FFXIV Tank Comparison! Easy/Hard? Strong/Weak? Intense? 

Since this video I have significantly increased the volume on the voice audio due to feedback like this, so I hope this is less problematic on my more recent videos! Thank you for the feedback, esper! 😊

Well you will also be happy to know that I put more energy in my voice in future videos, *and* i increased the voice audio. 😉

Hehehe thank you so much! 😁

Thank you! I'm glad to hear that the star ratings are appreciated! 😊

Indeed! In coordinated groups that really could get value out of it, it was awesome! I have a bad feeling that if these stances still existed today though, some sort of optimization would cause a lot of tanks to simply refuse to use them because a guide told them it wasn't necessary or something

​@CaetsuChaijiCh that's exactly how it was. PLD was relegated to OT status pretty much all the time since they had to go through AT LEAST 3 GCDs in shield oath whereas a DRK might be able to pull without grit and a WAR could most definitely just pull in Deliverance since inner release built a ton of enmity but if your dps were also hitting very hard everyone wanted a ninja so they could shadewalker the WAR along with every DPS popping diversion pre pull. It was something that definitely required some skill and planning but it also kinda sucks that it made PLD mandatory OT since their personal DPS would take a massive hit if they had to MT.

Some people really benefit from jumping right into the deep end 😁 it sounds like it was the right choice for you though! 😄

@@CaetsuChaijiCh Im the type that is more motivated to do something that I want to do or find more fun otherwise I lose that motivation soon. Thats why i took the decision of going the harder path because since its what i liked, i would be motivated enough to eventually get used to the class

@@CaetsuChaijiChame here, the funniest thing is that I dived from dragoon into GNB right away, and I was 2 weeks into the game, as it being my first MMORPG too. I’m GNB for 2 weeks now, but the fact that I spent too many time during the prior 3 weeks, that I lost my sprout, and that I only play on controller kinda made me suffered a lot in dungeons, you can imagine me totally clueless at the start XD

Thank you! And this is very true! Thank you for the addition! As of the rework, I would probably rank paladin as a significantly easier job to pick up at max level as it's rotation is now far more flexible and less punishing. Plus the removal of weird interactions like divine veil! 😊

Moving some magic actions earlier would certainly help! If they could have like a weaker version of the heals attached to them at lower levels that would also be great - but I have a feeling the rework is related to making them work better with the two minute burst which I think is the reason a lot of pld mains are worried!

I'm glad to hear you found it helpful! If you are interested, I do have both a starter and a high level guide for Warrior that you may find helpful! Starter Guide(1-50): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-o85OMqC6-Sc.html High level guide(51-90): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-E9tt7wb4iTs.html There is definitely a lot to learn, but I am sure you will get it! 😁

@@CaetsuChaijiCh yeah I believe I actually saw the starter guide already, I’ve been watching a ton of your vids so I finally subbed! They’re all super helpful, and I like how you present the information

Oh excellent! 😄 Thank you so much! I am glad to hear that 😃

Awww thank you so much! It really means a lot that you'd tune in for just my voice! 🥰

@@CaetsuChaijiCh I have to admit, i was joking about not playing lol. I love FFXIV. The comment about your voice was serious though. It's very soothing

Good to hear that you had a good experience switching job for your team! Sometimes this can turn out badly when this happens! 😅

@@CaetsuChaijiCh yeah I am kind of drunk on 30 second cooldown power now, so thanks for asking. Just optimized my rotation for better end game parsing and holy God is it way more fun than I've ever had. THE BALANCE

Paladins always look heroic! 😁 Thank you! 🥰

Yeah. I always use my Paladin for doing msq.

I've actually heard quite a lot of DPS players enjoying jumping straight into gunbreaker! I suppose the more involved rotation is less overwhelming if you played a job with a more involved rotation beforehand! Then the difficult part just becomes the tanking portion! 😊 It's great to hear you enjoy gunbreaker! 😄

thanks what attracted me to it was mainly the looks though i suppose for rotation sequences SAM helped out a lot with that for knowing when to time the damage window's and the positioning but I'm also graceful for GNB's more liner rotation to keep the sequence simple and easily recoverable if for whatever reason I'm forced out of melee range but in general i like the guides you did and the difficulty with GNB seems to more or less match the experience for first timer's like my self.

This is true! Gnb has some excellent spot healing tools just in general! And indeed when syncing down, certain level ranges *heavily* favor certain tanks at times!

I totally get that 😊 I prefer warrior for very similar reasons, and my choice in jobs tend to not consider dps potential anyway!

@@CaetsuChaijiCh i find that i keep myself alive as warrior easily, but many times when i see someone struggling, theres only so much i can do if bloodwetting is on cooldown. But as a paladin ive been able to save multiple people almost simultaneously in the nick of time

@@never5930 That is true! Warrior can maybe save one person every 25 seconds in a pinch, and then with Shake It Off maybe do a bit more, but that is that. For Paladin, you can really get a lot of healing through when you need to. I think it may be possible in longer fights for a paladin to reliably keep alive both itself and 2 DPS in, say, a dungeon or normal difficulty trial or raid encounter!

