Turning DRK into a tank was a huge mistake.

The whole bad dark knight thing is not the class it's every person not coming from a tank background thinking dark knight looks cool im going to swap to tanking

Give them time to learn there job it's still a new class and tanking ain't the easiest job right out of the gate
Positioning ,cool downs , and holding aggro should be there main priority but a lot of people think that dpsing as a tank is what there meant to be doing
Dpsing as a tank comes in time with practice but should only be done if groups need it which is rarely needed
I think people will think different once savage Alexander is downed and farmed pretty regular and the dark knight rotations start popping up

DRKs need some tweaks for sure. The class, however, is fine overall.

As for the enmity problem, I've had zero problems holding aggro. I feel I hold enmity better than my PLD on single targets and hold AoE enmity with zero effort. I was playing with a STR WAR today (I have all VIT accessories right now) and I easily held aggro against him in A2 while farming (we were goofing off a bit...). That's just one of many examples. I would argue DRKs have the best enmity of all three tank classes.

I do miss some of my defensive cooldowns from PLD, but it's manageable. I can survive just as well in A4 as any other tank. It's not like we have that much fewer defensive cooldowns than the other tanks.

SE released the DRK class to help alleviate DPS queues. Plenty of the terrible DRK tanks you're running into are former DPS players. They'll either get better or return to their mains. I've already seen a significant culling of them on my server by level 60.

Most of the DRKs I've run with aren't bad or difficult to heal. But some are the way OP described. Last week I was farming Alexander floor 2 and pumped into same DRK 4 or 5 times. Wearing full STR accessories, didn't really seem to have a clue about tanking. After him constantly dropping during the first run I did with him, I asked my random healing partners to focus on healing him during the following runs while I focused on the other tank. The DRK died every single run at least once no matter who was healing him. The DRK didn't seem to learn anything.

DRK is what broke my anxiety over tanking, and now I dare say I'm an exceptional one. Maybe not a perfect/pro, but more often than not, I tend to get randoms who will go out of their way to tell me how they were expecting me to be as bad as the last DRK they ended up with (and were happily mistaken).

So I'm a bit biased towards being glad that DRK was made into a tank class. :3

I have noticed though that when I was healing DRKs earlier on, that some were indeed squishy, but I've been putting all my points into VIT so far, and I haven't noticed the healers having to struggle to keep my HP up. Zero issues holding aggro, and in some cases, recovering aggro from over-eager DPS. (Except for those two places in Sohm Al, but I mean, come on... >_>; haven't had anyone die at least!)

If you're a tank you need to gear with that in mind. That said, I am a healer and I love a good challenge. However, when the tank starts getting one shot or globaled, I can't do anything to prevent that. So yeah, there comes a point where you have to sacrifice dps for survivability if you want to be a tank.

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Originally Posted by Taika

Most of the DRKs I've run with aren't bad or difficult to heal. But some are the way OP described. Last week I was farming Alexander floor 2 and pumped into same DRK 4 or 5 times. Wearing full STR accessories, didn't really seem to have a clue about tanking. After him constantly dropping during the first run I did with him, I asked my random healing partners to focus on healing him during the following runs while I focused on the other tank. The DRK died every single run at least once no matter who was healing him. The DRK didn't seem to learn anything.

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...Nothing wrong with going full STR as DRK right now.

I mean, DRK has a lot of problems, but that's not one of them. And as for that guy, he probably would have died with the extra vitality anyway.

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Originally Posted by Nektulos-Tuor

VIT doesn't really help out your healers. The mobs dying faster does. Especially in low level dungeons, I would rather one mob die faster then my tank having a slightly bigger HP pool. Then again, I am rather vigilant as a healer. I don't sit and wait until they are almost dead.

Honestly, I think it is better for them in the end.

They should learn to wipe and learn to be on edge with healing rather then becoming lazy.

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I disagree. GCD is by far the most important thing to a healer. I tried to heal a full str DRK through Vault and 9.7k hp did not cut it for the final boss. I could not spare one global cooldown to do anything other than spam heals on him. HP does help your healer. > <

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Originally Posted by Hayward

Welcome to the parser generation, where defense means nothing and it's the healer's fault if they're on the ground.

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Indeed. I feel positively old school with my vit accessories and focus on defense and emnity gain. If there is one thing I would ask the developers to do, it is to re-emphasize the actual roles our jobs have in the party, and make the skill of knowing your job and playing it's role effectively worth something.

