Diversifying Tanks

[Shurrikhan]

i wasnt implying seperate content just a bit of divesity in mechanics and attacks.. you could quite easily have a boss throw physical and magical attacks at you throughout the same encounter.

so instead of having every tank be great at everything youd hive variety and diversity
pld might get hurt by attack a but shrug off attack b a few seconds later..
drks might shrug off attack a but get smashed by attack b...

so while theyd have different strengths and weakness both would still be viable in the same content

Technically, the constraints would still be much tighter than that example would lead one to believe. Remember, we don't use a job except when it's competitive, and given that we can swap out the MT at a moment's notice, there is no way the PLD would ever be hit by Attack A nor DRK by Attack B. You'd have to balance, then, around the pair. And if each is specialized towards some given attack and neither is force to take an attack they are ill-adapted for, you'd only have one real strength: PLD's vs. B and DRK's vs. A, for a consistent high sturdiness. The net change from normal play, then, will just be a loss in flexibility.

This is, of course, just a consequence of the 2/4/2 setup in 8-man content. Should that vary, we'd have a whole different ballpark to balance around.

[waterboytkd]

This is, of course, just a consequence of the 2/4/2 setup in 8-man content. Should that vary, we'd have a whole different ballpark to balance around.

I see comments like this and it makes me think: would this game be more interesting if dps wasn't a role? Just Tanks and Healers? Maybe you could have a "Support" role, which can have some buffs/debuffs? Or is that just silly?

[Yrantis]

I see comments like this and it makes me think: would this game be more interesting if dps wasn't a role? Just Tanks and Healers? Maybe you could have a "Support" role, which can have some buffs/debuffs? Or is that just silly?

You touch on a funny point about FFXIV: everybody is actually a DPS in disguise, and that's because of the consistency of the fights in this game. Extra mitigation does absolutely nothing for you in a game with 100% predictable damage, and healing someone at full health does nothing, so what do you do the other 80% of the fight when the boss isn't specifically murdering someone? You DPS. They took away tank aggro so they could focus more on DPS, and while they did increase the amount of healing required this tier, it's still entirely predictable damage, meaning once you learn to play around it...you go back to DPSing when you don't need to heal. We are in fact, all DPS classes, but tanks add defensive CDs and position the boss as additional duties, while healers respond to specific, predictable damage outputs (once the fight is learned optimally of course, people take damage they shouldn't all the time when learning).

[Shurrikhan]

I see comments like this and it makes me think: would this game be more interesting if dps wasn't a role? Just Tanks and Healers? Maybe you could have a "Support" role, which can have some buffs/debuffs? Or is that just silly?

To me, it begs less the question of "What if there were no DPS" than "What if DPS could actually do more than just stand in the right places while gradually depleting the boss's HP?" That in turn begs the question, "What if there was more to the game than just standing in the right places, hitting buttons when their cues come up, and depleting the boss's HP?"

Similarly, I've always been under the impression that a great many controversies could have been spared and opportunities taken if the Healer role had just been named Support to begin with (with still many degrees of supportiveness varying across all roles atop that).