Fending Accessories Strength Gain

Nah, Aana's suggestion was really spot on. Brd/Mch used to have lower weapon damage (I'm guessing at some point they changed this because now they are all the same) and it wasn't ever an issue because it was just their baseline. We know that 1 WD is equivalent to a certain amount of str, so they should still be to balance DPS to be roughly the same while giving tanks a meaningful upgrade path on the right side accessories. Just adjust where the damage comes from slightly, it doesn't have to be weaker or stronger - just a shift.

(personally doesn't affect me as I'm not dropping the gil for crafted accessories, and since my co-tank already took that dive I'll get the raid drops anyways lol)

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Originally Posted by Aana

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Their previous posts about why they changed us away from vit damage scaling or the str/vit hybrid did describe the "we want defense and offense to scale separately". The post you quoted was exclusively to stop people from wearing lv 60 slaying accessories. Not the overarching problem.

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This quote is just a sign that SE doesn't even bother with changing tank accessories.

It's stated here and other threads that fending accessories weren't and still are not desirable. For years now, tanks equip STR accessories to clear duties and savage content. It doesn't matter whether the tank is skilled enough to make proper use of it by using CDs and pushing those deeps. STR accessories were meta and people tend to imitate.

SE's solution in 4.0 was to lock tanks out of STR accessories. It was not about all jobs equiping their appropriate gear, but tanks only. But because SE is lazy and didn't change pre-4.x gear, tanks kept their STR accessories.
In the quoted post they actually admit that "When level syncing, only tanks will have STR stacked up, but we will overlook this for content up through 3.x." and thus, did a half finished job. They don't even care, literally.

Now imagine this: SE could probably change old accessories that tanks wouldn't be able to equid old STR gear. They wouldn't even bother to add STR to 4.x accessories, they don't want tanks to scale with their accessories. This "+0.66 STR/10 iLvl" is just a farce, so it would appear to tanks that they could actually get an upgrade. But in reality they don't.

On a side note: They even prohibited overmelding primary stat-materia, later during HW. So, instead of STR-pentamelded fending gear, there was VIT-melded STR accessories for tanks. They couldn't prevent tanks from using them.

I will repeat myself: This accessory problem exists for years now, and there was no real attempt to solve it. Just bandaids as STR/VIT hybrid, now 'fixed' STR amount on fending gear.

There are multiple propositions out there. Lowering STR amount on the left side, lower potencies, lower attack power scaling per STR point, VIT only scale, etc etc.

I am convinced that SE doesn't want to change fending accessory, and I highly doubt they will do anything big before 5.0.

I remember when they changed Tanks Damage stat to VIT halfway through HW. I heard they were worried about the HP scaling and us having too much HP in SB. I personally thought it made since for our damage stat to be VIT, it made it a lot easier to deal with.

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Q4: For tank accessories, I believe it’s much more useful to meld Direct Hit onto the new crafted accessories than using accessories obtained from the new tokens and Savage raid. Are there any plans to adjust the stats on the accessories in the future?

A4: I believe the issue here is that the first groups of players trying to complete the raids quickly are in favor of pushing their DPS. Once they obtain Savage accessories, we don’t think they will need that much DPS. We met players at the event today that suggested to make it so you can’t meld Direct Hit on them. While I understand the comments on this will be spit, we’re carefully discussing this right now.

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I thought at first maybe you were confused SE, but the second sentence here illustrates you know exactly what's going on. You're basically flat out admitting that Savage accessories reduce tank DPS, "we don't think they will need that much DPS".

What?

- tank buys crafted accessories to increase personal DPS and help team clear before enrage
- tank wins Savage accessories for clearing
- tank equips Savage accessories because extra DPS from crafted accessories is no longer required

Please explain this logic :confused:

As for locking tanks out of Direct Hit, it doesn't matter, we will just meld Crit. Or Det. Or God forbid Skill Speed or Tenacity. Whichever gives the most the DPS.

Wait, let me repeat that just in case you missed it. Whichever gives the most the DPS.

(Just as an aside, I broke down and bought a crafted accessory. Just one because they went down to 800k. My co-tank bought me the wrist because I was still wearing crafted 320 wrist in v7s lol. Now to overmeld ; ; ; ; )

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

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And that's basically the whole problem in this. SE knows that we will gain as much dps as possbile, so they design boss encounters for that dps. But because the boss encounters are designed for high dps, we are in need to gain said dps, no matter what price.

If SE locks out tanks from dps gaining, without adjusting boss hp/enrage timers for lower dps, encounters will become harder. If they adjust boss hp/enrage timer for lower dps, but don't lock tanks out, we will still gain high dps to make content easier.

That's a vicious circle!

