I think they did this for variant dungeons in case you solo them, so that you survive tank busters and stuff. Although with how SE syncs content, I have legit tanked pulls and bosses on a Ninja recently when tanks died (thanks Feint, Shade Shift, Bloodbath, Second Wind).

I don't like the erosion of job identity and uniqueness. But I don't have an actual attachment to the trinity. In fact, I like the Rathalos and Stone Vigil (Hard) fights because of them not caring about tank enmity.

Quote Originally Posted by Valence View Post
Variant and Criterion were missed opportunities, for a lot of different reasons (rewards, failing to address midcore difficulty, etc)
Regarding midcore difficulty, I don't believe it was ever intended to be that. Players constantly asked to bring "WoW's mythic+" to FFXIV and to have 4-player raid content and this was the response.

In retrospect, it's fair to say it should have a midcore difficulty ie. criterion being in between variant and savage. But I think it is reasonable that the original concept was just "make it small-party raid content like mythic+" and that midcore difficulty wasn't in the original specification.