On tanking speculation in Final Fantasy XIV

This is meant to be a reply to this topic in the Wiping as Intended tanking forum, but they apparently haven't added me as a member yet so I can't post it directly there.  WaI is a guild/free company created by some guys I sort of knew in SWTOR that I'm joining at Callsign's behest as part of a compromise to get them to come to Behemoth.  Anyways, here goes:

This is going to come off as a bit ranty and maybe a little hostile but bear with me, I've got good intentions.

A lot of the "theorycrafting" that has been done here and everywhere else on the internet that I've seen so far (especially with regards to tanking in FFXIV, which I'm invested and have personal experience in) is basically full of shit.  By way of introduction let's start with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YzzZ99AoMU.  You want to know how I know it's complete bullshit right away?  Without any real evidence or supporting justifications, he claims that PLD is easier to play than WAR.  All you have to have done is played GLA and MRD in phase 4 to know that he already doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

Here's your GLA flowchart circa level 20:
Is there more than one enemy? => yes => Do you still have MP? => yes => Flash => Are you an idiot? => no => Flash again => Is one of the DPS attacking a target out of order or is the healer not playing somewhat conservatively? => yes => Sigh, Flash again => Now what? => Resume Fast Blade>Riot Blade>Flash until stuff dies
Is there more than one enemy? => yes => Do you still have MP? => no => You're doing it wrong, now hurry up and Fast Blade>Riot Blade => okay => Now use Flash
Is there more than one enemy? => no => Are you way ahead on threat? => yes => Fast Blade>Riot Blade
Is there more than one enemy? => no => Are you way ahead on threat? => no => Fast Blade>Savage Blade

Here's MRD:
Is there more than one enemy? => yes => Do you still have TP? => yes => Overpower
Is there more than one enemy? => yes => Do you still have TP? => no => You're shit outta luck, hope nobody's attacking mobs you don't have threat on => /panic
Is there more than one enemy? => no => Alternate Heavy Swing and Skull Sunder

Marauder "Bind All Keys to Overpower and Smash Keyboard" Tanking is hardly much of a challenge at 20.  Maybe it's trickier at 50 but clearly Mr. Happy doesn't fucking know about that either.

IRL I'm a pharmacist, and a large part of my job is dealing with medical research literature.  Distinguishing between quality research and research that has cut corners and used faulty methodology to reach a reasonable-sounding conclusion is a difficult skill to learn and practice.  The reason I bring this up is because I experience the same sort of frustration reading this thread and others and watching all the YouTube drivel on the subject that I get at the exact moment I realize a study has only been constructed to support alterior motives or agendas, support faulty per-ordained conclusions, to serve the zeal of its authors, or to make some chaps some cash down the line at the expense of the science of healthcare.  You look at something like Mr. Happy's video and it's instantly clear that he didn't make it with any consideration on whether his information was accurate or useful, it's there for clickbait, views, and subscriptions and it's really helping nobody.

There's something you all need to keep in mind.  There's no data.

No.

Data.

(Or maybe there is, but nobody seems to be keen on citing anything.)

We don't know how the environment will act at level 50, we don't have a clear picture of what stats or stat growth will look like, what items are available, the types of encounters that will be easy or difficult, how party sizes and composition will affect raid efficacy, etc, etc, etc.

Perhaps more importantly there's no tools yet with which to accurately collect data.  Plus, SE as an MMO developer has a long history of obfuscating the information you're given, which is why actual, verifiable numbers are even more important.  Anyone who has played FFXI probably has a pretty good idea what I'm talking about.  This isn't WoW where tooltips give you all the numbers and freely accommodate data parsing.  Early HNM through the first few years of FFXI were kind of magical in how much of an art there was to figuring out what works and the extent to which the game had to be brute forced to extract useful data.  I was still an officer in Memories of Xendor when Ginnai was developing the MoX parser for SWTOR and having actual data and numbers completely revolutionized the raiding scene for us.

Your heads are in the right place and it's a great showing of the passion with which you're all eagerly approaching XIV, but we have no numbers.  Making guesses and calling it theorycrafting when it's speculative at best is, well, a tad intellectually dishonest.

Update: I eventually posted an edited version of the above here.