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

[Carighan]

Damn that about the Bastion sounds really cool. Interesting distinction from the Paladin having their Cover.

[CyberNettrix]

As a healer main, the split of barrier healer and pure healer hasn't helped any of them be individual, it has done the opposite. I am not a tank but even I'm worried that exactly the same thing is going to happen to ya'll.

[Kishin12345]

As a healer main, the split of barrier healer and pure healer hasn't helped any of them be individual, it has done the opposite. I am not a tank but even I'm worried that exactly the same thing is going to happen to ya'll.

Oh it most certainly will! All this split does is take away flexibility.
They tried this shit back in heavensward, too where pld was supposed to main tank and what happened was that pld practically got never played. Warrior was the one pulling and generating aggro, then drk took all that aggro and kept it

It doesn't add uniqueness or identity either, because all we got now is another formula of what makes a main tank into a main tank and an off tank into an off tank.
More restrictions, less freedom

[DjGameKing]

I dunno, I would rather them try out this instead of having all 4 (well, 5 with EC) tanks be almost palette swaps of each other. Can I see problems, both in terms of gameplay and the community reaction, to this? Yeah. I just would still rather have those issues than having all tanks be allrounders and never have any specialization ever, because specialization is scary and we can't have that. Remember when they added extra effects to the 30% mitigations that perfectly map to each tank? A regen, an HP increase (+ heal), a shield and an excog effect? Remember how they didn't map those to the respective tanks with those effects (PLD, WAR, DRK and GNB in order of me listing those effects), because it might cause an imbalance with making the tank more and less good in certain content? I sure do and I am still annoyed. That is also an assumption on my end, but I don't feel like it is unreasonable to assume that when they, again, used effects that perfectly map to certain tanks. 3 out of 4 of those are even the effects of the short cooldowns!

Sure, I don't want to go back to HW or begin of SB levels of 1 tank being so bad that you just exclude them from PF groups, but something is needed. Something needs to give and if it takes a singular counter and what is likely some way to keep the boss debuffed or the party buffed to reduce damage, I'll take that. That obviously doesn't mean that PLD vs Bastion will be meaningfully different, same with WAR vs DRK vs GNB. That isn't gong to be the fault of the split, though, since again, we already have these quite similar tanks as it is now where they can choose to be MT or OT to begin with. And, let's just be real, you will absolutely be able to OT as PLD or Bastion and MT as WAR, DRK or GNB. The only question is how much will it disadvantage you, if at all. If the speculation is true that MTs can proc counters from an ally by using their short cooldown on a party member, that alone will prove that the only real difference is that MTs are likely slightly better at taking hits because of blocking and otherwise are completely interchangeable with an OT.

[Carighan]

I dunno, I would rather them try out this instead of having all 4 (well, 5 with EC) tanks be almost palette swaps of each other. Can I see problems, both in terms of gameplay and the community reaction, to this? Yeah. I just would still rather have those issues than having all tanks be allrounders and never have any specialization ever, because specialization is scary and we can't have that.

Exactly this.

[Kishin12345]

I still think the difference will be very small or won't matter at all. You will play the role and not the job.
The healer split killed astro's sect gameplay. We only lose and win nothing. All this does is force players to bring a certain tank comp rather than allowing them to play what they prefer. Or if you can still play any tank comp you like then the split might just get reverted in the coming expansions.
Just like many ideas and systems that got such heavy backlash from the start.
I know many tank mains being very uncertain if they will still enjoy tanking or if they drop tanking entirely.
It's just such a weird decision. I know not a single tank that is happy about this, it's more some kind of fear if i had to descibe it, maybe uncertainty?
We should not split healers either. Each healer should just be skilled at shielding and regen healing. At least so much that they can clear any duty on any difficulty if played properly.

Also what if the only true difference between mt and ot is the counter? We know that countering is a mt feature. So the new mechanic enforcing a mt for savage and ultimate could just be a tank buster that needs to be countered, which ot couldnt do?

[Lyth]

The tank role split is not a prerequisite for having unique tank designs. The Evolved mode showcase for DRG demonstrated that the dev team was willing to experiment with damage reduction on jumps, as a nod to dragoons in earlier Final Fantasy games. That doesn't mean that every melee job needs to now copy this to maintain parity.

If they wanted the tanks to not be palette swaps of each other, they absolutely could. We've only gotten to the current state because of an obsession with maintaining equivalence between the tanks at the expense of job flavour. If you make tanks unique, there will be necessarily be situations where one will have an advantage over the others. That's fine as long as it's not the same tank for every situation.

The reason why people are more bothered by this split is because the fight designs for tanks can be very asymmetric. You can still choose between H1 or H2 as a shield healer or a pure healer and still have some interesting variations on how you experience the same fight. If you design an obligate MT, then you take away that choice from players entirely (and let's face it, there isn't a great track record for designing fights that are simultaneously engaging for both tanks).

