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

[Izsha]

Except there isn't just 1 optimal DPS combo. DRG/MNK/NIN are all considered the same "tier" of melee dps and are interchangeable for several combos with other dps. It will be the same thing with tanks.

Furthermore, short of going with the most boring and game-killing option of complete homogenization, there will always be elitist ****s that only accept one comp. They are completely irrelevant.

The only way to accomplish the pipe-dream, utopian thinking of "balancing" all tanks equally would be to give them all the exact same skills with different skins on top (and maybe different ability names). That would be a surefire way to kill the game.

Again, all tanks will be able to MT or OT all content. It's just for the 0.01% of content that is actually hard, there will be 4 "optimal" combinations now instead of the 1 we have with only 3 tanks (WAR is most suited for MT and PLD is most suited for OT... DRK just gets the short end of the stick). With 4 tanks, two each designed with MT/OT in mind respectively, that allows for more choice. Sure, there's always going to be the elitist pricks that decide that one of the MT/OTs is better than the other one, but they're going to be narcissistic jerks no matter what happens, so you just ignore them.

Yes. Adding a 4th tank will add more options than 3. That's rather obvious and not an 'advantage' to sub tank classes because it happens regardless of creating MT/OT sub classes.

What you have failed to demonstrate is why 2mt/2OT provides more choice than 4 tanks. You claim it still has as much choice because in a world with 2 mt and 2 OT, you can just 'swap them' anyway because the meta only matters to 1%. Following that logic if there are not mt/ot specific tanks you could ALSO just swap them, except they would be designed to be swapped and not have the baggage of trying to do something they arent designed to do.

Furthermore if you dont care about the evil elite 1%s opinion of optimal, then theres nothing wrong with the 3 tanks we have right now. Drk is a very competent tank offensively and defensively. If you would be fine making a designated designed OT into a MT, optimization be damned, then there is absolutely no reason to whine about drk now because optimization be damned.

Your logic doesnt make any sense. It hinges entirely on your unsubstantiated and slippery slope claim that the only way to balance tanks is:

The only way to accomplish the pipe-dream, utopian thinking of "balancing" all tanks equally would be to give them all the exact same skills with different skins on top (and maybe different ability names). That would be a surefire way to kill the game

Yet you claim mnk nin and sam are all the same tier and they arent homogenized crap. Theres no reason we cant add another melee or another tank and succeed without causing a calamity as your irrational doomsaying about killing the game states. You just claim 4 tanks without sub classes will auto kill the game with no evidence or support. That's just lazy.

Edit: phone editing is balls. Had to rewrite some cuz deleted by accident.

[whiskeybravo]

Except there isn't just 1 optimal DPS combo. DRG/MNK/NIN are all considered the same "tier" of melee dps and are interchangeable for several combos with other dps. It will be the same thing with tanks.

No, if you want to achieve the highest personal damage then you need the support brought specifically by NIN, DRG & BRD. A SAM is not interchangeable with NIN in this regard. If you are only concerned about the group's raid damage then sure, I'll agree that a variety of comps are capable more or less equal output. But perhaps this is still too broad of a brush. IE, "Optimal" for what? It may be a fair point to break these out into various columns of optimized. Optimized for damage, optimized for mitigation, optimized for speed, etc etc.

The only way to accomplish the pipe-dream, utopian thinking of "balancing" all tanks equally would be to give them all the exact same skills with different skins on top (and maybe different ability names). That would be a surefire way to kill the game.

There's nothing utopian about it. The balance is somewhere in the middle. Not complete homogenization but not complete divergence either. Basic functions should be mirrored to set a base level of performance and expectation. At the most basic level they need a similar cooldown structure to work with before they can even start designing encounters. There is nothing within this structure of core components that requires complete copy paste of each tank to another. I would consider the core components of a tank: Self damage, party damage, self mitigation, party mitigation. If we assign a scale of 0-10 for these parameters, we can easily see there is room for some to be better than others, without completely destroying a bare minimum that can be provided. You don't have to make one tank solely reliant on damage, one tank solely reliant on self mitigation, one tank solely reliant on party mitigation, etc. They can each have a bit with one being slightly better for instance A and the other for instance B and the other for C.

Again, all tanks will be able to MT or OT all content.

This is quite an assumption, but even still, what's the point of creating a distinction where there is none?

