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

[Makeda]

I've yet to read the thread in full so this is a generalized opinion on MMO tanking.

I've been a tank in MMOs since 2005, but I am not a raid tank in FFXIV - thus my thoughts are also more generalized on this point.

EVERYTHING BELOW IS REALLY ONLY RELEVANT IF THIS IDEA THAT FFXIV HAS A MAIN/OFF SPLIT IS ACTUALLY TRUE IN THE RAIDING COMMUNITY AND NOT JUST SOMETHING I READ ON THE FORUMS...

Despite the mess that is otherwise current World of Warcraft, one concept they have done right for the past several expansions has been the goal - usually met by 1-2 patches into an xPac - that all tanks are equally viable in tanking at the dungeon, raid, and PvP levels of content. No class is seen as the 'main' and none as the 'off'. In fact the very concept of 'main' and 'off' was supposed to be purged out of relevancy about 8-10 years back when they switched to a 'swap at some trigger point' concept. Supposed to be because it took them a few expacs to fix some serious balance problems with the new idea...

- That allows both players in a dual tank situation to feel equally relevant.

There are some fights here like that: you get some debuff, the other tank takes over until they get the debuff which is usually timed pretty close to when it wears off of you is coordination has been done right.
- who pulls and who takes second swap is often just a matter of personal dynamics between the two of them. And in many fights there will be 2+ bosses that need to be kept apart, or a boss and a constant wave of adds that again need to be kept apart or at least can't all be hitting the same target.

A few other MMOs have situations where tanks are fairly well balanced across the classes - last time I tried Neverwinter it felt that way but I have not even reached max-level there so I don't know if it's actually the case...

But I do strongly feel that it does harm to a tank community to have this set of Jobs seen as 'main' and that set seen as 'off' unless the concept of 'main' and 'off' are both highly dynamic (for at least the Wrath and somewhat Cata eras of WoW, the 'off' tank was the actually complex role, and the 'main' had various joking names on the theme of 'crotch watch duty' because you'd stand in place and the average WoW boss is twice a player-character's height... often there was only one thing you could see most of a fight if you where 'main'... ).

- It's unneeded drama to have this split.

Yes in this game by mid-expansion most people who main tanks have all the jobs leveled and they share 90% of their gear in common so... you could just both zone out of the raid after every pull and switch jobs... but seriously that's not a good way to deal with such drama...

I wish that with 5.0 they would toss out the concepts of 'main' and 'off' in their fight design and work to make the tanks all equally viable in all tanking duties WITHOUT homogenizing them.

That IS possible... WoW did it for many years... the class homogenization of WoW is a lot newer than the era of class balance among the tanks... Something which all the more takes away the excuses for the mess that is current WoW but that's another topic...

That said... I know this wish won't occur. It's just not how SE seems to see the game. Much as I like SE's results in FFXIV, it really feels like the lead devs are all DPS-mains that don't 'get it' with tanking... so they just make tanking viable and then turn around and focus on the DPS or Support abilities of the tanks as if they were just a specialized version of a melee-DPS.