Why having a dedicated MT and dedicated OT is a TERRIBLE idea

[Izsha]

I’ll give you the very short answer. Warrior having the highest damage and fantastic mitigation combined with Paladin’s support abilities that allow parties to more easily mitigate or bypass certain mechanics via Cover and Intervention make them the ideal tank combo in the current meta.

Pld provides the same benefits to either so that's not any more synergy. That's just pld being boss at helping any MT. Drk has epic mitigation and only the smallest sliver of damage loss to war as a MT and (almost) as good snap aggro. Drk/pld is arguably tougher to kill and nearly identicle in damage to war/pld.

You exaggerate the damage on warthen just list pld actions. That's not a good sell on why drk/old is dramatically worse. The dps ie easy to see. Just check logs. Drk is no slouch on defense or damage in it's current form.

[Kalise]

there is nothing that stop having 2 tanks being meta and the other 2 crying in a corner, this will happen much more often with the current tank status, its happening right now with DRK, you just will add GUN to the list of the posible 2 most unwanted tanks.

the diference of 4 multipurpose tanks with no limitation of any kind vs 2 couples of tanks that are forced to play "MT-OT" roles is for the first ones if 2 tanks are just worse you have to give buffs-nerfs with having all tanks in mind basing the balance with all of then at the same time vs ¿PLD and WAR are to strong? ok then i will just buff DRK only against PLD and GUN only against WAR making dev job much more easy and straightforward since they will balance tanks capabilitys with the fact you will always bring a MT and OT, they will not care what PLD or DRK do when they buff GUN since you will always bring 1 of then in combat.

idk you but for me its pretty clear, adding GUN and don't add something like this will make tank status be like HW and SB but worse bcs we are going to be more, a complety knigthmare even harder to balance, and this will just make 1 MT will sinergy pretty well with 2 tanks (OT) and you have to keep a balance against the other MT to make both equally relevant.

Though, it's far easier to simply address the core issue of having an inequality between the very core of Tanking skills across any number of Tanks than it is to try and balance even 2 Tanks that are trying to be unique within a specific role.

For example:

If all tanks had equal Mitigation options for Tankbusters (Effectiveness/Cooldown) and having equal utility when not actively tanking (In terms of things like, providing extra mitigation to the active tank and providing party DPS) and all tanks had equal overall DPS output. Then irregardless of how many Tanks you have in the game, be it, 3, 4, 5, or even 15+e tc, they would all be equally worthy in either spot (MT/OT).

However, if you decide to try and make 2 MT's and 2 OT's and they have inequality within their skills even within their "Pairs" then you will always have difficulties balancing them out as the meta will eventually find the "Best" pair, if they don't find some way of "Cheeseing" out things like "MT/MT" or "OT/OT" compositions because of how the further inequality between tanks would impact things.

To say nothing about how you then also make it impossible to ever add a new tank into the game, because then you'd upset the balance of 2-2.

Since, the issue isn't that there's not an equal amount of "MT's" and an equal amount of "OT's". It's the fact, that at the very core, there's massive inequality between the base kits of the current Tanks. That's why WAR is considered the premier MT, because Holmgang > Living Dead/Hallowed Ground because the CD. That's why PLD is considered the premier OT, because Cover and Intervention > The nothing that both WAR/DRK have that provides similar utility. How WAR+PLD > DRK+X because Divine Fail/Shake it Off > TBN for providing party DPS through LB generation.

DRK is not wanted, not because it's a "Second MT" that isn't being balanced against WAR, not because it's a "Second OT" that isn't being balanced against PLD and not because it's some weird flexible tank that can be either MT/OT and is coming up short. DRK isn't wanted because at its very core, it's just outright inferior to the other 2 tanks that are dominant in their preferred roles. Which also goes to affecting those 2 tanks too (Such as how WAR blows PLD out of the water in the MT position and PLD blows WAR out of the water in the OT position. It's just less prominent because they still find a spot in the raid meta)

