tank gear

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Originally Posted by IntrovertAnt

Nevermind which materia but, I don't understand when people make this argument about one materia being cheaper.

I have never paid for a single VIII materia and I have about a dozen+ VIII tenacity AND direct hit materia via quests, drops, and those little clusters from tank in need leveling and alliance roulettes.

How is it you all need to buy materia for your melds?

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Because pentamelding obviously.

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Originally Posted by Tyrial

Except it kinda is...it's not parry levels of bad but it's still far from optimal unless you're pushing world first progression and have it stacked through the roof. It will always fall behind any other secondary.

Crit > Comfy SkS > Det > Ten (WAR)
Direct Hit > Determination > Critical Hit > Tenacity (PLD)
Comfy SkS > DH > Det > Crit > Ten (GNB/DRK)

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GNB doesn't want SkS it messes with your rotation and timers for syncing up No Mercy and Sonic Break. DRK sure for 5 BS under Delirium but DH is best for both.

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Originally Posted by kazzel120

GNB doesn't want SkS it messes with your rotation and timers for syncing up No Mercy and Sonic Break. DRK sure for 5 BS under Delirium but DH is best for both.

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Not true. GNB needs Sks to comfortably fit 9 GCD'd during your NM window. You may not need to meld it, but you DO need a certain ammount to get the most out of a 20% damage buff skill, which at the end of the day will vastly out weigh any ammount of crit or DH you meld.

I see what you're saying though - Too much SkS and Sonic break will come off cooldown a little before No mercy. So what though? Just hold on to it for a few seconds while you wait for NM to catch up, nobody is forcing you to use it right away.

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Originally Posted by VenKitsune

Not true. GNB needs Sks to comfortably fit 9 GCD'd during your NM window. You may not need to meld it, but you DO need a certain ammount to get the most out of a 20% damage buff skill, which at the end of the day will vastly out weigh any ammount of crit or DH you meld.

I see what you're saying though - Too much SkS and Sonic break will come off cooldown a little before No mercy. So what though? Just hold on to it for a few seconds while you wait for NM to catch up, nobody is forcing you to use it right away.

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But you don't understand.

If things don't line up perfectly then the job is UNPLAYABLE.

TL;DL I went into E1S with 2700+ Tenacity on DRK(because I need to be legitimate about my DRK complaints) and as a casual who wants to get into Savage as a tank, Tenacity stat REALLY needs to be buffed to make it worth investing in that isn't "budget stat" because Tenacity is like a lot people say, a dead stat... Like how DRK is a dead tank...

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

TL;DL I went into E1S with 2700+ Tenacity on DRK(because I need to be legitimate about my DRK complaints) and as a casual who wants to get into Savage as a tank, Tenacity stat REALLY needs to be buffed to make it worth investing in that isn't "budget stat" because Tenacity is like a lot people say, a dead stat... Like how DRK is a dead tank...

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DRK is honestly far from being a dead tank. It comes in third for DPS when provided certain raid buffs, but its performance even when denied optimal conditions is still within five percent of the top performer. DRK is currently a welcome participant in raids - with or without the jobs it needs to perform optimally - due to just how strong TBN is. Dark Missionary is also a very welcome buff, though GNB has an ability that does the same thing. At any rate, you'll find that DRK can make up for the damage it doesn't deal with the damage it doesn't take. Odds are we'll see a bit less use once everything is on farm, but I don't see anybody benching their DRK this time around. Tank balance is excellent this time around.

As for tenacity... Well, you've kinda got the right of it. It would probably have been a decent enough stat if tanks in this game were expected to focus more on survival than DPS, but such is not the case. We really are just blue DPS.

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Originally Posted by VenKitsune

Not true. GNB needs Sks to comfortably fit 9 GCD'd during your NM window. You may not need to meld it, but you DO need a certain ammount to get the most out of a 20% damage buff skill, which at the end of the day will vastly out weigh any ammount of crit or DH you meld.

I see what you're saying though - Too much SkS and Sonic break will come off cooldown a little before No mercy. So what though? Just hold on to it for a few seconds while you wait for NM to catch up, nobody is forcing you to use it right away.

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But you don't need ANY SkS to fit 9 GCDs inside of No Mercy. Just time it at the very end of your GCD. You can do it with almost 2.5 GCD. It's been shown in the balance discord with 2.47 GCD and 100 ping. GNB really has no reasons to meld SkS. Just go full ham on the other stats.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

But you don't need ANY SkS to fit 9 GCDs inside of No Mercy. Just time it at the very end of your GCD. You can do it with almost 2.5 GCD. It's been shown in the balance discord with 2.47 GCD and 100 ping. GNB really has no reasons to meld SkS. Just go full ham on the other stats.

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Keep in mind that being able to fit nine GCDs inside the No Mercy window is only part of the equation. You will run into problems if your timers start to drift.

