Please Reconsider Splitting Main and Off-Tank Roles Based on Job

[Mukuku]

Right now PLD as what was showed can do everything that was stated in terms of both MT and OT which is why I think their splitting is a wording issue.

That is true if the counter mechanic can proc off allies, e.g. through Intervention. If not, not being the actual MT would mean PLD loses the counter mechanic and potentially also potency since my understanding is that countering gives higher damage.

If e.g. Intervention can trigger counters I agree the issue is only naming, but if it's not there is a strong incentive for the "counter tank" to be the one holding aggro, which is what upsets many players.

Said that, a similar mechanic already exists with TBN, which needs to be timed right to "pop" on damage and can be put on allies. Popping TBN is damage-neutral whereas non popping it is a damage loss: it would only need to turn the pop into a damage increase to effectively have it as a "counter"...

[RaionKansen]

I agree with the OP. I think the wording that they used may be off. Right now based on what was shown.

All tanks can reduce enemy damage-- Reprisal
PLD and new tank can counter enemy damage
PLD can provide protection for individual-- intervention
PLD can provide protection for the party- wings & divine veil

Right now PLD as what was showed can do everything that was stated in terms of both MT and OT which is why I think their splitting is a wording issue. At EU fanfest we should get more clarification to calm our fears. However people are right to be cautious. Especially what happened with AST to where now playing AST and WHM in high end content can be a death sentence.

With them also saying that they want healers to focus on healing and that they don't like how bosses kind of just stand around for you to hit them, I think we're going to be seeing much more damage in higher end fights. At least that's what I'm hoping

[Zalifer]

I'm not currently playing endgame, but I was hoping to start running raids in the new expansion. Watching the reveal was like seeing someone get everything right, up until the tank split.

It feels like there's no way that this is a boon for players.

Lots of defenders of the change are saying that "the split won't matter" which is an awful defence for splitting them into two roles. If it doesn't matter, why separate them into two groups? Why put names that you know, mattering or not, people will select based on, feeling like they need one of each.

If the change does matter, and newer content forces people to use one MT and one OT, it now forces people who enjoy a job and role they have played for a long time to possibly need to change at one of those things, either swapping role to play their job, or swapping job to play their role. Of course, some people may see their main job and role line up. As for people that are happy to play either role on a job, they now can't play each on the same job, losing flexibilty and player freedom.

If the requirement for MT and OT is really only something that matters in the highest difficulty of content, then again, why put the names and groups in there? High end duty players already select the jobs that give every little optimisation in a fight, so names or not, they would work out which tanks are best for a given enounter and run those. And that decision will trickle downwards due to "meta". If people see all the top groups running MT/OT, MT/MT, or OT/OT, that will become a common thing to see required even in low level content that doesn't require it.

Any of the above scenarios would likely result in it being slower and more awkward to fill parties, as you now require the right tanks to fill your group. For tank players, depending on your chosen job, make it harder to get into duties. For example, if meta decides OT/OT is the way to run, PLD is going to find it harder to get into groups. Or if it's MT/OT, OT's may struggle to find groups as there are more people playing OT since it covers 3 jobs, or it could be with so many people trying the new tank (or just wanting to MT) there might be a huge surplus of MT's making it harder for those jobs to find a spot.

As other people have mentioned, PLD has been shown to tick all the boxes to be both MT and OT by their descriptions given so far. Hence, we might assume (a risk, I know) that all tanks will have a complete toolkit, but the tuning will lean a little one way or the other depending on the MT/OT role they are assigned, with party mit skills being weaker for MT, but having higher defences or tools to mitigate damage on themselves. If that's the case, then perhaps a simple toggle of which role the tank wants to be in would be a better solution would be, as many people have suggested, a way to switch from being MT to OT and back.