Thank you so much! That makes me really happy to hear! ☺

Old Lvl 72 DRK: Finally, AoE MP regen! 😄 Actually Warriors 1-2 AoE combo doesn't generate any resource until level 74, which can be inconvenient in its own right 😊

@@CaetsuChaijiCh exactly and in low lv withuot the seocond finishher of the combo you only can obtain the buff of warrior doing the aoe combo but whitout beast gauge

Yeah that is very true! 😁 Thank you! 😄

Thank you! I'm really glad to hear you enjoy my content! 😄 Ultimately the only way to truly get prepared for harder content is to jump right into it. If you want to prepare yourself as much as you can before you jump in, I do have a starter guide on everything you can do to prepare yourself! Here is a link: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FtomquU84-o.html Good luck with your journey into harder content if you do choose to do it! 😁

Thank you so much! 😁 That's a long journey, and I wish I had the opportunity to try HW DRK, I've heard so much about it! (parry procs, a dot, and more besides!) I totally understand preferring to play the less mentally taxing jobs as a main, as I also play primarily jobs that I feel are very simple and easy 😊

@@CaetsuChaijiCh not that I didn't have fun stance dancing or the cool mechanics of DRK. I'm honestly too obsessed with PvP to dedicate any more game time to PvE lmao

That is fair! I might have underestimated paladins mastery difficulty because to me the difficulty mainly falls into knowing which opener to roll with, and then dealing with skipping parts of your rotation because of down time and things like that! But I might have missed some crucial points in that 😊 I'm glad you agree with most of the guide though!

Square enix is going to change the job. They made Monks and summoners braindead easy classes. I'm guessing they're going to do the same for Paladins. I think SE is aiming to make all classes easy so newer players can enjoy the game and keep playing, which is something I agree with.

I don't mind if a job is made such that you can play decently well without it being too hard, but it is more fun when there is some space to optimize! And at least monk has plenty of super specific things they can optimize with still! 😊

@@Scrappy_ill_fold_ya_Doo Monk rework is well designed, I think all jobs should have a low kill floor but a high skill ceiling and monk definitely achieves this

@@Scrappy_ill_fold_ya_Doo monk is definitely easier than before, but i do very much still find it difficult 😅

Haha! I am sure you will have lots of fun with it 😁

Thank you so much! Ooooh that is actually a good idea! Imagine if they re-designed DRK to have a lot more self-healing built into the job, but also a lot of actions that spent HP! A bit like how it works in PvP! I wonder if that could work in a reasonable way for a tank in FF14 😊

The reason why DRK feels the weakest defensibly is because their entire defensive power is The Blackest Night and, for some odd reason, Square has buffed everyone's defenses EXCEPT DRK's, having them continue to focus entirely on TBN [which also means that tanking in levels before getting TBN is just annoying since you literally do not have your big defense skill compared to the others]. Another of DRK's issues also come from the fact that it's a full on tank in FFXIV when, in previous iterations, it's more of a tanky DPS that sacrifices HP to do damage. Bit hard to sacrifice HP when you're THE TANK.

@@AzureRoxe Tbh as a dark knight main... Im just here like why isnt there a 3rd aoe that heals... Like how the single target has a fp recovery then heal. The aoe combo would be amazing if it had a 3rd combo piece that healed.

That sounds like a great way to mix things up with how different those two tanks can feel to play! 😊

Thank you for the feed back! Future videos after this one actually have significantly increased voice volume 😊

That is also a great way to get motivated to try a new role! On the bright side, the awkwardness of the paladins magic phase has been toned down a bit with the rework, at least in my opinion, but I can understand why you might feel that way 😊

Yeah dark knights weakness in terms of self sustain is only truly visible once you get closer to endwalker, because paladin similarly has a massive self sustain issue (despite clemency existing), because it has no attacks that heal it until level 84! Dark knight is perfectly fine in all content though, so as long as you use your toolkit effectively, you should not have any issues! And yes, living dead has become incredible after they added the self healing part of it (and also added that you don't lose the invulnerability when you heal fully! 😂 It used to be quite a mess!)

