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

[Kabooa]

If you just want more general complexity and challenge, theres nothing wrong with that, but I dont think splitting mt/ot is the right forum to make that case. That is a broad, gamewide change in direction. Regardless of if se goes with 4 tanks or 2/2 tanks, that really doesnt have anything to do with decision making or complexity. It's an unrelated topic.

I do get the concerns. It certainly would suck to suddenly not get to play Paladin the way you like, or have to go into Gunbreaker or Dark Knight for what you loved Warrior for.

However, my original statement wasn't just about complexity. It was about them being too similar. Too same-y. Every bit of discussion following that was explaining why it is that way to me. In turn it's also why I'm not opposed to the idea of classifying MT and OT, because traditionally this has been a solid differentiation of classes that fell in to the same role of Tank.

Warriors / Paladins and Druids / Death Knights in WoW, Templar / Gladiators in Aion, Iron Breakers / Swordmasters in Warhammer, Warrior / ? and ? / Warrior in Guild Wars 1, so on and so forth.

However, as I said to someone in my static, it would be a much better idea to create these distinctions with wilder swings of the gameplay and effect of Stances currently in game. Though I'm not sure that's the thread for this.

[Kabooa]

I think the better idea, at least better in my opinion according to your particular issue, is to just have jobs which are more technical and jobs which are less technical.

Yeah. And see, that's the thing. The DPS already kind of fall into this. Monk, Dragoon, Summoner, to some degree Machinist and Ninja are the more technical jobs upfront. I frankly hope Gunbreaker is the one for tanks.

[Kaedan]

Yeah. And see, that's the thing. The DPS already kind of fall into this. Monk, Dragoon, Summoner, to some degree Machinist and Ninja are the more technical jobs upfront. I frankly hope Gunbreaker is the one for tanks.

I'm really, really hoping that Gunbreaker is how I'm imagining it to be. Similar to how Ninjutsu works. But instead of Jin, Chi, Ten, we'll have different ammo types that we can "insert" and then "trigger" like you trigger ninjutsu. Different combos of ammo can maybe do different things (like Fire and Earth creates a ground AoE or something like that).

[Reynhart]

Literally everything I wanted to say on the topic. I am TIRED of being relegated to OT status as pld. Someone on the pld guide page CALLED IT when they said pld was cursed to be OT always.
WAR is preferred MT. THIS. SHOULD. NOT. BE.
All tanks should be equally favorable to mt and ot with.

Problem is, it's really difficult to have that much tanks that are...
- Balanced
- Equal in every aspect
- Different in their gameplay
...at the same time.

Yes, PLD is the "de-facto OT" because some of its skills are just useless as a MT but fit perfectly in its "protector" lore. Of course, it doesn't mean that PLD can't MT, simply that it's not optimal. And this idea of tanks being favored for either MT or OT only has to be relevant when optimizing things to make all 4 jobs interesting from a strategic PoV. Everyone else will simply play the job they like, and clear 90% of the content with it.


It would also open the door to stances having more gameplay impact instead of simply be a toggle for less damage.

[Lyth]

I wouldn't get overly hung up on the 'MT' and 'OT' tags. At the start of Stormblood, the devs talked about their plans to make all tanks equally suitable to 'MT' and 'OT'. The end result was more about nerfing Blood Price and making Reprisal universal such that DRKs didn't feel compelled to MT. At the end of the day, it's fight design and your team's internal discussions that will dictate who tanks what and when.

Remember, forced swaps are really common mechanics.

I think this is more about moving away from the previous model of 'WAR, PLD, and everyone else as WAR/PLD hybrids', and towards a system where WAR and PLD are individually less important, replaceable elements in a two tank system.

[whiskeybravo]

Yeah. And see, that's the thing. The DPS already kind of fall into this. Monk, Dragoon, Summoner, to some degree Machinist and Ninja are the more technical jobs upfront. I frankly hope Gunbreaker is the one for tanks.

I mostly agree, with minor differences of opinion. I think BRD is more technical than MCH due to the way their songs interact with abilities and different parts of their kit, whereas MCH is just a strict rotation without much room for variation. I do agree NIN is more technical than the rest of the melee, and SMN more technical than BLM /RDM.

DRK used to be that technical tank (IMO at least, it was the more technical of the 3 during HW). PLD is kind of that tank now since they have many different support abilities and an actual rotation that's not just combo spam. Maybe there's hope GNB will be more technical than not.

