we got a fourth tank

[Kabooa]

The issue with this is the backlash they'd get if they FORCED people to be in Tank stance for actually Tanking.

At this point, Tanks have been in this situation so long that many people have been vocal about how they would HATE it if they had to be in Tank stance in order to Tank. As they're used to the "Lel just DPS" style of Tank play.

Of course, this is only if Tank stance was necessary and not just going to create a situation where Tanks just tell Healers to heal/shield them more because Tanks having more freedom to push DPS > Healers having more freedom to push DPS. Due to Tanks having higher base damage and thus higher returns from pushing it.

Which highlights the main problem, which is that at some point, in order to make a change to fit their idea that Tanks shouldn't be pumping out near DPS levels of damage, they're going to have to make an unpopular decision and stick to it.

Though, I can't see them doing that any time soon, I don't think they quite have the numbers to risk losing a fair chunk of the Tanking population who'd get upset if Tanks weren't just beefy DPS.

Yes I'm aware.

You need only look at any fending accessory thread to see that.

You would obviously have to pair such a change with stances impacting gameplay, not just numbers. Tanks should feel their best when in front of the boss, not behind it, and currently there is zero difference between those positions.

[Makeda]

I never liked the argument of "people won't change their main role" for not introducing new tanks/healers anyways.

Yeah the same argument applies to adding new DPS... "people who will play DPS already are, so they don't need anymore classes, in fact lets remove all but DRG just because..." - flawed logic is flawed.

For me the big drama is where in the MT-OT priority will gunfool fall? If this tank risks unseating WAR I'm going to have to level no matter how much I dislike the concept.

[Makeda]

No. God no. Please SE never add a job to this game that has a summoned minion do the tanking. I would not want to deal with a tank who has to tell a summon where to go and how to position things etc even if the player was directly controlling the summon's cooldowns for tankbusters etc.

As for 'needing' it, no we don't need a new tank but we didn't 'need' a third casting dps either, the game doesn't 'need' jobs of any specific role at this point.

Wildstar had this with the Engineer and it's tank bot. The Engineer used a rifle - so it was technically a ranged tank, and the tank bot was used to keep a target at range - though it didn't tend to live long and you had to keep spawning them. Many engineers just used builds without that pet (In Wildstar, like many current MMOs, you could only have a small number of skills on your action bar, and knew about 3 times as many - so everyone had a different skill build).

Conceptually though, and even in practice, it worked very well. You'd be spamming a new bot about as often as a tank here hits something like Rampart. If I remember right you had some control over it, but could also let it just do it's own thing. It was very handy for massive numbers of adds, as you could use it to split the adds the same way a Monk in WoW can use their statue - throw all the adds to the side, then peel them off in numbers small enough to survive. It made it one of the best tanks to use in some of Wildstar's dungeons that had trash packs frustratingly close together with pats moving between them... the engineers could rescue a situation the other tanks would wipe on by throwing the bot out onto some spell-casting adds that would otherwise take out the healer.

If we had a ranged tank here, or a pet-tank, it would instantly become meta for any content that had a risk of adds spawning in poorly controlled locations.

[Makeda]

I quite like the focus on DPSing too, makes the role "feel" more plausible, like the mob is attacking me because I'm an actual threat and not because it feels like attacking an indestructible brick wall for no readily apparent reason.

In WoW, a few expacs back, I macro'd "yo moma" jokes to my taunt and some threat abilities... :P

The only time I ever saw plausible tanking in an MMO-like game was in Guild Wars 1 which... had no tanks. But enemies would ALWAYS focus on healers, yet players and NPCs alike could not move through hostile figures on the map. So we'd get a stack of warriors, and form an actual wall around our healer - using choke points in the dungeon to create an impass.
- This was a strat for only a few months in that game during one particular patch cycle in the combat AI...

Personally I'm not a fan of the 'DPS tank' thing here. I'd much more prefer a situation where regular enemy damage was about as strong as current tank busters, and tanks had mitigation to compensate, but anyone else taking a hit from even a trash mob would be about 80% of the way to dead...
- Basically akin to WoW in any patch cycle before people outgear the stuff.

That said, some of the fight design here that I like might not be possible if it was any more lethal to the non-tanks...

[Kalise]

If we had a ranged tank here, or a pet-tank, it would instantly become meta for any content that had a risk of adds spawning in poorly controlled locations.

