LogFAQs > #953777678

Discussing the relative strength of the tanks is a weird conversation to me because they all have areas in which they excel. If you're looking at raw DPS then yeah DRK is the lowest, but the difference between the highest and lowest tank is about 4%, which is an effectively insignificant difference - it's well within the range where player skill and job comfort trumps job composition. Looking only at the raw damage numbers also obscures the strengths of the individual jobs - for instance, DRK has The Blackest Night, arguably the strongest tank cooldown in the game. The sheer amount of damage you can mitigate with TBN translates into needing less healing, which translates into more healer damage GCDs.

Prior to this last patch WAR was in the position of being the lowest DPS tank, but WAR brings Nascent Flash, which allows the WAR player to heal themselves for some frankly ridiculous amounts. It's the inverse of TBN - rather than mitigating damage you heal yourself after you take it. This again saves healer GCDs, which translates into more raid damage.

The tanks are basically equivalent in every meaningful way - any tank composition can clear any content, and you can play whatever tank you want without griefing your group as long as you know how the job works. Tank balance is the best it's ever been and I hope SE can manage to keep things this balanced in 6.0.

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