[shao32]

PLD din't change much at all since HW, they just get the holy spirit burst window on top of what they already have. im in the boat of having GNB being more technical, we have to many simple tanks already.

[Phoenicia]

I mostly agree, with minor differences of opinion. I think BRD is more technical than MCH due to the way their songs interact with abilities and different parts of their kit, whereas MCH is just a strict rotation without much room for variation. I do agree NIN is more technical than the rest of the melee, and SMN more technical than BLM /RDM.

DRK used to be that technical tank (IMO at least, it was the more technical of the 3 during HW). PLD is kind of that tank now since they have many different support abilities and an actual rotation that's not just combo spam. Maybe there's hope GNB will be more technical than not.

And there is the problem. What's more "Technical" ends up being an opinion. What is even "technical"? Is it simply "not-straight-forward"? If so that only takes out PLD and WHM in the category because everything else has a teeny tidbit to here or there.

For example, SMN is harder to pick up than BLM yes, probably hardest in game? But it's definitely easier to perform on once you learn it. If anything, BLM probably has a harder time optimizing due to how its timer juggling works. (i.e. trying to fit 2 Fouls inside a burst window without hurting your other timers is actually harder than you think). Whereas SMN's rotaional "blocks" are very flexible within their own block leaving you lots of wiggle room to recover from mess ups. (i.e. You can rush Festers to match a burst window or before dots fall of, or extend them while waiting for Ruin IV procs. You can delay/rush Bahamut before AF if you'll hit multiple targets or delay it until 27s left on AF timer).

Then BRD and MCH, once has a very fluid and interchangeable buff windows with a million procs while the other follows a very rigid timer with multiples of 30/60/120 with controllable procs. The first may be harder to optimize but the latter definitely punishes more. Depends here on what the person in question considers technical.

I find NIN the hardest melee to play and definitely the most technical beacuse of all the things it's already juggling while DRG and SAM fall in the same "straight-forward" category in my book. You can argue any different order and you'll probably be right. I just have a 10 times easier time doing reasonable DPS on every melee that is not NIN (Don't worry, I don't expect my NIN to do the same as my SAM, but for the item level, I expect a 500-1k DPS difference, not 2-3k).

Again, in HW, WAR had a much higher skill ceiling than DRK due to how its mitigation and DPS toolkits "collided", regardless of how steep DRK's learning curve was (slightly steeper than WAR probably) where, imo, you just had to learn how to not over-cap nor 0 your MP (so you don't drop Darkside) and you're pretty much a PLD on steroids. Which would put which tank in the "technical" category?

This then brings us to balance. How do we balance this? Should we balance effort vs reward? Because if a job is so hard to play we'll have 2 camps: Never invite this job because 9/10 the player won't be good because of how hard it is and the reward isn't overcoming the risks. Or find the very good players of these jobs and stack them in the party because if you do find this good players on this extremely hard but over-performing job will just mean easy time.

Do monks, black mages, warriors (or dark knights w/e you cal technical) and SCHs really deserve to over run the meta because of how hard it is to play them? Or do we make them the same as the other jobs and have players just avoid them because a SAM, RDM, PLD and WHM will definitely do the same job and are much more likely to do it right?

Regardless of which camp you support, it is unrelated to this topic. And shoving any role into a sub-role that was completely interchangeable is not the least relevant to technicality.

As for the topic on hand, currently All three tanks are excellent MTs.

- They all have very slight DPS gains from taking hits (Swipes, Vengeance counters, TBN>GCD manipluation).
- They all have very good personal mitigation (Yes DRK>WAR>PLD but the last is no slouch at all).
- Neither tank would lose aggro where the other wouldn't. PLD does the least DPS but has more passive enmity multipliers on Swipes and CoS for example.

The only difference right now as far as who main tanks is that pulling on PLD sucks and pulling on WAR is a 16 potency gain (thanks to memeheaval opener) and DRK is "lossless". All that means is just it's favorable to have the not-PLD pull. If the PLD (or group) wants the PLD to MT, they can always ride off the other tank's enmity. We did that in HW and we didn't even have Shirk back then.

As for OTing, PLD is, hands down, the best, but DRK and WAR aren't bad either.

