Physical Ranged TANK

[MaraD_]

This kind of class would end up a prim candidate for vote kicks. I suspect everytime people saw one they’d stand at the door and refuse to budge until the timer had moved enough and they could vote it out.

Interesting. Since this is only hypothetical, and no one can be punished for it, would anyone here actually vote kick out such a job? Would anyone here leave group? Its hard to imagine it would be "that bad" to be partnered, since you hardly change up your rotation.

Title is misleading...
I thought this would be about an actual ranged tank, like the Wildstar Engineer that used a plasma rifle and bots (think of the MCH).
But instead this is some weird idea about forcing a role switch on another player.

I've mentioned that type of tank plenty, but most people have already thought it before. So this type was more about something I never hear anyone talking about.
As for saying its misleading, thats sorta incorrect, but it takes a LONG time to explain why.

Lets pretend we make a new MMO.
its only DPS and Healers.

We have DPS who focus on AoE, and DPS who focus on single target. (some old MMOs did this, and 2.0 sorta did this)
We have healers who focus on AoE, and some on single target.

But, what if the single target healer was limited to ONLY selecting themselves? To compensate, they get MORE potency.
So they heal 100 potency per GCD.
The other AoE healer heals 50 potency per GCD.
A boss would deal 150 potency per attack (GCD)
and does 50 potency per raide wide attack.

essentially this "healer" would be a tank, by players standards.

Now what about a game where we had 0 heals. only mitigation buffs like rampart.
The AoE mitigation user does -25% dmg taken, and the self targeting one uses a -50% dmg taken.
the raid can survive X number of raid wide attacks.
so the DPS check isnt an enrage, but how long mitigation lasts, until HP is 0. (since there is no heals.)
This self mitigator would be considered the tank.

Mitigation and healing serve the same role in a RPG.
Just as melee DPS and ranged DPS are technically serving the same role.

I thought, what if we reverse the two? what if the self mitigator targeted others instead (Ramparts the party), and the AoE healer was self healing only (constantly equilibriums themselves)?
Which of the 2 is considered the tank, and which is considered the healer?
In short, the self healer doesnt fully work in FFXIV, but the role of "Mitigate dmg, so the healer can keep up heals, and protect the group" still applies to this job.
It would still be a tank, and fulfill its function in every situation.

The stereotypical Knight with a shield isnt the only way to define tank.
(But I'm still all for the Wildstar engineer btw!)

[Seraph522]

Interesting. Since this is only hypothetical, and no one can be punished for it, would anyone here actually vote kick out such a job? Would anyone here leave group? Its hard to imagine it would be "that bad" to be partnered, since you hardly change up your rotation.

The issue isn't related to rotations, it's related to positioning. As the target of aggro, the tank's job is to make sure the boss and/or adds are positioned correctly during fights - turned away from the rest of the group to avoid cleaves, moved in the right ways to handle certain mechanics (the poison puddles in Brayflox come to mind), keeping the boss still the rest of the time so melee can hit positionals, etc. With this suggestion, you've now made that duty the job of a DPS player who may never have tanked before in their lives and have no idea what they're doing, or a player who does tank but signed up as a DPS specifically because they didn't feel like tanking. Unless the mechanic is made entirely optional (and by that, I mean the DPS can actually mechanically reject the responsibility and not just expecting "no i don't want to" in chat, otherwise it opens the mechanic up to abuse), this would be highly unpleasant to a lot of DPS players, since it would feel like the tank player foisting off their responsibilities on someone else while still benefiting from tank queues and such. And that's not even getting to the fact that you've now got to do your DPS rotation on top of this responsibility, and DPS rotations are generally more complex and involved than tank rotations specifically because tanks have those extra responsibilities to worry about in fights.

And if the mechanic is wholly optional, it now effectively becomes a gimmick rather than an important part of the class, at which point you'd be best just making it a limited job - and we've seen the uproar surrounding the idea of limited jobs, so that wouldn't be terribly well received either.

[MaraD_]

And that's not even getting to the fact that you've now got to do your DPS rotation on top of this responsibility, and DPS rotations are generally more complex and involved than tank rotations specifically because tanks have those extra responsibilities to worry about in fights.

I of course meant the mechanics werent abusable. But with the part quoted above, I feel this is the bigger issue. Boss fights that require repositioning.
As it leads to downtime on DPS.
If slapped on a physical ranged DPS, it wouldnt really hinder DPS. for a melee, they would have to run out of melee range, to move bosses, if the distance is far enough. For caster, the obvious.

It IS more work for them, BUT I feel this is only an issue under 2 circumstances. (1) 4man, where its not a big enough deal, since bosses are easy enough to solo half the time, or at least duo. (2) EX mode primals, where people might get paired with double of these tanks, or an all caster group. EX primals are the range in which content is hard enough you dont want this, but not as hard as savage, where you'd never have let it happen in the 1st place.
So its more akin to what happened in 2.0-4.0 where people wanted NIN BRD so badly, they left spots in PF groups, dedicated for those roles. In a similar fashion, either wanting certain roles to work with the tank, or excluding it. And since yoshida tried to remove that with 5.0, I would see that as a bit of an issue. Personally find it within acceptance, but I would agree, its not good enough on its own to work. So I'd have to rethink it up. (which of course im now coming up with an alternative, which I feel is technically good enough of a fix, but leads to a different discussion I'll save for later.)

Thanks, this helps me fine tune the idea further. (Of course its a waste of time, but I love the challenge.)