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Originally Posted by Huneidu

I disagree. GCD is by far the most important thing to a healer. I tried to heal a full str DRK through Vault and 9.7k hp did not cut it for the final boss. I could not spare one global cooldown to do anything other than spam heals on him. HP does help your healer. > <

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I've never ran Vault in anything but full strength, as either a DRK or a WAR. Never had any problem with it. They just need to not get hit and be on it with their cooldowns.

well for leveling its safer to go full vit since you and your healer still lack gear AND some skills most the time depending on the instances level. on max level tough i go mostly 3 str / 2 vit for accs. on some fights like floor 3 or ravana i go full str since if the mechanics are ignored you die EITHER way. and if they are not ignored it works with full str like a charm.

when you have maxed defense and armor vit on lvl 60 gear that extra around 2000 hp from going full vit is really not worth it as its rarely going to safe you while killing a boss / mob faster is always helpful since shorter fights means less problems are likely too happen. this is due to the way fights are designed on ff14. only devs can fix that problem.

going full str while leveling tough. maybe a bad idea. except if you play with a healer you KNOW he can do it. dont do it with randoms. doesnt end to well most the time.

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Originally Posted by Huneidu

I disagree. GCD is by far the most important thing to a healer. I tried to heal a full str DRK through Vault and 9.7k hp did not cut it for the final boss. I could not spare one global cooldown to do anything other than spam heals on him. HP does help your healer. > <

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Adjusting to compensate for healer skill level is also a part of good tanking. I may toss on a vit accessory or two if it is apparent that the healer can't keep up.

I usually give people the benefit of the doubt first though. If the healer is good enough, there isn't a 4 man dungeon in the game that can't be tanked in full str accessories.

Oh idk, I'm loving DRK and it's gotten me used to tanking. I do feel that I need to improve a bit more on the job, it's fun seeing fights from the other side of the fence.

as a veteran tank?

DArk Knight feels like the squishiest of the three tanks so far, but I haven't gotten it to 50+ to see how it fares. WAR is all about predicting when an attack will come but DRK is in this wierd place where they try to be both a WAR with higher damage, and a PLD with sustained mitigation, but instead of finding its niche, it only manages to fail and make itself a weaker tank overall.

I do look forward to seeing how this class plays out and am steadily leveling it. But so far as my co-tanks go, I feel like DRK is the squishiest of tanks, barely on par with a Full-STR WAR in defiance and far below the survivability of a full-VIT PLD.

°-° My perspective as a both healer and tank.

First off, yes, I'd agree that there're plenty of bad players who leveled DRK up because it was a "cool looking class". Some of them don't use the class right and I'm scared to give them advice because of the "don't tell me how to play attitude". Specially when the vote kick now comes in a very gratuitous way. They don't pop cds, they don't know how to manage aggro, they leave monsters unattended and when the DPS go ham, they lose emnity. They are slow. They don't know how to pull, sometimes they pull more than they can hold and sometimes they pull one by one. They are not well geared/prepared for an encounter. Oh, wait... THIS HAPPENS WITH ALL THE TANK JOBS!!!

1) Paladins who never use a CD. Don't use flash. Only stick with RoH combos at level 60.
2) Warriors. Deliverance. Son of a...
3) Dark Knights. So far, only had issues with DRKs not using cds or Dark Side. I had to put some extra healing on my end, sacrificing some DPS. That saddens me.

THE WARRIORS TAKE THE CAKE HERE. God.damn. Seriously, guys, don't pull the 50% of the dungeon in Deliverance. Your 250 DPS cannot be compared to all the damage that SCH can do now with all the dots. Also, it's damn hard to keep you alive and I DARE YOU to say something if you die. Jesus Christ... I cringe when I have to heal a DPS minded Warrior. I hate you all.

As a tank I go full STR, because I will accept that increasing my overall DPS will make the encounter shorter. That means less healings. It also increases the emnity you generate so, no problem. When I drop/change stances, I will make sure I have a nice set of cds to compensate and emulate my tanking stance. So you, yes YOU healer, can DPS or preserve your MP to raise the DRG.

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Originally Posted by Eidolon

as a veteran tank?

DArk Knight feels like the squishiest of the three tanks so far, but I haven't gotten it to 50+ to see how it fares. WAR is all about predicting when an attack will come but DRK is in this wierd place where they try to be both a WAR with higher damage, and a PLD with sustained mitigation, but instead of finding its niche, it only manages to fail and make itself a weaker tank overall.

I do look forward to seeing how this class plays out and am steadily leveling it. But so far as my co-tanks go, I feel like DRK is the squishiest of tanks, barely on par with a Full-STR WAR in defiance and far below the survivability of a full-VIT PLD.