Tenacity is just not needed because of encounter design. Boss autos do basically nothing and as long as you execute mechanics correctly, you will have no problem clearing any encounter that you meet the ilevel requirement for. Tanks in particular will simply never be in danger to party mechanics due to the flat 20% DR and large health pool. The only thing that threatens you is a buster, which you have a billion cooldowns for.

Damage on the other hand is critical in savage content. Enrage timers are tight and squeezing out every digit of dps you can is important to clearing.

Until they redesign bosses to threaten tanks outside of tankbusters, tenacity will be the obsolete stat. At most you can stack it if you just want to spam roulettes with huge pulls.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

But you don't need ANY SkS to fit 9 GCDs inside of No Mercy. Just time it at the very end of your GCD. You can do it with almost 2.5 GCD. It's been shown in the balance discord with 2.47 GCD and 100 ping. GNB really has no reasons to meld SkS. Just go full ham on the other stats.

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I often struggle to get 9 GCD's in my NM with 2.42 GCD cooldown, even when i use NM in the last third of the GCD timer. Just because its possible doesn't make it effective - if you cant do it EVERY TIME then melding SkS would of benefited you more than melding anything else. If your assumption was held in a vacuum where everyone played perfectly all the time on every single fight then you'd be right, but nobody is perfect, and nobody will ALWAYS be able to fit 9 GCD's in a 2.46 window. Doing that every time literally demands perfection in every way.

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Originally Posted by Rathael

Tenacity is just not needed because of encounter design. Boss autos do basically nothing and as long as you execute mechanics correctly, you will have no problem clearing any encounter that you meet the ilevel requirement for. Tanks in particular will simply never be in danger to party mechanics due to the flat 20% DR and large health pool. The only thing that threatens you is a buster, which you have a billion cooldowns for.

Damage on the other hand is critical in savage content. Enrage timers are tight and squeezing out every digit of dps you can is important to clearing.

Until they redesign bosses to threaten tanks outside of tankbusters, tenacity will be the obsolete stat. At most you can stack it if you just want to spam roulettes with huge pulls.

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Tell that to Eden raids.

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Originally Posted by Rathael

Tenacity is just not needed because of encounter design. Boss autos do basically nothing and as long as you execute mechanics correctly, you will have no problem clearing any encounter that you meet the ilevel requirement for. Tanks in particular will simply never be in danger to party mechanics due to the flat 20% DR and large health pool. The only thing that threatens you is a buster, which you have a billion cooldowns for.

Damage on the other hand is critical in savage content. Enrage timers are tight and squeezing out every digit of dps you can is important to clearing.

Until they redesign bosses to threaten tanks outside of tankbusters, tenacity will be the obsolete stat. At most you can stack it if you just want to spam roulettes with huge pulls.

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New!Titan would like a word with you about autos doing next to nothing. Even the harder hitting autos of current savage content isn't enough to make tenacity a desirable stat, though. As you say, the damage is just too important. Personally I wouldn't even consider tenacity worth stacking for safety in mass pulling in roulettes either. 'bout the only time I would suggest that someone try using it is for bleeding edge progression where they're probably tackling fights well before their gear is up to the task. It might save your behind then, but it's never worth having otherwise.

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Originally Posted by Thela

Because pentamelding obviously.

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Oh, I thought penta meld tanks gear was not better than the higher ilev stuff given the loss of str and vit. Are people penta melding tank gear for this raid tier?

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Originally Posted by IntrovertAnt

Oh, I thought penta meld tanks gear was not better than the higher ilev stuff given the loss of str and vit. Are people penta melding tank gear for this raid tier?

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Pentamelding will give you your pre-savage BiS. The higher item level stuff you get from doing savage will typically trump it, but there have been a few exceptions thus far. It's what we've done for a long time, really. Not something I'd call a necessity, however - unless you go for the bleeding edge progression, in which case it may end up being something worth looking into at the start of each new tier. Doubt you'd be replacing much of a full savage set from a previous tier, but once in a while you'll find a piece here or there that can be replaced with pentamelded crafted gear.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

TL;DL I went into E1S with 2700+ Tenacity on DRK(because I need to be legitimate about my DRK complaints) and as a casual who wants to get into Savage as a tank, Tenacity stat REALLY needs to be buffed to make it worth investing in that isn't "budget stat" because Tenacity is like a lot people say, a dead stat... Like how DRK is a dead tank...