[shao32]

snip

they try to do that all the time and never work, masive homogenization of dps, utility and mitigation will kill tanks identity specially since we want diverse tanks kits what you ask its imposible by how the rotations and stuff works, some tank will be always superior to the others no matter what, holmgang need to be tuned down thats not a secret but that can be balanced easily, what i dont want is every tank having same tools, only the universal skills to fullfill his duty as tanks of course, and all jobs are going to be balanced with the new stuff now in 5.0 so take current WAR and PLD as a argument may not be best.

thats depend of how innefective is take a doube MT-OT, if you loose many stuff for bring double MT-OT, lets say when you have double scholar for example, then you will never want to have 2 of then, specially since what i say except for that especific stuff that separate tanks all of then will have same leves of agro, dps and mitigation in his own way, but his kits will be mre diverse since no matter how much utility PLD have if his partner have similar utility leves, thats saves the other 2 being so focused on utility and can focus on something else, a bit more dps, movility another kind of utility whatever you want.

idk if you see this as a dev perspective, but having to balance against 3 its much more harder that balanced against 1, its save a lot of time and resources since tanks are with healers the most hardest roles to balance.

despite what we saw i doutb we get more tanks since the devs will have a limit of how much jobs are going to be able to handle at the same time, and at minimun we aren't go to get a new tank in 4 years so i dont expect we get more tanks since it will be to much jobs and will affect the quality of the game balance wise speaking.

[Kalise]

they try to do that all the time and never work

No they don't.

They have literally not once tried to do this.

As evidenced by the fact that PLD is literally the only Tank that has anything like Cover/Intervention that can allow them to effectively use CD's for the active tank, increasing the number of CD's a MT has by 2-3 (Cover, Intervention + Sentinel and Intervention + Rampart), heck, potentially even 4 if you end up using PoA for a TB instead of a RB.

As evidenced by the fact that Holmgang still exists with its shorter CD than any other similar skill.

masive homogenization of dps, utility and mitigation will kill tanks identity specially since we want diverse tanks kits what you ask its imposible by how the rotations and stuff works, some tank will be always superior to the others no matter what

It will not kill tank identity, since no tanks identity is "I'm the best support" or "I'm the best at cheesing TB's" - Well, no tanks identity SHOULD be those (The fact that that is what PLD/WAR are respectively is not indicative of what would happen in a world where actual balancing has been done)

DPS at the current expansion already is balanced. You look at logs and you can see that all 3 tanks are roughly equal with each other. None of them play the same, yet they all are achieving similar DPS. Maybe you could adjust some things here and there, such as how easy it is to maximize DPS on WAR because of how much their damage hinges on IR+FC spam (Which to be honest, I abhor the design of, it's neither fun nor interesting to have all your damage pushed into this 2 button combo for 10s every 90s)

A large portion of mitigation is already homogenized, thanks to Rampart being a role action and every tank having a form of ~30% DR as a CD (Vengeance, Shadow Wall, Sentinel) - Pretty much everything else is fluff outside of invulnerability skills (Which I still think shouldn't exist/work on TB's because these are the skills that are problematic to balance, especially if wanting to keep them with individual flavour)

The major things that need doing, is pulling out all of the fluff "Defensive CD's" that aren't mandatory for soaking TB's and making sure that every tank has equal mitigation for TB's. I.e. Rampart, Shadow Wall, maybe a 3rd CD (That isn't invulnerability). You can tweak things to have individual class flavour too if you wish, like maybe Shadow Wall generates Blood when attacked or maybe it's a bit stronger against Magical damage. Perhaps PLD gets a slightly more potent Rampart but with a longer CD.

Then it's a matter of making snap enmity more equal across the board. Which currently means buffing PLD's snap enmity. Which could be as easy as tweaking CoS to have a higher enmity modifier on its initial hit of damage, giving them a potent oGCD enmity boost (Akin to how WAR can Equilibrium and DRK can DA Dark Passenger)

With the final thing being to sort out utilities. It's not necessarily needing to give every tank Cover and Intervention and an AoE shield, but just giving tools to aid the party in similar ways.
For example, if TBN was 20% on allies it would be the equivalent of Intervention + Rampart, if it could scale up somehow with a CD then it could literally emulate Intervention, but in a DRK theme.
Then party DPS boosts can come in the form of many things. Like a thematic thing for WAR could be a Warcry that boosts damage or something (Instead of SiO being a random shield that has no real thematic reason to exist). DRK could get like a debuff to put on the boss to increase damage taken. While PLD gets to Divine Fail for extra LB generation or something.

idk if you see this as a dev perspective, but having to balance against 3 its much more harder that balanced against 1, its save a lot of time and resources since tanks are with healers the most hardest roles to balance.

