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

[Terhix]

The more I ponder this the more I think the split is mostly a nothing burger, and like with healers where double barrier is generally more viable than double regen, it seems to me that double "off tank" will be more viable than double "main tank". If OT is supposed to focus on debuffing and helping allies, it's quite quaint that PLD kept all of: Reprisal, Veil, Wings, Cover, Intervention, and Clemency. I love dropping TBNs and Oblation on people as much as the next DRK, but they will really have to expand the support kit of all 3 of the "OT" jobs to rival let alone be better than that of PLD's.

All that said I think the split is entirely because they wanted to introduce the parry mechanic to the new tank, and figured they need a second one and chose PLD to be that, and designate those two jobs as MT because they need to be smashed in the face to function and they don't want players to argue endlessly in casual content who should be the MT if one of those two jobs is present. Yes, we all know Damnation has thorns atp, but that's realistically sub 0.5% of WAR's DPS even when maxed out, it's cosmetic and if they delete it nothing of value will be lost.

[Kishin12345]

Worst case this might just boil down to "bring 2 off tanks, because they deal more damage"
I would prefer it if you could declare MT and OT before the encounter starts, so that any tank can be MT and OT

[Dastan]

You are still going to need 4-player dungeon tanks. I doubt they would just kill 3 out of the 5 tank jobs from doing that role. It's more likely that the jobs, in evolved mode, are just better at doing certain things compared to their counterpart tanks. We still don't know the full scope of evolved mode. I know people are using savage as a baseline only, but it also wouldn't make sense to have an "off-tank" in casual content either. A tank is a tank, and their role is to absorb damage and reduce incoming damage on the party.

[Evermomo]

I think they should move away from any class mechanics that punish tanks for losing 1st aggro spot. To me the easy fix is to let paladin's counter/retaliate a target's attack as long as they're in melee range, whether they are the target of it or not. Otherwise tank swaps will punish the paladin, and EV paladins will have to fight for parties and co-tanks that will let them use their kit how it was designed, or take a penalty.

It's very unlikely "OT"s have abilities that benefit from 2nd aggro, because losing part of your kit while holding aggro in dungeons and alliance raids doesn't make sense. If MTs take a penalty and OTs don't, this is an asymmetric problem we don't quite have in the healer split.

[Terhix]

I think they should move away from any class mechanics that punish tanks for losing 1st aggro spot. To me the easy fix is to let paladin's counter/retaliate a target's attack as long as they're in melee range, whether they are the target of it or not. Otherwise tank swaps will punish the paladin, and EV paladins will have to fight for parties and co-tanks that will let them use their kit how it was designed, or take a penalty.

From the dev panel UI can stack Sheltron up to 2 times which gives them up to 40s of a window to tank swap without losing dps, which should be enough for all vulns and mechanics like candies in M12S. If they don't have to be MT to trigger retaliations they might as well not do the whole MT/OT split anyway.

[SalamanderIX]

Right now I could tank a dungeon as a melee dps or a healer, wall-to-wall. I don't think there's going to be a problem.

[Evermomo]

From the dev panel UI can stack Sheltron up to 2 times which gives them up to 40s of a window to tank swap without losing dps, which should be enough for all vulns and mechanics like candies in M12S. If they don't have to be MT to trigger retaliations they might as well not do the whole MT/OT split anyway.

You still have alliance raids, other situations where suddenly the EV paladin is not able to play optimally. And if that burdens other players in a way that OTs and Reborn tanks don't, then it winds up being a reason not to have them in your party.

[RhmorouTia]

Restating what has already been said, but I wholeheartedly believe that this should not be a feature burnt into every corner of the game, but rather have it dependent on what tank has aggro and is stanced, rather than encouraging non-paladin tanks to play paladin just to be the 'main tank'.

As a Warrior main, it was quite saddening to hear that the devs thought that restricting who is the 'main tank' in any duty was a good idea - I think all tanks should be able to have the ability to retaliate when directly struck and benefit from all the 'main tank' benefits while Paladins and the new tank are also able to act as 'off tanks'.

[Mikey_R]

Can people stop assuming the worst when it comes to their description of main tank and off tank? So many people are assuming the worst but we know next to little about the toolkit of an off tank, so why jump to conclusions? Other games might define main and off tank in one way, however, FFXIV is likely to be defining it differently, it wouldn't be the first time terms have been switched around to mean something different.

What we do know is that in any content under Savage, it won't matter what tanks you bring, which heavily implies that the differences are small that in most content, it won't even matter and I guarantee it only matters more for Savage as they will plan mechanics around having both a main tank and an off tank.

And no, we don't know if Paladin's counter can only be used if they are the main tank, there might be creative ways around it, like Intervention, which follows the same buff pattern Holy Sheltron does. We also know that, if you cover someone, you can block the incoming damage, so that could be another way to get it to proc.

There are too many unknown for people to get so up in arms about, with the big one being knowing next to nothing about the off tank kit. Let's not base things on initial reactions, stop, think and make logical conclusions.

[ForteNightshade]

Let's not base things on initial reactions, stop, think and make logical conclusions.

While obviously speculative by nature, many of these concerns are rooted in "logical conclusions" because SE is rather notorious for pigeonhole designs then refusing to pull back on them when it doesn't work. The whole healer split is an example of that already wherein one pair of healers (Barrier) is demonstrably better than the other. Another example would be the Prange. They literally had to introduce a party buff then subsequently increase it because the Prange damage is so low nobody would ever bring them otherwise. Caster balance has been in the gutter for two expansions now because SE has refused to move off balancing around Raise.

So it's reasonable that people are a bit wary of how splitting tanks into two defined roles will be.