Thank you so much! And me too! 😊

Thats a great inspiration to try out tanking! 😁

Haha yeah, it is the worst when the boss decides to peace out right when you are about to use all your big cooldowns! Especially if you just clicked No Mercy! I always call it... "The saddest No Mercy window" when that happens! 😅

@@CaetsuChaijiCh And my tactics is give them double down, blasting zone, 2 DOT then renzokukem but some times I prepare 1 final cartridge to get hypervelocity

Thank you so much! Fortunately, I have actually increased the volume quite significantly since this video, so I hope you will find it easier to hear in my newer videos! 😊

I'm glad to hear that! I hope you enjoy this extended journey by leveling everything! 😊 DRK is commonly known to be the weakest tank defensively in dungeons, primarily due to its severe lack of self healing. It is still perfectly viable of course though! It also gets a significant survivability boost when it gets the blackest night at 70 😁

When I leveled Paladin and DK alongside each other, they felt like, well, day and night, defensively. Once you get to 70 and get TBN, DK feels so, so much better, and is even my favorite dungeon tank, due to how TBN gets used differently between trash and bosses.

Either one works. It's entirely up to what you would like to try next 😊 A dps would probably have less responsibility while you get acquainted with being more in melee range

As long as you also enjoy playing the warrior, I think that is a great thing to aim for! 😊

Yes I can see what you mean, how the three other tanks each has one specific style throughout the rotation. But paladin changes between two completely different rotations almost half and half by level 90! It is a great insight that you know your preference for faster rotation jobs like dark knight and gunbreaker! That let's you focus more on what you enjoy rather than feeling like maybe you have to do everything 😊

@@CaetsuChaijiCh Exactly, and I have heard many of Tank buddies ask me; 'How do you weave in your buffs and such during raids, while you have your No Mercy window?' and I just tell them that it has become second nature.

Good thing you are in minority and devs dont give a fk about your opinion. Also your mumbling doesnt even make any sense. "How do you weave in your buffs and such during raids", you mean oGCDs, you dont weave many buffs on GNB. Also no, they didnt, DRK have much more weaving and its much more intense since its very time sensitive (otherwise you overcap on resources or CDs), meanwhile GNB is just "do everything in no mercy window" style. Much less to memorise and much more wiggle room. So thanks for letting us know that you dont have any tank buddies.

Your static is forcing you to play Dark Knight? Is there a particular reason for this? I know that its very easy for me to say as an outside source, but if it is Damage output related, the average DPS of a Dark Knight is only about 3% more than Paladin (Who happens to appear to be lowest at the very instant I am writing this) If you are doing grey parses, it can probably be assumed you are not doing the average performance though, and if you are far more comfortable with any other tank, then an average parse of any tank is better than a grey parse for a tank you are not comfortable with. Not to mention, that if you don't actually enjoy playing Dark Knight, then you will not feel very interested in improving it, while if you played a tank you really enjoyed, you would play the tank more in general! However, if you DO enjoy Dark Knight but are just expressing frustration in learning it, then the good news are that Dark Knight is very difficult to perfect, so if you put in time to practice, I am sure you can get it down quickly! The scary thing is that because maximizing your burst involves The Blackest Night, you can't get the perfect practice on a striking dummy. Whatever the reason is, I hope you are still enjoying raiding with your static. You are very welcome to ask here for more specific advice if you think I can help 😊

I believe in your ability to fight your way out of muscle memorying only DRK! 😄 A tip for learning other jobs is to try and make keybinds that are similar: For example, having similar defensive cooldowns on the same buttons. Having combo actions in the same places, things like that! This can cover a huge part of just all the Tanks, but of course, that helps very little for many other roles --- but it is a start!😁

It can be challenging at first, but it is just a slightly different way to play the game at the end of the day 😊 I do have starter guides for all the tanks as well as videos going over tips and tricks for tanks, that you might find helpful to get started. One way to be able to practice tanking completely at your own pace to start is to do the first dungeon, sastasha, using duty support, so you have NPCs to help you instead of players that might get impatient! 😊 Edit: also in shadowbringers they simplified the way enmity is generated a lot, so compared to the times you played the game, this aspect is a lot easier to deal with!

Yeah for the first many many many levels Paladin is very limited on its self-healing! This is actually only properly fixed at level 84 when your attack spells start to do some regular healing. This little change actually makes Paladin incredibly good at keeping itself alive, it is just far too late to learn a trait like this 😅 Weirdly this is unchanged with new paladin too! It makes sense that the things that would be difficult with paladin are the self-healing and the defensive section since that is specifically the two departments Paladin has been lacking in for a long time. New Paladin is a lot better with defensive cooldowns, but the self-healing is still very rough for most of the leveling experience!

If you like the way warrior plays, it is not uncommon to say in terms of attacks that dark knight is just a way faster warrior 😊 You could say with the way gunbreaker works that it also sort of fits into the "1-2-3" waiting room until buttons light up situation, you just have to master fitting the things in no mercy, so the cooldowns align again later! If you like how gunbreaker looks I'd totally recommend you try it 😁

Edit: oh my God I just realized I completely misread what you said. Yes that is a cursed opener 🤣 I am so sorry! I will leave the original message as is though, for some reason I read it as "I can't USE TBN otherwise" which really confused me 😅 Hmm the common DRK opener is to cast blood weapon and TBN just before hard slash (as you pull with hard slash), so having someone else pull for you shouldn't be necessary 😊 although if you aren't the main tank, you would of course have to place TBN on your co tank instead. Blood weapon is cast just before pulling so it doesn't take up space in the opener itself that is already quite full. TBN is cast before the opener so that the MP from blood weapon doesn't go to waste. Besides, the probability that TBN is spent on the first few swings from the boss is quite high still. You go blood weapon - TBN - hard slash, and go from there. That should be fine 😊 If you have a specific example of a boss fight where you need to have dps pull for you to use TBN, I'd love to hear about it - I have heard very strange situations for most tanks already so it isn't out of the question!

