Really want a magic tank

[Rayo]

as much as I love the idea of a ranged Tank, when over 80 percent of mobs are close range/melee and 99-100% (incase I missed something) of bosses are close range/melee, such a tank, even with a pet, would be highly impractical cause something will charge at someone eventually, might as well be the guy with crap tons of survivability. I mean sure the tank can have plenty of long range attacks , a ranged auto attack, and a ranged combo, etc but they'll eventually be forced into melee combat which makes a dedicated range tank kinda pointless.

Also, while I can't say for certain, a pet based tank would sound far more difficult. A tank's top priority is drawing all enemy attention and keeping it, positioning mobs and bosses for the party to safety fight and staying alive. If a pet has to do this, unless your enmity goes to the pet, its competing with 4(.5 per pet) people for enmity, rather than a normal tanks job of 3(.5 per pet), more so in raids and trials. Than when it comes to mobility and positioning, you have to focus on your own movement plus the pets movement and the relation of the enemy position to your pet which would likely take a separate button prompt, rather than a normal tank simply positioning while performing other actions. Lastly for staying alive, having a pet tank would increase your vulnerability in a way, having to micro manage a tank and you and the healer now have two separate bodies to take care of, and likely for balance reasons, you're far weaker in favor of a super sturdy pet but you'll be punished for having your pet die.

a Caster tank in robes of Casting/healing can work fine, we know how it can feel to perform a cast at point blank (cause PLD), and the matter of defense can be tweaked with a tank stance that has a far more powerful defensive buff to compensate for a caster's natural fragility, on top of that we can Simpy shorten to make instant cast a casters primary spells if casting will be its primary choice of combat

[Malkria]

I don't think a ranged tank would work at all. But it could be close range spell caster, I think a lot of blue magic spells would lend themselves to that quite well.
Blaster could be a close range spell, 1000 needles, bad breath and aqualung are all suitable for radial or cone AoE attacks.

It would have to have some melee attacks, like Red mage, blue mage has never been a pure caster, so it could be amalgamated with spellblade attacks, which I think would work well in the context of a magitek knight.

Again, not necessarily. There are plenty of ideas across the mmo genre that could allow for a variety of tanking. For example using a gun and shield ala Guild Wars 2 or the mesmer from the same game. To does require some outside of the box thinking which may be hampered by how much the devs are trying to keep all the jobs functioning about the same in the 1-30 range. But not impossible.

I mean simply try it in some dungeons. It isn't the best tank, but you CAN see it working if given a more dedicated job and/or abilities. Just depends on if the devs want to try it, but you can see the potential if you try it yourself.

[Lambdafish]

Just going to throw rune fencer/spellblade/mystic knight into the discussion, it pretty much is the ideal choice from a dev standpoint for a magic tank. It has tanking abilities as part of its iconic kit (shellblade, protectblade), and has a playstyle that is easily emulated in XIVs battle system (buffing self with different elemental sword abilities). Its foundation could also be based off RDMs implementation into XIV, due to it also being a magic sword wielder.

Again, not necessarily. There are plenty of ideas across the mmo genre that could allow for a variety of tanking. For example using a gun and shield ala Guild Wars 2 or the mesmer from the same game. To does require some outside of the box thinking which may be hampered by how much the devs are trying to keep all the jobs functioning about the same in the 1-30 range. But not impossible.

I mean simply try it in some dungeons. It isn't the best tank, but you CAN see it working if given a more dedicated job and/or abilities. Just depends on if the devs want to try it, but you can see the potential if you try it yourself.

The issue with ranged tanks in this game is the mass importance of positionals and keeping the boss in a certain place. Unless you want the job to be full of binds and about locking the boss in place (which would either be broken or pointless in practice), a ranged tank would either be in melee range 99% of the time, or would cause chaos for any job that needs to hit positionals

[DRKoftheAzure]

Unless they make DRK AoE spells have combo potencies then good luck trying to ask for a magic tank... DRK and PLD are as close as you going to get...

[Malkria]

The issue with ranged tanks in this game is the mass importance of positionals and keeping the boss in a certain place. Unless you want the job to be full of binds and about locking the boss in place (which would either be broken or pointless in practice), a ranged tank would either be in melee range 99% of the time, or would cause chaos for any job that needs to hit positionals

Granted I haven't done a lot of tanking, and frankly that is why I am asking for a magic/ranged tank. I don't like melee and I doubt that I'm alone in that if there was such an option I would be more into tanking, and I imagine others as well. So all that said, maybe let's try to think of a way to make this work?