But the thing is, that it just isn't hard to balance multiple classes against each other. Not in a role where everyone needs to be able to do the same thing (Mitigate TB's, Generate Enmity, Have some use while not being the active tank)

It's only hard when you start to try and create "Unique" versions of what should be baseline tools for the role.

Like, all tanks need to be able to soak TB's. But then you make a unique skill like Holmgang that just ignores them on a shorter CD than anyone else's version and you break Tank balance.

All tanks need to be able to generate snap enmity so to be able to pull without DPS overtaking with their alpha strike (Or having to wait X seconds before they can start DPSing). You make a tank like PLD that has garbage upfront enmity and you break tank balance.

All tanks need to be useful while not being the active tank. You create skills like Cover and Intervention and you break tank balance.

It's honestly not hard to see the major flaws present in current tank balance. None of them stem from the need to have specifically categorized "MT" and "OT" sub-roles.

[shao32]

As evidenced by the fact that PLD is literally the only Tank that has anything like Cover/Intervention

TBN is literally intervetion, both works simillary and archives the same result, and SE give WAR a aoe shield, they did this in some degree this expansion, cover is the only mechanic that remain exclusively to PLD and is part of his identity like the block mechanic.

It will not kill tank identity, since no tanks identity is "I'm the best support" or "I'm the best at cheesing TB's" - Well, no tanks identity SHOULD be those (The fact that that is what PLD/WAR are respectively is not indicative of what would happen in a world where actual balancing has been done)

best support and stuff like that are identity per se, being a dps tank was a strong identity for WAR all this years,its the best? depend, in terms of dps against utility it is, you can see the DPS BLM vs bard or ninja for example, mitigation or emity,? not at all since we need those being equal to fullfill our basic dutys.

DPS at the current expansion already is balanced. You look at logs and you can see that all 3 tanks are roughly equal with each other. None of them play the same, yet they all are achieving similar DPS. Maybe you could adjust some things here and there, such as how easy it is to maximize DPS on WAR because of how much their damage hinges on IR+FC spam (Which to be honest, I abhor the design of, it's neither fun nor interesting to have all your damage pushed into this 2 button combo for 10s every 90s)

but utility is not, WAR and PLD have stronger and more impactfull utility that DRK and by SE logic that have to be compensated with more dps since even the defensive utility brings oportunity for more dps rooms for you healers-dps and better team logistic.

A large portion of mitigation is already homogenized, thanks to Rampart being a role action and every tank having a form of ~30% DR as a CD (Vengeance, Shadow Wall, Sentinel) - Pretty much everything else is fluff outside of invulnerability skills (Which I still think shouldn't exist/work on TB's because these are the skills that are problematic to balance, especially if wanting to keep them with individual flavour)

The major things that need doing, is pulling out all of the fluff "Defensive CD's" that aren't mandatory for soaking TB's and making sure that every tank has equal mitigation for TB's. I.e. Rampart, Shadow Wall, maybe a 3rd CD (That isn't invulnerability). You can tweak things to have individual class flavour too if you wish, like maybe Shadow Wall generates Blood when attacked or maybe it's a bit stronger against Magical damage. Perhaps PLD gets a slightly more potent Rampart but with a longer CD.

i consider all tanks are pretty unique in the way they mitigate damage, apart of rampart and the sentinel variants every tank has his form of mitigation skills that interact with his own kit with is awesome, and they still have some unique skills for themself, thrill of battle, dark mind, bulward, ect, i wish we get rid of rampart since i want shadow skin come back (despite being just the same).

