I think any of the races can tank any of the content out there without too much trouble on any of the tank jobs, but RDM offers even more flexibility than the rest.
Your biggest strength as an RDM tank is avoiding taking damage, so your HP comes into play less, making it less risky as a taru, and you have a lot of refresh gear and convert available for you to help keep your MP up, giving you less MP concerns as a galka. Personally I'm a mithra, so pretty middle of the road.
For melee phases or mobs your biggest boons are your innate fast cast + fast cast gear, as well as haste. Not only can you get your shadow recast down to the cap (which is a lower recast time on Nas than it is on retail by several seconds, for whatever reason) easily, but your shadow casts will go off much quicker. You can be fairly sloppy if a mob has slow 2 and elegy on and start your ichi shadow cast in between attack rounds and still get it off if you do it fairly quickly after a swing, and ni gives you even more play.
For magic damage, you have access to enough element resistance gear to be fine for any of the content you care about there, along with job trait MDB.
Stoneskin and phalanx are your other big strengths and come in to play with both types of content, giving you additional leeway to screw up or deal with bad doubleattack procs on physical damage, and provide a lot of effective HP for magic damage.
I don't bother with PDT gear outside of an earth staff, in part because I am constantly at 67-69/70 already, and I generally don't bring RDM to content where I know I'll end up getting hit - mostly I use it for wyrms, but will take it elsewhere if needed. If I get terrored on Faf or Nid the BLMs are gonna end up tanking for the duration anyway, so I'm not super concerned there.
Cliff notes: RDM tanking playstyle and gear means any of the races can do it pretty effectively and you don't run into the same potential drawbacks nearly as much as you would on races that have HP or MP concerns.
Atasha wrote:
Honestly never heard of rdm tanking.
It can tank almost all the content in the game, and is better than PLD at certain portions of it. (I'd argue it's better than PLD for most everything, especially on Nas, but lots would disagree)
Square Enix even used it as their tank for Absolute Virtue in the kill video they released.
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PhD Shitposting 2037 | Cthalupa 75 BLM BRD RNG RDM WAR | Cathatwopa 75 NIN THF BLU BRD PLD
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