You generally cast TBN pre-pull at -3 seconds.

Thank you for describing your journey through the tanks! 😊 I can definitely see how a lot of the things you described match. For example, the sheer amount of different buttons you need in your fast burst as DRK might be difficult to deal with on a Controller. I dont know if Paladin feeling easy is related to you not playing savage, as I believe the Slow Paladin has a much more easy to start rotation without a weirdly long pulltimer or something. I can totally see what you mean by the sound of Fated Circle not matching the animation, too! I am glad you found some tanks that you really enjoy playing, considering how much time you have invested in it! 😄

@@CaetsuChaijiCh thanks for the confirmation on fated circle. Thought I was the weird one out. Through you video I did try WAR and GNB last night. WAR was a chill experience in normal raiding. In dungeons its weird not needing to mitt a lot of the time cause of bloodwhetting chaotic cyclone is so insanely busted. GNB is still very nice to play, but getting used to resource management. I still had to do Eden Normal, so do this as GNB, for nostalgia, Squall glam and shorter que times 😇. I agree it plays a bit like PLD (FoF damage boost button) and as DRK (burst). Less strict as PLD, you can enter burst or spend a bit of resource if overlapping. That's nice. Also nice to be able to help others by casting aurora and Heart of Corundrum. Also that same HoC is crazy powerfull. You can Superbolide into HoC and aurora and heal to full (when not taking dmg). DRK still didn't touch, I want to revisit it, but have to rework my controller. I think I just like playing Tank, and pick up whatever I feel like that day. And yeah it's a lot of time, but I like lvling and trying all the different classes. And through this I want to have a top 1 or 2 per role to have as go to if I want to play melee/ caster/ ranged dps, or tank, or healer. And it helpt becoming a better all round player. Plus Amaro mount.

@@CaetsuChaijiCh o and yeah slow PLD has a more logical start. I did learn fast PLD first. I make mistakes, but can recover and because its casual it's not as punishing if I make a rotation mistake. Maybe it doesn't feel that difficult to me, because I'm not that good at it. Like some people don't find BLM difficult as casuals, because the rotation isn't that difficult. The execution in more movement heavy fights for BLM. (I do think BLM is difficult). Slow PLD does have the craziest PLD opener. Cause you can min max by casting FoF almost 30 secs before pull. That's the most crazy slow PLD opener I know of. But in casual of course no one bothers.

Yeah that is a good point. Black mage isnt too difficult to play at its base level, but once you start to try to master it, you realize there is sooo much depth it can be difficult to take it all in! Regarding your example with slow paladin opener, I looked a bit into it and fortunately (?) slow paladins optimal opener combined with its looping rotation requires fight or flight to be available at a point that you cannot use it as a precast in your opener (you need it around 30 seconds or so into the opener), so this sort of option is exclusive to fast paladin 😊

@@CaetsuChaijiCh ah ok that's good to know. I think I attributed a fast variant opener to the slow build. Thanks for clearing that up!

Personally in some aspects I also feel gunbreaker can be easier to play than paladin, but I felt the specifics in terms of optimization meant there were more difficulties in perfecting gunbreaker (in my opinion 😊). But indeed, paladin sure has a bunch of awkward features 😅 That description of warrior is really on the nose! It just works so well! 😊

@@CaetsuChaijiCh Yeah, GNB optimisation is rough for sure. Def a lot easier since the bloodfest change though!

After you get Raw intuition yeah WAR is smooth, but before that it's rough to lvl WAR. And it's logicall and easy to understand for sure!

Have you played PLD since the 6.3 rework? It used to be the most difficult tank to optimise for and is now the easiest.

If a dark knight activates their invuln, they'd prefer you don't heal them at all, since it causes them to heal for a lot, and only properly activates when they "die" 😊 Gunbreakers' equivalent tool to dark knights shield is heart of corundum which reduces damage taken and specifically only heals if they drop below 50% hp, or the timer runs out, like excogitation. So if you keep them topped up at all times, they will find it very difficult to heal. Certainly, the predictability of the dark knight not really offering very much self healing but prefers to offer the blackest night shields can be easier to deal with for some players 😁 And the common issue of gunbreaker and healer miscommunication with superbolide is a classic!