Then it's a matter of making snap enmity more equal across the board. Which currently means buffing PLD's snap enmity. Which could be as easy as tweaking CoS to have a higher enmity modifier on its initial hit of damage, giving them a potent oGCD enmity boost (Akin to how WAR can Equilibrium and DRK can DA Dark Passenger)

With the final thing being to sort out utilities. It's not necessarily needing to give every tank Cover and Intervention and an AoE shield, but just giving tools to aid the party in similar ways.
For example, if TBN was 20% on allies it would be the equivalent of Intervention + Rampart, if it could scale up somehow with a CD then it could literally emulate Intervention, but in a DRK theme.
Then party DPS boosts can come in the form of many things. Like a thematic thing for WAR could be a Warcry that boosts damage or something (Instead of SiO being a random shield that has no real thematic reason to exist). DRK could get like a debuff to put on the boss to increase damage taken. While PLD gets to Divine Fail for extra LB generation or something.

i agree all tanks need to have more or less equal chance to pull, in fact we have that before WAR get unchained unlocked again, but i dont agree every tank need a way to aid the party in similar ways as PLD, 2 meaby can share that stuff like WAR and PLD both do ae shielding, but not all of then.

But the thing is, that it just isn't hard to balance multiple classes against each other. Not in a role where everyone needs to be able to do the same thing (Mitigate TB's, Generate Enmity, Have some use while not being the active tank)

It's only hard when you start to try and create "Unique" versions of what should be baseline tools for the role.

Like, all tanks need to be able to soak TB's. But then you make a unique skill like Holmgang that just ignores them on a shorter CD than anyone else's version and you break Tank balance.

i disagree, its pretty hard to balance tanks in that way since you not only have to keep in mind things like how much mitigate but recast, how the skill scale with your stats, how the skill or overall kit react against other jobs kits (defiance adloquium for example) there is many factors in mind, and we are not the only jobs, the devs are focusing on DPS and healers too at the same time, we dont enjoy full time atention from then and they get a lot of feedback from diferent points of view so that make his job more harder, its not a easy job at all, if it was DRK will be fixed asap like WAR at the same time, but then if you are gonna make changes you have to keep in consideration the own job numbers, sometimes is not so straightforward like increase TBN duation to 7s, there is a lot of things, and having feedback coming of why my job can't do this like this this and this, or why my job is the last for this its more when you compare you job with other 3, if i compared my job with 1 bcs we are only 2 for 1 spot in a optimal setup is much much better.

All tanks need to be able to generate snap enmity so to be able to pull without DPS overtaking with their alpha strike (Or having to wait X seconds before they can start DPSing). You make a tank like PLD that has garbage upfront enmity and you break tank balance.

All tanks need to be useful while not being the active tank. You create skills like Cover and Intervention and you break tank balance.

It's honestly not hard to see the major flaws present in current tank balance. None of them stem from the need to have specifically categorized "MT" and "OT" sub-roles.

i agree, snap agro, mitigation should be always similar betwen all tanks no matter what so you start the fight with you fav job, but stuff like cover and intervetion dont break tank balance as my opinion, it dint in ARR when we only have WAR and PLD and it dint matter bcs there was only 2.

the flaws of current tank desing are WAR being top tier MT and PLD being top tier OT, and DRK in the middle master of nothing with i agree, but if they push DRK to compete against WAR for the "MT" with similar capabilitys and GUN for the "OT" with similar capabilitys to PLD and all having equal snap agro so you will not care at all who take the place of "MT" and who take the "OT" and have something to avoid bring 2 "MT-OT" i can see they will archive much much more easily with less effort compared to the current system or "one for all- all for one" if you preffer call it, at leas in my opinion but i respect yours of course.

[Kalise]

TBN is literally intervetion, both works simillary and archives the same result, and SE give WAR a aoe shield, they did this in some degree this expansion, cover is the only mechanic that remain exclusively to PLD and is part of his identity like the block mechanic.

Neither The Blackest Night nor Shake it Off work like Intervention.

In case you're unaware, Intervention is 10% DR plus 50% of the effect of Rampart or Sentinel you have active.

Meaning that PLD can pop Rampart + Intervention for 20% DR for their target. Or Sentinel + Intervention for 30% DR for their target. Or heck, Rampart + Sentinel + Intervention for 40% DR for their target.

TBN is only ever 10% of your maximum HP as a shield for the target. DRK has no health buffs to make it stronger. It will never let a MT soak a TB on its own.

