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

[Lyth]

Now to put some more fuel into the discussion...

This video makes valid points, most of which is probably just common sense for someone who has played the game and focused on tanking for 10+ years, as in his case.

There's actually a bit more to the story on strength accessories. In ARR and Heavensward, tanks prioritized STR over VIT by either using accessories designed for melee DPS or by using STR materia pentamelds. To convince tanks to boost their HP, the dev team initially played around with VIT as a damage stat in late Heavensward, before deciding to force tanks into it by role locking them into VIT accessories without any STR on Stormblood's release. They felt that by doing so, tanks would then focus on 'tanking' as opposed to doing damage.

When players complained about the change, they were given buffs to enmity instead and the complaints were sidestepped as being 'about enmity' rather than 'damage'. After all, this is how they intended players to play the game now. Players then went back to their i270 STR accessories from the Alexander raid series, which were not role locked, and proceeded to tank with minimal health to maximize their damage output. When players flat out ignored the forced gameplay change, the dev team then had to compromise by adding STR progression back on to tank gear. This is a recurring theme through this game's history. When the devs are overly prescriptive about how we play, it usually backfires.

Part of listening to your playerbase comes down to observing how players are actually playing the game and actually adapting changes to fit them. There are a lot of tanks and healers at all skill levels out there who are actually interested in maximising damage, because it gives you something further to optimise and improve on. So you can expect that if counterattack procs are available, people will be standing in avoidable damage just to squeeze in extra damage. You can expect even the most casual of players to start arguing over who gets to tank and can benefit over the extra procs. You can probably already imagine what a nuisance 8p and 24p roulettes will be due to the constant toxic infighting between having multiple 'main tanks' who 'need' to get those counterattack procs.

On the coordinated side, you'll see organised groups testing out if they can get away with a solo MT and locking out OT, or alternatively trying to run double OT and locking out the MT slot.

There are solutions out there. LB penalty/subrole locks have been discussed but tanks are relatively rare. If you have an LB subrole penalty, DF will also be forced to always match one of each, which will increase queue times for casual content. You can apply damage down penalties for trying to proc counters off of avoidable damage, but then players will just min-max off of the ones that don't have damage down attached.

But I'd feel more confident about solutions, if I knew that they acknowledged the potential problems to begin with.