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DRK is not that bad. It's a middle ground. It's not as tanky as PLD and is not as DD as WAR. You can perfectly MT with DRK and do more damage than a PLD. You'll lack some survivability in comparisson but still it's doable. As an OT and based on parsers, WAR obviously does more damage than DRK, bu DRK can pull some nice numbers, above the PLD DPS.

The problem with DRK right now is the lack of raid utility in my opinion. Even if we don't have a nice hardcore content right now to try the job out, I don't see this job as something that could bring something important to the table.

They are not really squishy if you know how to play them.

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Originally Posted by SuperZay

It was a major oversight by a development team to make a traditional DPS class as a tank. We have all seen these warning topics but now it's time to see the real results of this decision. Because people who waited and wanted it as a DPS role are playing it as such regardless of what SE thinks about the job now.
I heal DRKs every day and they are by far the most squishiest tanks I've ever seen. Why, most of them put all attribute points in Strength, use full set of Strength accessories and never use any defensive cooldowns. Often their HP drops low faster than I can heal through damage and they never help we with Living Dead and such to catch up, neglecting their tank and damage mitigation responsobilities. I have to babysit them every second or they will die, leaving me no time to help with DPS as is the case with properly geared and played tanks.

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I can't speak for those tanks you've had the displeasure of having to heal, but as for myself playing with Dark Knight, I've had little problems with staying alive, even with a decent amount of mobs hitting me in a dungeon. I use all strength accessories and spec'd in strength as well. Properly using cooldowns, along with Dark Arts, helps mitigate a lot of the incoming hits. I'm guessing that the tanks you've had to heal are still getting used to the job and aren't using them as effectively as they could be. Most of them could improve with more practice and experience.

You actually have to heal as your healing class and not DPS? nawwww /comfort

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Originally Posted by FallenArisen0990

Oh idk, I'm loving DRK and it's gotten me used to tanking. I do feel that I need to improve a bit more on the job, it's fun seeing fights from the other side of the fence.

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Agreed. Also your signature is amazing <3

Correct me if i'm wrong, I might be mixing up ff11 with ff14 str raises the dmg max cap and determination raises the avg dmg within that cap. So while Str will give you an RNG chance to hit harder, You dont necessarily hit for a higher amount all the time using str. However, when I asked my healer friends they said for the content out atm. Str is the more useful way atm. I think you're just playing with some bad players who dont use their mitigation moves, or even dont have them yet due to going to a tank class from a dps class. Just be cool and remind them to hit some mitigation moves more to maximize party dmg. He's up-ing his dmg however he is also lowering party dmg. I always juice as much dps as a healer as i can. Both sides of this argument should agree, max dmg from tank and healer is a bonus. If a tank doesn't understand this and tries to fight about it, He/she just a terrible tank.

DRK's are already Damage Dealers. And so is basicly every other tank and healer. I mean. 90% of every skill is doing damage or boosting damage in one form or another. Dealing damage is a group responsibility.

You're not sitting there and doing the bare minimum of your job right?



Right... ?

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

DRK's are already Damage Dealers. And so is basicly every other tank and healer. I mean. 90% of every skill is doing damage or boosting damage in one form or another. Dealing damage is a group responsibility.

You're not sitting there and doing the bare minimum of your job right?



Right... ?

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this is actually pretty accurate and could probably sum up all of the issues with people saying stay in your roles and learn to play your role. I believe when you are fight a mob or a boss, object is to get its health to zero. You have roles within the party but the goal is to get that health to zero. a role is not the only thing you do, its a certain responsibility within the group goal.
You are a TNK, yes you are supposed to get aggro and take brunt of damage do to your dmg mitigation. doesn't meant you don't do as much damage as you can while performing that role. Healers are to keep people healthy, doesn't mean that you shouldn't dmg boss when you can. Same with DPS, your focus is to cause as much damage as possible. Doesn't mean you forget about other things like covering healers when necessary, tackling adds so they don't hurt party.

Im so sick of this role thing. In a fight, roles can change based on how the fight is going. But they don't give you any freedom to adjust. TNK should have a spell that could heal group or self thats worth using, Healers should have a skill that allows them to perform as dps for even a few seconds, and dps should have defensive skills that are worth using to help take pressure off of healers. They made this game like a flawed "Choose Your Own Adventure" book where every option and choice leads to the same page. Giving you the supposed ability of choice but you don't have choice at all. And the fact that they have really only one best way to play a job is stupid. People saying "you don't use this skill, you are not playing your job and role correctly, you are hurting the group" is stupid.