Shake it Off is closer in that it scales with WAR's CD's but even then it's 8% and scales 4% per CD (With the effects being Thrill of Battle (Often used for DPS increase with Unheaval), Vengeance, Raw Intuition and Inner Beast (Meaning needing to be in Defiance and tank your DPS by using Inner Beast instead of Fell Cleave) for up to 24% max health shield. Not accounting for the fact that you'll never want to use this for the TB and will only ever want to use this skill when a RB is coming so you build up LB from the entire party having their shields broken.

Also, saying "Cover is part of their identity" doesn't alleviate the fact that this "Identity" is part of the major imbalance within tanks because it's gifting one tank a special and very potent skill that will always make it superior to other options while it has a monopoly on that type of skill.

If you keep Cover as it currently works where it allows PLD to have an additional 20% DR CD skill (That also then allows their own personal CD's to work to prevent the damage of the active tank) then you will always have an imbalance with tanks. Even if you make another "OT" sub-role job to pair with them, if they don't have Cover or something like it, they are destined to stay in the garbage bin (Outside nerfs to make PLD complete garbage outside of this skill)

That is the problem. Inequality within the tools that Tanks have available to perform their basic duties.

best support and stuff like that are identity per se, being a dps tank was a strong identity for WAR all this years

Yes, DPS tank was an identity for WAR. Until PLD's and DRK's complained that they're just inferior at being Tanks when DPS is a thing people care about.

Same with "Best support". So long as you can call a job "Best support" you've literally got an imbalance with the OT role.

its the best? depend, in terms of dps against utility it is, you can see the DPS BLM vs bard or ninja for example

The difference between these DPS jobs and Tanks, is that no Tank is bringing buffs to party DPS in lieu of personal DPS.

All 3 tanks have all of their DPS tied into their personal damage. No-one has a buff or debuff that amplifies party DPS.

The closest thing we have is how PLD/WAR's AoE shields generate LB to increase party damage by increasing the frequency of DPS LB's.

Also, this is what I was referring to with "Overall DPS" - Both in terms of contrasting burst vs sustained personal damage, but also personal vs party DPS output - In the case that any tank did have some of its damage output in the form of support skills to amplify the party.

i consider all tanks are pretty unique in the way they mitigate damage

You can consider that all you like. It won't change the fact that the core CD's for tanks are:

Rampart
Vengeance/Shadow Wall/Sentinel
Holmgang/Living Dead/Hallowed Ground
Intervention
Cover

Everything else is niche (Dark Mind only works vs magic damage. Raw Intuition only works against AA's) or is active mitigation (TBN/Sheltron... Inner Beast )

i dont agree every tank need a way to aid the party in similar ways as PLD, 2 meaby can share that stuff like WAR and PLD both do ae shielding, but not all of then.

And then we're right back to the inequality of tank kits again.

At the very core, all tanks need to perform all of their functions at a similar level.

These functions are and will always be:

1) Enmity Gain (Notably, Snap Enmity)
2) DPS
3) Mitigating Tankbusters
4) Providing support while "OT" (More accurately, while not the active tank)
5) Mitigating "Fluff" damage (I.e. Auto Attacks and/or Raidbusters)

If any of these things are not equal, there will be a Tank imbalance and you will see 1 (Or more) job get dumpstered. Sometimes you might be able to get situations where a pair of tanks can balance out an inequality (Such as how WAR pulls while PLD provides support) but in the grand scheme of things that sort of balancing is doomed to fail, especially with a new job coming into the mix.

i disagree, its pretty hard to balance tanks in that way

It is not.

The fact that they've already balanced DPS between Tanks and already made Rampart and 30% DR CD's baseline for all tanks shows how it is possible to do things like this.

Right now, the major things creating imbalance are:

* The inequality between Invulnerability skills. (Making WAR the de facto best "MT")
* PLD's having all of the Support skills (Making them the de facto best "OT")
* PLD's having crap snap enmity (Making them the only tank that sucks at pulling)

stuff like cover and intervetion dont break tank balance as my opinion, it dint in ARR when we only have WAR and PLD and it dint matter bcs there was only 2.

Tank imbalance didn't affect the game back when there was only 2 tanks and they were both run because then you had the best of both of the classes.

