Talent tree (spec) suggestion

[BabyYoda]

Why do I believe talent tree would work for Tanks more than DPS jobs in ffxiv?

usually games have sub-roles specially PVP focused games,

there are more than 1 dps, there is a marksman, bruiser, assassin, controller/support.

but I don't this will work on FFXIV DPS jobs, but what if this could work for tanks? and how?
we are having currently 2 sub-roles for tanks which is tank/off-tank.

do you think this could work for tanks that allow them to have 2 skill trees each tree will focus on being Main tank or Off tank?

Main tanks: have their damage depending on receiving damage like how revenge and TBN work.
Off tank: doing more damage by not receiving damage, like how PLD shield could explode if no one attack them.

[Mikey_R]

Wouldn't work, let's go through each content.

Dungeons, 1 tank, always MT.

Normal trials/8 man raids, you can enter either on MT spec or OT spec and have no guarantee on being on the right one, 50% chance your damage is neutered for no reason.

Alliance raids, dependant on whether the raid requires each tank to MT at some point, you will have the wrong spec.

Extreme trials, Savage and Ultimate. With tank swaps, you will be MTing/OTing at some point, calling it even, 50% of the time you will be less effective, just because.

This is before we get into the logistics of having to keep swapping depending on the content you do, where, for most of it, it is a coin toss whether you have the right one or not.

So, for me, it falls flat before you even start looking at how you would change the jobs.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

Talent trees don't really work, they are an illusion of choice there is always a meta build, and inferior builds. As Mikey said, due to how flexible MT and OT is in XIV, this idea will fall flat, it would not bring anything new or interesting to how jobs work.

[AnjouMaaka]

The only tank this could have any chance of working for is dark knight and only if there's a self sustain tree where instead of Oblation you get warrior's Equilibrium and Abyssal Drain becomes a GCD that costs 1500MP and untied from Carve and Spit. You know most dark knights would choose this. But for pretty much every other job, it would be an illusion of choice so I can't get behind it

[SargeTheSeagull]

"Talent trees are an illusion of choice, there's always meta builds." Yes. But it's better than no choice at all. So long as the difference between "meta build" and "non-meta" build isn't so large it takes appreciably more time to clear a given piece of content, who cares? If I'm going to work I have two choices: 1. Take the interstate and get there fast but be bored. 2. Take the route through the hills and have a wonderful time but take three minutes extra" yeah, on an average day I'll obviously go 1 but who cares if someone else goes 2 or if I feel like going 2 once in a while? Oh no, my coworkers will have to deal with me getting there on time instead of 5 minutes early. They won't remember that an hour into work so who cares?

[NegativeS]

Talent trees don't really work, they are an illusion of choice there is always a meta build, and inferior builds.

Different types of content would have different 'metas', and the ability for people to experiment and engage in discourse about it opens up a whole new metagame for people to engage with. I do not think a talent system would fit FFXIV (at least, in its current iteration of job design), but I hear the 'illusion of choice' argument all the time in WoW discussions and it never holds any water. Having a choice is better than not.

[Carighan]

Having a choice is better than not.

In a vacuum, yes. But as WoW has amiably shown over the years with its many many many iterations of both talent trees and other systems, it's not in a vacuum, rather talent trees drain dev time, proportion to the amount of fake choices you want to offer. Sure, you could always go the GW2 route, that between its massive amount of choice for skills and weapons coupled with specs just gave up, throws 100 things at the wall and hopes 5 skills, 2 weapons and a few talents stick (enough to make 1 full spec), but even then you gotta bugfix/maintain the others (and GW2 famously had very broken skills for very long based on not doing bugfixing).

So no, it's not necessarily better. If we assume that devs don't have enough management-cleared job rework time to get balancing done or fixing DRK or nerfing Picto or removing Viper and coming up with a concept that actually feels unique and interesting and viper-y instead, then we got to assume that this would become even slower and also that implementing talent trees would take an equivalently long time. So we'd have the talent trees for the first role by 10.0 or so. :P

[Seku]

Or they could work in giving Cool down's dual purposes to fit different situations without relying on stances. Kinda how Shake it off can use warriors defensive cool downs to increase it's shielding to the party and could assist in extending the theme of each job without necessarily adding in more buttons yet giving more options.

[Rithy255]

I do actually like the idea behind the post here, the arguments against seem to be "illusion of choice!" Well I rather have the Illusion then just not have it all, funnily enough not everyone's a top end meta slave. creativity and the lack of actual variance is why people are generally upset with current job design, I rather SE try new things like this then stagnate with current design.

Some builds going to more a MT, or more a OT, or variants like AOE sustain would add some interest, I do think you'd need a quick switch system before combat in place for this to work for OT's.

Personally what I'd want is certain Cooldowns to have selectable upgrades, such as lasting longer, adding a additional effect, being able to share a defensive with another tank but weaker, shorter cooldown Ect, theirs a lot you can do with Tanks & Healers.

I do think a system like this would leave out Dps for the most part, as trying to change damage cooldowns and how they interact is going to be something next to impossible to even balance, but I could see ways of giving DPS slightly more cooldowns that help (such as mantra, Addle ect). giving them variances and Physical ranged of course has more unique cooldowns, so even in the case of dps we can argue that theirs room for utility variance.

[CKNovel]

I believe talent trees can work but only if they're designed in a way that answers a player's need rather than a meta.
In short, no choices involving DPS potential but utility.

For example what if you had to choose between an extra dash or an sprint with a shorter cooldown?
What if you had to choose between GNB's Aurora reducing damage taken or stronger healing?
What if DRK could ditch Living Dead's healing effect but its cooldown is reduced?

You could have choices to compensate the lack of a specific job.
The hardest part is to design the talent well enough to answer the player's need rather than answer a fight specific need or a meta.