I keep getting mixed advice for DRK Tanking

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Originally Posted by Lucke

I would advise against STR. The added dmg is negligible and so is the aggro you'll get.

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We're talking about DRK in this thread. DRK dmg isn't negligible at all, as darkness negate dmg penalty from grit, we're basically warriors with full time inner beast and high potency combo.
A full str DRK in grit can easily put 650 dps on dummy, over 750 without grit (as an offtank): less than war (because of berserk), but you definitively can't tell it's negligible

I'm not sure if healer in cleric stance can still push higher than that since he would have to heal as well and can't contribute to dmg 100% of the time.

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Originally Posted by Lucke

I have never, ever run into aggro problems on a VIT tank

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The aggro management argument is false here since we can buff power slash on single target or spam unleash with blood price on on multiple ones. DRK isn't called king of aggro for no reason. A full VIT DRK shouldn't have any issue with that.

Start vit and work in str. Most of all feel comfortable with what you're doing as a tank before you try lowering vit in favor of str. I may get flamed for this but I personally go all vit so that my gf can lightly heal me and go full dps(she's WHM). It seems to work out really well.. ^^; but yeah.. Just make sure to experiment with full vit.. Leaning towards str.. And see what feels best! If you're worried about messing up.. Don't be.. Because as a tank.. No.. As a human..you're gonna mess up from time to time zzz at least mess up in a way that makes you play better ^^

Tanking 101: don't piss off the gf.

I did all str I didn't have any problems leveling up dungeons at first were hard but it forced me into a position on how to manage my CD, which I think is extremely important. Endgame if you are main tank I would do 2vit 3str accessories. If off tank go all str. You'll need two sets of accessories. Always have full set of vit and str so you can adjust to the fight.

Attribute points? All str.
Accessories? Do what you want.

When I levelled WAR in the first week of the game I stuck to VIT because back then WAR was a paper tank.

At level 50 for the first instance it was VIT all the way very few tanks used STR and the argument of STR vs VIT only really started to turn from VIT to STR after everybody was full i90 gear and breezing through the content. (Pharos Sirius caused big problems though since a lot of mechanics did lots of damage) After this time STR was the obvious choice since all the following level 50 content was far weaker than the average item level assuming you managed to cap yourself before the next wave of content, the only place where VIT > STR was new coils where people penta melded accessories for best of both worlds.

Early Heavensward is essentially a reset and 51-60 you will find unless you have a competent healer STR accessories will make it slightly more difficult in the new levelling dungeons, trash hits a lot harder than before and unless you are prepared some pulls can be surprising. I levelled DRK as a first timer through all the new dungeons and had zero problems holding hate i130 up to the i135 HQ gear from main story and only really using quest gear up to 60. It's almost impossible for anyone to say STR or VIT right now because Alexander Savage will be what decides is the most optimum selection, most content below that will be overgeared by the time everyone hits the cap of esoteric gear (i190/200?) and in that case it is likely that for anything other than new Alexander Savage runs STR will shine again also by that time you will easily be competent enough to know how much you require anyway.

STR for attributes definitely. Gear u wanna play by ear.

Here's the thing, VIT really only matters for surviving large hits like tank-busters during boss fights. Outside of that, how much HP you have doesn't matter nearly as much as how much HP you can recover/how much you can mitigate over an extended period of time. If your healer is terrible, the trivial amount of HP from ur VIT attr points isn't going to help you.

STR on the other hand, will help with HP recover when you consider the HP absorption of DRK. It will also increase your dmg to help you keep threat, killing mobs quicker means incoming DPS goes down faster, and increased parry chance also decreases the incoming DPS.

I tank with all my attributes on STR and 2/5 of my accessories are Slaying. I don't find myself squishy. I lose aggro when i totally neglect it but grabbing it back it super easy and if i am playing good, i can fit in a few more dps rotations before i do my enmity combo.

I took a break from tanking yesterday and went back to tearing up my SCH. I had the chance to compare a couple of tanks i got into party with. For the sake of this thread, i will only tackle the DRKs i've been with. I do not see much difference healing full vit vs full str ones but what's noticeable is dps constantly ripping hate off the vit ones. It could be attributed to them learning the dungeon but the sometimes, these are tanks that are already in the upper ilvls.

I also try to check the jobs the person already played. Those who have all tanks maxed out or have a few healers maxed out tends to be the better tanks. However, those who came from dps jobs, regardless if they are vit or str, they're both painful experiences(that's what she said).

Bottomline, it takes quite a lot of factors to judge a good tank from a bad one but if we're only concerned with stat allocation, it doesn't matter.

Go vitality when you start to lvl as a new tank, once you get comfortable go into str. Once you've played around with how you pull mobs, how many you wanna pull, you can get into "what can I do to keep threat while popping the necessary cool downs to survive". Honestly with the changes right now to str accessories vs vit in endgame I find myself wearing full vit with points into str, I rarely ever wear str off pieces maybe it's because i'm a drk. Who knows lol.

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Originally Posted by winsock

Here's the thing, VIT really only matters for surviving large hits like tank-busters during boss fights.

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...This is absolutely not true. Firstly because HP is a buffer for the healer, allowing them to do other things by alotting them time, and secondly because tank busters aren't even the hardest thing to heal a tank through. When things get messy I've been the tank at low HP, and I've healed the tank at low HP. I've eaten mountain busters while not topped off because the healer got distracted by a DPS an incredible amount of times and I've survived because my base HP pool allowed me to take more damage.

I'm not going to rant on the whole "You need no more than X HP to do everything in the game" advice that keeps going around because it's not wrong, just miseading to newbies, but telling them more HP isn't going to help them is just... not helpful or smart advice.

Also, if you've ever played healer limbo you'd know every HP counts.