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

[Reynhart]

There's a very good reason SE went the path they did. For one, added health isn't as effective as damage reduction. 20% reduction is 25% eHP increase.

Yes, exactly the increased HP war received...healing received is a little lower, and that doesn't make any sense.

30%? that's 43% eHP increase. You'll end up with WAR having to nearly double its max health to match the reduction of Sentinel.

So what ? It's a complete arbitraty number.

What about the poor healers? Healers hate tanks that are harder to heal (the main reason behind 2.0 WAR's failure).

Well, if Defiance actually increased healing received by 25% (which it should) WAR would be exactly as hard/easy to heal as PLD. The thing is, you'd still end with two tank stance having the exact same effect on eHP, yet still be different. So, not like DRK.

Or do we need to have eHealing increased as well by the same percentage? What about healer aggro then?

You're serious ? An enmity issue in this game ?

Also content where "only tank" is not just 4-man. 24-mans have 3 "only 1 tanks".

No, it's 3 tanks.

People like to drop OTs and heals for solo-tank/solo-heal setups as soon as they have the gear for it. Ever thought how terrible it feels to play those content?

Which they don't anymore since SE includes some reason to tank swap almost everywhere. And you know the good thing about having specific OT jobs ? Precisely that they could still be useful when they don't ever have to tank the boss. That's the whole purpose of having a job designed as an "OT"

I mean you of all people mained PLD in HW and switched of it mid-expansion.

No, I switched DRK at the very beginning of HW, because DRK is my favorite job and tank my favorite role. I wasn't even sure to raid back then, to even make that choice "strategic". My other character "mains" PLD, but I'm just using it for casual content. The reason I still leveled all tanks is because it takes too much space to have differents sets for different level, and I had a PLD retainer at that time that I'd still want to level to 60

I remember talking to you in Idyllshire where I asked you why and you said it's until SE gives PLD some love.

Well, every job needs some love. But for a long time now, I thought PLD should have been the tank made to "protect others". And also that, since Cover is its iconis ability, like Jump is for Dragoon, it should be a more important aspect of its gameplay.

I'm not going to find it for you.

Then, you should avoid claiming that, wether it's true or false.

Yoshi-P has always considered PLD as the "Defensive tank" throughout ARR and HW

Exactly, it probably was true "throughout ARR and HW"

and his balance changes early Stormblood still followed that assumption.

How ? Enhanced Cover, Intervention with transferable mitigation, Royal Authority after Riot Blade, and the ability to block magic to proc Shield Swipe on AoE, all of those are definitely more useful for an OT than a MT. I see nothing in SB that says PLD is supposed to be a "MT".

[Kabooa]

And yet... No-one has brought up the anecdotal evidence that "It isn't"

Instead, just saying things like "It's easier to balance because it's easier" or "It's not terrible because it's not!"

People have brought up other games to show where not dividing tanks has allowed for varied encounter design and wholly unique skillsets and gameplay within Tanks - WoW being a prime example even if it's become a terrible game due to lack of content and boring grinds.

There are a plethora of ways where MT vs OT designs can be bad. From minor inconveniences to actively destroying DF accessibility for 8 man content (With also nuking the already low population of tank players)

With also the fact that, tanks are already pretty close to being equally capable and if they were just pushed over that little threshold and were basically all equally capable, it would open up the doors for having literally any content be possible. Since if all tanks were equally capable, you can design anything and not have to worry about "Oh, we can have people split into 2 groups because what if [Insert Subrole] doesn't have the other tank nearby to provide [Insert Subrole Specific Skill] for them!" or "We can't do this mechanic, because then people would stack [Insert Subrole] Tanks to cheese it" or "What happens if DF matches up with 2 Tanks from the same subrole? Welp, can't make any mechanics that utilize both subroles!"

Thus allowing for more focus on designing other aspects of tanks. Such as improving their rotations, culling out the stupid Enmity rotation that has been sitting around being useless for years. DESIGNING MT/OT DIFFERENCES INTO STANCES, so that they can BOTH be useful for tanks and provide fun and interesting gameplay shifts to utilize both (Instead of feeling punished for when you HAVE to go into the defensive stance)

Be careful about saying no one, when if even one example exists it kind of discredits you.

If you believe WoW never had clear main and off tanks, you're wrong. It wasn't until the second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, that things started to bleed together, but even then you had clear favorites simply due to some tanks were just -tougher- and other tanks could more easily swap to damage dealing when needed without incurring a hefty respec cost (Which Dual Spec later removed).

