Tank Mitigation vs Tank DPS.

[Arthrun]

This is my first time having leveled a tank class and I am having a blast tanking in SHB. And as such I have come across some things that I found odd to me and would love a bit of an explanation a bit.

As a tank should I focus getting food and Materia to focus on my dps or mitigation?

2 things and prompted me to ask. I was watching some videos where they were doing savage content and the person in the video said that tanks and healers for their FC were last in the rotation to get gear to help improve the group. I thought. "Isn't survivability more important?" I took a step back and though that I came from idea of what raid groups do in WoW. For those who may not know. Mythic raiders, before personal loot was a thing, built a spread sheet of all the gear for that tier and analyzed who would benefited more from what. but almost always tier sets were prioritized with healers and tanks first to make survival priority over speed of clearing.

The second thing was that I saw in the forums that Healing and mitigation is not as prevalent need because of the need to transition phases faster means more breaks in between some situations. And I can see that point when you encounter cinematic like attacks. Visually its amazing but you do see that tanks and healers literally do get a moment to just breath. Far more than you do in WoW. Add on to the fact that in down time for healers it is better for the group to sneak in a dps spell or 2.

I would appreciate the advice because IF I am dropping Gil on tenacity Materia I would like to know if I am really using it to help progress in harder content.

Thanks.

[Allooutrick]

I'm no expert but I can imagine the reason why tank gear isn't as important as dps gear for savage content is because bosses focus more on their mecanics and cause the group to react. Better gear for the majority of your party (the dps) means they can take a little more pain for their mistakes. An adequately geared tank will still survive a tank buster if they use their cooldowns well. It also means healers don't need to heal as much, keeping their mp up for when it's needed.

[Komarimono]

Hmm, not sure when you played in WoW, but tank survival wasn't a problem in harder content. Naxx 40 was a roadblock since we suddenly needed extra tanks, not gear, for Four Horsemen. Before that C'thun was bugged and no one was clearing it until fixed due to mechanics.

Burning crusade it was about DPS galore to beat enrage timers in higher level raids like Black Temple and eventually Sunwell was about DPS until M'uru, then it was about DPS and survival, people using Drum Buffs and tanks stacking as much dodge etc to avoid the damage of adds North and South while another tank picked up voids, then it was about pure DPS to time the transition(This is all pre nerfs)

WotLK was again about DPS. Soft and Hard enrage timers, harder content purely about damage done like Death's Demise Yogg'saron achievement and later Algalon when added. Icecrown was about the same, minus a few fights where one relied on spamming heals on an NPC while tanks went for mitigation, but DPS was needed to clear ads quickly.
We won't discuss the boredom of the coliseum =P

Come to think about it, every hard encounter in WoW, DPS is what made the kill happen, not the tanks survival. This is coming from a Death's Demise title holder, though we did get gear as well, it was a balancing act for distributing gear based on what was needed at the moment in time. Each raid that came out, previous raid tier was enough to begin. I mean heck... We cleared WotLK Naxx in our Sunwell Gear first week.

[Aramina]

I thought. "Isn't survivability more important?" I took a step back and though that I came from idea of what raid groups do in WoW. For those who may not know. Mythic raiders, before personal loot was a thing, built a spread sheet of all the gear for that tier and analyzed who would benefited more from what. but almost always tier sets were prioritized with healers and tanks first to make survival priority over speed of clearing..

That's not really correct. It's *mildly* correct in that tanks need gear enough to not be gibbed before healers can heal them/dps can kill them and healers need enough gear to keep everyone healthy enough to not be gibbed by unavoidable damage. That said, those minimums are very quickly reached, usually before actually stepping into Mythic.

edit: Sorry I went off on a tangent, that seems to be a common misconception from people who haven't done/haven't done much progression raiding in WoW.

[Nora_of_Mira]

2 things and prompted me to ask. I was watching some videos where they were doing savage content and the person in the video said that tanks and healers for their FC were last in the rotation to get gear to help improve the group. I thought. "Isn't survivability more important?"

you would be correct in this logic IF, and only IF, Square did not already provide the toolset to survive all incoming damage with coordination between Tanks and Healers. Of course survivability is important! But your healers have everything they need to keep you alive assuming you're using your defensive CD's when you're supposed to and the OT is doing their job as well. You shouldnt need to meld anything into defensive stats, ideally. That is why they suggest melding into you DPS AND why DPS get gear first; you safely defeat the DPS checks faster, conserve healer mana, and overall more safely guarantee the clear for everyone.

[Aladire]

So, it comes to this. Often at the start of a new patch that adds new gear, you can quickly craft the armor and throw in tanky like things and use food buffs. The you should be able to survive stuff doing the mechanics correctly. Once the dps has enough gear to skip mechanics, then you can get the healers and tanks geared enough.

The reason is that lets say the final boss mechanic where everything kind of goes off at once is when the boss has been up for 13mins out of the 15min fight before enrage. But, you notice that at 12mins, there is an earlier overlap of some mechanics. If you can get the dps to be good enough to kill the boss right before 12mins, then you made the fight easier.

Then once you start to give gear to the tank, you can put more useful materia such as crit.