Sound argument

Now, think about how much Tank imbalance affected the game when there was a choice between which Tanks you ran in a party. I.e. HW and now SB.

the flaws of current tank desing are WAR being top tier MT and PLD being top tier OT, and DRK in the middle master of nothing with i agree, but if they push DRK to compete against WAR for the "MT" with similar capabilitys and GUN for the "OT" with similar capabilitys to PLD and all having equal snap agro so you will not care at all who take the place of "MT" and who take the "OT" and have something to avoid bring 2 "MT-OT" i can see they will archive much much more easily with less effort compared to the current system or "one for all- all for one" if you preffer call it, at leas in my opinion but i respect yours of course.

But the thing is, this will never be the case. Not so long as they're being balanced around inequal kits.

DRK will never be able to compete with WAR unless Living Dead is made to work exactly like Holmgang (Or better) - This includes if Holmgang was pushed to a 4 minute CD the same as Living Dead, Holm is just better because it doesn't have that forced heal shield effect (That requires 100% max health to be healed)

GNB will never be able to compete with PLD unless they have Intervention and Cover. (Also, if they did get both Intervention and Cover, it would make GNB + PLD the best composition because then you'd have more tools to use to bypass TB's)

Hence why it's much easier to balance multiple jobs around the same basic toolkit to accomplish their core duties. That's why things like standardized Rampart and 30% DR CD's are very good for tank balance and why unequal things like the invulnerability skills are horrible for balance.

[Lyth]

It amuses me that people think SE thinks that PLD is an offtank.

Of course they think WAR is the OT and both PLD and DRK are the MTs.

The point of Tint and my posts is that SE considers PLD and DRK as "MT" and WAR as "OT". Community treats it the opposite since WAR performs excellent as MT.

Some context here that should have probably been in the opening post: Interview Link

We also really wanted to add another tank to balance the tanks more. With 4 tanks, we can better balance the tank role, with two main tanks and two off-tanks.

When players decide which role or job to play. Even a small difference in abilities and attribute make a big difference. People like to take Paladin as an off-tank thanks to abilities like Cover, so the Warrior and Dark Knight are fighting for the main-tank spot most commonly.

So hypothetically speaking, if we rebalance things and put Warrior as MT, then the Paladin and Dark Knight would be fighting for off-tank. No matter what we really needed to balance this with two and two. Its much more fair this way, so its two jobs between main tank and two between off-tank. This is very tentative so please convey this is no indication at all of our final plans.

I'm not ready to shoot down this idea just yet. It mostly hinges on how the devs choose to define "MT" and "OT" for the coming expansion. We don't even know how the battle content is being designed yet.

There is one benefit of this sort of a system: it moves us away from making every tank have an answer to everything. Homogenisation only works if you make every tank functionally identical. You can't half commit. If there are small differences, then it becomes easy to pick out which tanks are the best. If there are large differences, you're comparing apples and oranges, and it no longer becomes clear cut.

If the two categories of tanks are sufficiently different from each other, you have no point of comparison. How does Cover trade-off against a gap closer, for example? How does party-wide damage reduction trade-off against an invulnerability move? How does a stun/silence trade-off against a party-wide knockback prevention skill?

Perhaps instead of "MT" and "OT" relating to the "active tank", we should think of these as ability pools, such that combining an "MT" with an "OT" gives you access to the broadest variety of abilities.

[Izsha]

It could he done (theoretically) either way. We have 2 types of healers. We could have 2 types of tanks. But I really hope they just make tanks. Players will find a way to cheese it. Thehealer thing works because mitigation and recovery are distinct and both required. There is nothing to comparethat to in tanking. They all just mitigate. If the OT becomes tank supoort like brd/mch are ranged supoort then players will add up the damage and ignore their classification anyway for meta. Players will break whatever they make.

Also, people leveled and played tanks for years. If you leveled sch ypy chose the shieldhealer. I didnt choose the "ot" or "mt" class. Removing that will pass off a giant portion of tanks. Not to mention the logistics of 1 tank scenarios (mt or ot design will be better for dungeons/24mans. Remember 2.0 war being shunned from dungeons?) Not to mention how older content will work with these new setups.