@@CaetsuChaijiCh I only heal the dark when their healthing isn't enough, or the fight is with 1 enemy such as raid boss,

From what I've found it feels like whether dark knight or gunbreaker does ever so slightly more varies a bit. We can probably agree that they are extremely close at the very least 😊

Had a PLD in a dungeon tell me that it was too hard to keep agro and that the only reason I didn't think so was because I main'd one. Like whut

DRK dmg is better under party buffs so depends on the content you’re doing. With a static raid party in an optimised context, drk will push ahead but in dungeons where there are less buffs/party finder where people are more likely to have buffs drifting all over the place, gnb should be higher.

@@kleverklogs well at max percentile in dungeons WAR is the strongest (and the one who gets more parses), then DRK and PLD almost the same, and finally GNB. Still the difference between them is tiny. I'm really curious to analyze those numbers

I'm sorry to hear that! I went a bit overboard with a too calm voice and then didn't give the audio very much boost back when I made this video, so it might be very difficult to hear on some devices or audio sources! I hope you found a solution that at least allowed you to enjoy the video 😔

@CaetsuChaijiCh I turned the audio up. It's not so much an issue as a mild annoyance. I forget to turn it back down and get blown out by a video from another creator. But I always find my way back here. Keep making the good stuffs.

I appreciate the feedback. I have changed a lot about the audio on my videos since this one though 😊

That is a good question! Unfortunately it is going to be a vague answer! It depends - With patch 6.3 that released right at the start of this year, you can see when an attack is physical (a blue sword next to the damage) or magical (a purple wand) or "unique" (a green explosion..? Often means you can't reduce the damage at all) But ultimately, there isn't really a formula to it. You could argue that Raid Wide damage tends to lean towards magic damage more often, and that Raid wide damage might be more common in alliance raids for example, but that isn't very helpful. The best you can do is approach it on a case by case basis. I do believe the current raid tiers P8S is supposed to have an overwhelming amount of magic damage if that helps!

All of them. The vast majority of unavoidable damage is magic damage,

Yeah I can understand that 😊 two resources to keep track of can be more confusing than just one, and then DRK also has lots of cooldowns to use 😊

That's fair! If you try a tank from the start, then you have plenty of time to get acquainted with the buttons before it gets overwhelming, and especially tanks like warrior and paladin nowadays have very simple attack rotations as well 😊 But if you'd rather not, that's alright!

Hmm well I think the reason for that is because the game officially technically has five roles in regards to things like the party bonus! And there's only three mages. Adding one more melee dps would make it 6 melee and 7 ranged / mage dps options. I understand it can be frustrating if you specifically prefer a certain role to not see new additions to it though! 😅😊

That is understandable! A lot of players enjoy the specific kind of busyness the gunbreaker brings to the tank role 😊

That is a strange interaction! I haven't tested that recently, does that mean that if you use cover and Hallowed ground the damage is just not redirected?

@@CaetsuChaijiCh I don't know if order of skill matters. I always take off my gear for the 506067080 roulette so l always get the 2 easiest dungeons. The green man dungeons have these untargetable big green man that hits you very hard. There is one device that you will always run into one of these big green man, so l always use hallowed ground At that big pull. Occasionally, l will get sprout healers that get killed by these big green man, so l cover them. And l found out l will take damage. Hallowed ground didn't reduce redirected damage to 0.

Oh that is very interesting! Thank you for giving a super concrete example, I might take some time to look into this! 😊

On the bright side, dark knight is very strong? 😅

I am glad to hear it was still helpful despite the difficulty! Thank you for the kind words! 😊 I have worked on putting a bit more volume in my voice in videos since this one so I hope you won't have as much of an issue with hearing my guides in the future 😊

That is also a valid reason to have a favorite 😊

Me as well. I got really attached to it and I can't really imagine leaving it behind. I'm leveling warrior rn but I dont like it nearly as much as dark knight, probably cause it's an ARR job so it's a very long level up. And all of its defining features are kinda late so I'm not having fun. At least the story is funny but it's just because of curious gorge is genuinely for real the mentors name. And blackest night and living dead are so clutch. I've soloed bosses a few times cause of LD and it rules.

In more recent dungeons, there typically is only one path forward, so tanks don't have to be burdened with knowing the way. This is also more the case in older dungeons that have had a rework 😊 Everyone has to start somewhere, and I am sure if you let your group know you are a bit new to the role, that people are more lenient! A lot of dungeons can also be done with duty support so if you really want to, you can safely go in and do it with NPCs so you can practice without being pestered by anyone! 😊

@@CaetsuChaijiCh That's encouraging to hear! Thank you! I like the concept of Gunbreaker, but if it's the most complex, I'll maybe give Marauder or Paladin a try. 🤗

@benjaminfast5496 paladin is very simple to start. Warrior becomes simpler at higher level, but has better defensives. Overall both of them are excellent starter tanks! 😊 Good luck! 😄

Haha! It's never too late to switch over! 😁😊 The annoying part is mostly in having to level up again, but if you enjoy the job, that will be a breeze!