[Arthrun]

Hmm, not sure when you played in WoW, but tank survival wasn't a problem in harder content. Naxx 40 was a roadblock since we suddenly needed extra tanks, not gear, for Four Horsemen. Before that C'thun was bugged and no one was clearing it until fixed due to mechanics.

Burning crusade it was about DPS galore to beat enrage timers in higher level raids like Black Temple and eventually Sunwell was about DPS until M'uru, then it was about DPS and survival, people using Drum Buffs and tanks stacking as much dodge etc to avoid the damage of adds North and South while another tank picked up voids, then it was about pure DPS to time the transition(This is all pre nerfs)

WotLK was again about DPS. Soft and Hard enrage timers, harder content purely about damage done like Death's Demise Yogg'saron achievement and later Algalon when added. Icecrown was about the same, minus a few fights where one relied on spamming heals on an NPC while tanks went for mitigation, but DPS was needed to clear ads quickly.
We won't discuss the boredom of the coliseum =P

Come to think about it, every hard encounter in WoW, DPS is what made the kill happen, not the tanks survival. This is coming from a Death's Demise title holder, though we did get gear as well, it was a balancing act for distributing gear based on what was needed at the moment in time. Each raid that came out, previous raid tier was enough to begin. I mean heck... We cleared WotLK Naxx in our Sunwell Gear first week.

Perhaps It was the gild I was in and we distributed gear based upon the % benefit of said gear when it was simed. Often times our results were that tanks and healers had more to gain then dps did. Raiding has changed a lot since Classic, BC and Wrath. I was never server or world leaders in completion but I was competitive all the way till legion. Damage from bosses and healing outputs are far far more intense now than it was back then. HPS now a days easiliy outpaces DPS from a statistical point of view in BFA raiding.

But then again. This is the first FF Expansion where I am wanting to take harder content seriously so I am wanting to know if I am simply melding wrong or have the wrong mindset when it comes to progressing the group when I find an FC that needs a tank.

[Arthrun]

So, it comes to this. Often at the start of a new patch that adds new gear, you can quickly craft the armor and throw in tanky like things and use food buffs. The you should be able to survive stuff doing the mechanics correctly. Once the dps has enough gear to skip mechanics, then you can get the healers and tanks geared enough.

The reason is that lets say the final boss mechanic where everything kind of goes off at once is when the boss has been up for 13mins out of the 15min fight before enrage. But, you notice that at 12mins, there is an earlier overlap of some mechanics. If you can get the dps to be good enough to kill the boss right before 12mins, then you made the fight easier.

Then once you start to give gear to the tank, you can put more useful materia such as crit.

Thank you for this. This made a lot of sense to me. Mechanics overlap because of boss timing can make things so much harder. I saw that first hand. Since Tank gear is pretty standard across the board it just comes down to what Stats I should push for over others.

[Komarimono]

Perhaps It was the gild I was in and we distributed gear based upon the % benefit of said gear when it was simed. Often times our results were that tanks and healers had more to gain then dps did. Raiding has changed a lot since Classic, BC and Wrath. I was never server or world leaders in completion but I was competitive all the way till legion. Damage from bosses and healing outputs are far far more intense now than it was back then. HPS now a days easiliy outpaces DPS from a statistical point of view in BFA raiding.

But then again. This is the first FF Expansion where I am wanting to take harder content seriously so I am wanting to know if I am simply melding wrong or have the wrong mindset when it comes to progressing the group when I find an FC that needs a tank.

Hmm, I dunno. I checked with former guild, since oddly still great friend with them. Healers are important, yes. But my replacement as tank, and happy they stuck around, say they are doing fine. Enough that they are thinking of going Demon Hunter for a change.

I guess it depends on simming vs actual and player. We never got into the mathmetics of it until I'd say around Lady Vashj, screw her buggy venom dropping mantas too when bugged out lol. And no fight to this date beats Pre nerf M'uru in terms if HPS vs damage taken in tanks, while you'll never see another M'uru style fight. While it was great it get it down, and funny that M'uru was harder then Kil'jaden, I'd have to agree with the devs that it was a shame so few actually got to clear it or see it due to the aggressive challenge it represented.

But that is WoW. So far in FF14, while not raided just yet so only get to play one day a week, I've noticed damage mitigation seems fine to me over gearing for DPS from possible TOS breaking measurements. Though I am only 79 and 5 days playtime. The small FC I was invited too seems to favor tanks going for mitigation when they can, and DPS going for max pew pew. FFXIV seems more about avoiding the naughty boss mechanics while keeping up damage done though, from what I've seen in raiding streams doing harder content.

[Vrankyl]

The best suggestion I can make is to look at the Tank forums. That said Tenacity has pretty much always been a bottom tier stat for tanks, it replaced Parry a bit too literally if you ask me. Think about it this way, dps stats like Crit and Det also help with your mitigation skills since every tank has a self healing ability. The bigger those numbers the bigger your self healing is. As of right now from what I last read GNB the stat Priority is enough SkS to put you around a 2.38-2.4 GCD, and then Crit > DH > Det > Tenacity. IIRC the DRK and PLD stats are the same with only WAR being the odd one out.