This finally brings me to 3.2. I'll be honest here: I really like the meta. I feel that the innovation FFXIV brought to the MMO genre was the legitimisation and encouragement of tank and healer DPS. I like figuring out how to squeeze that last bit of DPS out of a fight and figuring out how to maximise my DPS without sacrificing my survivability. It made me a better player and made me work with my healers. It added extra strategy to fights. It made gearing less boring for tanks. It let me help carry people in difficult fights, or speed up dungeon runs.

With the talk of "adjusting" tank DPS, I'm worried that the dev team is finally giving up on their intended design. I do agree that gearing has been unfair for tanks -- no other role needs to balance two main stats, nor do they need to buy three different sets of accessories to progress easily (fending, slaying, and melded).

Another thing I've read here off and on recently, is that if you want to DPS you should roll a DPS. If you don't like tanking for the sake of it, you don't really love tanking. This is the furthest thing from the truth. I love tanking and being the guardian of the group. I just like being able to contribute to the DPS check in a significant fashion. If they nerf tank DPS, I'll still be a tank. But I think the community meta will simply shift back to not wanting WAR in their parties. It would also invalidate much of the skills all tanks gained in Heavensward. I'd hate to see it all go to waste.

How would I fix things? A few adjustments to PLD's toolkit would alleviate some problems:
1.Grant TP recovery from Shield Swipe use
2.Divine Veil should be activated by any heal the PLD receives (self-heal or otherwise)
3.Clemency should either be oGCD, have a CD and cost no MP, be oGCD and cost MP, or retain its cast bar but not be able to be interrupted
4.Sheltron should either have a timer (2 seconds) so as not to be eaten by auto-attacks, or be the only way to block a magical attacking
5.Sword Oath should lower TP costs across the board

This still doesn't account for how encounter design relies on DPS checks, less mitigation, and hard enrages, but it would help.
tl;dr 1: Tank DPS was encouraged by developers from the very beginning by "soft" tank mechanics, but ignored by the community on account of PLD's overwhelming mitigation superiority in 2.0

tl;dr 2: All tank classes have been given explicit DPS skills in Heavensward, to make design choices clear.

tl;dr 3: Balance is definitely Whack since Gordias Savage, in terms of mitigation, gearing, and specifically tank accessories. This is a combination of things which simply make the problem worse than it ever has been

tl;dr 4: Nerfing tank damage isn't the answer, adjustments should be made to PLD (and DRK) to help with TP management, and encounter design should not revolve around severe DPS checks, so much that mechanics are ignored (A4S sacrifice strategy).