Main & Off Tanks: Name Change

[Carighan]

Yeah that was kinda what I was getting at. They already explicitly said they want the sub-roles to be able to fill the entire role in non-highend content, which implies that like both healers being able to heal a dungeon, both tanks will be able to "cover it all", and it's only in high-end stuff that one role (probably OT) will be required to provide some specific function while the other just happens to be slightly better at all the other stuff, so might as well bring one of those, too.

But then, that's also why DPS are split the way they are, so I guess it comes at 0 surprise. And it's not like the tank split is happening for us, that is, for customization and identity reasons. It will definitely improve as a result - or rather, it is factually not possible to have tanks have less identity than now, except maybe PLD with Cover they are already identical for all practical purposes - but the point is to reduce the balance to an easier scope (among 2 or 3 tanks, instead of 5), same reason it exists for DPS and Healers. The game has too many classes comparing other MMORPGs and no ability to soft-balance via specs like in WoW or GW2, so it has to hard-balance. And hard-balance explodes ever faster in complexity the more classes you add, and as a result it's not surprising they're reducing it from "You're balanced among the tanks" to "You're balanced among the offtanks", then simply prodding a few hard edges to ensure both roles are needed in high enough content.

That's why I asked what the goal would be that'd need to be fulfilled, because I feel we as players have an extremely different idea of the goal than the devs probably had, judging by both the class-setup of FFXIV and also the progression of balance patterns in other MMOs.

I will say: This might work. I will also say: Evolved mode is a much bigger element. And I'll also say: Both this and Evolved Mode are emergency break-in-case-of-glass reactions to the class-system finally driving at the wall fast enough and being close enough to it that the devs have to admit it's not tenable any more (and frankly wasn't since ~late Stormblood?).

I don't think this'll truly solve anything. But hopefully catching up to what other MMOs do in their very first expansion already and knocking core systems over and genuinely changing things gets the devs practice with it, and subsequent iterations can fix things, that's how it worked out for other games after all. They all had to break stuff to eventually figure out what works and doesn't work for their game. The one thing that annoys me about this split specifically though is not only the naming (albeit I get why they do it) but also the fact that PLD is an MT because S&B, when given their current non-evolved ability set, they'd be a far more natural OT, meanwhile the Warrior is inherently more suited to evolving into an MT. But oh well, then again I haven't seen the evolved modes of the other classes so I dunno.

Are you disadvantaged using 2 shield healers over using a pure and shield healer? As that is the criterion you set out.

You are, quite significantly so. It's not that you cannot beat ~all content with the setup (unlike 2 regen healers which are hard-excluded from some things albeit not as much as people like to believe), but it's quite the challenge. Mostly due to some issues with re-healing since shields don't stack, and how the mechanics of healing raw HP as a shield healer interacts negatively with another one being around. That being said SCH+SGE works, just don't try 2xSGE or 2xSCH, unlike 2xAST which is best-case for twin-regen.

[Supersnow845]

Are you disadvantaged using 2 shield healers over using a pure and shield healer? As that is the criterion you set out.

I don’t get your comment, I’m using the healers as example the sub role split didn’t work

The fact that SCH/SGE does work and AST/WHM doesn’t are both examples of the split not working, if both didn’t work then the split would arguably work, if both worked then the split is superficial but harmless, it’s the fact that it’s an uneven distribution that’s the problem

As for the whole “balance against less classes idea” from Carighan SGE and SCH are literally two classes with 70% shared actions and they still can’t make SCH not ridiculously overpowered so not sure that is working out either

[Mikey_R]

I don’t get your comment, I’m using the healers as example the sub role split didn’t work

Okay, we will go through it, starting with the criterion proposed for a successful split:

I would define a sub role split as feeling like your party is disadvantaged by not having the “designed” split and the classes should compliment each other and cover each others weaknesses while still filling the same role

This gives 2 points to note, the first being, not being disadvantaged by not having the designated split, in this case pure an shield healers, and the second, they should fill each others weakness.

To the point I was initially making then, if the default team is 1 pure and 1 shield healer, are you then disadvantaged by taking 2 shield healers? This isn't about being able to clear content, it is about doing it with as much ease as possible. How much more do you have to work around each other to successfully pull off double shield healer. If you basically play them the same, then yes, the split was unsuccessful, however, if you have to play differently or it creates much more friction, more cases where things are made redundant etc. to the point where replacing one shield healer with a pure would alleviate all these points, then the split was successful.

If we continue to delve into the second part of the post:

Instead we get the shield healers doing everything and the regen healers ridiculously reliant on the shield healers to do everything g

Shield healers can do everything whilst pure relies on shield. This shows that pure healing is reliant on a shield healer, in this way, the split was successful, however, it isn't as required the other way around. This, to me, shows that shield healers are too strong in the healing department. However, you have also said that Scholar is ridiculously overpowered, so, maybe it is just Scholar causing this imbalance. If you reduced the power of Scholar to something similar to Sage, would shield healers still be able to clear fights, or would they struggle more, in which case, a pure/shield split would be preferable, which means the split worked.

Really, all this is boiling down to is, is Scholar too strong and is the sole reason why a double shield heal comp can work in the first place? If so, should you then judge the split against a clearly overpowered job that is breaking that balance. However, I suspect not many would take kindly to nerfing the power of Scholar.

[Supersnow845]

No SCH is overpowered in utility compared to its direct competitor but the problem of wider healer balance isn’t exclusively SCH it’s the fact that the games combat design relies exclusively on shield healing. In terms of useful power relative to the design of the encounter SGE is still far stronger than AST AST usually just wins out because it has a raid buff it can use because it can afford to be not great on the healing side because SCH can cover it.

If you nerfed shield healers to the point they also needed regen healers to survive then sure the split would work, but you can’t really nerf shield healers like that in an easy way because the encounter design is still overly reliant on shield healing. Even if you nerfed the shield healers healing potential so much that double shield becomes impossible week 1 it wouldn’t change that shield healing is just more useful as a concept. This is an example of encounter design enforcing tiered power of a sub role which is just bad. You could force it into something “acceptable” by simply nerfing raw healing power of shield healers (which I don’t even disagree they should do) but it wouldn’t fix the uneven nature of the design of the split because pure healer mechanics don’t exist