It's something that I can overlook, but it's just silly that our accessories are just as costly to upgrade in terms of time, effort, gil, and so on, when upgrading them has such an absurdly minuscule value to us. It's not only that this is still a problem after so long, it's that they've spent this long "trying" to fix the problem by completely dancing around the issue at large for whatever ungodly reason they might have. Most people want to deal as much damage as possible in their respective job, so they're going to go with the most optimal way of dealing more damage, because defense is a binary pass/fail mechanic that doesn't actually engage the player in any way.

I understand removing the damage scaling from VIT for sanity's sake when it comes to balancing, but we're basically subsisting off of table scraps for a role that is already heavily underused in this game.

The worst part is they actually managed this perfectly in creator. Tank damage was changed to scaled with vit so raid accessories were BiS, and vitality potions were very potent. Unfortunately there were definitely too many complaints about tanks dealing damage numbers too close to actual DPS, and it was seen as a balance issue. They wanted to go a different approach to tanking in stormblood and this is what we got. I don't see why they couldn't have just nerfed the overall dps of all the tanks and left the superior vitality scaling intact.

As is it right now tank raid accessories are like the worst thing, it might as well have been a one-chest.

So it begins. 3rd clear and we got our 1st tank accessory of the season. Tank ring. Both me and my co-tank have pentameld Accs. To quote our orange leader:

SAD.

Off to my retainer it goes. Thanks SE. Youre a real pal. I can only pray this isn't like my Final coil season. We got I believe, 16 tank rings alone (before unlocks. This was once a week clears).

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Originally Posted by Coatl

Unfortunately there were definitely too many complaints about tanks dealing damage numbers too close to actual DPS, and it was seen as a balance issue. They wanted to go a different approach to tanking in stormblood and this is what we got. I don't see why they couldn't have just nerfed the overall dps of all the tanks and left the superior vitality scaling intact.

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I'm probably in the minority in this, but I have no problem with tank DPS matching mid-tier DPS character, all other factors equal. If they balanced fights around tanks having to pull their weight in DPS checks (not to Gordias levels for god's sake though), then it shouldn't be an issue beyond the handful of people who think tanks being able to do damage is the worst thing ever (and interestingly, probably don't ever touch savage or extreme content).



It's not like tanks aren't already expected to DPS as hard as possible, they just have a lower maximum number to shoot for. And yes, I understand why they did it, but damage scaling with Vitality was a good idea and I still would like that back.

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Originally Posted by Capn_Goggles

I'm probably in the minority in this, but I have no problem with tank DPS matching mid-tier DPS character, all other factors equal. If they balanced fights around tanks having to pull their weight in DPS checks (not to Gordias levels for god's sake though), then it shouldn't be an issue beyond the handful of people who think tanks being able to do damage is the worst thing ever (and interestingly, probably don't ever touch savage or extreme content).

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I'd consider myself in that minority as well. Obvious problem being the 7 or 8-tank comps (why bring a dps that can die to everything?). But it seems like it would be fairly easy to simply code the DF for not accepting those kind of parties by default (make it a checkbox option like unsynced & reduce or eliminate rewards for "special comps"), problem solved. That way people can still do crazy comps if they want, just no reward for doing it in relevant content.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

I'd consider myself in that minority as well. Obvious problem being the 7 or 8-tank comps (why bring a dps that can die to everything?). But it seems like it would be fairly easy to simply code the DF for not accepting those kind of parties by default (make it a checkbox option like unsynced & reduce or eliminate rewards for "special comps"), problem solved. That way people can still do crazy comps if they want, just no reward for doing it in relevant content.

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This seems like the reason party finder exists, and would be unneeded work. The game already allows you to do whatever silly thing you want without penalty, just not with randos.

How to make DD classes more valuable in a game balance where tanks can reach DD level DPS:

Make DD's possess the heavier raid DPS boosts.

i.e

Base line:
Tank - 90
DPS - 100 + 10per member(Raid Boosting)

"7 Tank Comp"
Tankx7 = 630 Rdps

Proper Comp (2, 2, 4)
Tankx2 = 180
DPSx4 = 400
Raid Buffing from DPS = 40 x(Per member) = 240
Total RDPS = 820

Add Healer's DPS if desired:
Healer = 90(+40 ea in DPS comp)

7tank = 710rdps
Normal = 1080

Even with the lightest buff of 10 still puts the normal DPS influenced comp 30% ahead. Add more weight and that gap widens even more.

TL: DR It's a numbers thing that can enable the concept.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

How to make DD classes more valuable in a game balance where tanks can reach DD level DPS:

Make DD's possess the heavier raid DPS boosts..

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Might as well make the DD's capable of tanking the boss then.

Oh, and everyone should just heal themselves.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Might as well make the DD's capable of tanking the boss then.

Oh, and everyone should just heal themselves.

