I'll be able to figure that out pretty soon
@@rjohn1277 Go for it! Ultimate content is great and super rewarding to learn. The one thing I will say however is that since Dawntrail is right around the corner, most people won't be running ultimates for a good while, probably not until they're done with the new savage tier.
Yea I’m not gonna attempt Ultimates until a bit after Dawntrail comes out, debating between UCOB or UWU as my first ultimate but I’ve been told both are pretty lenient on DPS checks due to the gear creep and I have friends who I’ve met through Anabaseios that have said I’m more than capable of clearing an Ultimate and have offered to help me out whenever I’m interested in doing an Ultimate
@@rjohn1277 The order I went in was UWU>TEA>DSR>TOP>UCOB, but in terms of difficulty I'd rank them (most difficult to least) DSR>TOP>TEA>=UCOB>>>>UWU. UWU is a great starting point, it's a good mix of not being that difficult and being fairly fun. There's really only 2 mechanics with any substantial difficulty, Gaols and Suppression. Everything else is on par with or easier than anything you've done in savage. TEA and UCOB are pretty similar in terms of difficulty, UCOB doesn't have any single mechanic that's extremely difficult but the difficulty is in the fact that the fight is very chaotic and random. TEA is almost the exact opposite, the first 2 phases are pretty difficult but are pretty static. There is some variance in BJCC depending on which role starts with nisi's and who gets the debuffs, but the difficulty of BJCC is respecting the movements of other people and not causing car accidents with the nisi's while also doing your required positioning for mechanics. Although the last 2 phases are substantially easier as every mechanic in AP and PA are basically just pop quizzes to make sure you studied. Consider this last bit a PSA :P The one last thing I want to say about TEA, specifically Perfect Alexander, because this doesn't get said enough, respect Stillness, it's much more strict than any other Pyretic mechanic in the whole game. You can't sheathe your weapon as going from your idle pose stance to your cpose stance counts as motion and will kill you, if you play on standard movement, moving your camera will count as movement and will kill you. The solution is to just spam Escape when you see the cast bar (or whatever it is on controller) and just take your hands off of your keyboard until it's over.
One thing that you left out for Paladin is the relatively recent rework. I've had a few recent discussions about Tank difficulty where I had to remind people about that and how it drastically reduced the difficulty of the job on the optimization end. So possible a few of those voting for it might be thinking back to pre-rework experiences. Also from those discussions- lvl 50 warrior is at it's core very similar to 90 warrior. Sure you a couple ogcds and some free gauge as you level, but compared with paladin which still has to pick up Holy Spirit, Atonement, and the Confiteor combo it changes a lot less.
i think something else to bring up and think about, especially when it comes down to difficulty, percieved or not, is how INTUITIVE something is. WAR doesnt particularly gain or lose anything by "just press the shiny button", so in alot of ways you can say it "plays itself"... and then tucks you in, warms up a glass of milk, kisses your forehead and tells you it loves you. smash combo, inner release, press the same button for 20 seconds. unga bunga war. No matter what WAR has under the hood that trips people up, most people can agree its hard to mess up in th first place with WAR. in the same vein, while optimizations aren't OBVIOUS, PLD also guides you on what it wants- 1-2-3, atonement a bunch, confiteor combo, and the cooldowns all line up to go from 1 to 2 to 3. it flows in a natural, obvious way. the vast majority of difficulty for paladin comes from optimizations, which have been... counterintuitive at times. like atonement shifting. Dark is alot less obvious. things line up, sure. 30s plunge, 60s shadowbringer. but do you press blood weapon first? do you wait for it to fall off before using delirium? should i stack them? shadowbringer has 2 charges, do i store them for the 2minute? suddenly you see why DRK is "really hard". The burst phase for DRK isnt exactly telegraphed and the job isnt designed in a way that clears that up from tooltips alone. Once you learn, you learn, and it results in being very busy on top of that. Gnb has a little more direction than dark; at least gnashing fang is obvious, but cartriges? if you use burst strike on every time the shiny pops up, you dont even HAVE a burst, and if you just try to fill it up, it's full before no mercy is back, how many do you use? do you stay full? do you try to line it up where you get your 3rd cartridge when no mercy comes up? Same issue as dark. you just know you need 3 cartridges every 60 seconds. and youre spending 2. not much to go off of. and thats just the entry level before we get into how strict it is to optimize.
Slow breaker is painful for me to play. And I mained it for most of ShB and EW. I really don't know how anyone plays it slower than 2.40 or 2.41 in any kind of content where tank DPS actually matters.
Oh, I will say this for WAR: It basically has its full rotation by level 50, meaning players can get the muscle memory nice early on. Relatively speaking. But yeah, I still think PLD is easier. WAR's upkeep buff and gauge management is just PLD basically doesn't have to deal with in any way.
As a Midcore Dark Knight main, I feel like Gunbreaker is the hardest to play optimally. Even with a 2.45 GCD, it feels clunky and strict. I feel like I'm drifting everything. I'm really hoping 2.5 Slowbreaker is a viable GCD tier for Dawntrail, and it looks like it might be because of the Lion Heart combo.
Yeah, I main it and it's painful to play at anything slower than a 2.41 for me. But with the DT changes and Burst Strike just not being a thing on your 2 minute anymore, I think Slowbreaker might actually be playable.
I'm a main tank and haven't reached cap level yet, but I do have my 2 favorite classes untill now: DRK and PLD. I just have to make my mind and choose one to master and min/max for endgame content. The thing with DRK is I keep questioning myself all the time whether I should spend all my MP with EoS or TBN and, once I choose one, I keep thinking if I did the right choice or not. Also, for the magical damage mitigation skills, I just use it as if it was any other mitigation because I still don't know how to track if the damage is phys or mgc (if someone could explain me...). I like both of the classes, but i'll have to wait till cap to see which one I enjoy the most, especially when min/maxing rotations
For dungeon contnet playing drk early levels real challenge is rolling the healer who can compensate for your miserable ability to tank early on. Wall to wall pulling is often sucidal on drk pre 70. Its mitigation and healing tools are also terrible with one of its mitigations are related to a specific damage type.
PLD because it has only 2 timing windows. 30 and 60 seconds. At the 60s mark you have to weave a total of a 4 ogcds plus tinc. I wrote a whole damage optimization, but it was a lot of words to say do things on cooldown and tinc before damage buff. There are no optimizations beyond using damage buff after first 2 melee combo actions, because 5 of 7 combo actions are hard hitting. Req and goring is always under damage buff. It doesn't matter which you do first as long as you stick to it. That's it. Oh, you can optimize by using holy spirit combo action when you need to step out of an AOE and use atonement before stepping away.
I only tank as a secondary role, and took up gunbreaker because it's an optimal off-tank and I like that it's a good balance of damage, mitigation and healing... However, I found it much too involved and unforgiving to only play now and then and went back to warrior to tank, and it's a lot more comfortable.
Personally, the strictness of gunbreaker makes it feel the easiest for me, because using mitigation is the only decision you ever make unless something's already gone wrong with the rotation. I don't tank in high end content though, so sticking to the rotation correctly is rarely tricky.
I love gunbreaker thematically and the overall feel, hence why it's my main tank class. However, I'm a very casual player (crafter main) so even while not trying to hit those burst windows correctly, the class is very, very "busy" and feels very button mashy at times.
I'm a simple man. Gun + Sword = happy times in my book. I may not be the best Gunbreaker, but it's a blast and the difficulty mastering it as been a joy. It's also fun to hit the invul and watch a healer panic..... N..not that I do that!
The nature of the game revolves around versatility and role responsibilities. You can see this in all jobs, not just tanks. Ex. A job that is highly versatile, doesn't do its role to the absolute highest levels compared to a job that solely focuses on its role with no versatility. In this case, emnity is the managable resource and pallies have the best versatility as a tank, so they fight with that aggro all the way through content. Damage is the secondary concern. All tanks hover around the same damage output level.
War has come a long way from being laughed at and bamished from content in the early years. Now they are the edgy OP Isekai protagonist they deserve to be after such an origin story... They are honestly TOO OP and hard to get behind since they are the obvious favorite of the devs now
Warrior legit does abysmal DPS in high end content at launch. Most famously, Xenosyvex, THE warrior main, cleared week 1 P8S the moment he swapped to gunbreaker.
You've missed the part that DRK lacks of Midigation (Since one is Magical only and TBN is just gone if theres a multiple hitting TB) and a huuuge lack of selfsustain (Selfheal).. at least compared to the other tanks at max Lvl
You should specify between raids and dungeons. They are vastly different scenarios and change how tanks feel. For example: GNB has some of the best cooldowns in raids, they are extremely effective, but not the best at dungeons. Warriors are gods in dungeons because they can leech so much in trash pulls and never die. However, they are not nearly as effective in raids. Just a thought.
I tried to keep it more general because sometimes there isn't much of a difference and sometimes there's a huge difference, and I feel it makes more sense to focus in where it really matters! 😊 No worries!
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Yeah, its a good video. I am just offering a little feedback (Hopefully constructive). However, I understand that most players are casual and wont step into difficult raids.
The problem with rating difficulty as you say is it's so dependent on the situation. Are we talking about dungeons synced down, level 90 ultimate raids, level 90 extreme trials? The answer is so variable its almost not worth generalizing. On leveling dungeons DRK might be the hardest, where at a 90 ultimate it might be the easiest as the dps checks are tight and it has high damage with very low rigidity. Coming from mostly savage level experience, it can even be fight specific, where having a warrior makes P12S phase 2 easier on both tanks because of the short invuln cooldown, or bringing a paladin makes it impossible to skip tankswaps on some fights because of the longer invuln cooldown, making it slightly harder on both tanks.
My difficulty curve DRK>GNB>WAR>PLD (yeah i say it) but tbh for me is a straight forward rotation never hard.. thats also the reason why something like Dragoon feels for me more easy then Samurai or even Reaper sometimes. DRK is for me peak because make a perfect burst can be hard.. shitton of oGCDs.. you want to use as many EoS and Bloodspiller as possible (and still have to use mitigation between it) and also something like.. "Yeah your ONLY real Heal is a Shield that punished you when its not break." what make his "Heal" even harder to use because you want to spam it but also you want to have enough MP for burst and it should break _always_ to not flush 460 Potency directly down in the toilet. (and probadly even more MP when you are forced to use non free EoS outside of burst do not lose Darkside because you will only spent MP on TBN outside of the burst.)
As a DRK main (or more like WAR/DRK duo), DRK is essentially oGCD vomit every even-minute burst lol As for GNB, I find it a bit hard to use compared to DRK but I think it's just due to the Gnashing combo and the DoTs. IDK how or why that throw me off lol
Another thing not mentioned is TBN being much weaker than the analagous ability on other tanks (in EW) and DRK effectively missing a mitigation with Dark Mind means while they do fine on bosses, trash pulls are much more difficult to deal with.
Give Drk Blood Price back and make Abyssal Drain a spell again and the survivability would be comparable to a War in dungeons wall to wall pulls. I miss the early Stormblood days because we had that.
