Alright so I'm always seeing people discuss the new ideas on classes for Ala Mhigo, I always see fights between Samurai being a DEEPS or tank and I got to thinking.
I remember someone saying YoshiP doesn't want anymore sword tanks for a while right? Well.. how about Geomancer?
I get that the class could be a DPS.. Or a Healer.. But at the same time a Tank Geo would be hilarious, Think about it: Want to provoke an enemy? Bong that bell, annoy them. Want to damage an enemy? Bong that bell on their head, Ain't no one silencing your bongs.
But yeah it seems to make sense to Final Fantasy XIV Gil me, A mace like bell that can be used to annoy enemies, Using earth magic to defend yourself and turning the ground into a DoT like Stained earth.
What's everyone else's thoughts on the idea and what's your idea for a potential tank?
I would love to see a Beast Master tank. We already have a pet based DPS and healer, why not a pet based tank?
I absolutely agree that Beast Master would make for a great tank. You could even give them a Death Grip type thing by having their pet go bring a mob back to them.
That said, I feel like the pet system needs a functionality and robustness rework before new pet classes happen.
The only problem I see with that is pet management in this game sucks. It's extremely clunky and unreliable. I'm not sure if I want that on a tank.
There's very few ways that a pet tank could work, and most involve a major overhaul of how pets work in this game which is just asking for too much work in the long run unfortunately.
I kinda want something that is different from all the other tank classes in-game. Right now, all three tanks are basically big eHP pool + melee. And that's fun, but if they're going to add in a new tank I'd like something different.
Evasion tanking wouldn't work without a massive combat rebalance. Drain tanking would be kinda fun, but I don't know if that could work well in-game. Someone floated the idea of a ranged magic tank, and while I like that idea you'd have to incentivize range in some way and I don't know how. A purely caster tank could be fun I think, maybe have most of your eHP come from casting shields.
Because of how most enemies run FFXIV Power leveling close to whomever they aggro, and have many cleaves ect as the base for a lot of the necessary movement challenge for the tank, I can only really see it work with a pet based tank.
The pet would be the one drawing the aggro, while the tank buffs it and deals casting damage, and maybe replendish it's HP by sacrificing his own or some HP swap function (because partymembers can't see the pets, so having to heal the pet as a healer would be troublesome for the gameplay).
If you also makes it possible for the tank to always split AoE damage with their pet when both are in the splash zone, when the tank could have a reverse cone dodging function, where they would have to move inside the AoE if the damage will be too high for the pet to survive.
But it would problably be a pain to balance, so I doubt we'll see that. If we ever see a casting tank, it will likely still be a melee.