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

[Sazuzaki]

That actually could be a pretty cool idea. I know in Blade and Soul, main tanks would spec into an enmity stat to increase their aggro generation. Attaching something like a materia so your job stone and allowing counter attacks to proc via rotation or adding an effect onto a skill like intervention would be neat. Same thing with OTs.

[EldDragonDives]

I made my thoughts on the change itself extremely clear in my last comment on this thread, so I will not rehash them here. What I want to bring up instead is how much I hate the WAY they revealed this change.

The Berlin presentation is still a ways away, and in the meantime, we are left to be at each other's throats over a controversial and divisive change that we were given barebones information about, and left with more questions than answers, knowing we're not getting ANY of the answers we need for a depressing amount of time. In my opinion, either they should have given us all the info THEN AND THERE or they should have kept it to themselves until they were ready to GIVE us all the information. This is, again, in my opinion, a terrible way of going about it. It's possible they did this purposefully to see what the initial reaction was, but that's just a possibility and I don't even necessarily believe it myself. I still utterly reject the premise of the division being job-based and it's doubtful anyone will change my mind.

[Carighan]

The Berlin presentation is still a ways away, and in the meantime, we are left to be at each other's throats over a controversial and divisive change

MT vs OT in an MMORPG is now a "controversial change".

It really says a lot more about how reductive, static and sheltered FFXIV's design was and still is, and how much it made it fall behind. See also how WoW's housing they did 0-to-hero in one big implementation basically makes a mockery of the one we have here. SQEX was sitting on its laurels too much. We're so unused to change even something as yawn-inducing as this split feels massive to us.

I suspect they just didn't think this'd be a noteworthy point of debate for players. Because it's so normal, after all, the same split basically exists right now on live. In hindsight they should have, of course. Like I said, this game has been so static for so many years (to its detriment) that of course even something like this feels really huge. But I suspect they just didn't because of how a similar split for healers wasn't a problem combined with how the concept just is never an issue for RPGs. Still yeah, they should have maybe expected this given they ought to know their audience, and at least had a full panel about the MT/OT thing and why/how/exactly.

[Lyth]

It's a regressive change.

There were people who considered themselves to be 'main tanks' in FFXIV. That was circa 2013, and they insisted on stacking max parry and VIT. Meanwhile, their skilled colleagues were maximising STR and damage while using using coordinated mitigation and swaps with their co-tank smartly to offset the defensive difference. Gordias ended that debate years ago (it continued on this subforum until about Stormblood, but not everyone got the memo). A more modern game probably wouldn't even implement a trinity design, let alone designate a 'main tank'.

I think the only potentially interesting change here is the idea of counterattacks. However, the planned implementation is something that has been tried and has failed before (because players find ways to take more damage to get more procs). I would be much more impressed if they reworked interject/stun to have job specific flavour and gave all tanks the ability to give mobs vulnerability in exchange selectively countering specific scripted attacks (especially if they're replacing the current system of timed raid buffs). That's the type of counterattack that I'd like to see, rather than spamming Shield Swipe procs off of every raidwide.