Dark main here. Honestly gunbreakers placement surprised me. Amongst the groups I'm in regularly it's known as THE job to unsynchronize on (I still prefer pal or dark depending on the fight). And while it does have a more involved rotation it feels like it's a lot more straightforward. Making perfect practice the real enemy. Paladin is probably only easy from the perspective of someone currently at endgame. Endwalker endgame. I also want to note here that requiescat regularly tricked people into thinking they needed to keep their mp up in order to keep the buff due to wording. This is not the case and I still see people very obviously trying to play around this non-existent mechanic. And I feel like at least a few votes for paladin might be because of this. But I also don't think that would lower it on the list. Personally I find paladin to be the hardest because MOST of its duration is still very feature dry. Before you get clemency your at the mercy of your healer and DPS output. Bringing not much in either front. Even then it's not till magic master 2 where you feel sustainable without tanking your mp and in turn your damage. It's claim to fame is having a lot of shorter mitigation. But that still takes a LONG while.
The idea of low-level Paladin being challenging in regards to its defenses is a little hard for me to wrap my head around. That may be because, when I first leveled Paladin, I did it alongside Dark Knight, and the two were as different as night and day, defensively. Or day and night, as the case may be. Also, while the king of low-level defenses is Gunbreaker, it starts at 60, and while I have only three characters with Gunbreaker, I have *eight* with Paladin, so I've done WAY more ARR and HW dungeons with Paladin.
Ive leveled all 4 tanks and warrior is definitely harder during the leveling portion but becomes invincible late game. I find drk to be the most complicated just because of managing TBN and the mp gauge. If your TBN doesnt absorb enough damage you waste mp because that proc gives you a free ability that grants darkside. If enough damage isnt absorbed you are like crap crap crap because it changes the whole rotation. 😂
Idk about y'all but I groan every time I'm healing a roulette and my tank is a GNB. WAR and PLD are ez mode I just dps, DRK can get rough but it's pretty clear that if I'm having to GCD heal them to keep them alive it's a skill issue (on their part). I always have to heal and use more CDs on GNB in casual content.
There's gonna be more of that in DT with the new lionheart combo that's like 3000 potency in 3 GCDs and doesn't have guaranteed crit dh. SE: "Hope you like crit disparity :)"
War>Pld>Drk>Gnb>HWS Drk in terms of difficulty War is just ooga booga and you can do anything in no problem. Pld is just a simple rotation and reduce damage with shields + tenacity materia (build for pld only). Drk was very complicated and hard back in HWS that you need keep agro and mana if you want to MT(couldnt do both), thanks to SB and SHB they did justice to my favorite job. Gunbreaker you need to be a combo master if you want to maintain dps in a right time to use, make 1 single mistake and you have to start over for next 1 or 2 minutes even if you get interrupted by aoes and enemy phases.
Minor rant ahead. Yes, my primary tank is Warrior, followed by Paladin. I love Warrior to death. Unga bunga for life. The hardest part of Warrior is when you're low on health and there's 2 seconds left before you can hit RI/BW again, the rest of your cooldowns are still on cooldown, and for some reason your keyboard refuses to acknowledge that you hit your Holmgang hotkey despite it being good to you for 5+ years. It's also hard as a warrior when you get a sage who: never touches Haima, Toxicon, Taruchole, Physis, Kerachole, Dyskraisa, Druochole, Phlegma, Zoe, or even Soteria on a mass pull in Skalla and expects their single target Kardia Dosis + Diagnosis and their basic shield to be enough healing to carry you through the pull in Skalla; or even just standing there doing nothing and expecting me to heal myself on some of the pulls. Spoilers: basic stuff never carries in higher level content. So yes, it's very possible for a warrior to die in content where they have RI/BW if healers don't touch the juiciest parts of their kits. I found this out yesterday while doing the megapull in Skalla before the second boss. I died twice due to the sage not using a majority of their kit when my cooldowns were down and my Holmgang hotkey didn't want to work for me anymore. Yes, I avoided the bad as best as I could. Yes, I thought the rest of the party was competent enough to take on the pull. Yes, I didn't realize the sage was playing so poorly as my own self-healing and mitigation was pretty much carrying myself through Skalla until the megapull. Yes, my RI/BW was doing 95% of the healing in pulls when the sage would only shield me. Yes, the sage got upset at me for dying when they didn't bother with the rest of their kit. Why do you ask? Sages, please read your tooltips. They actually do some amazing work in parties WHEN YOU ACTUALLY USE THEM.
Yeah it's funny how so many understood "warrior is immortal PART of the time" and assume it means warrior never needs anything. Meanwhile I can begin to explain how much easier it is to tank as warrior when the healer uses something when bloodwhetting ends. You know, just a little thing to help tide me over until the next immortality moment 😅
@@axylum4453 The healer's gonna have to eventually learn how to use their jobkit. Doing baby pulls simply encourages lethargic behavior or just not learning anything at all of how to manage resources in packs. The sage never said anything at the start of the run indicating that they were having trouble with anything. No, they weren't new to sage either with them being lvl 86 at the time. The pulls up to that point were fine for the most part save for the sage just constantly casting Dosis in packs and shielding me but not using Toxicon procs. The last time I gave advice to someone over sage they literally told me to go kill myself and 'to stay in my lane you stupid woman.' As a healer, I've always encouraged my tanks to go balls to the wall. If we wipe, that's fine. Get back up and try again. If I'm on tank, I encourage healers to dps between heals as just healbotting or waiting for damage to go out slows down the run significantly. I would have completely brushed off the wipe I had yesterday in Skalla to my keyboard if it weren't for the fact that the sage was not using their whole kit at that level, but also their attitude of getting upset at me for dying as war.
@@laceyclark311 I'm of the same mind that healers need to learn their job better. In fact, this applies to every role. It's the fault of the game design that normal content is so stupidly easy that it allows people with such egregious skill issue to fill up the queues. That sage has probably had such an easy time because tanks have so much agency that the healer barely needs to use any healing. Which is at least 80% of their buttons. Many tank players are conditioned by their massively overpowered short 25 sec mits like bloodwhetting so when they return to basic tank cooldowns (or play DRK), they tend to struggle. Peoples' toxic reaction to your advice is super annoying to hear. I've had similar incidents when I used to play in EU. Now I play in JP where that practically never happens. The average skill level is good enough that you never really need to give advice (not that I could because language barrier) Also it's not toxikon that you want the sage to be using but dyskrasia. Using Eurasian diagnosis (to get toxikon stacks) or hard casting diagnosis is a waste of a gcd because it doesn't synergise with kardia and your ogcd heals are more powerful. Toxikon barely does more damage than dyskrasia and requires a target (swapping targets reduces ease of use). Dyskrasia can be used whenever and is instant cast (like toxikon) so you can double weave sages powerful ogcd heals and shields. For a lot of content, a single haima and kerachole plus dyskrasia spamming is enough for many w2w pulls. Sage is really not that hard imo, granted I am a healer main and I hate the current state of healers but that's another topic.
@@axylum4453 I would argue that Toxicon is free damage and the sage can hit Focus Target on the tank, but that's another story for another day. It's like you said in another video on my other comment, ain't nothing gonna fix this sort of skill issue unless SE decides enough is enough and forces people to learn. Like the other day I was in Orbonne and found a BLM that would constantly flip between Fire and Blizzard 3, yet their highest cast count was Scathe (97 uses). I managed to outdps them as AST. There were times while I was on whm where I managed to outdps the entire party in EW dungeons while keeping everyone upright. One mch I encountered in Hyperboria that was the lowest on the forbidden chart I found again in Babil who didn't have Fire 4 or Foul. I once had 1/4 of an alliance raid get yeeted off the arena in Breach because they didn't think you needed to be in front of the pillar to safely survive it DESPITE HAVING DONE IT CORRECTLY EARLIER. I also once had to solo the first boss of Lunar Subterrane as PLD because the whm 'didn't pay attention' when 3 of them failed the safe spot check mechanic. Same run the healer died constantly on the last boss and I found out on the final boss that he's got a tankbuster if you take too long. I once had a healer who would completely dump everything on me at the beginning of pulls in Bardam's Mettle and then resort to Physick spam in packs because I dared to pull big then small (yes I managed to proc Living Dead 3 times that run, why do you ask?). Later on I see that same healer but on whm this time on the same alt who can't do mechanics in Breach, and I see them again later on being talked about on a Reddit post getting kicked from a Lunar run. Sorry for the tangent, but yeah, player base skill issue.
Having played 3 out of 4, I'd say GNB is the hardest because of how difficult it is to move and/or weave defensive CDs into the rotation. Its far form impossible and even a casual scrub like me learned. But it is hard.
As someone that also plays every tank probably 95% of the time I play cause I love tanking sometimes gnb for some reason in some content it just feels unnecessarily squishy and I can't figure out why but other times I don't have any issues
That's going to have a lot to do with your Healer and DPS, especially in dungeons. In boss fights all the tanks feel plenty survivable to me. It's wall to wall pulling in Dungeons where you start to see the differences. I think too many healers have gotten used to running with WAR tanks in dungeons and sometimes forget they actually have to heal other tanks. Plus if you have bad DPS stuff just lives too long and you start running out of mitigations. Plus GNBs damage is heavily tied to RNG so you could get a bad burst window through no fault of your own and run into the aforementioned stuff not dying fast enough problem.
It might not be considered the hardest to play but drk is for sure the hardest to keep alive. Have to play sage only these days in case a random drk appears that somehow *doesnt* single pull.
I actually find DRK harder to play in dungeons than GNB simply because of the survivability issues the job seems to have. Also optimizing TBN is just one of those things I can never seem to get right. Which sucks because I actually love the job for both the lore and the playstyle.
I would say, and this is as a DRK main that DRK is the hardest as it is the only one that can't heal it's self back to full from it's own abilities plus the tank immune can kill you. GNB can be more complicated but has better sustain.
The hardest to play tank is Viper. They tend to be really squishy and suck at self heals so you can't really do anything wrong and have to kite things. Oh the actual tank classes? Uh. ... . ....uh... ....hmmm .... ehhh.... I think maybe gunbreaker needs the player to have a brain exceeding that of a 2 year old monkey? I will go with gunbreaker. In endwalker I would have said Dark, but trust me they "fixed" that this expansion.
I agree with the list. Warrior can be immortal. As a healer I can feel at ease with them also with Paladin since they have clemency as well. I would switch the last two though. Gunbreaker has better survivability than dark knight. I main dark knight too and I'm like ugh why couldn't they gave me two charges of abyssal drain
I find it interesting that PLD and GNB are compared to each other, considering those are the two I like, and I never really thought of them as similar. I don't like WAR, though not quite sure why, and I feel like DRK has terrible self-healing compared to other jobs in mobs, so I feel squishy. Maybe I'm just not playing it right. Which, to be fair, I admit I am not one who gives much thought to min-max-ing potentials. All that said, when I heal, I lime WARs because of how self sufficient they are. I have more trouble keeping DRKs alive more than any other tank, though.