You could argue that the split will be inconsequential in the end (because people will proc counters off of raidwides, because the damage differences from utilizing counters will be negligable, or because double MT or double OT will end up accidentally being a meta pick due to balance issues), but those scenarios all indicate a design failure rather than a successful design.

What I'd like to see is either a discussion about how they've weighed the potential drawbacks of this split, or a Q+A session where they field players' concerns about the changes to the role. Then we could put these worries to rest.

[Carighan]

The tank role split is not a prerequisite for having unique tank designs.

Technically correct. The best kind of correct.

However in the context of why people complain about the upcoming split, it should be noted that making each tank "properly unique" also means they're now effectively 5 tank sub-roles (not just 2 as in EC). Each tank will be the premier tank for a specific context, and will be clearly superior in that context. Not a problem to me personally - in fact I'd love that. Best times in MMORPGs I've played was when class identity was strong even if it cost (some) balance. Always the years each MMO felt best.

It works okay-ish in the context of DPS because there, the balancing metric is ultimately much simpler. Even then, assuming no other melee DPS gets the damage reduction Dragoons do (which I hope they don't, as it'd make DRG really unique) there will be plenty situations where you want to bring a dragoon for sure as they can cheese an otherwise annoying mech. And vice-versa where their sky jump is effectively a wash. But, like I said, we're talking a tank mechanic difference on a damage class. That's easy to avoid massively issues with.
To translate this to tanks, all tanks would still tank 100% the same (so no MT/OT split and neither unique tanking capabilities per-tank either, all tank CDs and base HP and all stay ~equal as now). But their damage systems and patterns would be very unique. This can work, but due to FFXIV's extreme focus on damage output, could still cause the same problem. Really this is something they avoid out of sheer coincidence with non-damage differences on damage-role classes, nothing else.

But anyhow my main point is that if someone dislikes an MT/OT split (as in, "I want the boss to look at me" vs "I want to be the tank the boss doesn't look at"), then having five fully unique tank specialities is the same but in more extreme. You'd end up with something like "I handle add spawns", "I tank physical-attacks-only-or-mostly bosses", "I'm the one to tank bosses with DoTs or other piercing damage", etc etc. Which again, to me is fine, in fact I'd love that. But it doesn't help people who already dislike splitting into two specialities if they go for five instead. But that in turn is why I don't mind the MT/OT split, in fact I actively desire it: It's a step in the right direction. Yeah it's two specialities instead of five, but hey, huge step in the right direction!

The reason why people are more bothered by this split is because the fight designs for tanks can be very asymmetric. You can still choose between H1 or H2 as a shield healer or a pure healer and still have some interesting variations on how you experience the same fight. If you design an obligate MT, then you take away that choice from players entirely (and let's face it, there isn't a great track record for designing fights that are simultaneously engaging for both tanks).

Not the correct comparison. MT and OT in the EverCold contest are subclasses not raid-plan positions, while H1 and H2 are raid-plan positions. You can trivially go onto H1 as the shield healer and on H2 as the regen healer, even if most do it the other way around. But, equivalent to that, right now in virtually all fights you can swap the tank positions, and the fight works perfectly fine. Yes ideally you also flip R and M positions, but given current gear levels if you wipe because of a few missed 40 potency positions your problem really wasn't the boss looking south, honestly.

What you describe is this:

* The Scholar plays as the regen healer. You bring a Sage + a Scholar, and the scholar never ever ever casts a shield or so, they exclusively do Physick and Emergency Tactics stuff and oGCDs to restore raw health.
* Or, the White Mage plays as the shield healer. You bring an Astro + a White Mage, and it's now the White Mage's fault if the group dies because they didn't have enough shields on them.

See how that has issues? And that's the equivalent.

[Terhix]

What I'd like to see is either a discussion about how they've weighed the potential drawbacks of this split, or a Q+A session where they field players' concerns about the changes to the role. Then we could put these worries to rest.

They seem to keep their reasoning close to chest as per usual, the closest we got is from the same famitsu interview, machine translated:

(...) It hurts a little to hear people ask, "Should Warriors study how to be a sub-tank?" We've received similar comments from Dark Knight players as well, but in Evolved Mode, one person must be the main tank and the other the sub-tank, and adjustments must be made accordingly. Of course, we've made sure to create a fun experience unique to being a sub-tank, so I hope you can look forward to that positively.

So they're clearly aware of the concerns, all the way up to Yoshi, but seem determined in their direction regardless. If they can make off-tanking fun on its own rather than just being the same role as MT but with fewer responsibilities (with very few exceptions like P2 in TEA) that sounds good to me. Whether they will succeed or not time will only tell.

[Derio]

I cant really see how the split will matter when PLD looks to have most if not all of its supporting tools still available. This means that either OT will get more party utility or the slide is just PR talk.