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.

[Carighan]

A more modern game probably wouldn't even implement a trinity design, let alone designate a 'main tank'.

This is correct, although we can see from Guild Wars 2 that just removing tanks/healers entirely (and by default also removing DPS as a role since it's the only remaining one) does not just solve a problem.

You still end up with designated main tanks and healers. Even in such a setup!

And like you say, we already had MT/OT splits. We already had game-decided (not player-decided!) MT and OT splits. In fact we have it right now one could easily argue. Which leads me to ask an important question:
You call it a "regressive change". But since, right now, on live, we have an MT/OT split, what is the "change"-part of that statement? Just that it re-shuffles who is MT and who is OT?

(edit)
And not to misrepresent my opinion, I don't like the idea of some being "the MTs" and some others being "the OTs", I'm merely saying that from all available evidence both in this game and others, it's an unavoidable reality. It - seemingly - cannot be avoided. All SQEX is doing here is adopting the terms and realities the playerbase has already created in the game anyways. The sole meaningful difference is that like with healers, we'll probably see content designed with the idea that you have 1 regen + 1 shield healer, errr, 1 counter + 1 protector tank in your group. Nobody is stopping you from not doing it and in fact by and large the game doesn't even care (see DF group composition results), but the devs won't balance for 2 regen or 2 shield healers any more. It might be fine, it might be optimal, but it's never considered during balancing.

I really don't see the problem with doing that as the devs. Because again, they're not adding an MT/OT split. It exists. Right now. I dislike the names (heavily), but I also kinda dislike that on the healers, and I get that many don't like lyrical names. Heck we don't even call the red role "damage dealers" any more; we've reduced them to the number you see, DPS. They're not even inventing the terms if we're being honest, they're merely adopting the terms we the playerbase already use ingame. Right now.

[Lyth]

From my standpoint, I want to see the developers talk us through how they've thought this out, to demonstrate that the potential problems have been evaluated carefully.

At the moment, the terms MT and OT are just a convention used by guide-makers relating to who takes enmity first in the fight script. It's a bit like saying that you prefer the melee M1 position because you like the west corner more than the east corner. There are differences in how the mechanics play out, but you should be able to do either if you're flexible.

This is a bit different. Your MT will want to have enmity for as long as possible to maximize their damage output. If there's a forced swap, your MT needs to swap back as soon as possible to get counterattack procs. If the MT is not the active tank, then they will likely be expected to stand in avoidable AoEs to proc their counterattack to avoid 'griefing' their party with lower damage. There will probably be entirely new 'MT uptime' variations to every strat with different swaps once people get their initial clears and want to maximize damage (and you know how well NA/EU PF handles variations in strategy). You will see lots of PF arguments over who gets to tank and for what parts and over how it impacts their personal damage. I don't even need to see that conflict arise to feel disappointed in it.

And that's in the best case scenario, where MT counterattacks translate into a meaningful damage difference. If they don't, then a lot of groups will deliberately run double OT for the convenience around not having to cater to a MT, and better raidwide mitigation.

I do think that they need to change things up, but there's no point repeating a design decision that we know doesn't work out from past history. Counterattacks are a great idea, but they should be tied to intercepting specific attacks (i.e. an Interject style move) rather than recieving damage. If you did that, you could even make some tanks proc their counterattacks off of tankbusters, and others off of raidwides. I recognize that they've committed to splitting the tanks, but having an obligate MT that has to take damage is not a good idea. You don't need to 'wait and see' if you played Heavensward and Stormblood. Show me how this time is going to be different.

If they were really committed to mixing things up for tanks, we'd see an overhaul of the entire defensive toolkit, which has seen a progressive power creep over many expansions.