Final Fantasy 14 doesn't balance around specific class composition outside savage and Ultimate. I'm not worried about queuing into Eden Normal and having two Bunbreakers in the party.

And yes. I even said (In my own anecdotal experience post - There's the one.) that baking the MT/OT difference more heavily into stances is likely a better idea.

[Kalise]

Be careful about saying no one, when if even one example exists it kind of discredits you.

If you believe WoW never had clear main and off tanks, you're wrong. It wasn't until the second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, that things started to bleed together, but even then you had clear favorites simply due to some tanks were just -tougher- and other tanks could more easily swap to damage dealing when needed without incurring a hefty respec cost (Which Dual Spec later removed).

And yes. I even said (In my own anecdotal experience post - There's the one.) that baking the MT/OT difference more heavily into stances is likely a better idea.

Can you direct me to a post where anyone has specifically mentioned another game and used it to support MT/OT split?

I may have missed it, but the only reference I can see is you saying "I've played plenty of MMO's that featured the split between Main and Off Tank"

What are those "Plenty"? Can you show exactly why the split was important within their game to create the content they did? How it was beneficial? How it was superior to any other option?

Also, I never stated that WoW never had "MT" and "OT" classes.

But when talking about their being more than 1 Tank class in WoW it's only WotLK that it is actually a thing. Before then it was Warrior only. I mean, vanilla was horrible for raid balance, you literally had a Paladin just applying buffs to the raid non-stop because 40 man raids with single target buffs lasting 5 minutes meant it was a full time activity to keep everyone buffed...

After WotLK, it came down to numerical balances mostly, in terms of DPS and effectiveness of active mitigation. With a few shifts based on "This unique skill cheeses this mechanic" - Such as DK's AMS completely negating tank-swap debuffs or certain Tankbusters, Paladins cheesing things with Blessing of Sacrifice to remove sleep effects or using Divine Shield/Hand of Protection to immune certain skills.

Then of course there was the time when being a -tougher- tank was actively detrimental. You wanted a -squishy- tank so they'd stack up more Vengeance and do more damage (Which had a cap based on HP so you wanted high HP and squishy tanks... Like Druid)

But most of these things are due to encounter and mechanic designs (Vengeance being one of the dumbest things they ever did for Tanks... Though it was fun being a literal god in PvP when it worked there...)

Outside of that the Tanks in the game have been mostly well balanced in terms of MT/OT capacity. Also, with more encounters using both tanks actively tanking at all times (I.e. When a tank swap happens and a debuff is waited out... Adds spawn and need picking up. Or the boss is literally multiple entities that all need tanking) and less time of the "OT" being just DPSing.

[Kabooa]

Can you direct me to a post where anyone has specifically mentioned another game and used it to support MT/OT split?

I may have missed it, but the only reference I can see is you saying "I've played plenty of MMO's that featured the split between Main and Off Tank"

What are those "Plenty"? Can you show exactly why the split was important within their game to create the content they did? How it was beneficial? How it was superior to any other option?

Also, I never stated that WoW never had "MT" and "OT" classes.

But when talking about their being more than 1 Tank class in WoW it's only WotLK that it is actually a thing. Before then it was Warrior only.

I'd rather provide a new post than go look through this thread again. Simply put, the list of games with highly diverse tanks that I personally played in a multiplayer setting:

Aion (Templar (Main), Gladiator (Off) )
Warhammer (Ironbreaker (main), Swordmaster (off), and Knight of the Rising Sun (Mix), and their counter parts on Chaos)
World of Warcraft (BC - WOTLK) ( Warrior (Main), Paladin (Main), Druid (Off), Death Knight (Main/Off) )
Guild Wars (Warrior / X (Main), X / Warrior (Off) )
TERA ( Blockers (Main), I-Frames (Main/Off), Evaders (Off) )

WoW is a game that has iterated greatly over the years. BC Era is vastly different than WOTLK, and WOTLK is what I have listed them. In BC era it was Warrior (Main), Druid (Off / Main), Paladin (Off).

Regarding vengeance, when the mechanic was introduced, the tank you wanted in front largely depended on what you wanted for your party. Early on, Paladin as the main tank was brokenly overpowered, not only dealing as much damage as a DPS but also providing more healing and shielding than healers, while also being near unkillable. Sure, a druid would do more damage, but you could literally replace a healer with a Paladin main tank.

