Just maxed the last class on my 3rd character, meaning that combined with the previous two I’ve now maxed out all classes in the game.
Dragoon is an annoying class because you have to constantly switch between two attack lines (if you want to keep your damage buff up) while simultaneously keeping track of your positioning. And it certainly doesn’t help that its questgiver is located out in the middle of nowhere. It has quite a few instant attacks however and ends up fairly decent at evasion once you get the hang of them. The party buffing abilities are a nice bonus.
Samurai gives you a bit more leeway with your buffs (they last longer), but forces you to keep track of an expendable resource in addition to adding a 3rd (shorter) attack sequence. That combined with the focus on high skill speed results in a class that’s extremely busy and a real pain to play optimally. The main saving grace here is that there’s no need to worry about positioning. One other thing to note is that, unlike all other classes, its level 60 quest requires an ilevel of 200+ to beat.
Paladin turned out to be a hybrid Tank/Healer; in addition to the standard suite of tanking abilities it also gets a strong single-target heal and some attack magic. The shield starts showing its worth once you get Sheltron at 35 and yeah this is definitely the class with the most survivability. It’s just generally good all around.
Warrior is sort of odd. It swaps out some of Paladin’s defense for more offense, but that offense is quite limited and not really worth the trade unless you’re doing solo duties/quests. Personally I only ended up using it for PvP.
Dark Knight has been my go-to tanking class and is quite a bit of fun. It’s magic themed, meaning it has some defensive abilities that only work against magic attacks (which I often forget to use) and uses MP to provide both more offense and more defense. The MP shield, Blackest Night, is fantastic and can even be used to defend the main tank if you happen to be off-tanking. Probably the busiest of the tanking classes though with all the instants and resources you have to keep track off.
Finally we come to Gunbreaker, which is a hybrid Tank/DPS with a bit of Healer thrown in for some reason. The healing abilities aren’t anything to write home about (beyond that they’re instant), but its DPS-like attack combo makes it one of the more aggressive tanking options available thanks to having a relatively short cooldown time.
Ultimately, tanking is quite a bit of fun and vastly preferable to playing melee DPS or (gods forbid) Healer. All you really have to worry about is keeping the boss faced away from the party (Hansel/Gretel fight excepted) and using defensive abilities if/when the boss uses a tankbuster attack. Most mechanics don’t even target you, and those that do will often barely hurt even if you mess them up. It’s great.
One thing I have noticed however is that tanks on the Aether data center in general seem to absolutely hate having their tank stance on (presumably because it used to lower stats?). Meaning if you aren’t tanking there be prepared to get swarmed by adds during raids and have your healers blitzed if/when the MT dies.