Why should I wear VIT accessories in 4-man dungeons if the healer is too lazy to do anything besides keep me topped off?

With a good healer who does DPS in between heals, I'll switch to my VIT set for big pulls to give them some more wiggle room. Even then, with proper cooldown use, the extra HP is unnecessary.

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

For my part, I absolutely hate strength tanks. I find them a pain in the backside to heal

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Something isn't right if a small HP difference is a problem. Keeping your tank totally topped off is a waste of time anyway, you have plenty of time to throw out some nukes while they're taking hits. It's also a waste of MP as you'll be losing parts of your cures to overhealing.

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Originally Posted by Hayward

These hot dogs are a plague to real tanks who actually put DEFENSE ahead of their parser numbers.

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VIT does not affect defense in any way. Higher "parser numbers" mean things die faster, which means less healing.

If you're going to speedrun I prefer you wear VIT gear as tanks have neglible AoE damage compared to the healers (except maybe for SCH now as all their AoE damage is DoTs). If I can get in a few more Holies/Gravities/Stone IIIs because you had more HP and I could ignore healing you for longer, then that's probably better than whatever AoE damage you're doing by spamming your AoE enmity tools that would keep hate on you anyways.

If you're just doing a normal 4-man run then I really don't care as long as you use your CDs properly so you don't die when I have to heal up the party.

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Originally Posted by Ayrie

Snip

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I only do vit builds lately. As I play exclusively in DF, I'd rather have the extra hp and not take any chances. =/

As for drk being a dps, as someone that mained Drk in FFXI, I'm happy about it being a tank. The dark/edgy part of the class really did attract a lot of people to it (myself included, hey I was a teenager back then), it also meant that we got a lot of people that didn't know how to play the class correctly and just picked it up anyway. Not only that, but the class wasn't the easiest to do right, and it lead to years of "loldrk." It made it really difficult to get beyond that stigma even if you really knew what you were doing. By making it a tank, it forces players to either get good at it or not play it at all. Now if only they would change the drk battle stance, the sephiroth pose with a claymore style weapon simply does not work, it looks stupid.

I wonder if this thread will come up again when Samurai gets released as a tank...

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Originally Posted by NovaUltimatum

I wonder if this thread will come up again when Samurai gets released as a tank...

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I feel samurai should be a class in the same vein as arcanist that can go for more than one role. Call the tank a Bushi and the dps a Ronin.

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Originally Posted by Kowen

Why should I wear VIT accessories in 4-man dungeons if the healer is too lazy to do anything besides keep me topped off?

With a good healer who does DPS in between heals, I'll switch to my VIT set for big pulls to give them some more wiggle room. Even then, with proper cooldown use, the extra HP is unnecessary.



Something isn't right if a small HP difference is a problem. Keeping your tank totally topped off is a waste of time anyway, you have plenty of time to throw out some nukes while they're taking hits. It's also a waste of MP as you'll be losing parts of your cures to overhealing.




VIT does not affect defense in any way. Higher "parser numbers" mean things die faster, which means less healing.

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I'm sorry, I read this and all I can hear is "hurrr durr muh dps".

Healers find this annoying because a tank more concerned with his damage is squishier and his damage contribution isn't nearly as valuable as he'd like to think.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

I feel samurai should be a class in the same vein as arcanist that can go for more than one role. Call the tank a Bushi and the dps a Ronin.

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I think they want to move away from what they did with split job roles. They seem to prefer going with multi-stance effects on the job (Sword Oath/ Shield Oath kinda thing)

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Originally Posted by NovaUltimatum

I think they want to move away from what they did with split job roles. They seem to prefer going with multi-stance effects on the job (Sword Oath/ Shield Oath kinda thing)

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I can understand that for sure. But at the same time, I think a class that starts out at level 1 might not be a bad idea. I think that the game is ripe for a new starter area and continent with 1-50 quests to do. I feel heavensward basically added nothing for players that weren't already at the level cap with their main story done. Adding some low to mid level content might not be a bad idea.

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Originally Posted by Ayrie

Bring those inflated HP bars into my static's groups. We'll fix your opinion on str vs vit accessories real fast.

STR brings more aggro, more than anything. HP bloat is just wasted stats after a point. Even on large trash pools, HP bloat is worthless if incoming damage is higher than a healer's output.

Vit accessories aren't worthless, they have a place, but good tanks know the value of that extra strength, and healers know that hit points isn't how you measure a tank's worth.