THAT is why when I hear "2 MT 2 OT" I get terrified because that automatically means that you're the bottom female dog if you're one of the OT tanks. The community has worked SO HARD to remove the MT OT status and has worked to establish that fact that there IS NOT MT OR OT, just the guy who's currently eating the autos and positioning, and the guy that will do it eventually.

This is another good point. We've finally arrived at encounter design that's not overly reliant on strict MT/OT designations. Tanks are encouraged and/or required to swap frequently in most of the fights which helps make tanking more engaging for both tanks.

At the end of the day, people arguing that MT/OT split is a good idea are really shooting themselves in the foot. It's better for all of us if we can just play the jobs we want to play without worrying what our individual job does or doesn't bring to table, or whether or not we will mesh with the others we find ourselves randomly grouped with, or when we are just trying to find good players (regardless of job) to fill open static spots. The list goes on and on.

SE most certainly needs to do a better job at balancing. It's not perfect, but the MT/OT is split is even more imperfect. I think if they focus on providing tanks with more or less equal impact, then they can use playstyle to differentiate them from one another.

[Aurelius2625]

The problem that is being overlooked by some is that NO, not all tanks will be able to be MT and OT. The meta will determine what that is, regardless, because of optimal comps. If you are WAR, you get to be MT, if you are DRK, you get to be MT if there is no WAR. If you are PLD, you are SOL, fam.

That's how it is. PLD has such poor pulling ability that the other tanks pull, and then you just sit there, hoping that the fight has something for you to do. Even add pick up is a tragedy. This "WAR is MT" mindset is SO firmly ingrained because of unchained and the ridiculousness that it allows for pulling, that even in Guardian, 07s, WARs would REFUSE to swap with the PLD to take a 50 potency loss to pick up the Dadaluma and Ultros adds, and the PLD was forced to do so, in shield oath if there was no NIN available.

WAR's swap with PLDs just to have PLD use an invuln, and then boom, WAR is back to MTing, or the DRK does it.

This is outrageous and should not happen. Tanking should be a DYNAMIC process where both tanks swap in and out to utilize defensives in a cooperative, meaningful, strategic way. Or, fights should be designed as such to provide each tank opportunities to be useful to the team and be ACTIVE instead of being a "Blue dps".

I'm terrified that all that's going to happen is that if you are OT, you're SoL, get in that corner and do your combo, because you're not tanking this fight... even though you're a tank.

Fights should be designed around any of the four tanks being able to be MT no problem, and force teamwork and swaps into play. This would require four balanced, relatively equal tanks to be able to accomplish this.

THAT is why when I hear "2 MT 2 OT" I get terrified because that automatically means that you're the bottom female dog if you're one of the OT tanks. The community has worked SO HARD to remove the MT OT status and has worked to establish that fact that there IS NOT MT OR OT, just the guy who's currently eating the autos and positioning, and the guy that will do it eventually.

I almost don't even want another tank at this rate.

[Kabooa]

This is quite an assumption, but even still, what's the point of creating a distinction where there is none?

I think this is a bit dishonest of you. Paladin isn't (or rather shouldn't be) main tanking in any group where there's Warrior or Dark Knight, and Dark Knight isn't main tanking with a warrior. And Dark Knight Warrior, while completely 'viable', is less effective than either of them paired with a paladin.

To be quite frank, the current direction of the three tanks, with this paradigm in mind, wouldn't even change. It's Gunbreaker coming in who'd mold around that, more than likely getting a kit more comparable to Paladin than Dark Knight or Warrior.

How would formally saying and then designing Dark Knight and Warrior to just do what they currently do better, and then design Gunbreaker to be the pivot point for Paladin, be a bad thing?

You can currently Dark Knight Warrior stuff, and be fine, though in some cases you have to work around your cool downs differently. You can double paladin and make the DPS checks and maintain threat fine. The only difference between now and speculation moving forward is that they don't have a [MT] or [OT] tag on them.

[Kalise]

If taking things at face value, then when SE says "We're adding a 4th tank so we can design them as 2x MT and 2x OT's" it suggests that there's a possibility that they would be trying to create a situation where you always want to run 1x MT and 1x OT tanks.