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I too like going for extremes. /s

Atleast with the proposed gameplay change there would be more individual tank impact so that players could feel like they're worth more than a bot that presses a necessary button or two every 90/180/500 seconds because the game arbitrarily makes it so.

Oh but, you know, playing a TANK is just so HARD. We shouldn't force them to also partake in an aspect of the game that has a substantially higher skill ceiling and more rewarding outcome with a an actual appreciable effect beyond the required minimum. :eyeroll:

But clearly, everyone enjoys being a walking meatshield with no real threat in game nor from a immersion perspective.

Tanks are so POPULAR! /s /s /s /s /s

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

I too like going for extremes. /s

Atleast with the proposed gameplay change there would be more individual tank impact so that players could feel like they're worth more than a bot that presses a necessary button or two every 90/180/500 seconds because the game arbitrarily makes it so.

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And that doesn't change in your suggestion. In fact, no amount of gameplay changes in your suggestion. You just create a different requirement to justify the 2/4/2 party composition, and increase the damage a tank does, for no other reason than you find 5k less fun than 9k.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Might as well make the DD's capable of tanking the boss then.

Oh, and everyone should just heal themselves.

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I'd actually be fine with that, if in very limited frequencies. At least you lay the groundwork for players being able to skillfully redistribute and rotate about incoming damage and effects in the absence of a tank, rather than facing, then and there, inevitable death to a "composition debuff".

Personally, I'd like to see tanks have slightly less HP, but greater defense(s), making them yet more efficient to heal without being the only ones who can survive what is still, to them, only mediocre damage.

More broadly speaking:
I'm actually pretty happy with where Tank DPS is right now. It's a powerful and worthwhile tool, but it isn't yet strong enough to warrant taking a third tank, despite it's indirect contribution -- while less able to benefit from gear as damage-dealing does (much like that of healer's as while healing can be done faster for more dps globals, the healing needed is capped and further reduced by tanks -- being decently sizeable over progression (well, less so for DRK). Ideally, even if a 2/4/2 is the intended allotment in a game, then every option one removed from it, too, should be just a hair off from viable. 1 Tank and 3 healers, 3 tanks and 1 healer, or even 1 tank, 1 healer, and, say, 3 defense-supportive DPS among the 6. Gimmicks

I may rethink that though if the new spikes in parse height currently limited to Monks and BLMs (e.g. 7.4k on O6S) reaches the others, though. 4.2 to 4.9k and 7.4k are pretty far divorced when considering the rDPS a tank can contribute outside of, again, that "composition check'. 4.5 to 5.8, though, sounds reasonable enough. An extra 20+% total DPS (personal + bonus) is a pretty huge difference.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

This seems like the reason party finder exists, and would be unneeded work. The game already allows you to do whatever silly thing you want without penalty, just not with randos.

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I was attempting to make a distinction between pre-made parties and "special" comp parties. Yes, at current you can ignore DF requirements with a pre-made party. What I was trying to suggest (if we are looking at a situation where tank dps = dd dps) is to take that away and make it an option like Undersized parties that removes loot/exp/gil etc. So if you wanted to faceroll savage with 8 tanks you can do that, but there won't be any rewards.

Does 1 str and several vitality points are worth those 76 points of crit/det/dh?
Lets take for example ryumyakku necklace and crafted necklace, the ryumayakku has 18 vit more, 1 str, 133 det, 93 crit, where crafted brings skillspeed and only 86 determination, there is no point in getting crafted am i right?

As DRK i want as less skillspeed as it is possible, since i dont benefit from it so much as i do from det or crit. It does not affect my CD's, only 1-2-3 combo and maybe quietus, but thats not too much.

I believe it all depends on who are you playing and how.
At least necklace is not worth pentamelding. :f

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

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It's a relatively minuscule difference either way. Vit aside, you're gaining 1 str for -58 secondary stats. Skillspeed may not be great for Drk, personally I don't think a little bit hurts for practical reasons, but the secondary stats would be "worth" more than the str. Plus, it's cumulative in a way. If you have all 5 pentamelded pieces you're looking at +290 in secondary stats compared to +5 str from raid/tome gear.

The other thing is that the extra vit doesn't even matter, outside of something like Ultimate Coil of bahamut. Food and proper mitigation cover the hp you're missing just fine.

Dps checks are strict and the vit/ten is unneeded with proper tanking i already got my acc's overmelded but it cost me 20m its so stupid that we have to resort to this.

You can have pretty high skill speed on DRK. 2.33 gcd is one of the BIS. And you want enough skill speed for an extra gcd under BW, which is about 2.38 I believe.

The core issue will always be here as long as DPS is more important than defensive stats.

Honestly it seems like VIT is just not relevant enough. I've just got into the savage tank scene since this patch and I'm slowly leaning towards more and more DPS melds because doing the extra tiny smidge of damage is always more useful than anything else when the enrage timers are as they are. There is no danger to warrant taking TEN or VIT.