Leveled all tanks to 90, WAR is definitely the easiest, and GNB is definitely the hardest. Though i personally think DRK is a lot easier to play than PLD and was surprised at the disparity. DRK plays a lot like WAR but without self healing, and PLD plays similarly to GNB with a very long rotation just not as strict on the timings.
im a gnb main and everything feels natural about it to me. i learned xiv tanking with it. drk on the other hand, i am actually hot garbage at. it doesnt click with me. i job skipped it to 80 on my main when i swapped servers and never looked at it again lol
As a tank main, my judgement is as follows: -DRK is the hardest to level, as they’re not great for under-savage content -PLD and WAR aren’t actually that hard, in my opinion -Both DRK and GNB have decently high skill ceilings; but GNB has the added skill ceiling of needing decent ping in order to play it effectively.
One thing I think should have been mentioned is historical biasess. Some people including myself experienced one tank back in arr, and have a rather unfavorable view of it because of that. For me this was GLD, reason why once I got to limsa I swapped yto ACN almost immediately.
For me, i tried through my ShB start and through most of EW to main DRK, but not only was the button bloat a bit much for me but what rubs me the wrong way the most is TBN, not only does it come on super late (Similar to when WAR gets inner release) but out of all of the tanks it being the main mitigation tool for DRK feels like a "Rules for thee but not for me" because outside of PLD having a guage cost for sheltron DRK has a mana cost and possibly a shorter duration (can't quite remember) than the other tanks not to mention the mana cost taxed on for a possible damage gain and the only other benefit being 10 seconds shorter CD, while I'm not for homogenizing of the jobs this feels like a tideous outlier that only applies to DRK.
@1337penguinman perciesly, it honestly feels like the only tank designed in the off tank role since you can better gauge when to use TBN like, for example tank busters while not worrying about mitigating damage to you. If it breaks great free damage if not, no harm, no foul.
Based on my reactions to seeing what tank I get as a healer in a dungeon, I'd put WAR as easiest ("Oh boy a WAR! I can AoW spam!") and DRK as the hardest ("Oh no a DRK, I can't put my aetherflow in the square hole qq")
If we're talking dungeons, WAR is absolutely the easiest. Just pop bloodwhetting on cooldown and you won't die. You can use other mits if you really like keeping your health bar above 75% but you don't really have to 90% of the time.
I play every tank class and I feel pld is the hardest. They have 0 self heals until way late into the game so if your healer is new or dead... you're pretty much sol. As a dark player, what holds me back is healer paranoia. Even when I say I'm going to use living dead they see my hp drop and freak out wasting my living dead.
I was told DRK was the hardest when I started. I thought the Paladin was harder to use than the DRK. I came back to FF14 when STB came out. Played 14 before it was remade.
Something interesting with optimizing gunbreaker is that you literally cannot hold Bloodfest in your opener. This is important, because some fights demand that the group starts on a one minute burst, and holds buffs until a minute into the encounter. But since you don't start a fight with any cartridges, you have to use Bloodfest to do any kind of burst in your opener. This, ironically, makes gunbreaker slightly easier to optimize in those scenarios. You literally just do your normal opener and rotation, while everyone else has to adjust theirs.
Tanking is actually easier than being a DPS in my opinion. No positionals, much simpler rotation (usually), and in modern 14 aggro isn't an issue as long as you remember to turn tank stance on. The hardest part is learning your mitigations and how to space them out.
I don't think Dark Knight is necessarily hard, moreso that if you don't have a good healer and know what you're doing, you're more likely to die as a result of a lack of knowledge/tools at your disposal. One change that they should absolutely revert is carve & spit and abyssal drain being on the same cooldown, it feels nonsensical compared to the other tank self healing options.
For a video about tank difficulty,, I find it a little odd that this video focused so heavily on attack rotations. There wasn't really a lot of time spent on the defensive side of things which is what I ultimately feel makes GNB definitively the hardest tank to play. Yes it has a very tightly rimed rotation but it also needs to manage that while still squeezing in properly timed defensive cooldowns (and goodness forbid you actually need to move the boss at all on top of all that).
That is indeed something both drk and gnb sometimes have to wrestle with, but because drk has an even tighter burst than gnb, that was something I considered more significant there. Indeed, as you kind of pointed out yourself, the defensive side is mainly made more difficult situationally because of the attack rotation, hence why the attack rotation somehow takes center stage anyway! 😊
1:25 for random dungeons especially i hate warrior to be honest .. as a healer .. its a coinflip you get a decent one and then you are just green dps ... otherwise you will have the hardest work to do ever ... warrior without a good use of his cooldowns is just paper ... i had situations where i could easy keep a dps as "tank" alive but the tank just died ... and important note there obviously after the tank died nothing was left for any emergency for the "dps tank" ... with no other tank job its so extreme ... i believe a lot of people are just sure like the community say "ah i play warrior so my brain can just rest i cant die anyway" and that is not true .. at all .. and yes warrior can do most of the content synced solo ... does it mean its "easy" or does it mean he has stuff to use for it to help him with that ... of course he has the most selfheal out of all tanks ... IF HE USE IT! xD and i dont even start to talk about all the other options for any dmg reduction and so on "i am unkillable why should i reduce the incoming dmg?" truely as a healer main i hate warrior as a tank ... 10% of the runs you are just personal healer for the dps thats lame especially just in normal dungeons .. most other times you have some sort of a paper tank and wish the run will be over sooner then later ... and sometimes you feel like you just dont have a tank at all ... warrior is the only tank where you nearly never have the moment to think "well not perfect but totally fine to heal" its always more like "heal all or nothing" ... and just with warrior ... because its the easiest? what a joke .. but not a good one :/ 3:23 but i still wouldnt say its always the fault of the dead warry ... i dont hate the "warrior is unkillable" community shittalk just because people believe that and play like it ... its annoying in both direction as warrior player and as player with warrior in the group .. 9:35 im not a tank player at all ... just got them all to 90 with dungeons and thats it but when you said "dont know when to use it" i just though "especially in an aoe pull .. always?" ;D but that shield is pretty huge you can even feel how less work the healer has to do once you get it i cant really remember how the lvling worked with my warrior its over a year ago and had a break a couple months ... dark knight and paladin where both meh in lower lvl and got more fun the higher i got ... gunbreaker for me felt a bit like too many buttons ... dont even know how because i later realised paladin has the same amount ... or was it even more? cant remember xD something for me just felt wrong with the gunbreaker i dont know but for me just for cassual dungeons there was not really a difference in the tanks ... yeah the warrior has a lot of selfheal and stuff but ... how "important" is a lot of selfheal compared to the other tanks if you have a healer with you anyway ... xD
warrior and paladin are the 2 easy tanks, darknight is middle of the road difficalty and then gunbraker is the hard to play tank (yet still easy, just the hardest of the 4 tanks in ff14)
yea, sq puts as much effort into re-organizing the leveling experience with each expac as much as they implement QoL, years and decades after complaints/mods
![[FFXIV] How Tanks Work But From a Healer's Perspective](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qCR8b6YfAtI/mqdefault.jpg)
The hardest tank is definitely paladin. When they use Hallowed Ground (almost) nothing can pierce them. You can't get harder than that.
Nice 😉
I... technically not wrong. 😂
oh i wish people used that... people treat it as oh shit button instead of a cooldown and its making me mad
Technically he is wrong, gnb also get the same invulnerability, except paladin can still die from damage on the target he covers, paladin can die from 2 sources (the others being uninvulnable things like walls or enrage) while the gbn can only die from the second source
@@grimacetexas9719 Gunbreaker damages itself with Superbolide, so it is less hard. Cover is an optional softener.
The hard part about warrior is when i level sync down to anything below 56 so im not completely unkillable anymore 😢
It's actually pretty funny how that works! If I queue for something as tank, but I have a feeling I won't be 56+, I tend to lean towards other tanks more! 😅
Doing the roulette 50 dungeon is 🥱 with warrior. It's probably the same for all jobs lol
@@TomTheOwl68 lol yea
Synced-down, Warrior still has the best invuln with the earliest availability
@@NomoregoodnamesD8 agreed, but no raw intuition/bloodwhetting is still lame lol.
One thing I've noticed when levelling all the tanks is how inconsistent the levelling experiences are. GNB gets brutal shell and camouflage before sastasha but paladin has to wait until sheltron on 35
And paladin has to wait until tower of babil before they get healing on their attack rotation 😅
Indeed all the tanks have particular high points in the leveling experience!
PLD's early game - *especially* when it was still GLA - had me almost falling asleep in my chair back in the ARR/2.0 days.
This should be one of the major points the devs work on during Dawntrail, if they haven't already. So many skills/utility are available very late, or in the case of tanks, key things about the role/job is unlocked at way different times. PLD gets their first gap closer at 74 right now as an example, the only tank that doesn't have a gap closer in 70 ultimates for instance, boggles the mind why it's like this.
@@tsjeriAu Also consider poor BLM, whose rotation changes completely, multiple times, as they're leveling up. NIN no longer needing to maintain Huton for attack speed will help them be less painful in MSQ roulette, at least...
drk has too wait post lvl 70 to get their aoe mit while others get it at 70, sucks in uwu and ucob
DRK is the hardest for me.
It was my main job in StormBlood/4.x when it was the Nigh unkillable drain tank. It wasn't a hard job so long as you actually read the tooltips of the job, Left both stances on when tanking, and used the correct abilities in the rotation, which was Mainly Dark Arts and Abyssal drain followed by Quietus to refill MP and use TBN, along with Salted Earth and Blood Price, to keep you Black Blood up.
Then they took that level of Selfsustain, gave it WAR and left DRK out to die
Gunbreaker main here. One of the most difficult parts is with no skill speed on gunbreaker, even if you do your rotation flawlessly, your burst will drift by 1 gcd every 2 minutes after the 3 minute mark assuming there is no downtime. You will run into a situation where you are sitting on 3 cartridges with a solid barrel ready, and roughly 2 seconds left before no mercy and gnashing fang come up. You are actually forced to burst strike and then finish your solid barrel combo, drifting your gcd by one in order to go into no mercy with the 3 cartridges needed for your full burst. You will drift by 1 gcd at the 3,5,7,9,11, etc minute marks. So by minute 7, you're already 3 gcds late to the raid buffs (assuming full uptime). At that point, you need to make a choice between overcapping a cartridge on those minutes, sacrificing a burst strike inside of your burst window or drifting your gcd by 1 AND losing a burst strike in your burst window.
Just use 1 lightning shot and that about it. GNB is not that hard
@@TheNightclawer “it’s not hard if you do it wrong”
@@TheNightclawerBruh...
i find it funny how many people in the comments are saying something along the lines of "i main xyz and its definitely the easiest" like the fact that theyre maining it isnt a major reason it seems easier for them
8:31 I will admit that I'm kinda guilty of this sometimes. I learned most of my tanking fundamentals via leveling Dark Knight (and everything before that I learned via Level 50 Paladin). So things that a lot of people rightfully find difficult about the job feel second nature to me, just by virtue of the fact that I learned how to deal with them while also learning Tanking 101.
