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

[Pixieh]

That is the problem with my group now, too
Both tanks are very worried and despise the tank split already.
They both announced that they will very likely retire from tanking.
So we are unfortunately tankless now
The removal of tank stances is equally dumb. Like what do they even expect at this point? Spam provoke every 30 seconds or what?
Not a single tank i know thinks anything good will come from this. It will just be that all main tanks play the same way and all off tanks play the same way.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is turning off a lot of GNB's, DRK's and WAR's from maining tank. Most of us don't want to either be a budget tank or have to switch class. Personally I don't like Paladin because its the most generic class lore in all of mmorpg history. I don't like Bastion because it has the most stupid weapons. If you're not a burly dude or Roe female those weapons are going to look stupid. Absolutely stupid.

It simply does NOT matter if budget tanks can step up to MT if need be. The game itself clearly divides tanks into main tanks and off tanks and it doesn't MATTER at all what can and cannot be done. People won't care, they will ONLY see the MT and OT labels and that's it for them, they won't educate themselves, 3 out of 5 tanks will be looked down upon.

Screw you SE.

[Carighan]

This is so fascinating to read coming from any other MMORPG - doesn't matter which. FFXIV has clearly (and by a significant margin) the worst class setups, worst core class-side gameplay loop and worst per-class gameplay loops. And it is also the only one where all tanks are carbon copies of each other. Do you honestly think that if all the other MMORPGs, who can create far more meaningful gameplay, could also have all tanks be identical while doing so, they wouldn't do it?

That is, tanks not being equally apt at doing things is a core prerequisitive to better gameplay. Or in fact more generically: Classes cannot have meaningful gameplay while they are supposed to perform functionally identical independent of context.

Something has got to give.
Either the context matters. Some are better than X, others at Y, and so on.
Or they play differently, hence have different skill floors and (usually ceilings, so some are strictly superior just more risky).
Or they are unstable, e.g. with strong performance-altering chance modifiers (something the FFXIV playerbase yelled out of the door when Astro for example).
Or, and this is where our tanks currently are, they are just palette swaps of a single class.

Something always has to give. If a tank isn't worse at having the boss face them, they cannot - in turn - be better at something else. And vice versa. And if you want neither, you don't actually have two classes you are comparing, just one.

Lemme ask this the other way around: What if the situation were inversed? What if so far, we had different MTs and OTs, and now the devs would ask "Yo, would you like it if we made all tanks able to be either the main or the off tank equally well"? but it comes with a catch "In turn, we remove all tank classes you're all playing Generic Tankclass now, who is naturally the MT and the OT of choice". That's the opposite side. We are basically after everyone had said "Yes" to that choice. That works, but it's also pointless. That'd be an easy reason to quit a game for me if a dev threw their own RPG class system out of the window like that just because players can't handle the thought of ever being in a situation where they have to socialize and go "No wait, you do that".

[Pixieh]

Inversed situation or current situation, there shouldn't be a situation at all where they change tanks so fundamentally over a decade in. Paladin's and Bastion's will of course not mind the change, they get to keep playing Hero.

It clearly doesn't affect your main, so it's easy for you take SE's side, innit?

[Mikey_R]

Inversed situation or current situation, there shouldn't be a situation at all where they change tanks so fundamentally over a decade in. Paladin's and Bastion's will of course not mind the change, they get to keep playing Hero.

It clearly doesn't affect your main, so it's easy for you take SE's side, innit?

What about the tanks are they changing so fundamentally? We know both MT/OT are capable of being the one taking the hits, ie. the one infront of the boss and they even stated that the distinction will only really apply in Savage/Ultimate content (I don't think they added Extremes to the list, but I'm not going to check). SO the question that should be asked is, what is it about those encounters that means it would be more beneficial to bring both an MT and OT over, say 2 MT or 2 OT. Again, they have said the content would be clearable if you have the same style tank, you just might need to change how you approach certain things. Take from that what you want.

Off the top of my head, the only real change to a boss encounter I can think of where the distinction would matter is if there was a period of time where the tank tanking a high amount of damage. the MT will be able to deal with it better, and whilst an OT can as well, they might need more babysitting from a healer.

So, what is the actual issue that is making players say, oh no, my main is OT, quitting tanking forever, when we know nothing about what the change actually means other than the vague snippets of info we have got. Or, is it purely just the name that irks people?

[Carighan]

Paladin's and Bastion's will of course not mind the change, they get to keep playing Hero.

It's funny, I main Paladin, and I really don't like MTing. I will probably swap to Gunbreaker in Evercold. See, that's the thing. I just play a different tank class. They're all - currently - identical, so it really really really doesn't matter unless you don't have 2+ levelled right now.

[Burmecia]

Paladin's and Bastion's will of course not mind the change, they get to keep playing Hero.

I'll just let DRK continue main tanking
kindest regards, local ot PLD

[DjGameKing]

Inversed situation or current situation, there shouldn't be a situation at all where they change tanks so fundamentally over a decade in. Paladin's and Bastion's will of course not mind the change, they get to keep playing Hero.

It clearly doesn't affect your main, so it's easy for you take SE's side, innit?

So... am I to understand correct, because it is a fundamental change over a decade in, it is bad? Because if that's the case, truly awful that they are giving us more character creator options in EC. Smh my head, SE screwing us again.

