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

[Carighan]

What do you do with 2 MTs in the party?

Is that truly relevant to consider? While 2-shield-healer and 2-regen-healer parties happen every so often, sure, it's not exactly something the game actively wants to balance for.

For better or worse, the 8man setup will be 1 MT + 1 OT + 2 melee DPS of different classes + 1 PRanged + 1 Caster + 1 Regen Healer + 1 Sheld Healer.

Basically, IMHO the cardinal sin is tying damage to other stuff.

Only if we want to be eternally stuck in the limitations of the current FFXIV class design paradigma where equivalence is paramount, uniqueness is illegal and upsides (or downsides) are forbidden. There was in itself nothing wrong with gapclosers having damage, except the fact that gapclosers were readily available. In what way said availability could have been cut, it doesn't even matter. But the community of FFXIV, as always, rabidly opposes anything detracting from fully identical setups, and hence all tanks needed gapclosers and hence all tanks would then need damage to weave on their oGCD gapclosers, which in turn doomed them.

Other games manage fine. Other MMORPGs manage fine. It's sad to excuse the inability and unwillingness of SQEX to invest into actual class design with statements such as "the cardinal sin is tying damage to other stuff" (non-damage stuff only I presume?). Everybody else has no problem with that.

And I will say, considering the four classes shown, there is some hope there that they finally "got it". Paladin does not look like the other 3 tanks could be carbon-copies of it, and tanks no longer being carbon-copies of one another would fix one of the biggest issues in tank gameplay right now, if not the biggest one.

[Mukuku]

Is that truly relevant to consider? While 2-shield-healer and 2-regen-healer parties happen every so often, sure, it's not exactly something the game actively wants to balance for.

A regen healer will not lose an "augmented offensive cast proc" if another regen healer is in the party and vice-versa for shield healers. As soon as you involve DPS you automatically bring to the table the wish for many player to optimize their damage regardless of any other consideration.

Only if we want to be eternally stuck in the limitations of the current FFXIV class design paradigma where equivalence is paramount, uniqueness is illegal and upsides (or downsides) are forbidden.

Balance vs. Uniqueness: chose 1. Most players will chose balance. There is a reason many games started with far more uniqueness and moved toward homogenization. Everyone likes "uniqueness" until they realize they are subpar at task X and they don't feel them being better at task Y is enough "compensation".

Other games manage fine. Other MMORPGs manage fine.

For single player games it typically does not matter, still even there a lot of players gravitate towards "meta" builds, which tells a lot about what many players really want.

For MMORPGs, WoW started with far more "uniqueness" and moved away from it. "Bring the player, not the class" was the name of the game from after TBC.

And I will say, considering the four classes shown, there is some hope there that they finally "got it".

I hope so, but IMHO tying damage to other aspects like utility or defensive is fundamentally the wrong way.