- For one, they don't cause threat issues due to no passive multipliers that are DPS gains. (Irrelevant thanks to Shirk, but still worth mentioning in case Shirk goes away).
- DRK and WAR can snap aggro adds (kind of irrelevant in many places, but still lots fights had them).
- DRK can TBN the MT which is similar to Intervention (not better but close). So the only thing it falls behind as an OT is Cover.

Veil, Passage and SiO can be used regardless of which sub-role you're filling.

So the outliers right now are:

* PLD snap enmity is utter shite.
* WAR can't support MT from OT role.
* Group mitigation, while redundant, is overloaded in PLD's favor.

So, since the three tanks are so close in performance and are the closest to being balanced they've ever been since release, it is, in my humble opinion of course, much easier to fix the outliers than it is to nuke the three tanks and reshuffle tools to shove them into two sub-roles. Even when adding a fourth job.

However, I do understand that splitting the tanks in "pairs" is a very good way to balance them (and I am in this camp), I would rather still have all 4 tanks capable of either side, MT or OT.

What I would have preferred is for the pairing to be either a synergy or conflict (not both) sort of system. Where you have 2 pairs of 2 that can work well together. Or 1 job can pair with 2 but not another in the same "type" kind of conflict. More onto this below.

What does this mean you ask? Synergy is obvious, you make a pair that work really well together.

For example PLD and DRK can intervene and TBN each other to have mitigation on steroids. Maybe also add in some form of DPS synergy between the two so having PLD+DRK is always more individual and combined DPS due to boosting each other that they lose if they are matched with other tanks. Then do the same with WAR+GNB. You can of course shuffle pairs in any order, I just felt it would be cool to have light and darkness "paired" together.

What about conflict? This is a different scenario where it would be kind of like having SCH and Noct. AST. Add buffs that do not stack.

Let's go opposite of how we went earlier, Light and Darkness shouldn't be paired so no DRK+PLD synergy. Instead we make it so both apply something on that is beneficial to the party (be it DPS increase or raid mitigation or w/e), but they cannot stack. So PLD overwrites the DRK's, and DRK's overwrites the PLD's. Maybe even make it similar to Virus back in late ARR and HW where party/boss gain a debuff that prevents the reapplication of similar effects for a certain period of time. Voila, players now do not want to pair PLD with DRK and would prefer to get one of the other two tanks, leaving it open to "we have PLD(DRK), let's avoid DRK(PLD) and get the first WAR or GNB that applies!"

I'm fine with either camp, the first gives 2 options. But not having those 2 options doesn't feel terrible (might still feel bad like missing slashing does right now). While the other option gives 4 combinations, but landing on the wrong ones (having two conflicting tanks) might cause more stress than needs be.

Either path taken would, imo, prevent having 1 absolute best tank combo unless the stars all align and have one combo has the two jobs that are considered the "WAR" of ShB.... But then again, shoving the tanks into MT and OT roles might do just that. Guess we have to wait until the end of May to know what Yoshi-P and his team end up doing.

[Capn_Goggles]

I think that it's a bit dramatic to call it a terrible idea, especially when the idea has already been implemented, though perhaps not so overtly. WAR is clearly the designated main tank this expansion, and DRK/PLD are far better suited as off-tanks with DRK straddling the fence a bit more than PLD, the only difference is that it hasn't necessarily been codified in black-and-white; yet, despite this, all three tanks are more than capable of doing their job admirably in any position, even if one is better suited for the job than another. The same applies to the healers, though things are not so neatly defined as MT and OT in that department, all three healers can do all content, though SCH may have a harder time in dungeons and WHM doesn't bring a lot to raids compared to AST or SCH.

[Alestrae]

I agree with the above posts. For me, again, the main issue is that with the tanks we have now, the players decided the position of MT/OT based on the kit.. And will continue to do so. This, more than anything else is why SE deciding MT/OT pairings is bad. If the players run with let's say MT/MT because it is more efficient, they will.

Let's say they choose to run MT/OT but with the SE roles reversed. So the SE OT is in the MT position and the SE MT in the OT position. What will SE do then? Will they leave alone; or nerf/buff to enforce their vision. Old SE let the players choose.

FFXI nin was originally a dps. Shortly after it's introduction, a player discovered that a nin with voke tanked better than anything else. This became so common that SE codified it, adding enmity to it's gear and made it's tanking more difficult. Resulting in bring another nin to bounce shadows off. The point is. Players chose.