This leads into a very specific grouping of options. Basically, if we consider SE's view of tanks where PLD and DRK are MT's and WAR is OT (Thus GNB will be OT) then we have the following options available in 8 man parties:

Paladin MT + Warrior OT
Paladin MT + Gunbreaker OT
Dork Knight MT + Warrior OT
Dork Knight MT + Gunbreaker OT

For all of 4 options. Potentially increasing if players find a way to cheese 2x one sub-role as being optimal (For example, using 2x MT's that have cheesy skills like Holmgang. Or using 2x OT's that have extra CD's like Cover/Intervention/Passage of Arms)

Meanwhile, if you design tanks in a way where you don't intentionally hamstring them so as to force "MT" and "OT" variants, you get the following options for your 8 man parties:

Dork Knight MT + Dork Knight OT
Dork Knight MT + Gunbreaker OT
Dork Knight MT + Paladin OT
Dork Knight MT + Warrior OT
Gunbreaker MT + Dork Knight OT
Gunbreaker MT + Gunbreaker OT
Gunbreaker MT + Paladin OT
Gunbreaker MT + Warrior OT
Paladin MT + Dork Knight OT
Paladin MT + Gunbreaker OT
Paladin MT + Paladin OT
Paladin MT + Warrior OT
Warrior MT + Dork Knight OT
Warrior MT + Gunbreaker OT
Warrior MT + Paladin OT
Warrior MT + Warrior OT

A total of 16 different options. 4 times as many as if you force them into specific roles (16 times as many if people figure out that MT+MT or OT+OT is superior than a MT+OT set up due to poor balance between the 2 sub-roles)

When one of the issues people have is that WAR MT + PLD OT has been basically the norm since the games inception (With only a few times where DRK appeared for certain raid tiers while either WAR or PLD had been turned to crap temporarily) surely the ideal scenario to strive for is one where you have 16 potential options all within an acceptable level of viability (Because no job is lacking a specific core tool to function) as opposed to one where, at best, you have only 4 options with each sub-role (I.e. Player) only having 2 options to pick from since, as that's barely better than the oft maligned status quo has been.

[Izsha]

Minor note, I used 12 options instead of 16 as I dont think anyone really wants duplicate drk/drk etc combos and se has pushed hard against that via lb and such.

But fundamentally, yes. That's the ideal state we should aim for.

[whiskeybravo]

I think this is a bit dishonest of you.

Huh?

They say either tank can MT or OT, I say then what's the point of calling them MT or OT. They are just tanks, why force the designator?

I'll go a step further. You say WAR will be the "main tank". Why? Because they can pull the easiest? So is this the one and only qualifier for MT then? Because everything else is fairly equal.

Actually I'll go one more. Since WAR and DRK have the more efficient pulling ability, is that a valid excuse for never giving PLD the ability to pull efficiently? If WAR has the least punishing and most fluid tank stance, is this a valid excuse for never fixing PLD's wonky tank stance costs?

If you think that base level tank functions like this should be addressed, then you can't possibly disagree with the notion that some degree of homogenization is required to maintain a level playing field. Just because we ended up in this position of one tank having the best pull ability, and another having a useless ability as a MT, doesn't mean we have to double down on it.

[Kabooa]

Huh?

They say either tank can MT or OT, I say then what's the point of calling them MT or OT. They are just tanks, why force the designator?

I'll go a step further. You say WAR will be the "main tank". Why? Because they can pull the easiest? So is this the one and only qualifier for MT then? Because everything else is fairly equal.

Technically, I don't know. I'm speculating as much as anyone else.

They could make Paladin and Gunbreaker the Main Tanks and make Dark Knight and Warrior the Off Tanks. Who knows.

To me, it seems a simpler prospect to go along the current design scheme and fit Gunbreaker into the new paradigm than it is to fully redesign four tanks, especially since two of them already fit the main tank archetype pretty well.

Minimal co-tank / party support, dominant threat out put, superior mitigation options and frequency., blah blah.

[Izsha]

That's what befuddles me about this whole thing. On the one hand there is no shortage of teeth gnashing about the current state of tanks that is born of inequality of function. Pld cant pull for crap and has a monopoly on 'helping while not tanking'. Unsurprisingly pld has the OT position on lock while the other 2 that can pull and dont supoort from the sides fight for the only slot left. This situation everyone bemoans IS what it looks like to have a sub class of tanks int mt and ot and that was by accident. Now people want to enshrine this while simultaniously complaining about current situation?

That's how we got into this mess. The way we get out is by equalizing the imbalances. Not constructing more of them. Give pld snap aggro. Give war/drk more to do when off tank. SE has done reasonably well on equalizing dps while keeping them unique. We just need to apply that to aggro and support actions with slightly more mitigation homogenization and were good to go.

[Kabooa]

All my teeth gnashing is that tanks are too same-y at a baseline level. They really only heavily differ on their burst phases.