I'm not trying to brag or anything - on the other side of the coin, because I learned how to play FFXIV using a job whose casual rotation is fairly freeform, I am *woeful* at my DPS job rotations. (As a Reaper, I have yet to go one trial/raid without forgetting to refresh Death's Design.)
To be fair, Death's Design is a bad mechanic in all honesty.
I'm glad you mentioned how WAR and PLD have a very hard time at lower levels before they have good defensive tools at their disposal. I definitely think GNB is the hardest tank in EX or Savage raids, but leveling WAR and PLD was grueling in comparison to leveling the other 2 tanks imo
Dark knight is going to get quite a bit easier in Dawntrail. The removal of damage on their gap closer and living shadow not needing a resource will contribute a lot to that. It'll still have a challenge but I'm curious to see if gunbreaker remains the hardest.
Indeed, gunbreakers lion heart, while huge in damage, also means except the opener you actually get to keep the cartridges from blood fest in two minute bursts, so that will absolutely loosen up gunbreaker as well! 😊
I am very curious to see if something changes in the ranking too! 😁
Im a big fan of the change tbh because using Mitigation as DRK in Burst can be stressfull and tbh Plunge is for me the least interesting oGCD and most of the time is just "the animation!" but in reality you will use it almost all the time for more damage in the burst phase.
Tbh its for me also funny when people say "Weaving mitigation as GNB is so hard!" i was first DRK Main and then switch to GNB and i was surprised how easy it feels to weave mitigation as GNB.. even in burst it feels easier then DRK
One thing to note about GNB is that its difficulty in raid content varies wildly between encounters and if you're the MT or not.
Some fights like P4S require the MT to constantly reposition the boss, which also happens to align with the burst window. For a WAR, this is not a problem, but for a GNB that MUST weave OGCDs every minute, this can be a nightmare.
Haha not gonna lie, after the range adjustment to continuation I found it really fun to weave in and out of range during GF to reposition the boss.
@@KingCloudsCape yeah, that change was definitely made due to the feedback of P4S, which is... Concerning if they didn't think it would be a problem in the first place.
I love this video and your content in general is my favorite on all XIV guides/analysis. I always get the vibe you’re trying to be as fair as possible, and consider all options. I genuinely look forward to your uploads, thank you for what you do ☺️❤️
I almost feel like you could turn the collective opinions into two graphs. First would be a line graph that shows the relative difficulty as they level from 1-90 just doing normal content (WAR would have some satisfying drops in difficulty); Second would be a plotted graph for increasing levels of optimization (Extremes -> Savages -> Ultimates -> Theoretical optimal play).
I'll have some more constructive thoughts on the other role videos as they come out. I don't play Tank enough, but wanted to leave a comment for the algorithm :D
The idea is good, unfortunately I don't think I could plot such a graph in a fair light without it getting extremely biased! 😅
That is why I have focused on hitting a few select cases! 😊
Thank you though! 😄
Really nice video! I for one started with GNB as my first tank and WAR was last I even tried, let alone leveled, so to me GNB was significantly easier than the other 3 tanks!
As someone who mains paladin, paladin is definitely not the hardest. However, in terms of full-out maximization, there's a few difficulties that paladin has that other tanks don't need to worry about. Passage of Arms is great as an extra raid wide protection but is harder to apply to the full party. Keeping damage uptime during ranged phases where you still have to move a lot can be difficult and require slide-casting such as in P12S Para3. Unlike other tanks, you can assist your party with on-demand healing through clemency so with non-DPS phases such as P9s/P12s Limit Cut, you can heal pretty aggressively but at the cost of making the mechanic harder for yourself.
This video actually, with all this technical talk, made look all tanks complicated xD
another thing I'd like to note on DRK and GNB being seen as the harder tanks is the sheer amount of weaving oGCD damage buttons they require in comparison to the other jobs, so there may be times where you have to sacrifice your damage rotation to fit in a necessary mit as well, and then you have to adjust around that
Nice video with interesting things to think about. Thank you! I’m a casual player who mostly tanks but sometimes heals. For my play style easy is a good thing, so I often play Warrior but sometimes Paladin. I agree with your ranking of the two, but at max level, when Paladin finally gets its full tool kit, they become quite close. Warrior has more and stronger healing options while Paladin has more and stronger mitigation. In special cases Paladin’s mitigation is better, but overall Warrior is better off with its healing. Paladin takes a much bigger hit when mechanics force it out of melee range for more than a few seconds. Both its gauge and a large chunk of its MP come from melee attacks. Also, while its spells are ranged, it can only initiate Requiescat from melee.
It really depends on what you find harder, the nature of stockpiling or strict rotations. I have all of the tanks at 100 now, have played them all and at a base level, GNB and PLD are harder than the other two. There is a strict nature to your rotations, I would say GNB is the harder because it is stricter, and stepping a toe out of line can really be punishing with the only real variable you're allowed being where to place your sonic break in the NM. It's better to place it last in windows where you are trying to fit a burst strike in, as doing burst strike last will make continuation fall outside of the NM window. PLD has a lot more wiggle room with the ability to hold using holy spirit and the atonement combo for 2 gcd's without punishment for both lining up the atonement combo with your burst or in holding a holy spirit for movement you know is coming. This actually makes PLD a little harder when it comes to optimizing, as these are choices you do not have to make on GNB.
From an optimization viewpoint, WAR and DRK are harder. WAR is honestly barely harder, but saving exactly 50 gauge for a burst window, no more no less, and having infuriate close enough to use 2 in the burst without letting it ever sit at 2 does require some planning. Fortunately, you have a lot of void time to plan while hitting 123 or 124. At a base, just spend everything, it's easy and you have wiggle room but to get the most damage you need to be saving those for the 2 minute windows. It was even harder before 7.01 where to get the absolute most you had to save your primal rend for 30 seconds, then your primal ruin so that you could get 2 ruins in a 2 min window but they removed that by lowering the primal ruin window to 20 seconds. DRK on the other hand is much harder in my opinion. Optimizing it requires using a TBN close enough to the 2 min window and not spending the proc, which can be difficult without overcapping on mana or not having as much as you'd like considering that you also don't want to just not use edge for 60 seconds. You also want to not spend your shadowbringers and I just find not pressing a button harder than pressing it sometimes especially with a high damage skill like that. DRK is easy to just play and smash everything but holding everything for burst to optimize and then getting it all in is harder than following the strict rotation, for me at least.
I suppose for WAR and PLD you also have slightly more decisional optimization in that their dashes do damage still, but you will want to hold one in some cases, sometimes even have both ready to go.
Big comment sorry, but anyway, I think DRK is the hardest.
Another factor to consider with regards to War being "harder" to optimize at lower levels, due to needing to stockpile gauge for berserk, is that optimization in lower level content is far less important (or at least you're far less likely to be doing something where optimization does matter at those levels). So players are more likely to think of that as something that's annoying rather than something that's difficult.
Im kinda surprised gnb was the winner. I was always told it was hard so i personally resolved myself to not touch it till i was "ready". Then one day i looked at it and read all the tool tips and realized it is paladin with an extra button similar to how sage and scholar are also kinda just the same job. Dark knight has no analog, it really is its own thing so i assumed it was drk
I personally find dark knight to be like warrior with more buttons in terms of attack rotation, similar to how gunbreaker can come off as "stricter paladin" 😊 but it at least didn't surprise me we had a close first and second place!
TBH, if you can do WAR, you can do DRK.
Then again I might be a bit biased because I duo-main WAR and DRK lmao
@@CaetsuChaijiCh definitely once you get delerium and do that 5 times in a row fs i can see that
@@crowdemon_archives i msin pld so of course id find gnb easier too
u will feel satisfied as GNB when u can finish the full combo during the no mercy period (and having Camouflage for defensive early for pve)
DRK wise, after getting TBN, normal pve is easy coz u can spam with it/rampert afterwards, but the long cooldown for DRK, u will feel bored during the off burst time lol...but u can throw TBN on other tanks when u are an off tank, dats one of the merit for DRK when doing late game content
i play both DRK and GNB, but playing GNB feel more satisfied coz the combo
With DRK it’s always been the defensive CDs for me. Dark Knight was the tank that I originally wanted to learn, but I was still new to the game and had never tanked. It was Dark Mind specifically that spooked me since I had no clue how to tell the difference between physical and magical damage. I had just thought that DRK wasn’t tanky. Plus tank anxiety and all that. I never touched a tank again until GNB was released. Kinda ironic that the 2nd hardest scares me the most, but the hardest I am all in for 😅
GNB is the tank for DPS mains that want to try tanking. They really should split the tanks for high end content into MT/OT like they do for shield vs normal healer. DRK and GNB as your OTs, PLD and WAR as MTs.
@@1337penguinman I would highly disagree with that, having that distinction makes it so unnecessarily restrictive. This is already the case for healers, if you play SCH in a static your only other real option is SGE, whereas if you play WHM in that static your options are all 4 healers, since double barrier is viable but double pure is not viable.
This really does come down to what content you're doing. For general roulette content, who cares they're all easy.
For Savage I'd say it goes to either DRK or GNB but is pretty interchangeable depending on the fight. GNB's rotation can be pretty hellish to get back on the rails in P12S P1 if you get unlucky during Para 3, and DRK just gets pummeled in P10S.
But for Ultimate, it easily goes to GNB, and it's not even close. Sure, PLD has to deal with basically being a troll pick in TEA because of how long their invuln timer is and how much damage they take, but far and away GNB takes the cake because of how hard it gets screwed over by one simple thing that is ubiquitous in every ultimate: downtime.
GNB gets negatively effected by downtime more than any other JOB in the whole game, with the possible exceptions of RPR and DRG. GNB is so supremely cursed in TOP and DSR because of this that playing it is basically an extra ultra-nightmare difficulty modifier on top of the nightmare difficulty of ultimate. Your burst windows will completely change depending on how many carts you go into a phase with which is dictated by kill times, so your re-opener during the DSR intermission will be entirely different if you had 2/3 carts going into it compared to having 3/3 carts going into it. It also has to contend with having the 2nd longest invuln cooldown in the game, which means it has the most awkward time adjusting to different mit plans that some tanks might have.
The literal only positive to playing GNB in TOP and DSR is that you're on the absolute bottom of the LB3 priority list, meaning that during the DSR intermission and TOP P6 Cosmo Memory, GNB will never have to LB3 (although it still has to LB3 during Magic Number at the end of TOP P6).
For the other ultimates it's a bit more lenient, mostly because you don't have to worry about and play around Double Down, but the cartridge system still means you can get screwed by downtime and wonky kill times and is why I'd still call it the hardest tank in those ultimates as well
But again, for roulette stuff/dungeons/full uptime encounters, who cares, they're all easy.