Genuinely, I don't know how to react to this, because I think it is an insane statement to say. We can argue that they shouldn't have been a situation where this change had to happen in the first place, sure, but it is here and something needs to be done. Also, as much as you can and will say "oh, but you main PLD so you will be fine" since you said that to Carighan, keep in mind that PLD was preferred OT until EW finally released us from Spirits Within scaling from HP and gave us self sustain not tied to Clemency. So PLD has "only" been preferred as MT for the last 5 years. Are we gonna argue that poor PLD should actually be made into a preferred OT in that case? Because that seems to be the angle you're shooting for.

Plus, as well, as much as you can blame community perception of tanks that will force the OTs to be OT and MTs to be MT, you calling OTs "budget tanks" shows me you're right alongside the very same people you say will look down on the tanks.

[Lyth]

Players are objecting to being forcibly shoehorned into playing an understudy tank role just because they don't want to play PLD or cannon PLD. 'Just trust me' isn't a very promising start when the game has spent the past ten years designing fights in a fairly predictable way. I would not be surprised to see a lot of people decide to swap over to melee over being an obligate understudy tank, given experience with the current fight design formula. As Mukuku succinctly put it:

When I am not currently tanking I don't think "I am tanking in a different way": I think "I am currently not tanking, until we swap".

And if you're always not tanking as a tank, you're better off doing something else more productive with your time.

Now, whether the developers will successfully bring this to pass is another question altogether. If the goal was to create 'unique' tanks, then it's worth noting that evolved PLD is basically unchanged from current PLD outside of some further button simplifications and the Answering Strike mechanic. If they wanted to make the tanks unique, a starting point would be to take features away from PLD that are related to off tanking, such as Intervention (which is now part of Sheltron) and Cover, while giving it features that the off tanks don't have. I've also seen nothing to suggest that main tanks will be more effective at taking damage, outside of perhaps passive blocking. Right now, the main split appears to be between tanks who are forced to land counterattacks to maximize their damage output and those who do not.

If the main differentiating factor ends up being the counter, I suspect that one of the subroles will be locked out of the first tier based off of dps optimization. And unless Answering Strike is deliberately overtuned, I think there's a risk that the subrole in question will be main tank.

[Carighan]

Players are objecting to being forcibly shoehorned into playing an understudy tank role just because they don't want to play PLD or cannon PLD.

It should also be noted that "understudy" is something you get from the word "off tank", but this is historically not how roles work out in specialized tanking.

E.g.: Assume both Paladin and Bastion have a counter move they use from being personally attacked. Now also assume that to make up for this - and inherently slightly prefer not being the tank actively targetted - GNB, WAR and DRK get more moves to protect the part as a whole.

This would inherently specialize the tanks so that in fights with more tank-targetted abilities and stronger and longer AA cycles, PLD and BST want to be MT, and OT doesn't matter. While in fights with a lot, and especially frequent raid damage, you'll want to bring two of DRK/GNB/WAR, to maximize raid mitigation uptime. That's how tank specialization actually works out.
Again compare WoW during it's TBC era: One tank excelled at personal damage mitigation, and hence was usually "the main tank". Warrior. One tank had low damage mitigation but due to an enormous raw health pool had equivalent eHP against most bosses, the Bear Druid (Alamo says sum durids r bare lol), but they lost out due to needing so much extra mana to heal up. But against damage that could not be mitigated (most DoTs, many special boss abilities) this larger HP pool was the key, as Warriors could not bring their superior mitigation to bear (pun intended). Meanwhile the Paladin was a bit like a warrior but less mitigation-centric, in turn they had stronger CC and absolutely insane aggro generation including the best area aggro generation tool in the game. Whenever add spawned and needed to be quickly picked up and nuked down, Paladins were the tank of choice. Against these they could often utilize their CC (e.g. dungeons) and also had the far safer and more flexible pickup.

That's how tank specialization works! Just because one tank (in WoW the Warrior) is superior in "standard tank and spank" doesn't mean they win by default. They only cover the default case.

(edit)
And yeah I agree it's super super weird that they make PLD a main tank, the only tank class that has a slight slant towards wanting to be the not-main-tank right now. So weird. If anything DRK should have been an MT, given their lore-wise hero syndrome and their desire for breaking TBN.

[Kishin12345]

I'd definitely take the option where all tanks are equally skilled at mting and oting. I'd even make the healers equally skilled at shielding and burst healing.
I mean does anyone really think if there is an evolved job that just doesnt work in a certain encounter, the dev team wouldn't change that job, so it works in all encounters?
We've seen that multiple times over many expansions and i dont expect that to change ever. Like if the drg skyhigh jump thingy being drg's gimmick doesnt end up working in a savage or ultimate fight because of whatever reason, they surely change that feature so it will work again.
Look at ninja's tcj not working because of mobility issues, look at viper's early changes in dt. It was just way too clunky putting a debuff on the opponent rather than putting a buff on yourself.
Reaper mains have been complaining about death's design since forever.
Maybe jobs will be more unique in 8.x but along the lines in the following expansions a lot of it will get watered down again.
I think that is just how things go.it's always the thing when 1 job has someghing that other's want for their job aswell and over time all jobs will have certain things that other jobs have.
Does anyone think there will be any job without a gap closer for example? Homogenization is inevitable imo