gazel7424: It would be funny if a PLD decides to Cover a party member, and hopping over to them makes the boss turns around cleaving the rest of the party members, leaving only the PLD and the Cover target alive.

bee5464: It's very interesting that DRK, as an off tank, doesn't get a counter as per the description of OT. It initially released as THE counter job, especially since reprisal also inflicted a damage down debuff.

augsalz: they forgot about the 3rd tanking role and arguably the most important one, floor tanking.

Osteichthyes: Bastion's weapons are called Skyltborg, therefore any issues with Bastion is a Skylt issue.

Orion_Quest: I believe the devs aren't using the same terms most other MMOs that use a trinity consider Main and Off tanks. The OT generally plays more of the support role, picks up adds, and does the occasional swap when mechanics call for it. While the MT is usually the one that tends to need said support. Main Tank is typically referred to as the tank that stays on the boss full time (unless mechanics require otherwise). Having ranged attacks would be much more useful to an OT for things like picking up adds, and kiting, and tend to make more use of utility and support skills because they don't need to save cooldowns for their own personal survival.

Scerttle: 2:00 my feeling is it's like heart of corundum vs heart of light. One can help out a single party member while the other helps out the whole party. MTs have stuff like cover/intervention/clemency while OTs have stuff like shake it off/HOL/dark missionary.

I also feel like PLD and BSN (or whatever the abbreviation for bastion becomes) both seem to have ranged options as part of their kit for boss repositioning.

JohnTeacher: Paladin is already the best main tank currently and this is very noticeable in Kefka since his autos hit like a truck. The passive block of the shield effectively gives you mit as if you had put 500 more into tenacity on another tank, which is further enhanced by all the passive regen paladin got.

During the evolved demonstration, it seemed like holy sheltron had a guaranteed block (like in the good old days). If we assume this is something that will be universal for all short mits going into evolved mode (to compensate for unique 90s mits getting pruned), the off tanks would only get a guaranteed parry. That would make a noticeable difference in fights like Kefka.

I think what off tanks in return will get some maintainable damage reducer as the video suggested. This would probably be combined with a more "blue dps" style rotation for the more relaxed off tanks, to make their focus on dealing damage rather than main tanking the boss.

LawAbidingPokemon: Why would they turn off auto attacks ? I remember Yoshida-san saying it was dumb that 1.0 didn’t have auto attacks

AlastorXIV: Ranged atracks will be base kit on every MT probably for repositioning

masterplusmargarita: I think the "how do you encourage one MT and one OT" question is pretty easy - damage. Baseline you make off tanks do more damage than main tanks BUT you give main tanks options that elevate their damage above off tanks if they're being targeted. Counters are an obvious and pretty elegant one, but even just "300 potency, goes up to 350 potency if targeted" on attacks would do. You can apply the same to buffs and utility. You want to bring a main tank because it's the best option, but you can't have two people be targeted by the boss at the same time, so the second slot gets filled by an off tank.

I'm sure there'll be more to it, but the emphasis they've put on counters makes me think this is a big part of their strategy.

javi7636: I'm pretty sure the MT/OT split is going to be handled very similar to the Regen Healer/Barrier Healer split. Every healer can apply both regen effects AND barrier effects, but a Barrier Healer like SGE can apply many more barriers than a WHM over the course of a fight, and vice versa.

I'm expecting "Main Tanks" to have low cooldowns on single-target mitigation (Sheltron, Cover, etc) and long cooldowns on group mitigation (Divine Veil, Passage of Arms, etc). Meanwhile "Off Tanks" will be the other way around, such as having group mits on a 30s cooldown similar to SGE and SCH.

Also, I hate the terms "Main Tank" and "Off Tank". They're so misleading. Can we find new names for the two categories? We could call them something like Parry Tank/Buff Tank. Or even Ranged Tank/Melee Tank.

kuronaialtani: Something that caught my eye from 11:00 onward when you’re describing the attacks is that the first one, some stance or buff, had the yellow gcd effect, while the ranged attack after had the blue ogcd effect. But then the jump and claw swipes had no effect on them. Swapping to the ranged phase, again, gcd, but all the ranged attacks had no effect, and ground pound mode again the gcd effect.

Very interesting unless they reversed some by accident in the trailer or only added it to specific button hits.

lordturtlemonk: It's interesting because some of the melee attacks have the Bastion shooting out the claws like projectiles of their own it looks like

apljack: I will say in Dawntrail, that PLDs definitely are the best 'main' tanks in general, but damn if the last two tiers I have had more go OT and make me MT as GNB that I ever had previously in the entirety of Endwalker. I think WAR right now is the only job I can guarantee will try to MT instead of me. I think this is because in Savage, everyone just mostly focuses on invuln timings, so they prefer I MT instead of OT with a PLD, because I have a shorter CD. M11S I can take first TB and 2nd tower, for example.

Not gonna lie though, I forget that Camo has a Parry boost on it. XD I use it primarily for the 10% mit with others for TBs and such. XD Still living in Abyssos times when I double mitted all TBs to reduce dots.

ColeMu: Chaos theory - the actions use charge/ held input to determine the outcome on the spells that looked like they had cast timers.