😆 If you can make it to level 56 and get raw intuition then warrior becomes very very nice to learn with absolutely!! 😊

This threw me off: how were you in Troia with sprouts? o.O

@@CaetsuChaijiCh I ran a Troia a couple of days ago where the healer disconnected after a couple of minutes. Instead of waiting, our tank (Warrior) was just like "let's keep going until they reconnect." We finished the entire dungeon without the healer. I was a little worried about Scarmiglione's big transition attack, but with Shake It Off it was barely a tickle. Warrior is god.

I think that the sprout icon might stay if your character is younger than 3 months but I am honestly not entirely sure 😅 And yes, warrior is insane! If the raid wide damage is happening rarely enough, warrior can keep multiple people alive with nascent flash too!! 😁

@@mattstanford9673 You lose the sprout when you complete the last quest in Shb AND have 300 hours. If someone story skips an alt, they will be a sprout in Endwalker content until they have 300 hours on the character.

Well that makes it a good goodnight video to put on I guess! 😂 I have fortunately(?) put a bit more volume in the voice over on newer videos since! 😅

That makes sense! As I did say warrior is in more of a priority system and the intensity is very low, it is definitely a job without much flow at all 😊 but a job with great flow certainly would be gunbreaker! I think that is something people often praise that job for

@@CaetsuChaijiCh no it’s just that in duegeon ques when I solo finish off the boss as gunbreaker. Players are “WOW” at me. Feels good

The best part about Gunbreaker is There's straight trash players so when you're not trash you look even better.

😁😁 Thank you! 😉

Thank you 😊 I really appreciate it!!!😁

At the time I was more focused on not being too loud, which incidentally led to rather low audio unfortunately! ^^'

You might be right on that, of course, the ratings are just my opinion, and based on what I have observed! At the time of making this comparison, all four tanks were closer than they are now, and Warrior was strictly at the bottom. While the average damage of Paladin and Warrior at the time was almost exactly the same, the warrior had much less variance, meaning the paladin had the capability to do significantly more damage based on crit luck and things like that - that was at least my reasoning for giving Paladin a 4! At the time Warrior was also known for having notoriously low damage for a tank in single target fights, while paladin was known to just have a really awkward rotation. After Paladins rework, it is safe to say that the ratings that I gave Paladin here are somewhat off ^^'

You are not the only one that feels that way~ I ranked the mastery difficulty of paladin lower because as I saw it, the main difficulty is knowing how to start the fight with the best opener, and then how to deal with down time in between, mainly by keeping track of what things to skip and what not to skip. For example Compared to gunbreaker who can run into having no mercy ready but no resources to spend with it if there is too much downtime, makes gunbreaker stand out as harder to master by having to work around these things, combined with the intensity. At least to me! I think I mainly ranked paladin lower on mastery difficulty based on how big of a factor the set in stone looping rotations plays overall, and that it has less ogcds it needs to use in the burst making it less intense than drk and gnb 😊 but I totally understand and appreciate your perspective! Thank you!

@@CaetsuChaijiCh I understand that haha, I do feel like PLD can be underestimated at times with how much it can take to master them, but in a general sense, following a normal rotation as PLD is generally fine. GNB Especially can be harder to position and use defensives while in burst (same as DRK but I feel like only really applies in 120's). I do think generally Gunbreaker is generally the best tank right now if you are good at it. I'm wondering how things would change for 6.3 with PLD I'm thinking they will get more busy during raid buffs, but have less Jank with it, Unsure how that will effect things in the future. Looking foward to but also worried about PLD changes.

@@pootisspencer4866 I agree! Not to mention that however they choose to change PLD might set a precedence for how they plan to change AST and DRG later on as we also got promised! So it is very exciting and scary at the same time. I certainly hope those that already main PLD will continue to like the job after the change, most of all 😊

I don't exactly agree on the macro thing since just mashing a macro with a Mish mash of ogcds on it tends to get quite janky. But I get what you are going for, and I appreciate the feedback, for when I maybe will remake these comparison videos, probably changing some of the areas of focus 😊

​ @CaetsuChaijiCh First thank you for the response. I get where you're coming from, and I understand that if you're gonna make a video, might as well show things "properly", but I feel the 2 min burst mindset is more of an elite raider thing, and that is not a level at which most people can play or will ever have to. In my experience with players that were struggling or trying to find their place/rythm/class, focusing on more important basics (simple rotations, staying out of fire) yields the best results in every metric, from performance and continued growth to just enjoyment of the game. You can't just redirect a casual player to an Icy Vein 3-page essay with 22 icons charts and expect them to improve and have fun. I find FFXIV landed in a weird meta that isn't necessarily in its best interest. It is stale and only comes together for 15% of the fights duration.