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.

Statics are a completely different situation. When in a static, you know how your other members are going to behave, and that level of predictability makes a hell of a difference between STR and VIT specced tank. Random DF STR tank =/= static based STR tank, this is kind of obvious.

Back to OP. Dont write of an entire job due to bad players playing it. I have come across DRK who have had a mix of DEX and INT accessories in DF. This is down to the player being an idiot, not the class. If tanks (any tanks) are full STR specced, then they need to take this into account in DF and pull accordingly. If they dont, its down to the player being bad and bot the class. There are many many many good DRK out there.

B....bb....but tanks ARE dps though, just more of a how to say a heavy armored dps.

We still deal damage even if smaller than DDing dps, we gotta keep hate somehow, spamming flash only gets us so far.

Even our tank stance is just basically " DEAL DAMAGE WITHOUT DROPPING FASTER THAN A DD STANDING IN AN AOE"

Our Off Tank stance literally means an Offensive Tank/DPS

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

I can understand that for sure. But at the same time, I think a class that starts out at level 1 might not be a bad idea. I think that the game is ripe for a new starter area and continent with 1-50 quests to do. I feel heavensward basically added nothing for players that weren't already at the level cap with their main story done. Adding some low to mid level content might not be a bad idea.

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I also thought that they should have had those new jobs start at level 1.You wanted to gate unlocking them after main story, fine. But if you were gonna add a new job with abilities that need learning and adjusting, give players time to adjust. Felt weird unlocking MCH and looking at all the skills already learned at level 30 but listed as lvl1, lvl2, lvl5, etc. The good thing about lvling up a new class is unlocking skills as you go and learning and incorporating them into your style of play. And because you used one skill enough so when you unlocked next skill, you had an idea how that skill was to affect the others. IDK...just don't agree with how they did things this expansion. This letdown was almost as bad as buying the Destiny House of Wolves Expansion......wait......ok Maybe not that bad

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Originally Posted by RyuRoots

Healers find this annoying because a tank more concerned with his damage is squishier and his damage contribution isn't nearly as valuable as he'd like to think.

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VIT doesn't affect incoming damage at all, and the tiny amount of parry you might get on a VIT accessory is negligible with the way the stat currently works. If you feel like a tank in STR gear is squishier then it's placebo.

All damage contribution is valuable, whether it's from a tank or a healer. If a dungeon goes faster, that means we can all get on with our lives a little sooner.

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Originally Posted by Noira

*snip*

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Nobody was talking about OTing. Your main job as a tank is to take all the hits so the DPS and Healer don't die. DPS on top of that is a bonus, just like a healer being able to DPS is a bonus. You can easily keep hate even without STR accessories unless you are significantly less geared than your DPS or you aren't using your enmity combo frequently enough.

In static raids you only need enough VIT to survive a tank buster + an auto-attack so the healers can get you out of the danger zone. Gear and skill level vary greatly in DF content though so it's much better to err with caution and go VIT.

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Originally Posted by Kowen

VIT doesn't affect incoming damage at all, and the tiny amount of parry you might get on a VIT accessory is negligible with the way the stat currently works. If you feel like a tank in STR gear is squishier then it's placebo.

All damage contribution is valuable, whether it's from a tank or a healer. If a dungeon goes faster, that means we can all get on with our lives a little sooner.

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Somehow you don't get what squishy means. A tank with 40,000 HP is much less squishy than a tank with 10,000 HP because they can take more hits without dying. All defenses do is multiply your HP with regards to EHP. EHP is what matters and more HP means defense matters a helluva lot more because it gets multiplied by your defenses. You need a good combo of both defense and HP to not be considered squishy. And like I said, your tank DPS is trash for AoE compared to what healers can output.

Consider two tanks with the same amount of defense; they reduce all damage taken by 20%.

Tank 1 has 10,000 HP
Tank 2 has 12,000 HP.

The 20% Defense means their EHP is whatever their HP is x1.2

Tank 1 has 12,000 EHP
Tank 2 has 14,400 EHP.

Tank 1 can only take 12,000 HP raw damage whereas Tank 2 can take 14,400 raw damage.

Now let's see with low HP and high defense:

Tank 1 has 5000 HP and 20% damage reduction via defense
Tank 2 has 7000 HP and 0% damage reduction via defense

Tank 1 has 6000 EHP
Tank 2 has 7000 EHP

Tank 2 is still less squishy than Tank 1 when they have 0 defense because their HP is higher. Tank 1 will need 40% more defense (or enough defense to mitigate 40% more damage than Tank 2) to reach the same EHP as Tank 2 just because of raw HP difference.