Do you think that the new lionheart combo will solve the downtime issue for GNB ?
@@aphelion888 Yes actually, and even if it doesn't completely solve the issue it will alleviate a lot of that stress. However Lionheart is unlocked at level 100, so every ultimate prior to FRU will still be very cursed for GNB.
That’s why I was hoping they would add someway for gnb to generate cartridges without hitting the boss. Something like you have to stand still and load cartridges maybe 1 every 3 seconds. Now this isn’t the perfect solution especially in mechanic heavy downtime like p2 of DSR, but there are parts where even generating 1 extra cartridge would be such a game changer for gnb. It would lead to less aoe combo spam just so your burst alignment doesnt get absolute butchered. Lionheart will be a godsend on the 2 minute windows but I’m still worried about the 1 minute window, especially if we get more fights like top and DSR with the way double down works.
@@Firewolf161 100% I've been saying for a long time that GNB needs some kind of reload mechanic for downtime. In regards to mechanic heavy downtime, it will kinda depend on rng but for P2 DSR at least you could use it in similar timings that SAM players use Meditate. For Strength your only opening to reload would probably be when you're waiting for the dragoons to dive at the start since tanks have a lot of movement because of the tethers afterwards, and for Sanctity it really depends on if you get meteors or not, although if you're OT and get meteors you'd end up North anyways so you can maybe get a cart or two.
@@Spiritchuckpvp That’s good thinking and that would be the fun part of an ability like that, trying to find good openings to use it would add a lot of fun to prog/optimization. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like we are getting anything like that soon if at all. We can dream tho right lol?
i would love to see pulls from other jobs perspectives: healers vote which tank they prefer to see in roulettes, tanks vote with which healer they feel safest when get paired etc
I feel like the problem with DRK is that, for a casual player, it rarely feels like you're really doing well. Whether you focus on damage or TBN, it's unavoidable to wonder if you should have done the opposite.
Magical shields add even more uncertainty. If you're doing content for the 1st time, its basically a gamblewhether youll be using them all the time or never touching them.
Add in the limited self-healing, and you start to wonder if its worth it to queue with this class...
it'll be more of the same in DT where DRK is mostly the same. They have alleviated the ogcd burst by shifting blood weapon and removing plunge but does nothing to fix the job identity. No blood gauge on living shadow helps... I guess. It will still have issues with sustain despite the buff to shadow wall
DRK is probably hardest for me because of ping and weaving which is super subjective. The removal of damage from the gap closer might make it more manageable.
It's hard to say. What we know for certain is that the new disesteem attack will add in an ogcd where the two plunges remove two, so it helps a bit, but I could imagine latency will still cause trouble!
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Yeah. Meanwhile the beast combo on GNB combined with velocity having no damage means GNB will become even more managable for me, making it possibly easier than PLD XD
@@CaetsuChaijiCh it's a gcd btw
@Xienus woops, I misread that then!
Paladins difficulty to optimize increases dramatically compared to the other tanks when a boss fight has transitions. They have even more spreadsheets then blackmages...
With gunbreaker, during standing rotation, non bursting, in some places you use burst strike to prevent overcap, these are points of realignment I found. Another trick to get back on if you are behind a GCD, (I've done this when lost a GCD and need to get back to max carts for next burst phase), is to use the AoE rotation once. This helped me alot in P12S, just before she jumps away for limit cut - especially if stuck in the corner on lightning shot duty baiting the + with sadness and tears.
The need to get a rotation JUST SO - not just for tanks, but for DPS too - is exactly why I'm so reluctant to try current raids and especially Extreme/Savage content. Especially as someone who likes dabbling in many different jobs (leading to muscle-memory confusion), and who fat-fingers things now and then as it is, I have a lot of trouble nailing them down precisely.
You don't have to be perfect to do extremes or savage! I am sure you could get into it if you like! 😊
The focus on getting the rotation exactly correct is overblown. If you just focus on getting your 2-minute burst mostly correct (and make sure you pop your 2-minute raid buff on cooldown, if you have one), you'll be fine. The only time damage matters if when you're dying to the enrage, and that means you need to already get through all the mechanics. The most important thing in Savage/EX isn't your rotation, it's doing mechanics correctly. Doing your rotation perfectly only matters if you're trying to clear the entire tier in the first week; after that, getting additional Tomestone gear makes the DPS requirement pretty lenient, in most fights.
EDIT: The current patch is the best time to dip your toes into EX/Savage. With the final stage Manderville weapon, 650 Tomestone gear, and Echo, you can pretty much freestyle your rotation and not worry about hitting the enrage- especially since this tier's enrages were generous to begin with. In the current patch, if you wiped to enrage, it's because there were multiple deaths throughout the fight. If the group does the mechanics correctly, you'll clear.
@@WingsofAges In the case of GNB, having so little slack... well, I guess that's what "mostly correct" is for, but it's still not exactly reassuring! ^^;
You will be surprised how some of the BEST raiders, day ONE, NO gear, mess up their combos. Once you got crafted gear, youre pretty much set. At this point, you try to do your best :)
i loveeeee dark knight. cant even imagine playing another tank
T'is not how difficult the Job is, but how oneself has mastered it to the point where no one attempts to course-correct.
WAR: What is that? I only know level 5 MRD and a bit higher leveled MRD when I started PotD.
PLD: Just burst every minute, use the 30 second cooldowns on cooldown and keep the gap closers for the 1 minute burst. Might be a bit biased here, I play PLD the most out of any tank.
DRK: I leveled it in Bozja and actually never played it at 90. So far, it felt fairly similar to PLD to me in terms of rotation. There are a few 60 second cooldowns, use those as an indicator for going all out, possibly without spending all MP to have some for TBN and to make sure MP are at least at 9k for the bigger burst every 2 minutes. Never let Darkside expire. There's likely some room for MP optimization with Blood Weapon, but I won't math that out. For Blood Gauge, I need to keep in mind to avoid overcapping it when I have Delirium. For Salted Earth, I use it on cooldown. But the only difference seems to be 2 Shadowbringer uses and Salt and Darkness between 80 and 90. Shadowbringer lines up with the 2 minute burst naturally and Salt and Darkness will be used whenever I have it. It's a bit more complex than PLD, but still feels very doable overall.
GNB: I was able to play it at some point, well enough to almost beat O12S phase 1 solo, but somehow unlearned quite a bit. So now quite a few skills drift. Especially in dungeon content. Idk about raid content, might be better when I don't have to run from pack to pack. Maybe I should do an EW Alliance Raid or some Pandaemonium or EW extremes to figure that out.
What people never talk about with paladin is optimizing cover/ passage of arm plays in a raid like setting. Having to know when you can intervene someone and still have gauge for your sheltron when you need it.
Having to weave in passage of arms during your burst can be intense. But a lot of people dont even know you can do that without losing dps. The fact you not only hsve to weave it but also position yourself so that you are in front allles during busy stuff can be hectic.
Yeah you dont need to do it for a clear but it does separate the skill gap between a paladin that can only focus dps vs a paladin thats insane in prog and makes healing a bit more comfortable.. hell even just practicing doing so on normal content can be chaotic but it is satisfying.
Personally though i really wish pld had a 120 sec burst too
Gunbreaker is definitely gonna get easier in Dawntrail. Adding the lionheart combo to bloodfest and removing rough divide is gonna make burst windows so much easier. At least the 2 minute ones. You're still gonna need to stockpile for the off minute bursts. But they're essentially removing 5 ogcds during the 2 minute burst.
Looking through these comments and seeing how tank players seem to center their entire rotations about their self heals... I get the healer strike now. I first I was thinking "bah, healer babies" but now, reaching some of the thoughts from the tank side of that argument, I find myself firmly on the healer's side. What's the point in even having the trinity if the healer is completely surplus to requirements, because the tanks can pretty much just take care of themselves? How is that fun for healers to just cast glare over and over again because nobody needs you?
What is a modern healer, except a babysitter for DPSs that messed up a mechanic?
GNB has definitely been the hardest to learn and optimize, but I think because it feels like a Ferrari, while PLD is a Corolla, WAR is that rusted Ford up on cinder blocks, and DRK is a Tesla cybertruck.
I have an idea of boos + tank rework it goes as follows:
Rework tank busters:
Tank buster will have 3 types:
Slash, smash, pierce, magic
Let take example we are in raid and the boss will have 4 tanks busters
And tanks have 4 main tank busters which will be each tank buster will have the same effect but with additional one of the 4 tanks buster type example: rampart will have magic mitigation, blood spitter will have smash mitigation
If done correctly it will mitigate 80% dmg and give effect as follows:
Magic : will give team support buff
Paladin : defense
Warrior: Heal
Gunbreaker: regen
Dark knight: shield
If fails it give 20% mitigation Nd lose the effects
Smash and slash and peirce will give tank specific rotation that have big damage as a reward for done mechanic right
Effects will be randomize each time but with very hard moments will give magic effect tank busters
Please give me your thoughts
I mean, you can't say Warrior is difficult at higher level casual content, at all.
The fact that a lot of your videos include 'did you know that Warrior can solo (insert duty name here) sync'd?' shows how much survivability the job has.
Well, being able to solo all that content says more about what the job is capable of. All those dungeons warrior can solo, many of them require you to actually play the job really well to do it! 😁
Although yes, in terms of survivability warrior is definitely the easiest. I don't feel like I gave the impression warrior had much to worry about from a casual perspective, but maybe I did! 😅 It does explain how few votes the job did get!
@@CaetsuChaijiCh I find Warrior's the hardest to heal (healer main) in dungeons, since they pop Bloodwhetting and heal themselves so much they 'take no damage'. But then it falls off and their hp drops like a tonne of bricks. A very volatile tank I find.
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Warrior CAN solo the first lvl90 Dungeon. With that in Mind, i guess almost 80% of all Warrior Players cant do that because the Dungeon is pretty hard (These Trashpacks lol) when synced.
@zordiark9673 Indeed. Just to take an example, the first boss in said dungeon will use craven companionship (friend tacos) and since you're alone the hysteria that follows is unavoidable. However you have about half a second before the follow up donut aoe lands, and you can just barely fit a gap closer and run in before it resolves. Getting hit once by that gives you doom. And you have to time that perfectly every time about 4-5 times if I recall correctly 😊
That's of course just one example.
The trash packs in the dungeon are mostly melee so understanding how to kite optimally is also needed. And so I could imagine a lot of warrior players simply won't know the tricks for soloing! It is sort of like it's own sub category of dungeon running! 😁
@@henryhunter9643 This is a hallmark of someone who's bad at the job, not an issue of Warrior itself. Bloodwhetting lasts 8 seconds on a 25 second cooldown, that makes them immortal for practically 1/3 of all time spent in AOE situations. But for the other 2/3 of the time, they need to mitigate. Some Warriors just don't, instead expecting the healer to keep them alive until Bloodwhetting is up again. 17 seconds is more than enough time for a large group of enemies to just melt through the Warrior's HP if they aren't using other cooldowns, so the healer can feel like they're desperately scrambling to keep them alive.