First off, if the pet had basic controls and a decent sized aggro pull it could bring in the mobs just fine. From what I have observed in dungeons this could lead you to using the tank to pull mobs then tell it to move to a certain spot much like a fairy or other summon we have currently. Next would be in dealing with positional mechanics. To be honest...there would be no way to conventionally manage this without a LOT of micro managment. So instead maybe have a mechanic based around shields that the mage bolsters with it's own damage. Without it, the mage has to sacrifice some of their own life to either restore the shields or repair/heal the pet. This also would get around the healer needing to heal both mage and pet, simply have the mage be the only one to heal the pet.

By linking the life of mage and pet you could have a reasonable way to be ranged while tanking, bolstered by having the pet simply attack what the mage attacks much like normal pets do currently. Now yes this would in effect make the pet 'easy mode' for a lot of mechanics, but at the same time the tank has to keep track of the fight, teammates, themselves, mechanics, and their pet's status. So I feel it would balance out.

Also, while I can't say for certain, a pet based tank would sound far more difficult.

Well yes and based on what I wrote above it should be. As for aggro there is already abilities to shift aggro around from person to person via the NIN, so having a tank pet just soak up all the aggo the caster produces isn't outside of what can conceivably be put in the game. Furthermore having an aspect of the tank that can't be helped by teammates is also already in the game, unless the Dark Knight actually can get help from AST or BRD jobs with their mana regen?

Granted this would either be considered an easy mode job because the pet can ignore/soak a portion of the mechanics that other tanks can't, or it would be considered the hardest tank due to having to keep track of yourself AND your pet as you tank. Maybe that is a good thing, after all the point is to have a tank that is NOT like the others with a different flavor and weapon. In fact with a high physical defense, magic defense, and high dps style tanks...without going ranged there honestly aren't a whole lot more options to go with.

[PatronasCharm]

A magic tank would be so much fun! Yes, please!
It might actually get me to play a tank, I’ve slung some fun ideas for caster tanks out and about throughout my year here, but for the most part they’ve been somewhat of a Hybrid caster, since to me tanking from a distance seems off.

But Regardless of that, I am so eager to see what new “tank” job SE has in store for us in the coming expansion

[Vorlonshadow]

Imagine how wonderful things would be with a Geomancer Tank, XD

Geomancer Tank, no thank you.

[Rayo]

Granted I haven't done a lot of tanking, and frankly that is why I am asking for a magic/ranged tank. I don't like melee and I doubt that I'm alone in that if there was such an option I would be more into tanking, and I imagine others as well. So all that said, maybe let's try to think of a way to make this work?

I can see what you mean by your concept and it could work in any other game, heck I've mained a Ranged tank in another game, but it worked their because the game was a sci-fi setting with plenty of Ranged, gun toting enemies. On top of that, I'm a huge supporter of a Caster/ranged tank, with the ideas of Morning star (Long mace) wielding Blue mage, Blunderbuss and artillery fire Cannoneer (FF5), I'm not even opposed to a summoned tank, but one solely based around that idea causes problems called impractical and unbalanced because gameplay.

What you propose is that you want to either play a pure utility non-healer support that tells another tank to get hit or play as two tanks at the same time. Why not just be the tank and cut the middle man. Not to mention the balance issues. You play an all around safer tank, so you have to be balanced in theory as a "less risk, less reward" or "more work, same result" job. you either have a super effective pet but you have to dedicate yourself to constantly keeping it active and drawing enmity to it, or have a pet that can just as easily die in combat as any other tank, and you'll have to pick up the pace. on top of the fact that you have to be punished if the pet dies, either you can't tank at all and what normally happens when the tank dies happens or you become the tank with little to no tools beyond the basics. not to mention the vast majority of bosses in the game are built around the idea of having a tank at point blank range, as most bosses carry 3 categories of attacks, anti tank (small circle, tank busters, cleaves, enmity focused attacks, run away aoes, line of sight mechancis), anti-melee(small circle AOEs, 360 cleaves, Run away AOE, line of sight mechancis) and anti-ranged ( Super large cone aoes, half room aoe's, stack markers, Pull ins, donut AOE's, random targeting, rush down attacks line of sight). Major threats to melee and tanks overlap, but not ranged threats, you'll have to actually watch out for more things if you were to be a ranged Pet master tank.

[Malkria]

I can see what you mean by your concept and it could work in any other game, heck I've mained a Ranged tank in another game, but it worked their because the game was a sci-fi setting with plenty of Ranged, gun toting enemies. On top of that, I'm a huge supporter of a Caster/ranged tank, with the ideas of Morning star (Long mace) wielding Blue mage, Blunderbuss and artillery fire Cannoneer (FF5), I'm not even opposed to a summoned tank, but one solely based around that idea causes problems called impractical and unbalanced because gameplay.