That's why WAR and PLD are as good as each other at taking hits even though PLD has higher defense and WAR has way higher HP. Their EHP is about equal.

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Originally Posted by RyuRoots

I'm sorry, I read this and all I can hear is "hurrr durr muh dps".

Healers find this annoying because a tank more concerned with his damage is squishier and his damage contribution isn't nearly as valuable as he'd like to think.

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Most STR tanks probably don't care.

If healers are allowed to make the choice, so do tanks. Feel free to take a stance though.

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Originally Posted by SuzakuCMX

EHP is what matters and more HP means defense matters a helluva lot more because it gets multiplied by your defenses.

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It doesn't work like that.

WAR has the same EHP as a PLD not just because it has more HP, but because defiance gives a 20% bonus to incoming heals as well.

Adding VIT increases your HP but you still get healed for the same amount, so it doesn't raise your EHP the same way that defiance does.

Tank A could have 6000 HP, and Tank B could have 7000 HP because of VIT gear, but cures still hit them both for the same amount. That means Tank B needs more incoming heals to top off than A does.

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Originally Posted by Kowen

*snip*

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Yes it does work like that. You don't keep the tank topped off 100% of the time; that's a waste of MP. You keep them with enough HP to survive the next few hits with room to spare. If they are riding the VIT/STR line PERFECTLY, then yes, that means keeping them topped off most of the time.

If a tank buster and an auto-attack are going to hit you for 8000 HP then I'd prefer you have 20k HP and no defense than 15k HP and 20% defense. No exceptions, because the 2nd tank is still going to have a lot more room for taking hits than the first tank.

Unless you're in a battle that does % based HP damage all of the time, in which case it doesn't matter how much HP you have.

Regardless, you sacrifice 3k HP trading all VIT accessories for STR accessories. That is about 30% of your HP pre-accessories on a DRK and should not be done lightly.

If you are going to be outputting more damage than your healers with the STR accessories than your healers would be doing when you have VIT accessories you should sacrifice your personal DPS for the group's DPS.

Yes I will have to put out a few more heals to keep you at full HP. But you're not changing how much defenses you have with switching accessories and the VIT gives both you and the healers a lot more room for error. But currently the VIT differential is small between DRK and PLD, DRK can self-heal constantly, PLD has a self-heal, and WAR gets +20% healing done to make up for the difference in HP. The 3k HP from VIT accessories is a couple Cures or a Cure II....which means I can do an extra 2 DPS spells at least before I have to heal you.

If you're going to be tossing out nukes then yeah, I totally agree. That's why I said I'll switch to VIT accessories when I'm with a healer who uses cleric stance.

Raids are different too, where a few thousand HP can mean surviving or not. I mentioned 4-man dungeons specifically because I don't recall any of them having tank busters.

Technically any extra HP over what you need to survive the biggest spike is wasted. Technically.

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Originally Posted by SuzakuCMX

If a tank buster and an auto-attack are going to hit you for 8000 HP then I'd prefer you have 20k HP and no defense than 15k HP and 20% defense. No exceptions, because the 2nd tank is still going to have a lot more room for taking hits than the first tank.

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In this case both tanks can only take two hits before dying, but the first tank will need more healing to be able to survive anything after two hits. Give me the second tank.

Increasing your EHP by VIT only is the worst way to do it when healing is concerned; it's an absolute pain to heal HP sponge tanks.

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Originally Posted by Kowen

snip

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The entire diatribe was about whether or not a tank using STR gear instead of VIT gear was squishier. You said no. Due to how EHP works and the fact that your defense doesn't change, yes someone in STR gear will be squishier than the same class in VIT gear.

It should also be noted that the VIT gear gives you about 30% more HP than STR gear so with VIT gear on you can turn off Grit if enmity isn't a problem and have the same EHP as if you were using STR gear with Grit on. I don't know the damage formula so I don't know if the 200 STR differemce from accessories is less or more than the 20% increase from turnimg off grit.

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Originally Posted by Waliel

Technically any extra HP over what you need to survive the biggest spike is wasted. Technically.

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Suzaku already made the appropriate reply, but I'd like to add that it is not as simple as this. If you only have enough HP to survive the biggest spike, and there are any complications whatsoever and for whatever reason you aren't topped off when the spike comes, then you're dead.

It's always best to have some buffer. Not saying you can't use STR accessories, but you gotta account for a buffer.