Every time I swapped to tank with my last glamour, I sighed a bit, in discontent. The Snow White color really didn’t sit well with me, despite it matching up with the otherwise nice Yafaemi Chain Hose. On top of that, the more I looked at it, the whole thing just looked cobbled together. I never intended for the look to last all that long, I suppose, so my being dissatisfied with it doesn’t come as a major surprise. However, through more or less all of Heavensward, I’ve not had many tank looks that I’ve truly fallen in love with.

That is, except for one core look, that ultimately goes back to late in A Realm Reborn, when, much like now, I was pretty fed up with tank gear. Most of the core problems that I have with tank stuff were the same back then as they are now, though in some ways less frustrating. Toward the end of the expansion, after finishing my Excalibur Zeta, I put a lot of work into figuring out Alahra’s core tank look. I went back and forth between two body pieces, the Mythril Cuirass and the Iron Scale Mail, coupled with the Augmented Gallant Cuisses or the Valor Cuisses. I never quite perfected the look though, since I couldn’t ever settle on pieces for the arms and legs.

It wasn’t until early Heavensward that I figured things out. Back then, I had fallen in love with Dark Knight, and Alahra more or less ran around pretending to be her sister all the time when she was tanking. Mid-leveling process for Dark Knight, I put together the first version of the one tank glamour I’ve been happy with (for Alahra, anyway) throughout Heavensward, and I talked about it before here. That glamour was meant for Dark Knight primarily, though, and I’ve focused almost entirely on Paladin for most of the last year.

After coming to the realization that I wasn’t going to figure anything new out for tanks with Heavensward effectively over and no new gear until Stormblood, I did what I should have done in the first place and restored the Paladin-friendly version of the look.

Glamour Components
Head: Elegant Rimless Glasses (Metallic Silver) | Body: Mythril Cuirass (Pure White) | Hands: Orthodox Gauntlets of Fending | Legs: Chimerical Felt Breeches of Fending (Pure White) | Feet: Orthodox Greaves of Fending

I never actually found a headpiece I liked for this version of the look. The Skull Eyepatch from the black/Dark Knight variant obviously wasn’t going to cut it. I could have gone with the Augmented Gallant Coronet, but it’s a bit too “ceremonial” for an otherwise simple look. Normally, I don’t think I used anything for the head slot back in early Heavensward, but I had Alahra’s original hair then. With Minfillia’s hair, for whatever reason, I always feel much better about a glamour with at least some form of eyewear. Going to the Elegant Rimless Glasses on tank completes the transition away from the Reading Glasses (at least, I don’t think any remaining glamour is using them now).

The rest of the look is more or less standard Alahra and simply a white version of the other look, so there’s not a lot to talk about here. The only other, very minor difference, is that I’m using the crafted version of the Noct Breeches from the black version of the look. The Chimerical Felt ones dye in a two-tone pattern (which is more evident on colors other than Pure White), and I normally don’t like that. However, in this case, I prefer the muted grey along the edges of the half skirt to the more prominent brown from the Noct model.

And that’s that. Much as was the case in ARR, I think this will mark the final tank glamour I do for Heavensward. That’s actually somewhat disappointing to realize, that with a whole new expansion of tank gear, I have more or less ended up at the same place I ended 2.x. We did get the Orthodox Gauntlets and Greaves (which  will probably still be my staple for a long time), but the expansion never really gave me a body piece I fell in love with. Here’s to hoping Stormblood gives me something for tanks to fall in love with!