[SleepyNeko]

Aion (Templar (Main), Gladiator (Off) )
Warhammer (Ironbreaker (main), Swordmaster (off), and Knight of the Rising Sun (Mix), and their counter parts on Chaos)
World of Warcraft (BC - WOTLK) ( Warrior (Main), Paladin (Main), Druid (Off), Death Knight (Main/Off) )
Guild Wars (Warrior / X (Main), X / Warrior (Off) )
TERA ( Blockers (Main), I-Frames (Main/Off), Evaders (Off) )

There are MT and OT in Aion? I thought all the tanks can block now so no such thing as i-Frames only tank.

Also WoW-BC is not that Druid is OT because they are designed to be OT, its just that they are bad at MT so they can only do OT. WAR and PLD are can be MT and OT just was well as Druid, however PLD was not great in general in BC.

In WotLK all tanks can MT or OT with no issues so there is definitely no separation in MT or OT.

[Kabooa]

There are MT and OT in Aion? I thought all the tanks can block now so no such thing as i-Frames only tank.

Also WoW-BC is not that Druid is OT because they are designed to be OT, its just that they are bad at MT so they can only do OT. WAR and PLD are can be MT and OT just was well as Druid, however PLD was not great in general in BC.

In WotLK all tanks can MT or OT with no issues so there is definitely no separation in MT or OT.

It's been a long time since I played Aion. I speak mostly from pre-Expansion experience.

BC Druid was fine outside specific encounters, like Illidan, that required you to block or suffer -50% max HP for 20 seconds. AKA dead. However, a protection warrior did no damage when not tanking, while Feral Druids could go Cat form and contribute a bit more. Paladin specific off tanking was in encounters with many, many adds, due to having global threat and better aoe tanking options than the other two.

This extends to WOTLK because Protection Warriors and Paladins, when not tanking, were useless, while Feral Druids were much the same as BC, while Death Knights depended on their spec and gear, with some spec and stat combinations being better suited to full main tanking and others for Off-Tank-But-Not-DPS.

[Kalise]

I'd rather provide a new post than go look through this thread again. Simply put, the list of games with highly diverse tanks that I personally played in a multiplayer setting:

Aion (Templar (Main), Gladiator (Off) )
Warhammer (Ironbreaker (main), Swordmaster (off), and Knight of the Rising Sun (Mix), and their counter parts on Chaos)
World of Warcraft (BC - WOTLK) ( Warrior (Main), Paladin (Main), Druid (Off), Death Knight (Main/Off) )
Guild Wars (Warrior / X (Main), X / Warrior (Off) )
TERA ( Blockers (Main), I-Frames (Main/Off), Evaders (Off) )

Okay.

You've listed some games (Whether or not I agree with certain classifications or not aside... Such as "Ironbreaker MT" "Swordmaster OT" IB was never used because it wasn't OP like BO because it didn't have BO's health proc to make it immortal. SM was just a DPS it was no more tanky than a WL. The Tank for Order was KotRS because triple auras made them useful while providing the DR bonus. With the Chaos side being all about BO with Chosen being more of a DPS even with a shield and no-one played Blackguard).

Now what about where you now use these games as examples of this division of MT/OT being a good thing? Why was this split important? What did it achieve?

Since, I've brought up WoW's Tanks being tuned to be fairly equal in their abilities and how it was a good thing because it significantly reduced the variance between "Best" tank and "Worst" tank for either MT/OT position as well as opened up far more design space for encounters that included both tanks more consistently spending 100% of their time actively tanking things as well as utilizing mechanics such as splitting raids between areas.

Here you've just named some games that had MT/OT.

Note that most of those games are dead or dying.

Please can you further expand on how their tanking divide was actively beneficial and wouldn't have been better had they not separated tanks into MT/OT subroles.

[Phoenicia]

There are MT and OT in Aion? I thought all the tanks can block now so no such thing as i-Frames only tank.

I think y ou're mixing Aion with TERA online. Aion only has Templar as a tank. Gladiators, Aetherteck and Assassins all could tank but none of them was as good as a templar.

In TERA they have 4 classes that can tank, two "actual" tanks in Lancer and Brawler that can't fill a DPS role, and two "hybrids" that can join a group as a DPS or as a tank, namely: Warrior and Berserker. The pure tanks are outright better than the hybrids and in any scenario the two are in a group the "pure" tanks. Exception is "raids" with 2 or 3 tanks in group then the most geared tank spends more time tanking (Aka main tank).

Multiple snips.

While I will agree that variance made "variety"... We can agree that it wasn't good variety.

For example, in TBC, it was bad if you liked to tank on your pally because outside of your blessing and aura people wouldn't even take you into their raids over a warrior that was a better single target tank nor a druid that was a better off-tank for obvious reasons. Paladins caused serious aggro issues from the OT position because holy damage, unlike other elements of magic damage, has/had no resists that reduce their damage and bypassed armor, at the same time, they also couldn't do that for over a few seconds because they wouldn't have the mana sustain without taking hits to convert 40% of the healing received into mana which was their main source of getting mana back.