Ranged Tanks and Pet Tanks...

Well, I remember back in the day in WoW when Warlocks could tank things with their Voidwalker. But it became a strat to cheese a particular boss fight because of pets AoE damage reduction that made it better than an "Actual" tank so then the pet got nerfed to uselessness...

There was also a time in WoW when Warlocks had a Glyph that gave them a Tank stance that boosted their threat and defenses and changes a few of their skills to be instant casts. That was actually pretty fun, since you ended up playing a Tank but with DPS rotations (So you know... Actually fun). But then it was removed because of course having fun in a Blizzard game is not allowed, gotta remove any source of entertainment lest anyone start enjoying themselves instead of paying $30 for a store mount!

Other notable tanks I recall off hand...

Engineers in Anarchy Online where kind of Pet Tanks. Well, not really an actual tank but kind of because their schtick was to get a bunch of buffs from high level players to allow them to build a pet that would be many times higher level than them and use that to carry them/their team through content. Ahh, the joys of AFK farming because of hiding in the corner of a mission map while your level ??? pet (Because you could only see levels up to 50 levels higher than you) was set to Hunt mode and ran around murdering everything was a thing xD

They later nerfed Hunt mode though so this wouldn't work (Yet at the same time, Keepers could AFK farm Shadowlands content because they would just stand around in the middle of a pack of enemies with auto-attack when attacked activated while their healing aura sustained them...)

Also in Anarchy Online was the Soldier class, which was a ranged tank. Using Assault Rifles (Or Machine Pistols/SMG's if you were min/maxing) to fill their enemies full of lead (Or plasma) while for defence they had reflection shields that mitigated (And reflected) damage. With of course, their main defensive CD being the OP OP Total Mirror Shield which would be a massive 75%-82% damage reduction (With 1 minute 20s duration and 2m CD...)

Of course, AO had some peculiar things with Hate management. Like, if you sat down in combat you'd generate a bunch of Hate (Because standard OoC healing items technically only had the requirement for you to sit down to use them, so hate generation when you sat down made things hit you to stop you from healing) so you could effectively "Taunt" as a Tank by sitting down if you didn't have your actual taunt skills available or if they were out of range xD

Though, I get the concern about a pet tank in FFXIV, due to it being more traditional in regards to needing to face bosses away from the group to mitigate cleaves and such. Meanwhile, pets have very limited control compared to other games, as well as them having delays on using actions because they'll queue them up for when they finished their current action. So it won't be as easy to for example, quickly reposition a pet while throwing out an AoE and using an oGCD taunt to pick up adds. Generally, pet tanks work by pets just being imbalanced to cover up for their weakness of lack of control.

Unless there ends up being something like your character still does most of the stuff just with the caveat that your enmity goes to your pet. So that basically all your pet needs to do is be in the correct position and get slapped a bunch. But I dare say that wouldn't really be fulfilling the fantasy of a "Pet using Tank" (Either that or they go the aforementioned Glyphed Warlock or WotLK era Unholy Death Knight tank where they have a pet but it's just there to DPS stuff while the PC is the actual tank still...)

[Hysterior]

Bit of a shame that the new tank is another sword user, would have preferred something new.
But still nice to have a new tank class at least. Hopefully some DPS will do the switch.

[HyperiusUltima]

Bit of a shame that the new tank is another sword user, would have preferred something new.
But still nice to have a new tank class at least. Hopefully some DPS will do the switch.

There’s a good chance they will, provided the job is done properly. Let’s just hope whenever they do the play test stuff again they don’t get horrible PR for it on GamerEscape since Stormblood got an outrage from WHM. Also, I’m hoping they listen to feedback this time around before releasing so we don’t wind up with a job that’s either neutered(DRK) due to bad implementation or gets nothing new(WHM).

[Kalise]

Bit of a shame that the new tank is another sword user, would have preferred something new.
But still nice to have a new tank class at least. Hopefully some DPS will do the switch.

True, it is another sword wielding class. But it's also one of the highly requested sword types the Gunblade.

So, hopefully they can make it play differently enough to a normal sword that this doesn't end up being an issue.

In addition, given the fact that it's such a highly requested weapon, there will be some DPS swapping over to play it, provided the class doesn't end up being boring or UP.

Possibly actually a reason they decided to make the Gunblade user a Tank was to entice some DPS players over.