It really isnt a big ask to match all tanks dps. They already did it. Mitigation needs minor tweaks (revamp IB to be non stance locked, remove the extra CD, then up HG timer). Give pld snap aggro. Give war/drk similar power as pld yo supoort the active tank/party. No more required pld as supporttank. No more war has to pull.

There will always be a meta comp that is 1% better than comp 2. But as long as that margin is small, game is balanced. Let the parse paddders freak out about 1% while the rest of the game goes on with any tank combo.

[whiskeybravo]

SE just needs to give it up honestly. Can't release full jobs, can't release full races, now they are considering tanks being only half a tank.

There are many reasons why it'd be a problem if taken to the extreme, for all the points illustrated and more. Most notable to me are: Are their OT's in 4-mans? And if OT dps is higher than the MT jobs, people are just gonna try to make 2 OT work for everything. Oh you need to pug a tank for the night? Hope you find the right one, or have both types leveled and can perform equally on them.

All 4 tanks need to be equally capable of either MT or OT as the situation calls for. Absolutely idiotic to split them in to separate tank roles.

There is one benefit of this sort of a system: it moves us away from making every tank have an answer to everything. Homogenisation only works if you make every tank functionally identical. You can't half commit. If there are small differences, then it becomes easy to pick out which tanks are the best. If there are large differences, you're comparing apples and oranges, and it no longer becomes clear cut.

This is a valid point, but to me it seems to lead down the path of "Jack of all trades, master of none". Instead of being really good at one job, you're just mediocre at a couple because the system forces you to be.

[shao32]

snip

sorry if i don't quete everything by parts, phone and such.

TBN is the intervetion counterpart since both skills work similary, both are single target protection of short duration, both have quick recast, and both skills get boosted by his own tank, TBN with DRK hp and intervetion by other CDs skills, im pretty aware how intervetion works still his boost defense is limited by the recast of such skill (rampart, sentinel) vs TBN having his full protection always.

WAR still have slashing debuff but apart of that defensive utility make and edge on progresion and less skilled raids to dealt with the big raid aoes and other mechanics, DRK lacks any impactfull utility so by default should have more dps to compensate that or get reprisal back.

we use to have foresight/rampart/shadowskin and we din't need at all the blant change of making rampart a role skill, mitigation wise we good with the exception that PLD need more magic mitigation, WAR was good with foresight and its not only holmgang that make WAR the best MT, it defiance and his powerhouse despite not being optimal its a edge and none of the other 2 can compete against that.

i doubt you, me and anyone here really understand the process of buff/debuff anything in this game, making a clone army with diferent paintings in the armor don't solve anything either since you will still want it to be diferent enough to feel unique somehow, and archive that only with dps rotation is blant bcs we never have a complex dps rotation
for much we love to discuss about tank balance nobody here is a expert, if it was so easy then they will never have such problems in the first place, holmgang, living and hallowed are already counterparts, what separate this skills are just numbers and they complety fail to balance this ones despite bein so straightforward and obvious, same problem happen with vengeance, shadow wall and sentinel, and now ppl are complaining sentinel its not worthy of the recast.

now utility really depends of the content too, cover don't break anything bcs PLD still have to use CDs to survive the hit so it's not like holmgang that just roll over mechanics several times in a fight saving CDs, intervetion the same, at basic levels its not better that TBN but the moment you have to spend you own CDs its being equal to make a tank swap, the diference cover save that swaping process transfering damage to PLD and in a normal process you just swap and use you own CDs directly.

the last thing, let's face it, it will be never be a perfect balance, it will be the always the rule of 2 like the sith and if they balance with couples obviously DRK have to compete against holmgang (if they pair it with WAR of course) but its not like holmgang aren't going to get ajustment this expansion, some skills are go to disapear, meaby we lose our invu meaby not, meaby PLD loose veil meaby not, ect ect , they are looking at tank stances, meaby are going to be usefull during all the fight, tank dps its going to see a nerf, our main stat and the acc problem too, meaby they get rid of the silly role skill system, we are going to see a lot of changes.

but again it will dosen't matter if GUN compete against PLD they are not going to be the best comp if the MT-OT barrier is there, of course in theory, in my opinion its better, i preffer it over having a clone army with diferent weapons, but i will still being DRK no matter what they do.