Tank split MT and OT - Why can't tank jobs just choose if they want to MT/OT?

[StriderShinryu]

To be fair that’s because they won’t give OT responsibility, not because they need to define OT as its own role

Like the OT used to be an actual job; remember the bird in E5 or the second dragon in O10. You don’t have to make OT its own sub role you just have to actually make the OT do something that isn’t share invuln CD’s

Yeah, I think this is really the key we're missing for both tanks and healers (and something I'd like them to respond to before Berlin). The changes we've mostly just heard about have just been in a vacuum. We don't know what the fight design intentions will be moving forward; we've just heard that moving from the 2 minute meta should give more mechanical and timing freedom. We've heard that jobs will be more unique and, with tanks specifically, that certain roles will have more to do but that's about it.

If the MT really does just focus almost entirely on self mitigation and making smart use of it's counter attacks that could allow for the OT to be in charge of keeping the rest of the party alive, spot mitigating to help the MT out when needed, and maybe even handling special OT targeted mechanics. There could actually be a lot more to the role than there currently is but we won't know that until we see/hear at least a little more on what their intentions are (preferably with a real sample fight using a retuned/tweaked version of an old fight to demonstrate the differences).

[Loggos]

Excuse my mucho-texto, posted these in other threads and I do believe they apply here.




We might genuinely overthink this. Both "main tanks" and "off tanks" by sheer metric of how boss mechanics worked to this point will have to be able to do both at different times anyways (forced swaps). What they might differ in is probably "how" they apply the mitigation and support, which we actually had in the past already prior to job homogenization.

I agree with your analysis because my first thought when they declared PLD a main tank was "wait a minute, but evolved PLD still has all its "off-tanky" party support tools". If the distinction was as strict as the labeling makes it sound it would also be really strange if we'd only have two main tank jobs and three off-tanks when main-tanking is probably the role fantasy that draws most people to it in the first place (esp. in FF14 where off-tanking has had a rather...weak implementation so far, esp. in normal content). It wouldn't be a smart move to make three out of the four established tanks "secondary tanks" and give the honour of the main tank to just one legacy tank and a completely new/unknown one.

But I do think the widespread confusion is warranted because if what you say is their intention then their communication on this issue has been really sub-optimal. Them saying "there'll be main tanks and off tanks" evokes a very clear image of "main role and side-kick" because MT and OT are just such clearly understood roles (the one who gets beaten up by the boss and positions them and the one who...doesn't for the most part - even if you tank-swap that core principle stays the same because now it's the other one who gets beaten up while the first one doesn't). It's different from shield and pure healers in my opinion because none of them is (officially) a "main healer" and a "sub healer". They just have different approaches to achieve the same (equal) outcome (in theory).

So if SE's idea is to make both tank "sub-classes" equal and distinguish them like shield and pure healers I think they should clarify this at some point.

[ForteNightshade]

2x Regen healer being just not viable has to do with mitigation-centric fight design and not playing to Regen healer's strength. Regardless, in high-end content we made double barrier healer work and virtually any tank combination was able to clear any high-end fight mechanically speaking.

SuperIchi's point still applies to high-end content, even if you subtract the 2x Pure healer statement.

To be fair, you already outlined why we made double barrier work. It's objectively better to mitigation damage instead of healing it back up afterwards. Especially when certain boss raidwides (Absolute Zero, Fixer) will simply one shot you without a ton of mitigation.

Tanks likely won't have this problem, but if say Savage fights demand more mitigation and say a WAR/GNB comp lacks that, then it's comparable to the WHM/AST problem. I also worry that PT will enforce it no matter what like they do with healers now.

[Eesh]

I also worry that PT will enforce it no matter what like they do with healers now.

PF enforces the most banal things as it stands, this gives more (rightful if the fight design demands it) ammunition to them going forward.

And even if they don't go back to HW/SB where outright job banning was a thing then it's making filling roles even more painful since where a tank could adjust easily now it's another specialized slot needed to fill.

[Mikey_R]

Just as a curiosity, did a similar outrage occur when they split the healers into pure and barrier healers? Because, ultimately, this is the same concept as that. For most content, it doesn't matter what pair of healers (tanks) you have, however, if you do harder content, it becomes better to have one each of a pure (main tank) and barrier (off tank) to better utilise the unique buffs they bring.

You know what, expanding on this point, DPS are restricted as well. You want one of each 'role', melee, caster and phys ranged, that, if you end up in a situation where you have 1 slot to fill and are only missing 1 role, you only want DPS of that role.

So really, tanks have had it easier than all the other roles to fill spots with the only limiting thing being the number of tanks available and the fact there are about a million DPS players at any one time.

[Uzephi]

that could allow for the OT to be in charge of keeping the rest of the party alive,

Sounds like you just relegated OT to healer duties with that sentence.

[Burmecia]

there isn't main tanks or off tanks, there is only aggro and those too weak to hold it

[Akira]

i don't know if this has been said in here before or not but, how about we reserve our judgement until after the final fanfest they did say all this is under early develpoment and is subject to change.

[Haami]

this is the only upcoming change that I completely did not like...

As a main healer since 2.0, I truly believe that the day healers got ruined is the day they Categorized Healers in 2 sub roles ( Pure Healers - Barrier Healers ) this hurts the role in many ways than I could mention..

A Major issue that I can see is it limits the Fantasy of when a new Healer is made, as they have to make one that falls under those 2 sub roles... instead of approaching the idea of making a new healer based off of an older ff game, or completely coming up with a new concept.
with that healer not only being played differently, but also offers it's own way of support too, White Mage : Pure healing - Astro : Card buffs - Scholar : Strong shields - Sage : Strong Dmg > and work it from there and create new ideas, each idea with its own identity... instead of making it just 2 subroles... and that we all have to abide by the law of " all healers need to dps nonestop " and basically thats our major benefit to the party.. instead of it being our healing and whatever utility each healing job offers....


Now unfortunately I see the same thing is happening with The Tank roles...
this means that the next tank to be added after 8.0 is going to also be another " Main Tank " because currently by the time 8.0 is out, we will have 2 main tanks, and 3 off-tanks...

Honestly these sub roles are abysmal and they should be completely removed... Let The Tanks Pick what they want to do in an endgame content given what unique utility the job they play can offer... don't force us into a category that we do not want!

[Yuella]

Simple. Level an OT tank and an MT tank. If you want to OT, play the OT tank. If you want to MT, play the MT tank.