I have significantly increased the volume of my voice in future videos based on feedback like this. 🙂 I am sorry to hear that, but I hope you found the comparison interesting nonetheless!

Run before it explodes!

Healers adjust pls.

Warrior is a good job for most all content so that is not a bad idea 😊

thank you :D@@CaetsuChaijiCh

I wish I had had the opportunity to try HW DRK, but aside from that I do agree, my favorite is, also warrior 😁

That's the spirit! I hope the paladin rework landed well with you! 😊

@@CaetsuChaijiCh honestly I am not a fan how my magic is triggered now. Made me change my rotation muscle memory.

@@protrainingtips Yeah I get that, it is quite different! Personally I feel the fact that Holy Spirit has a more prominent space in the rotation as a whole, rather than being that button you press four times in a row every minute, is a good thing. But it does mean the rotation is very very different now!

Thank you for the detailed comment Logan! Let me try to respond to each point: 1. I decided not to mention Paladin's significant healing from its spell burst because as I see it, the paladin's healing from their spell attacks is there to compensate for the fact that Paladin is the only Tank that does not have a built in heal as part of any of its 1-2-3 combos. Granted, I could've mentioned explicitly that the someone that has to cast a heal could be yourself, but that was sort of a broad gesture that it could be you or someone else. The fact that an attack spell that as a side product heals you also counts is a detail I could've been more direct about! 2. Looking it over a second time, you are right that Paladin's self healing combining Requiescat and holy sheltron does outmatch Gunbreaker very handily. I think I may have underestimated Paladin in this regard and simultaneously overestimated the value of Heart of Corundum heals when needed, however, comparing the self-healing of any tank with Warrior on AoE is more of a joke given how absolutely ludicrous Warrior's AoE healing is in the first place. I believe my thought process in the green tank joke was more related to being able to heal other players, where Paladin needs to cast Clemency to do this at all. You are however right in the fact that Paladins self healing is very impressive! And regarding not mentioning Brutal Shell, this is given by the same reason that Souleater and Storm's Path isn't mentioned either, and by extension the Paladin's Healing from spells. 3. The fact that the Dark Knight is far less dependent on HAVING a lot of resources to perform the majority of its burst makes it a lot more flexible than Gunbreaker, which is the reason why the mastery rating I gave Gunbreaker is 5 stars, compared to Dark Knights 4 stars. Personally, I find very intense rotations with a lot of abilities to cram in difficult to master. The MP stockpiling combined with the optimization of keeping a TBN proc for burst also adds some complexity to Dark Knight on top of that. The comment about the feasibility of fitting all the oGCDs in the Dark Knight burst is intended as a small joke about the sheer amount of oGCDs the Dark Knight has in comparison to the other tanks. You are correct that when done correctly, you can fit everything in there! 4. A fight with an unusually large amount of downtime can certainly get in the way of the Gunbreaker, and your example of P8S using AoE attacks to just be able to stockpile cartridges in time really does highlight this! I feel that each tank has its own weaknesses in certain fights. Having a strict rotation can both be a downside and an upside, as some players may find it easier to consistently perform it when it is set in stone! 5. As you say yourself, difficulty is mostly subjective, and I believe that more intense jobs, namely with a lot of oGCD casts in quick succession, leads to a higher difficulty. If you are already a master of the general optimized gameplay loop in a savage context, such as planning your 2 minute burst, then Dark Knight, whose gameplay revolves heavily around stockpiling resources to do just that, would make it far, FAR easier to play and master. On the other hand, Paladin is trying its hardest to fit into this 2 minute burst window mold that has been built around it, which can make it difficult. However, as I see it, if you start your opener right as paladin, all you have to do is follow the order consistently, and then you don't even need to worry about when raid cooldowns come up, your rotation will line up naturally with it. This leads to the main difficulty for Paladin being in counting steps you need to skip due to downtime or other things that delay your rotation. I may be simplifying things a lot here, but that is the way I see it 🙂 6. Yes, the Gear dependency metric is entirely based on the fact that Paladin and Gunbreakers rotations are significantly impacted by their skillspeeds. The reason why I ranked Paladin as more heavily gear dependent than Gunbreaker is because paladin's break point between fast and slow is exactly at a breakpoint where most jobs tend to land if you just grab a full set of gear (for instance, the crafted set will typically plant you squarely in 2.45), but changing just one or two pieces can pull you over to Slow paladin instead. The reason why this is also significantly more impactful on Paladin is because the rotational difference between Fast and Slow paladin is massive, whereas for Gunbreaker, the rotation is very similar regardless of your skillspeed, however, slow enough and your No Mercy loses a weaponskill, and you may have some difficulty with consistently getting 3 cartridges for every No Mercy (And I will own that in this case, I actually discovered that this was not uncommon AFTER this video was finished!) I very much appreciate your detailed comment Logan, and as you can see, for the most part my reasonings are either related to comedy, lack of knowledge, or different opinions, and that is all okay! As a matter of fact, I highlight a reference to my more detailed job guides as each job is introduced in the i-cards in the top right, because I believe this comparison is nowhere near detailed enough to use as a guide on how to play any of the four jobs showcased. The comparison does however lead to some good entertainment (I hope), and helps players to get a general understanding of each job, which I get the impression you agree that the video does succeed on 😊