Wrath was when tanking started shifting to all tanks can fill either role, but there were clear "better" options for either role (which is fine as long as it didn't mean you couldn't function if roles are reversed).

Aion is a PvP game through and through... I mean even assassins and sorcerers could tank 90% of the game. Gladiators and Aethertecks are not "tanks".. They're tanky DPS. Templars could compete with the DPS on damage too.

TERA also had these serious issues of non-lancers being NOT wanted as tanks.... Until we all got so strong that EVERYONE can tank with I-frames. Yes, division of main and off was clear as I stated earlier replying to SleepyNeko, but how was it good division? If anything it just meant hybrids were wanted to DPS, not tank. And even then, the fact they were hybrids made it less bad since if you don't tank, you can slap in your DPS spec and beat the heck out of opponents dishing out competitive numbers to the DPS if not more (When berserk was the second highest DPS and warrior matched slayer). In FFXIV, as long as you have the blue icon, you'll never be a real DPS.

Honestly, that comparison doesn't help much either. In all those games you mentioned, you either have more raid spots than there are classes in game, or you can switch specialization on your chosen job and be relatively more useful to your team. Or BOTH!

In WoW, Pally bad tank? Np, holy is the best tank healer. Warrior got nerfed? At least I can DPS. Monks in Legion and BfA have great tanking, healing AND DPS specs. You probably won't be excluded for your class since you had 20~40 raid spots and only 12 classes to choose from. Unless it's really terrible like early BfA's Shaman but that's a very rare outlier. More likely than not you want at least one of each class.

In Aion tanking was a priority more than a main/off. There were no tank swap mechanics and not much PvE that required multiple tanks, you just picked the best tank in this priority: Templar > Gladiator > Aethertec > Chanter/Assassin > Spiritmaster pet > Ranger > Cleric (yes lol, the healer).

I won't go onto the other games beacuse I think my point is clear at this point I hope.

In FFXIV, not only do we only have 8 spots and a whooping 17 jobs to pick from. We also have extremely rigid roles in what jobs fill. Bards are DPS no matter how much support you slap on them. We do not have a "you heal unless WHM is in group then you DPS"... We have healers that only fill healing spots, tanks only fill tanking spots, not being fully capable of taking all of responsibilities expected from that spot means you just never will be invited. People are bound to be excluded. Widening the gap that causes the exclusion does NOT help the situation.. It only makes it worse.

[Kabooa]

Please can you further expand on how their tanking divide was actively beneficial and wouldn't have been better had they not separated tanks into MT/OT subroles.

Ask me for a god damn essay, why don't you?

Every encounter in Cataclysm and Pandaria that I personally played did not shift far from the paradigm established in BC. 10 mans were often designed around 2 tanks, 25 mans designed around 3. So the claim that tuning the tanks to be more equal opened design space is...questionable at best. If anything, it was likely just constant iteration over these big scale encounters instead of design space opening because now you can use a paladin instead of a warrior.

I can say this pretty confidently because multi-boss encounters were common in BC Era. Mono-boss tank swaps were also common. Dividing up the raid is also common. Shared cleaves pretty common. 2nd aggro tank busters were on a few bosses. It's almost like encounter design is independent of everyone having the same tools so long as those tools exist, in totality, among the group. Tank's a tank - It's just easier when you pick the right tank for the right job.

How is this better? I can't objectively say it is. It's different, and I prefer it. That's all I can give you that won't just be me spewing out all the anecdotal fun I can.

[Kabooa]

Stuff.

I speak primarily of pre expansions Aion. Ain't no Aetherteck in muh game.

Druids had a target limit. It was more efficient on mass aoe packs to just bring a paladin tank and let the Druid kitty form the boss. My old raid team for Hyjal effectively had a warrior for the bosses, a druid for the Aboms, and I played the paladin and handled everything else.

My TERA experience was limited to a recent boost weekend when they introduced the Valkyrie. I wasn't there for the growing pains - I just saw shields, iframes, and evaders and was like "This is neat." One random dungeon as my Valkyrie I spent a solid 2 minutes evading the boss while the party scraped itself back together. Good luck doing that as a Ninja on...anything. Moment that tank buster comes out, u ded.

Again, we for some reason assume MT/OT designation means OT can't MT and MT can't OT. I doubt that'll be the case, but who can say. To me, it's just formalizing what the players have already designated.