Not only should a good Warrior should not feel difficult to heal, but you shouldn't really have to heal them... at all. Use your free oGCDs like Celestial Intersection or Haima for added security and because when the heck else are you gonna use them, but if the Warrior knows what they're doing, they can mitigate their way from Bloodwhetting to Bloodwhetting and never actually need additional healing.
I’ve played every tank in both casual and extreme/savage settings
I main GNB so I have some bias here, but I was surprised to see GNB voted as the hardest tank. GNB is hard in the aspect of how rigid the rotation is and having to pre-plan your mitigations unless you wanna die to a tank buster (in savage at least) but I feel like it’s not too bad once you know the rotation of the class
I personally have found DRK to be harder than GNB specifically because of how many oGCDS it has alongside the lack of self heal compared to the rest of the tanks as well as having the same issue with needing to pre-plan mitigations for tank busters
PLD being second easiest makes sense, PLD is my 2nd go-to tank after GNB and my longtime friend back from when we met in Guild Wars 2 mains it (previously mained DRK)
WAR is my go-to tank for anything dungeon related, I like to make the healers job easy while also getting to do tons of damage and not having to worry about a rigid rotation like with GNB
Overall, great video, wasn’t surprised with the two easiest tanks, but was surprised with GNB being voted as the hardest tank
Yeah tbh DRK and GNB are pretty interchangeable in savage and it really depends on the fight.
For ultimate however, GNB is the hardest tank to play in the game and it's not even close.
Ah ok, I wouldn't know that one for sure yet just cause I haven't played Ultimate quite yet but I've been wanting to run some ultimates so I'll be able to figure that out pretty soon
@@rjohn1277 Go for it! Ultimate content is great and super rewarding to learn. The one thing I will say however is that since Dawntrail is right around the corner, most people won't be running ultimates for a good while, probably not until they're done with the new savage tier.
Yea I’m not gonna attempt Ultimates until a bit after Dawntrail comes out, debating between UCOB or UWU as my first ultimate but I’ve been told both are pretty lenient on DPS checks due to the gear creep and I have friends who I’ve met through Anabaseios that have said I’m more than capable of clearing an Ultimate and have offered to help me out whenever I’m interested in doing an Ultimate
@@rjohn1277 The order I went in was UWU>TEA>DSR>TOP>UCOB, but in terms of difficulty I'd rank them (most difficult to least) DSR>TOP>TEA>=UCOB>>>>UWU.
UWU is a great starting point, it's a good mix of not being that difficult and being fairly fun. There's really only 2 mechanics with any substantial difficulty, Gaols and Suppression. Everything else is on par with or easier than anything you've done in savage.
TEA and UCOB are pretty similar in terms of difficulty, UCOB doesn't have any single mechanic that's extremely difficult but the difficulty is in the fact that the fight is very chaotic and random.
TEA is almost the exact opposite, the first 2 phases are pretty difficult but are pretty static. There is some variance in BJCC depending on which role starts with nisi's and who gets the debuffs, but the difficulty of BJCC is respecting the movements of other people and not causing car accidents with the nisi's while also doing your required positioning for mechanics. Although the last 2 phases are substantially easier as every mechanic in AP and PA are basically just pop quizzes to make sure you studied.
Consider this last bit a PSA :P
The one last thing I want to say about TEA, specifically Perfect Alexander, because this doesn't get said enough, respect Stillness, it's much more strict than any other Pyretic mechanic in the whole game. You can't sheathe your weapon as going from your idle pose stance to your cpose stance counts as motion and will kill you, if you play on standard movement, moving your camera will count as movement and will kill you. The solution is to just spam Escape when you see the cast bar (or whatever it is on controller) and just take your hands off of your keyboard until it's over.
For me, the jobs learned at levels 60 and 70 felt less intuitive / smooth than those from Heavensward and Stormblood
One thing that you left out for Paladin is the relatively recent rework. I've had a few recent discussions about Tank difficulty where I had to remind people about that and how it drastically reduced the difficulty of the job on the optimization end. So possible a few of those voting for it might be thinking back to pre-rework experiences.
Also from those discussions- lvl 50 warrior is at it's core very similar to 90 warrior. Sure you a couple ogcds and some free gauge as you level, but compared with paladin which still has to pick up Holy Spirit, Atonement, and the Confiteor combo it changes a lot less.
I miss old pld was so much fun to properly plan your range phase during prog
i think something else to bring up and think about, especially when it comes down to difficulty, percieved or not, is how INTUITIVE something is.
WAR doesnt particularly gain or lose anything by "just press the shiny button", so in alot of ways you can say it "plays itself"... and then tucks you in, warms up a glass of milk, kisses your forehead and tells you it loves you. smash combo, inner release, press the same button for 20 seconds. unga bunga war. No matter what WAR has under the hood that trips people up, most people can agree its hard to mess up in th first place with WAR.
in the same vein, while optimizations aren't OBVIOUS, PLD also guides you on what it wants- 1-2-3, atonement a bunch, confiteor combo, and the cooldowns all line up to go from 1 to 2 to 3. it flows in a natural, obvious way. the vast majority of difficulty for paladin comes from optimizations, which have been... counterintuitive at times. like atonement shifting.
Dark is alot less obvious. things line up, sure. 30s plunge, 60s shadowbringer. but do you press blood weapon first? do you wait for it to fall off before using delirium? should i stack them? shadowbringer has 2 charges, do i store them for the 2minute? suddenly you see why DRK is "really hard". The burst phase for DRK isnt exactly telegraphed and the job isnt designed in a way that clears that up from tooltips alone. Once you learn, you learn, and it results in being very busy on top of that.
Gnb has a little more direction than dark; at least gnashing fang is obvious, but cartriges? if you use burst strike on every time the shiny pops up, you dont even HAVE a burst, and if you just try to fill it up, it's full before no mercy is back, how many do you use? do you stay full? do you try to line it up where you get your 3rd cartridge when no mercy comes up? Same issue as dark. you just know you need 3 cartridges every 60 seconds. and youre spending 2. not much to go off of. and thats just the entry level before we get into how strict it is to optimize.
Slow breaker is painful for me to play. And I mained it for most of ShB and EW. I really don't know how anyone plays it slower than 2.40 or 2.41 in any kind of content where tank DPS actually matters.
My take: PLD < WAR
Oh, I will say this for WAR: It basically has its full rotation by level 50, meaning players can get the muscle memory nice early on. Relatively speaking. But yeah, I still think PLD is easier. WAR's upkeep buff and gauge management is just PLD basically doesn't have to deal with in any way.
I'm a warrior main. It's definitely the least difficult of them all.
WAR is what I jump on when I just want to have a quick stress free expert roulette.
As a Midcore Dark Knight main, I feel like Gunbreaker is the hardest to play optimally. Even with a 2.45 GCD, it feels clunky and strict. I feel like I'm drifting everything. I'm really hoping 2.5 Slowbreaker is a viable GCD tier for Dawntrail, and it looks like it might be because of the Lion Heart combo.
Yeah, I main it and it's painful to play at anything slower than a 2.41 for me. But with the DT changes and Burst Strike just not being a thing on your 2 minute anymore, I think Slowbreaker might actually be playable.
I'm a main tank and haven't reached cap level yet, but I do have my 2 favorite classes untill now: DRK and PLD. I just have to make my mind and choose one to master and min/max for endgame content.
The thing with DRK is I keep questioning myself all the time whether I should spend all my MP with EoS or TBN and, once I choose one, I keep thinking if I did the right choice or not. Also, for the magical damage mitigation skills, I just use it as if it was any other mitigation because I still don't know how to track if the damage is phys or mgc (if someone could explain me...).
I like both of the classes, but i'll have to wait till cap to see which one I enjoy the most, especially when min/maxing rotations
For dungeon contnet playing drk early levels real challenge is rolling the healer who can compensate for your miserable ability to tank early on.
Wall to wall pulling is often sucidal on drk pre 70. Its mitigation and healing tools are also terrible with one of its mitigations are related to a specific damage type.
PLD because it has only 2 timing windows. 30 and 60 seconds. At the 60s mark you have to weave a total of a 4 ogcds plus tinc.
I wrote a whole damage optimization, but it was a lot of words to say do things on cooldown and tinc before damage buff. There are no optimizations beyond using damage buff after first 2 melee combo actions, because 5 of 7 combo actions are hard hitting. Req and goring is always under damage buff. It doesn't matter which you do first as long as you stick to it. That's it.
Oh, you can optimize by using holy spirit combo action when you need to step out of an AOE and use atonement before stepping away.
I only tank as a secondary role, and took up gunbreaker because it's an optimal off-tank and I like that it's a good balance of damage, mitigation and healing... However, I found it much too involved and unforgiving to only play now and then and went back to warrior to tank, and it's a lot more comfortable.
Personally, the strictness of gunbreaker makes it feel the easiest for me, because using mitigation is the only decision you ever make unless something's already gone wrong with the rotation. I don't tank in high end content though, so sticking to the rotation correctly is rarely tricky.
I love gunbreaker thematically and the overall feel, hence why it's my main tank class. However, I'm a very casual player (crafter main) so even while not trying to hit those burst windows correctly, the class is very, very "busy" and feels very button mashy at times.
I'm a simple man. Gun + Sword = happy times in my book. I may not be the best Gunbreaker, but it's a blast and the difficulty mastering it as been a joy. It's also fun to hit the invul and watch a healer panic..... N..not that I do that!
The nature of the game revolves around versatility and role responsibilities. You can see this in all jobs, not just tanks.
Ex. A job that is highly versatile, doesn't do its role to the absolute highest levels compared to a job that solely focuses on its role with no versatility.
In this case, emnity is the managable resource and pallies have the best versatility as a tank, so they fight with that aggro all the way through content. Damage is the secondary concern. All tanks hover around the same damage output level.
It's not a matter of which tank is the hardest. It's how many buttons you're willing to press.
No tanks are hard since they dumbed them down in shadowbringers and further in endwalker
War has come a long way from being laughed at and bamished from content in the early years.
Now they are the edgy OP Isekai protagonist they deserve to be after such an origin story...
They are honestly TOO OP and hard to get behind since they are the obvious favorite of the devs now
I can at least say as a warrior main myself that I ALSO want warrior nerfed a bit if it is any consolation 😅
@@CaetsuChaijiCh 🤣 as PAL (Tank) main, that would make me feel more adequate 😔
Warrior legit does abysmal DPS in high end content at launch. Most famously, Xenosyvex, THE warrior main, cleared week 1 P8S the moment he swapped to gunbreaker.
You've missed the part that DRK lacks of Midigation (Since one is Magical only and TBN is just gone if theres a multiple hitting TB) and a huuuge lack of selfsustain (Selfheal).. at least compared to the other tanks at max Lvl
You should specify between raids and dungeons. They are vastly different scenarios and change how tanks feel.
For example: GNB has some of the best cooldowns in raids, they are extremely effective, but not the best at dungeons.