What you propose is that you want to either play a pure utility non-healer support that tells another tank to get hit or play as two tanks at the same time. Why not just be the tank and cut the middle man. Not to mention the balance issues. You play an all around safer tank, so you have to be balanced in theory as a "less risk, less reward" or "more work, same result" job. you either have a super effective pet but you have to dedicate yourself to constantly keeping it active and drawing enmity to it, or have a pet that can just as easily die in combat as any other tank, and you'll have to pick up the pace. on top of the fact that you have to be punished if the pet dies, either you can't tank at all and what normally happens when the tank dies happens or you become the tank with little to no tools beyond the basics. not to mention the vast majority of bosses in the game are built around the idea of having a tank at point blank range, as most bosses carry 3 categories of attacks, anti tank (small circle, tank busters, cleaves, enmity focused attacks, run away aoes, line of sight mechancis), anti-melee(small circle AOEs, 360 cleaves, Run away AOE, line of sight mechancis) and anti-ranged ( Super large cone aoes, half room aoe's, stack markers, Pull ins, donut AOE's, random targeting, rush down attacks line of sight). Major threats to melee and tanks overlap, but not ranged threats, you'll have to actually watch out for more things if you were to be a ranged Pet master tank.

I personally see it as both a job you have to work at hard and as a kind of unique hybrid. In fact if you ever have played a "cloromancer" or a leech-type healer you might understand what I am trying to say next better. Basically the caster's DPS directly heals the tank and probably would be more on the direct then DoT side. Thus occasionally the caster would need to directly reinforce the pet, but this wouldn't be cast from MP it would come from the health of the caster. In fact various buffs could be done at cost of HP. Thus the caster is still the primary focus of the healers, not the pet itself which they won't be able to heal. Finally if the pet goes down, the caster could expend an ability to instantly bring it back up at maybe half to 75% of their health if available. This would give this job a LOT more forgiveness for dying while tanking, but at the same time could still be not enough to prevent the mob from going after the caster and then the party.

Now as for mechanics I would again point to another job in the BLM that I just god done arguing with the community about how some of the mechanics you will 'take the hit on' so you can keep your DPS up. If we already have a job where the player can eat mechanics as a DPS, having a tank pet do the same isn't unfathomable. In fact knowing which mechanics your pet can take and which it can't could be it's own unique style.

Again, if you have a SMN or even just the arcanist you can take it's tank pet and try it in a few dungeons. It's not a hard concept to test to see for youself how viable or not it actually is.

[Rayo]

snip

Yes, I've tried a SMN tank summon to tank a dungeon, it did not end well, it was tedious frustrating and boring and People had to regulate their own DPS to not over take the egis.

Also what you created is a Job more safe than PLD, but actively forces Healers to babysit you, you say that you should be ok taking a hit while as fragile as a Caster, but you actively sacrifice health to use your skills. You also don't really go over how you can help the party stay alive or optimally DPS, just how the Caster can keep their pet alive. aAlso the problem with the pet coming back is that Enmity doesn't work that easy, its built up. You can't simply just get back all you lost enmity that easily, and Provoke/Ultimatum works differently as it essentially puts you at the top of the list, not generates it. Lastly its broken that you can instantly bring back an important Part of the party combat ready at the press of a button, even if you sacrifice health, as no other job can do that without using up the emergency button or LB3.

I want you to know, I'm not against a petmaster Tank, I've come up with some ideas in different games, but what you propose brings up the SAM/BLM conundrum, "if its so overpowered whats the point of bringing anything else." What you want is something super easy, super effective, super fun, and super unbalanced.

What I would propose is different, when the pet acts as a tank the damage it takes is dealt to your health, you get a trait early on to make it so that the pet will cast Tank role actions on your target instead of you so it can use provoke, ultimatum, and shirk. Your abilities focus on buffing both you and your pet at the same time. With stronger abilities requiring the use of a Job resource (like PLDs oath, WAR's Beast, or DRK's Blackblood). Also some abilities are solely for your pet to use, including its own enmity generation. To simplify Pet maneuverability, you have a recall button, which causes the pet to drop its actions to follow you (excluding actions you tell it to perform) and pressing the button again to tell the pet to stay at its position (allowing you to effectively maneuver the pet like a good old fashion tank, but also tell it to stay so you can move out). Lastly in case the pet dies, you deplete your resource, but can take on a stance that makes you an inferior tank (all previous skills change to one for solely you) so you can make resources to re summon your pet.