@@CaetsuChaijiCh Thanks for the response! Some more thoughts: 3. I can see where you're coming from and appreciate your perspective there. I too found this to be difficult when I first learned dark knight, but it became very easy for me when I understood that the order in which I used the abilities didn't matter much at all. But I can certainly see how the average player would find it to be difficult, especially when progging an encounter. 4. This is something I think an entire video could be made about. I don't necessarily disagree with you there, as I think the execution of strict rotation jobs like paladin and gunbreaker isn't all that difficult, but the planning that goes into optimizing those rotations is very hard. I sometimes struggle with it even with the experience I have as a paladin main and gunbreaker enjoyer. 5. My point was less about how difficult a given rotation is to execute, and more about how severely mistakes will affect your DPS. For example, using Fight or Flight/No Mercy in the wrong place or entering a burst with only one or two cartridges will have a profound impact on your DPS. Whereas dark knight's design doesn't lend itself to being able to even make mistakes like those to be begin with. Aside from holding your Shadowbringer charges for your two-minute windows and your Plunge charges for every burst, you basically just use all your abilities on cooldown. Even if you decide to not play into the two-minute meta on dark knight and use all your stuff on cooldown and not hoard MP for bursts, your rDPS won't actually suffer. That's getting into the weeds quite a bit and begins to depart from the topic of the video, but that's my mindset. Since even the best players in the world make mistakes, though, it's a topic worth discussing. 6. So, dropping a GCD during your damage buff is actually preferred right now on paladin and gunbreaker -- it's the foundation on which the slow rotation for each job is built. With the current BiS, the tradeoff in increased direct hit you get from not prioritizing skill speed outweighs the benefit of cramming the 11/9 GCDs into their respective buff windows. 2.47 seconds is realistically the slowest GCD speed you can achieve that result on both jobs, but almost no one actually plays with that build. With gunbreaker specifically, there's no issue with building cartridges fast enough even with the 2.5 GCD speed builds (other than the downtime examples I mentioned, but that's not specific to any particular GCD speed, as far as I'm aware). While I agree that the differences between the fast and slow rotations on gunbreaker aren't huge, I do believe they're significant enough to be mentioned. This is the first video of yours that I've seen, but I'll be on the lookout for what you do in the future, especially when it comes to tanking.

I have increased this in future videos, but hopefully you can increase your local volume to overcome it in this case!

I get that. I should probably have added that. I decided to leave out the spoiler warning because out of context for new players (at least those that haven't seen this content yet), it looks mostly like generic combat footage. Some players may be more sensitive to those kinds of spoilers than others, but I imagine they know what's coming when the footage fades in 😅

@@CaetsuChaijiCh it's unlucky for me I just met blue bird girl in elpis so seeing her at a max level dungeon is just unfortunate but I am HEAVILY reading into it. Most people would probs not care though so don't worry

That is a good point! Curse those dialog boxes! I hope it didn't ruin the story for you 🙁

I am simply speaking calmly 😊 I didn't find it necessary to yell! 😂 Anyway, in my newer videos I've gotten a bit more oomph in my voice 😉

Thank you for your perspective! I think the reason gunbreakers aoe feels weird is because the animation is slightly delayed, and might look bigger than it is! While learning the exact way to get the mobs in one swing you can use danger / blasting zone, bow shock and provoke to hit the stragglers you missed, which can smooth it out if you miss a few 😊

You're bad at Gunbreaker. That's all it is.

@@qwerty-dm8gr probably, but to say warrior isn't easiest to level up is just ignorance. Your heals are dumb

I am sorry to hear that you feel that way! I will try to keep this in mind if I revisit this kind of video format in the future! 😅

I'm sorry to hear that. I have fortunately increased the volume of my voice in future videos.

I'm so excited for when you find out volume sliders exist, all grown up

Tanks can do around 2/3rds of the damage of a dps. If you just spam shield lob (which is the actual name of that action you called shield throw by the way), the fight would take significantly longer. Welcome to final fantasy 14, everyone's a dps, some of us just have additional responsibilities 😉

Thats alright 😊 a while after this video I fixed this audio issue but that doesn't change that it is on it.

Yeah, every tank has its perks! I can totally understand why Gunbreaker isn't for everyone too, with its sort of strict rotation in some ways 😊 And Paladin's cover is always a surprise - every time I see a paladin use it, there is a chance I discover a new mechanic you can mess with by using it!