Warriors are gods in dungeons because they can leech so much in trash pulls and never die. However, they are not nearly as effective in raids.
Just a thought.
nevermind. I missed it.
I tried to keep it more general because sometimes there isn't much of a difference and sometimes there's a huge difference, and I feel it makes more sense to focus in where it really matters! 😊
No worries!
Funnily enough that’s how play those tanks. If I’m doing a dungeon I default to WAR, but if it’s a trial/raid I go GNB
@@MRF0XTR0T yeah, GNB has insane defenses, arguably the best. However, WAR in dungeons is just god mode.. you practically dont need a healer.
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Yeah, its a good video. I am just offering a little feedback (Hopefully constructive). However, I understand that most players are casual and wont step into difficult raids.
The problem with rating difficulty as you say is it's so dependent on the situation. Are we talking about dungeons synced down, level 90 ultimate raids, level 90 extreme trials? The answer is so variable its almost not worth generalizing. On leveling dungeons DRK might be the hardest, where at a 90 ultimate it might be the easiest as the dps checks are tight and it has high damage with very low rigidity. Coming from mostly savage level experience, it can even be fight specific, where having a warrior makes P12S phase 2 easier on both tanks because of the short invuln cooldown, or bringing a paladin makes it impossible to skip tankswaps on some fights because of the longer invuln cooldown, making it slightly harder on both tanks.
My difficulty curve DRK>GNB>WAR>PLD (yeah i say it) but tbh for me is a straight forward rotation never hard.. thats also the reason why something like Dragoon feels for me more easy then Samurai or even Reaper sometimes.
DRK is for me peak because make a perfect burst can be hard.. shitton of oGCDs.. you want to use as many EoS and Bloodspiller as possible (and still have to use mitigation between it) and also something like.. "Yeah your ONLY real Heal is a Shield that punished you when its not break." what make his "Heal" even harder to use because you want to spam it but also you want to have enough MP for burst and it should break _always_ to not flush 460 Potency directly down in the toilet. (and probadly even more MP when you are forced to use non free EoS outside of burst do not lose Darkside because you will only spent MP on TBN outside of the burst.)
I saw a couple of those polls, didn't see the tank one though.
Didn't feel like I knew any of the jobs well enough to compare to the ones I did know.
As a DRK main (or more like WAR/DRK duo), DRK is essentially oGCD vomit every even-minute burst lol
As for GNB, I find it a bit hard to use compared to DRK but I think it's just due to the Gnashing combo and the DoTs. IDK how or why that throw me off lol
Another thing not mentioned is TBN being much weaker than the analagous ability on other tanks (in EW) and DRK effectively missing a mitigation with Dark Mind means while they do fine on bosses, trash pulls are much more difficult to deal with.
Give Drk Blood Price back and make Abyssal Drain a spell again and the survivability would be comparable to a War in dungeons wall to wall pulls. I miss the early Stormblood days because we had that.
Dark main here.
Honestly gunbreakers placement surprised me. Amongst the groups I'm in regularly it's known as THE job to unsynchronize on (I still prefer pal or dark depending on the fight).
And while it does have a more involved rotation it feels like it's a lot more straightforward. Making perfect practice the real enemy.
Paladin is probably only easy from the perspective of someone currently at endgame. Endwalker endgame.
I also want to note here that requiescat regularly tricked people into thinking they needed to keep their mp up in order to keep the buff due to wording. This is not the case and I still see people very obviously trying to play around this non-existent mechanic. And I feel like at least a few votes for paladin might be because of this. But I also don't think that would lower it on the list.
Personally I find paladin to be the hardest because MOST of its duration is still very feature dry. Before you get clemency your at the mercy of your healer and DPS output. Bringing not much in either front. Even then it's not till magic master 2 where you feel sustainable without tanking your mp and in turn your damage. It's claim to fame is having a lot of shorter mitigation. But that still takes a LONG while.
Drift Worries < Just hit Buttons
As long as you aren't cleaving the party or dying to mechanics, just relax and have fun
true for casual content. Less true for coordinated groups and Ultimates and Savage.
As a tank main the only tank that is harder is dark. And that's only in dungeon wall to wall. No issues in trials or raids
The idea of low-level Paladin being challenging in regards to its defenses is a little hard for me to wrap my head around. That may be because, when I first leveled Paladin, I did it alongside Dark Knight, and the two were as different as night and day, defensively. Or day and night, as the case may be. Also, while the king of low-level defenses is Gunbreaker, it starts at 60, and while I have only three characters with Gunbreaker, I have *eight* with Paladin, so I've done WAY more ARR and HW dungeons with Paladin.
1:20 was my thought, but I didnt write it down xD
Ive leveled all 4 tanks and warrior is definitely harder during the leveling portion but becomes invincible late game. I find drk to be the most complicated just because of managing TBN and the mp gauge. If your TBN doesnt absorb enough damage you waste mp because that proc gives you a free ability that grants darkside. If enough damage isnt absorbed you are like crap crap crap because it changes the whole rotation. 😂
Idk about y'all but I groan every time I'm healing a roulette and my tank is a GNB. WAR and PLD are ez mode I just dps, DRK can get rough but it's pretty clear that if I'm having to GCD heal them to keep them alive it's a skill issue (on their part). I always have to heal and use more CDs on GNB in casual content.
Hardest part about GNB is landing crits on double down and blasting zone 🤣🤡 +/- 1000 dps based on rng.
There's gonna be more of that in DT with the new lionheart combo that's like 3000 potency in 3 GCDs and doesn't have guaranteed crit dh.
SE: "Hope you like crit disparity :)"
War>Pld>Drk>Gnb>HWS Drk in terms of difficulty
War is just ooga booga and you can do anything in no problem. Pld is just a simple rotation and reduce damage with shields + tenacity materia (build for pld only). Drk was very complicated and hard back in HWS that you need keep agro and mana if you want to MT(couldnt do both), thanks to SB and SHB they did justice to my favorite job. Gunbreaker you need to be a combo master if you want to maintain dps in a right time to use, make 1 single mistake and you have to start over for next 1 or 2 minutes even if you get interrupted by aoes and enemy phases.
Minor rant ahead. Yes, my primary tank is Warrior, followed by Paladin. I love Warrior to death. Unga bunga for life.
The hardest part of Warrior is when you're low on health and there's 2 seconds left before you can hit RI/BW again, the rest of your cooldowns are still on cooldown, and for some reason your keyboard refuses to acknowledge that you hit your Holmgang hotkey despite it being good to you for 5+ years.
It's also hard as a warrior when you get a sage who: never touches Haima, Toxicon, Taruchole, Physis, Kerachole, Dyskraisa, Druochole, Phlegma, Zoe, or even Soteria on a mass pull in Skalla and expects their single target Kardia Dosis + Diagnosis and their basic shield to be enough healing to carry you through the pull in Skalla; or even just standing there doing nothing and expecting me to heal myself on some of the pulls. Spoilers: basic stuff never carries in higher level content.
So yes, it's very possible for a warrior to die in content where they have RI/BW if healers don't touch the juiciest parts of their kits. I found this out yesterday while doing the megapull in Skalla before the second boss. I died twice due to the sage not using a majority of their kit when my cooldowns were down and my Holmgang hotkey didn't want to work for me anymore. Yes, I avoided the bad as best as I could. Yes, I thought the rest of the party was competent enough to take on the pull. Yes, I didn't realize the sage was playing so poorly as my own self-healing and mitigation was pretty much carrying myself through Skalla until the megapull.
Yes, my RI/BW was doing 95% of the healing in pulls when the sage would only shield me. Yes, the sage got upset at me for dying when they didn't bother with the rest of their kit. Why do you ask?
Sages, please read your tooltips. They actually do some amazing work in parties WHEN YOU ACTUALLY USE THEM.
Yeah it's funny how so many understood "warrior is immortal PART of the time" and assume it means warrior never needs anything. Meanwhile I can begin to explain how much easier it is to tank as warrior when the healer uses something when bloodwhetting ends. You know, just a little thing to help tide me over until the next immortality moment 😅
if you know your healer is incompetent, just don't pull so much? do baby pulls if you have to
@@axylum4453 The healer's gonna have to eventually learn how to use their jobkit. Doing baby pulls simply encourages lethargic behavior or just not learning anything at all of how to manage resources in packs. The sage never said anything at the start of the run indicating that they were having trouble with anything. No, they weren't new to sage either with them being lvl 86 at the time.
The pulls up to that point were fine for the most part save for the sage just constantly casting Dosis in packs and shielding me but not using Toxicon procs. The last time I gave advice to someone over sage they literally told me to go kill myself and 'to stay in my lane you stupid woman.'
As a healer, I've always encouraged my tanks to go balls to the wall. If we wipe, that's fine. Get back up and try again. If I'm on tank, I encourage healers to dps between heals as just healbotting or waiting for damage to go out slows down the run significantly.
I would have completely brushed off the wipe I had yesterday in Skalla to my keyboard if it weren't for the fact that the sage was not using their whole kit at that level, but also their attitude of getting upset at me for dying as war.
@@laceyclark311 I'm of the same mind that healers need to learn their job better. In fact, this applies to every role. It's the fault of the game design that normal content is so stupidly easy that it allows people with such egregious skill issue to fill up the queues. That sage has probably had such an easy time because tanks have so much agency that the healer barely needs to use any healing. Which is at least 80% of their buttons. Many tank players are conditioned by their massively overpowered short 25 sec mits like bloodwhetting so when they return to basic tank cooldowns (or play DRK), they tend to struggle.
Peoples' toxic reaction to your advice is super annoying to hear. I've had similar incidents when I used to play in EU. Now I play in JP where that practically never happens. The average skill level is good enough that you never really need to give advice (not that I could because language barrier)
Also it's not toxikon that you want the sage to be using but dyskrasia. Using Eurasian diagnosis (to get toxikon stacks) or hard casting diagnosis is a waste of a gcd because it doesn't synergise with kardia and your ogcd heals are more powerful. Toxikon barely does more damage than dyskrasia and requires a target (swapping targets reduces ease of use). Dyskrasia can be used whenever and is instant cast (like toxikon) so you can double weave sages powerful ogcd heals and shields. For a lot of content, a single haima and kerachole plus dyskrasia spamming is enough for many w2w pulls. Sage is really not that hard imo, granted I am a healer main and I hate the current state of healers but that's another topic.
@@axylum4453 I would argue that Toxicon is free damage and the sage can hit Focus Target on the tank, but that's another story for another day.
It's like you said in another video on my other comment, ain't nothing gonna fix this sort of skill issue unless SE decides enough is enough and forces people to learn.
Like the other day I was in Orbonne and found a BLM that would constantly flip between Fire and Blizzard 3, yet their highest cast count was Scathe (97 uses). I managed to outdps them as AST.
There were times while I was on whm where I managed to outdps the entire party in EW dungeons while keeping everyone upright. One mch I encountered in Hyperboria that was the lowest on the forbidden chart I found again in Babil who didn't have Fire 4 or Foul.