So similar to the dragon racial wow had or Bullet from BlazBlue.

kuronaialtani: What surprised me was both “main tanks” having a ranged phase/kit. What could that say about coming fights if the job meant to keep the boss hitting them is going to have ranged combos/cooldowns, while the “off tank” protects the party as a whole?

Edit: I see you mention it, and other comments suggest it’s for repositioning, though with bosses being addicted to re-centering themselves who knows what we’d need to position bosses for anymore

MrJSar: I was thinking that the ranged abilities for MT was a feature. The ability to move enemies while still keeping uptime is great feature for a Tank, OT's can just follow behind using attacks.

The first ability with the glow on the shields I think is just Tank Stance being turned on.

lordturtlemonk: Honestly I would love if the claw attacks were straight up just a 1 2 combo. Something so tough about it having brawling attacks

jayjya0613: I can see SE nerfing off-tanks damage compared to main-tank when they use their enmity ability. This would enforce the main-tank vs off-tank dynamic.

Skywardflare758: For Bastion specifically, I’m currently picturing a combination of Paladin and Viper. The general kit would line up more with Paladin’s, but it’ll have variable GCD timings like Viper does. Maybe the resource building lines up more with Viper’s style rather than Paladin’s, with a pseudo mode switch.

As for main tank vs off tank, I currently think the balance aim will be two things. First, I think main tanks will have more flexible and slightly more effective personal short mits with better recovery (GCD heals as a backup) while off tanks will have something akin to Reprisal 2 and stronger versions of their ally targeting short CDs. The other is for damage, it’d go main tank with aggro landing counters > off tank > main tank without aggro.

Really though, I’m kind of worried as the current subroles are kind of wonky and have been for awhile. Healers have the issue where barrier is generally better than pure, and it mainly depends on if Astro is strong enough to compensate (it usually is), but double pure is almost always pain while double barrier usually works very well. On the other end, rez mages vs non rez mages tend to start out with rez mages prioritized, then whoever does the most damage (which is sometimes one of the two rez mages). Though casters also have the awkwardness where at least to me, it really seems like SE wants double melee, caster, ranged phys to be the norm, which further muddies things. Hoping Evercold moves towards the fourth dps slot being more open to any option.

FieldMarshall3: I genuinely think the only difference between main/off tank is that main tanks will get counter abilities while off tanks get more stuff that can heal/shield others. I may be completely wrong, but if im right then i really really wish they had called these two sub-roles literally anything else. In one of the interviews YoshiP said something about how people didn't understand the new main/off tank roles, which suggests that this is just another localization or translation issue. I dont think they understand that the words "main tank" and "off tank" carry a lot of baggage and expectations.

ampulica9150: MTs might end up having shorter or more commonly available cooldowns for personal mitigation with longer CDs on party mit, while OTs would have the opposite.

Maybe OTs keep rampart and their short CD for example, with the rest going into party mits and different flavours of sustain (this keeps dungeons easy for both types of tank).

Granted this looks at tanks in a vacuum and assumes they'll still need the exact same tools. Who knows what fight design will be like.

Also who knows what evolved SGE/SCH look like. It's possible the button crunch is making them offload some of their party mit onto the OTs. Or maaaaybe they get even fatter shields and it's THEIR job to keep the OT alive through tank busters while the MT handles them on it's own.

I reeeealy doubt the OT split is happening just because they want ONLY the tanks to feel different, it might be part of a more extensive support role redesign.

EvanderX1: What if the OT and MT stances were different. The usual enmity from activating it maybe defense or hp for MT then maybe attack maybe skill speed for OT. The only problem is why wouldn’t you want more dps no matter what if that was the case making MT kinda useless. If anything a distinction via their stances would potentially make the most sense akin to the AST of old.

pokeshaq8488: I'll be bastion

Nerf bastion

If the bastion get a covert i want the covert to be a shot in the chest to the party member, I mean if the sage can shot to heal why bastion cannot shot to protect?

If the OT get a debuff in the enemy like the melee one (i forgot the name Stein maybe?) but permanent maybe we can get the Warrior scream LB from the pvp like a skill because we saw they took animations from pvp for the evolved Jobs or maybe scholar war crimes with the toxic spread who knows, but in any cases i'm here waiting the bastion and the maybe falconeer guide in evercold, thanks for everything cae

14Blackspirit: So you want to have a meta where you always bring off tanks and main tanks. Just give the off tank a buff that increases dmg to all tanks. If you bring 2 off tanks then it does not stack and if you bring only main tanks in higher content you have a harder time with dps but still could clear the content so you want to bring an off tank just so he can press that one button for the main tank.

nemamiah7832: If MTs will be lacking in raid-wide mitigation and OTs would be able to clear content as OT OT, it's probably going to be OT dominance. Because, let's be real for a moment, party wipes very rarely happen, because the Tank died. Usually, the rest of the party starts falling apart first. So, let's say, if OTs are the only ones with access to stuff like Reprisal and are still perfectly capable of face tanking Extremes, Savages and Ultimates, I'd bet good money on OT OT being "the meta". Raid-wide mitigation is just that good.

siosilvar: The more I hear about MT and OT in Evercold, the more confused I get... I think I'm just going to have to wait for the final state to make any judgements, because I'm still stuck on Warrior having the only counterattack in the current game & Paladin having Cover (but also the only current 25s cooldown that can't be used on a party member).

Aug 10 2026

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