[Zalifer]

If they use a toggle method, my suggestion would be that it cannot be toggled during an encounter/combat. This would mean the tanks need to set up for the fight ahead of time, and doesn't reintroduce "stance dancing" where tanks will play in whatever gives more DPS and swap into MT only for big hits, for example. It allows for the devs to design fights that would require MT/OT roles (which may be the desire here, to introduce more involved tank roles, particularly for the OT), but as any player could likely fill either role on any job, it wouldn't have as large an impact on filling or joining groups. Some players may not wish to MT, some may not wish to OT, but that can happen now too. Even if the difference between roles isn't limited to tuning, but has different skills, those could be changed by the toggle too, of course. Maybe changing "stand your ground" to "stand my ground" when WAR is set to MT, removing it as a party wide, and giving them a larger personal, for example.

Anyway, this feels like maybe my one negative from the fanfest announcements, but I felt I had to make an account to add my voice to feedback for the team. I feel like there's probably the intention to give some great encounters and fight design in high end content behind this change, I'd just rather the way it's handled be different.
Almost every single other thing looked good, so I'm still really looking forward to the change to get into raiding, even if I feel a little railroaded into a particular tank role. Maybe iLvl reflection will make it easier for me to swap to another job for the other role though

[Atreus]

This distinction probably isn't going to matter in anything except high-end raids. If that still bothers you, idk. Feel like there's some hurt tank egos flying around.

[Mikey_R]

Wait, they are changing encounters?
Beyond getting out of the 2min meta constrains I mean...

Granted, it might be me reading too much into it, but they seemed excited about being free from the constraint of making fights around the 2minute meta. If we also look at the current structure of the 4 jobs they have shown, they seem to be going away from a strict rotation, instead allowing jobs to flow more freely. With this in mind, it might mean you see mechanics with far more RNG attached to them, so you have to adjust on the fly.

I might be being very optimistic about this, especially since I was always critical of anything like this in the past, however, I never expected them to change the jobs as much as they did, so I am hoping this design philosophy also translates into the encounters.

[DRKoftheAzure]

I'm just gonna keep my thoughts on this topic short; They should have made Dark Knight a Main Tank for Evolved mode instead of Off Tank, considering it was initially designed that way at the start of 3.0 all the way up until the start of Stormblood when the homogenization started slowly...

[ForteNightshade]

This distinction probably isn't going to matter in anything except high-end raids. If that still bothers you, idk. Feel like there's some hurt tank egos flying around.

But that's still a problem considering their whole spiel was talking about giving players more choices and accessibility in the ways they want to play. If the MT/OT split does have a noticeable enough impact you're forced to bring one of each to Savage or Ultimate, then it immediately contradicts their objective for Evercold. You now have less choice as a tank. If you prefer to MT, you'll have only two tanks to pick from instead of five.

And none of this gets into how difficult it is to balance all this.

[Heroman3003]

People are overreacting. Remember when everyone was horrified that 'official split' into Barrier and Pure Healer will be the end of job variety for Healers and it ended up not affecting anything whatsoever except the absolutely sweatiest parties imaginable that already would kick half the jobs for having 0.002% less average DPS? I bet this will be even less impactful than that.

[Mikey_R]

But that's still a problem considering their whole spiel was talking about giving players more choices and accessibility in the ways they want to play. If the MT/OT split does have a noticeable enough impact you're forced to bring one of each to Savage or Ultimate, then it immediately contradicts their objective for Evercold. You now have less choice as a tank. If you prefer to MT, you'll have only two tanks to pick from instead of five.

And none of this gets into how difficult it is to balance all this.

Imagine for a moment, that they had called the roles something else, would you still have these worries?

Really, that is what most of the worry is about, they have a notion of what a main tank and off tank is, likely from other games, and expect that same definition to apply here. It doesn't.

The best thing to do is wait until July, where I predict they will show more jobs, with one of them being Warrior, just to people can compare what Paladin has, as a 'main' tank, to Warrior, an 'off' tank.

Once we have a better idea of what they envision 'main' and 'off' tank to be, then we can start giving feedback, but as of right now, we know basically nothing.