I once had 1/4 of an alliance raid get yeeted off the arena in Breach because they didn't think you needed to be in front of the pillar to safely survive it DESPITE HAVING DONE IT CORRECTLY EARLIER.
I also once had to solo the first boss of Lunar Subterrane as PLD because the whm 'didn't pay attention' when 3 of them failed the safe spot check mechanic. Same run the healer died constantly on the last boss and I found out on the final boss that he's got a tankbuster if you take too long.
I once had a healer who would completely dump everything on me at the beginning of pulls in Bardam's Mettle and then resort to Physick spam in packs because I dared to pull big then small (yes I managed to proc Living Dead 3 times that run, why do you ask?). Later on I see that same healer but on whm this time on the same alt who can't do mechanics in Breach, and I see them again later on being talked about on a Reddit post getting kicked from a Lunar run.
Sorry for the tangent, but yeah, player base skill issue.
Having played 3 out of 4, I'd say GNB is the hardest because of how difficult it is to move and/or weave defensive CDs into the rotation. Its far form impossible and even a casual scrub like me learned. But it is hard.
As someone that also plays every tank probably 95% of the time I play cause I love tanking sometimes gnb for some reason in some content it just feels unnecessarily squishy and I can't figure out why but other times I don't have any issues
That's going to have a lot to do with your Healer and DPS, especially in dungeons. In boss fights all the tanks feel plenty survivable to me. It's wall to wall pulling in Dungeons where you start to see the differences. I think too many healers have gotten used to running with WAR tanks in dungeons and sometimes forget they actually have to heal other tanks. Plus if you have bad DPS stuff just lives too long and you start running out of mitigations. Plus GNBs damage is heavily tied to RNG so you could get a bad burst window through no fault of your own and run into the aforementioned stuff not dying fast enough problem.
It might not be considered the hardest to play but drk is for sure the hardest to keep alive. Have to play sage only these days in case a random drk appears that somehow *doesnt* single pull.
Warrior is hardest...... to stay awake😅
I actually find DRK harder to play in dungeons than GNB simply because of the survivability issues the job seems to have. Also optimizing TBN is just one of those things I can never seem to get right. Which sucks because I actually love the job for both the lore and the playstyle.
I would say, and this is as a DRK main that DRK is the hardest as it is the only one that can't heal it's self back to full from it's own abilities plus the tank immune can kill you. GNB can be more complicated but has better sustain.
The hardest to play tank is Viper. They tend to be really squishy and suck at self heals so you can't really do anything wrong and have to kite things.
Oh the actual tank classes? Uh. ... . ....uh... ....hmmm .... ehhh.... I think maybe gunbreaker needs the player to have a brain exceeding that of a 2 year old monkey? I will go with gunbreaker. In endwalker I would have said Dark, but trust me they "fixed" that this expansion.
I agree with the list. Warrior can be immortal. As a healer I can feel at ease with them also with Paladin since they have clemency as well. I would switch the last two though. Gunbreaker has better survivability than dark knight. I main dark knight too and I'm like ugh why couldn't they gave me two charges of abyssal drain
I find it interesting that PLD and GNB are compared to each other, considering those are the two I like, and I never really thought of them as similar. I don't like WAR, though not quite sure why, and I feel like DRK has terrible self-healing compared to other jobs in mobs, so I feel squishy. Maybe I'm just not playing it right.
Which, to be fair, I admit I am not one who gives much thought to min-max-ing potentials.
All that said, when I heal, I lime WARs because of how self sufficient they are. I have more trouble keeping DRKs alive more than any other tank, though.
Leveled all tanks to 90, WAR is definitely the easiest, and GNB is definitely the hardest. Though i personally think DRK is a lot easier to play than PLD and was surprised at the disparity. DRK plays a lot like WAR but without self healing, and PLD plays similarly to GNB with a very long rotation just not as strict on the timings.
im a gnb main and everything feels natural about it to me. i learned xiv tanking with it. drk on the other hand, i am actually hot garbage at. it doesnt click with me. i job skipped it to 80 on my main when i swapped servers and never looked at it again lol
As a tank main, my judgement is as follows:
-DRK is the hardest to level, as they’re not great for under-savage content
-PLD and WAR aren’t actually that hard, in my opinion
-Both DRK and GNB have decently high skill ceilings; but GNB has the added skill ceiling of needing decent ping in order to play it effectively.
One thing I think should have been mentioned is historical biasess. Some people including myself experienced one tank back in arr, and have a rather unfavorable view of it because of that. For me this was GLD, reason why once I got to limsa I swapped yto ACN almost immediately.
For me, i tried through my ShB start and through most of EW to main DRK, but not only was the button bloat a bit much for me but what rubs me the wrong way the most is TBN, not only does it come on super late (Similar to when WAR gets inner release) but out of all of the tanks it being the main mitigation tool for DRK feels like a "Rules for thee but not for me" because outside of PLD having a guage cost for sheltron DRK has a mana cost and possibly a shorter duration (can't quite remember) than the other tanks not to mention the mana cost taxed on for a possible damage gain and the only other benefit being 10 seconds shorter CD, while I'm not for homogenizing of the jobs this feels like a tideous outlier that only applies to DRK.
DRK also has very limited self healing compared to the other tanks at max level which doesn't help matters.
@1337penguinman perciesly, it honestly feels like the only tank designed in the off tank role since you can better gauge when to use TBN like, for example tank busters while not worrying about mitigating damage to you. If it breaks great free damage if not, no harm, no foul.
Based on my reactions to seeing what tank I get as a healer in a dungeon, I'd put WAR as easiest ("Oh boy a WAR! I can AoW spam!") and DRK as the hardest ("Oh no a DRK, I can't put my aetherflow in the square hole qq")
If we're talking dungeons, WAR is absolutely the easiest. Just pop bloodwhetting on cooldown and you won't die. You can use other mits if you really like keeping your health bar above 75% but you don't really have to 90% of the time.
I play every tank class and I feel pld is the hardest. They have 0 self heals until way late into the game so if your healer is new or dead... you're pretty much sol. As a dark player, what holds me back is healer paranoia. Even when I say I'm going to use living dead they see my hp drop and freak out wasting my living dead.
I was told DRK was the hardest when I started. I thought the Paladin was harder to use than the DRK. I came back to FF14 when STB came out. Played 14 before it was remade.
Nothing to add u got the order right. And I think that is pretty objectively true. I cannot think of a case where u are wrong
Something interesting with optimizing gunbreaker is that you literally cannot hold Bloodfest in your opener. This is important, because some fights demand that the group starts on a one minute burst, and holds buffs until a minute into the encounter. But since you don't start a fight with any cartridges, you have to use Bloodfest to do any kind of burst in your opener. This, ironically, makes gunbreaker slightly easier to optimize in those scenarios. You literally just do your normal opener and rotation, while everyone else has to adjust theirs.
I started tanking for the first time this week and hearing DRK is second hardest sure scared me a little.
Tanking is actually easier than being a DPS in my opinion. No positionals, much simpler rotation (usually), and in modern 14 aggro isn't an issue as long as you remember to turn tank stance on. The hardest part is learning your mitigations and how to space them out.
I don't think Dark Knight is necessarily hard, moreso that if you don't have a good healer and know what you're doing, you're more likely to die as a result of a lack of knowledge/tools at your disposal. One change that they should absolutely revert is carve & spit and abyssal drain being on the same cooldown, it feels nonsensical compared to the other tank self healing options.
For a video about tank difficulty,, I find it a little odd that this video focused so heavily on attack rotations. There wasn't really a lot of time spent on the defensive side of things which is what I ultimately feel makes GNB definitively the hardest tank to play. Yes it has a very tightly rimed rotation but it also needs to manage that while still squeezing in properly timed defensive cooldowns (and goodness forbid you actually need to move the boss at all on top of all that).
That is indeed something both drk and gnb sometimes have to wrestle with, but because drk has an even tighter burst than gnb, that was something I considered more significant there.
Indeed, as you kind of pointed out yourself, the defensive side is mainly made more difficult situationally because of the attack rotation, hence why the attack rotation somehow takes center stage anyway! 😊
1:25 for random dungeons especially i hate warrior to be honest .. as a healer .. its a coinflip you get a decent one and then you are just green dps ... otherwise you will have the hardest work to do ever ... warrior without a good use of his cooldowns is just paper ... i had situations where i could easy keep a dps as "tank" alive but the tank just died ... and important note there obviously after the tank died nothing was left for any emergency for the "dps tank" ... with no other tank job its so extreme ... i believe a lot of people are just sure like the community say "ah i play warrior so my brain can just rest i cant die anyway" and that is not true .. at all ..
and yes warrior can do most of the content synced solo ... does it mean its "easy" or does it mean he has stuff to use for it to help him with that ... of course he has the most selfheal out of all tanks ... IF HE USE IT! xD and i dont even start to talk about all the other options for any dmg reduction and so on "i am unkillable why should i reduce the incoming dmg?" truely as a healer main i hate warrior as a tank ... 10% of the runs you are just personal healer for the dps thats lame especially just in normal dungeons .. most other times you have some sort of a paper tank and wish the run will be over sooner then later ... and sometimes you feel like you just dont have a tank at all ... warrior is the only tank where you nearly never have the moment to think "well not perfect but totally fine to heal" its always more like "heal all or nothing" ... and just with warrior ... because its the easiest? what a joke .. but not a good one :/
3:23 but i still wouldnt say its always the fault of the dead warry ... i dont hate the "warrior is unkillable" community shittalk just because people believe that and play like it ... its annoying in both direction as warrior player and as player with warrior in the group ..
9:35 im not a tank player at all ... just got them all to 90 with dungeons and thats it but when you said "dont know when to use it" i just though "especially in an aoe pull .. always?" ;D but that shield is pretty huge you can even feel how less work the healer has to do once you get it
i cant really remember how the lvling worked with my warrior its over a year ago and had a break a couple months ... dark knight and paladin where both meh in lower lvl and got more fun the higher i got ... gunbreaker for me felt a bit like too many buttons ... dont even know how because i later realised paladin has the same amount ... or was it even more? cant remember xD something for me just felt wrong with the gunbreaker i dont know
but for me just for cassual dungeons there was not really a difference in the tanks ... yeah the warrior has a lot of selfheal and stuff but ... how "important" is a lot of selfheal compared to the other tanks if you have a healer with you anyway ... xD
warrior and paladin are the 2 easy tanks, darknight is middle of the road difficalty and then gunbraker is the hard to play tank (yet still easy, just the hardest of the 4 tanks in ff14)
I feel like I'm strange in the fact that I feel like Gunbreaker and Dark knight feel more similar than the other tanks.
They're both really busy jobs for a tank.
yea, sq puts as much effort into re-organizing the leveling experience with each expac as much as they implement QoL, years and decades after complaints/mods
As someone who plays all tanks, I still think Dark Knight is harder overall, but I think Paladin has the roughest leveling experience.