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Here let me fix your comment for you. "Like how WAR is a dead tank"
Right now WAR is the least played tank and really only bring holmgang to the table. Im not a fan of Nascent flash as an OT move becasue the healing is cut by 50% that you would be healing for your MT that is getting slapped, you might heal... 1 auto attack and some change with it. The one good fight WAR is in right now is Leviathan. Holmgang 1st/3rd TB, likely share 4th. Since Leviathan auto's both tanks Nascent becomes good sustain if used well to help healers focus on mechanics/dps. Its not earthshattering but its enough to warrent WAR in that fight...
All other fights, just don't bring WAR. The downtime in 1 makes it feels worse than the other tanks as they all can hit multiple targets in 1 and in 2... I haven't noticed many WARs yet able to break 7k (might just be me though from experience) while on PLD I can hit almost 8k with only 450 gear and one DMG down.

Now onto tenacity... I would say tenacity should only be considered if you plan on doing Ultimate progression. Any tiny bit of mitigation may impact the difference between a wipe and a close call, but that's Ultimate. Savage... just bring DET if you can't meld DH for some reason. (Isn't BiS for all the tanks going to be crit once we hit 470?)

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Originally Posted by BarretOblivion

Here let me fix your comment for you. "Like how WAR is a dead tank"
Right now WAR is the least played tank and really only bring holmgang to the table. Im not a fan of Nascent flash as an OT move becasue the healing is cut by 50% that you would be healing for your MT that is getting slapped, you might heal... 1 auto attack and some change with it. The one good fight WAR is in right now is Leviathan. Holmgang 1st/3rd TB, likely share 4th. Since Leviathan auto's both tanks Nascent becomes good sustain if used well to help healers focus on mechanics/dps. Its not earthshattering but its enough to warrent WAR in that fight...
All other fights, just don't bring WAR. The downtime in 1 makes it feels worse than the other tanks as they all can hit multiple targets in 1 and in 2... I haven't noticed many WARs yet able to break 7k (might just be me though from experience) while on PLD I can hit almost 8k with only 450 gear and one DMG down.

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I suggest you take a gander at FFlogs. WAR's DPS is fine in every fight thus far. DRK really only beats it when it has access to the correct raid buffs. The two are kinda sharing the third and fourth DPS slots insofar as tanks at the moment, swapping depending on raid comp. Its durability is also fine. WAR is fully viable in every encounter.

Public Service Announcement: If you are interested in gearing and melding and playing optimally, join The Balance discord channel. They give excellent info on stats and rotations that have been tested and shown to be optimal. I appreciate the work they do.

If you're not interested in playing optimally, please continue to meld Tenacity. I hear it's fun.

Tenacity is a perfectly viable stat for early progression on any fight you or your party members do not understand. (I say this with the assumption that many of us suck in comparison to World First runners, daily streamers, or high frequency parse runners.)

Going with a full penta-melded set with TEN food will net you about 3300 tenacity, this equates to 9.00-9.12% damage mitigation and increased damage (http://theoryjerks.akhmorning.com/stats/ten/).

I went full penta-melded TEN build during week 1 and 2 and noticed the difference. This kept me alive in situations where I should've died. I have 1 VERY clear example with Levi's Temporal Current attack. Getting hit by it does about 120-130k damage unmitigated, but I got hit by it and lived with 1.5k health. I should've been 1 shot, but didn't and it's cause of running TEN instead of CRIT/DET.

TEN will never be in any BiS set seeing as it is sub-optimal, plus we gain defense and HP from upgrading to Savage gear, but never count it out for progression. Once you get to about 138-140k health, then TEN will be useless until Ultimate drops.

Keep in mind that we are all not week 1 clear players. so choosing the safest stats are not always the worst idea.

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Originally Posted by Juanpierre

Public Service Announcement: If you're not interested in playing optimally, please continue to meld Tenacity. I hear it's fun.

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The first and foremost thing players running EX Primals, Savages, and Ultimates should be to concerned with is to clear the fights at all costs, not to play risky. Playing "optimally" in this game requires players to be very greedy and taking chances that would other wise wipe the raid just to keep their GCDs rolling (i.e. always going to the same rock in es4 even if it is a 2-1 just to keep uptime). Playing "optimally" would be to have a TEN set for clearing the fight and a DPS set for re-clears and parses.

Edit: I also want to add that TEN here on Primal, is a very cheap Materia, so it is also cheaper to meld!

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Originally Posted by xvshanevx

Tenacity is a perfectly viable stat for early progression on any fight you or your party members do not understand. (I say this with the assumption that many of us suck in comparison to World First runners, daily streamers, or high frequency parse runners.)

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Are you absolutely sure all of us aren't just as good as them and thus emulating them is a great idea?

Hoo, I keep looking at that and the grammar alone confuses me, and I wrote the dang thing.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Are you absolutely sure all of us aren't just as good as them and thus emulating them is a great idea?

Hoo, I keep looking at that and the grammar alone confuses me, and I wrote the dang thing.

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I apologize! I didn't realize I was among the top 5% in these forums!

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Originally Posted by xvshanevx

I apologize! I didn't realize I was among the top 5% in these forums!

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Bask in my mediocrity! It has five syllables, so it must mean excellence.