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

[Carighan]

But that's still a problem considering their whole spiel was talking about giving players more choices and accessibility in the ways they want to play. If the MT/OT split does have a noticeable enough impact you're forced to bring one of each to Savage or Ultimate, then it immediately contradicts their objective for Evercold. You now have less choice as a tank. If you prefer to MT, you'll have only two tanks to pick from instead of five.

And none of this gets into how difficult it is to balance all this.

We already know from the healers that this is entirely a non-concern and works fine.

Was AST being able to be a regen or a shield healer fun? Sure, conceptually? Was it meaningful? No, because regen was strictly superior in 99,9% of cases with the odd exception being so rare and so marginal you could just go regen 100% of the time and be perfectly fine and never wipe anybody ever, while shield could.

So there was no player choice even back when AST had that stance choice. And then the split happened, and despite so many players on these forums insisting, the sky didn't fall. Surprise. And tank split will be exactly the same. You all insist it's doom, it'll be perfectly fine, and in hindsight it seems laughable anybody ever worried about this.

Source: start MMORPG gaming in 1999, this happens every time a larger class rework happens which in non-FF14 games is actually fairly common.

[Mukuku]

We already know from the healers that this is entirely a non-concern and works fine.

I don't think the healers' situation is comparable. IMHO the big issue is that the MT apparently would lose damage if they are not countering. You don't have a similar situation with healers.

In most content IMHO a difference in defensive ability is not going to matter that much, but as soon as you introduce even a small damage done penalty you can bet you'll get friction.

[Azurarok]

since going from world first racers consisting of WHM/SCH, WHM/AST, AST/SCH comps to mostly AST/SCH comps wasn't a problem or something

[Mikey_R]

IMHO the big issue is that the MT apparently would lose damage if they are not countering.

But we do not know for certain either way whether that will be the case. In the case of Paladin, you might only be able to counter when you use Holy Sheltron and not on every block, with Intervention essentially being Holy Sheltron, but on someone else, it might still consider the counter chance, especially since it also has the same buff profile as Holy Sheltron.

We just do not know, so there is little point trying to argue based on one way or another. At this moment in time, only the devs will know.

[Burmecia]

im off tank pld and this seems like fine idea on paper, but perfect mess in practice

[Mukuku]

But we do not know for certain either way whether that will be the case.

Of course, but we can make educated guesses based on what was presented. If we are off-mark, the devs will know they need to clarify the message, if not they are made aware of some concerns they might have overlooked.

[rxantos]

Did they really wanted to insult every tank that doesn't play PLD? I will assume this is not the case and that the graph is merely an example and that any tank can MT/OT. Just have a choice at the beginning of the fight for one or the other.

But if not, it leaves tank players with two choices. Accept the blatant insult, or cut ties with the game. I spend time going to level 100 on all my tanks. I do not particulally like PLD playstyle. Placing the other tanks in glorified bad DPS status for most content is insulting. Is disregarding the effort each tank placed into learning to play and levelling. Thus the word insult is the correct one.

I do like 7.5. And I like the idea of new mode of playing without so many buttons. But, if indeed PLD is the main tank, this gives the middle finger to all tanks. Time will tell, but shutting up is aproval to this, and I do not aprove this.

[Carighan]

Oh so the current reality is also an insult to offtanks then, yes? Since we already, right now, got off- and maintanks?

Don't get me wrong the names chosen are kinda bad, but it's also just not an issue? We already know this works fine. Both from how tanks worked for the past expansions (during which we always had main- and offtanks!) and from how every other MMORPG didn't implode just because some tanks were better at being targetted and others at not being targetted.

It's a lot of doomsinging for something that is already reality, the game just so far hasn't attached a label to it, only the playerbase did, so far.

[Neekolyte]

I think it's just a little weird that they did separate them while simultaneously going on and on about how freedom was the goal. This just ain't it, lol.

[Carighan]

I think it's just a little weird that they did separate them while simultaneously going on and on about how freedom was the goal. This just ain't it, lol.

They said choice and class individuality is the goal. (e.g. the slide about reborn vs evolved mode).

This implies specializing classes more. Choice is not meaningful if all options are always equivalent. In fact, conceptually a class-based system cannot work (or rather, is pointless) if all classes are to be equivalent at all times. For a class to feel meaningful compared to other classes, it has to be superior at some things and inferior at others. That's how class-based designs work. That's basically their underlying nature. If you don't want this, you are discussing visual rethemings of the same class, which is, sadly, essentially what our four current tanks are given how much they mirror each other. There is right now no tank that has no 40% reduction skill for example. In return for, say, having passive 10% damage reduction at all times. There is no tank for whom the invuln skill triggers automatically on hitting 0 HP, in return for a different much shorter CD than the others. There is no tank that has a limited amount of resources that cannot be recovered during combat in return for the skills using them being exceptionally strong. All of those are things other classes of tanks in other games have or had, btw.

What I'm trying to say is: We already got MT vs OT anyways. They explicitly said they want to offer players stronger choices and more individuality. Of course they'll lean hard into stuff like this split, officially adopting it. I hate the name (Bastion Tank vs Protector Tank, pls), but the actual effect is already here, right now.

Just consider this: Right now, when you join into a savage reclear PF group, do you honestly care whether your Gunbreaker is the MT or your Dark Knight is? No? Then that's exactly how much you'll care once 8.0 hits, conceptually speaking. Because apparently the already-existing specialization into MTs and OTs has no value to you, so the new one has no reason to, either.