Coming from a history of WoW tanking, I would argue this is because there is not enough to threaten the tanks. You can eat O6S Demonic Shear out of tank stance with just a single cooldown. With 2 tanks on O5S, you can use 2 cooldowns for Doom Strike and survive it out of tank stance. Vitality means nothing when the primary tank killing mechanics are so unthreatening. This also makes it bland for tanks since we know we can even screw it up and completely forget any cooldowns and the healers can probably still save us.

Savage tankbusters should absolutely obliterate unattentive tanks. If these tankbusters outright killed you when you use any less than 2 cooldowns out of tank stance or 1 in tank stance, VIT might actually start to look a bit more important. If neccessary, the HP scaling on VIT could be increased to make the VIT melds and Raid drops look a lot more attractive. Then it becomes more of a choice... squeeze out a tiny bit extra DPS at the risk of getting blown up by mechanics or play safe and bring a big health pool to ensure you stay alive.

They could balance this out by extending enrage timers. If the encounter is more volatile and dangerous but you get a bit longer to clear it, then the importance becomes on surviving the mechanics more than absolutely min-maxing your DPS.

I have discussed with people on multiple occasions about tanking with tank stance on or off and almost every Savage-content raider insists that tanks should be tanking out of tank stance to maximise DPS because "Good healers can deal with the increased damage on the tank". This is a huge sign that there is a lack of anything to threaten or stress healers, even out of tank stance. A main tank without tank stance should be putting enormous pressure on his healers in exchange for his DPS increase. Currently we have only the illusion of choice. It is in fact better to be out of tank stance because the DPS means more than the damage reduction. This should be a real choice.

One other simple solution which is available and has precedence. Why not put a third substat on blue tanking accessories?

If I remember correct the ilvl 120 blue accessories for healers have a third substat on them. Giving a third substat in the range of half the max secondary stat would probably be enough to push the raid and tome accessories over the crafted.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

One other simple solution which is available and has precedence. Why not put a third substat on blue tanking accessories?

If I remember correct the ilvl 120 blue accessories for healers have a third substat on them. Giving a third substat in the range of half the max secondary stat would probably be enough to push the raid and tome accessories over the crafted.

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Wasn't it accuracy? That was primarily to alleviate the accuracy cap burdens, that don't exist now. It's also worth noting that slotting accuracy had no bearing on 80% of the healer's kit, so it's not really applicable here, where you're just picking between four different stats that are only compared on their contributions to DPS, because Tanks, barring specific mechanics, are always interacting with enemies in an offensive manner.

Yes, I believe it was accuracy. Now it is direct hit. It had little impact on healers unless they wanted to hit something in which case it could be considered important.

If the point is to make raid accessories BiS without boosting tanks to dps levels then tweaking the substat system on these accessories seems like a relatively simple fix that doesn’t have massive gains in dps.

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Originally Posted by Rathael

Honestly it seems like VIT is just not relevant enough.

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Well, health is the resource that determines how much damage you can take before you die.
Like 90+% of it comes from healers, rather than base health pools. That, naturally, is going to make base health pools largely irrelevant outside of burst. And burst is binary - it either kills you or it doesn't. This puts VIT in the same place as accuracy - mandatory until you survive/hit 100%, then avoid it like the plague.

Mitigation increases effective health per nominal health and outside of (binary) burst functions like a healing boost - A healing boost that no healer needs because they're powerful enough to manage without easily.

The core issue lies in healers, really. They're just too damn powerful and it's a known issue that pervades the entire game. It's not really something they'll address, though, so it's probably better to just leave it and give the accessories proper damage scaling.

Current maxed Relic armor for tanks are going to be BiS because of 5 meld slots which means 200 Direct Hit for each slot which is over 1000 direct hit... Just give tank gear full strength and 200 direct hit on each piece of so tanks don't have to focus on just 2 kinds of materia...

But that's only around 600 more DH than without. And the gear is 350, so you're trading around 126 str and a fair amount of raw defense. Could be close but idk about BiS..

600 DH is about 15% DH or about 3.5% increased damage on average.

126 Strength is probably close to 5% of your strength, plus any loss of other substats, plus the defense / vitality.

Yeah there is no way in hell those will be bis even with the 5 materia slots as long as they are that much lower ilvl. By that logic then the crafted gear would always be bis? which is only true for accessories.

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Originally Posted by Thela

Yeah there is no way in hell those will be bis even with the 5 materia slots as long as they are that much lower ilvl. By that logic then the crafted gear would always be bis? which is only true for accessories.

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There could be some exceptions in extreme cases. For example, belts have not-many stats overall and 1 material slot. So a raid piece has +40
370: 149 Str, 133+93+40=266 secondary stats.
350+5 TVI: 135 str, 122+86+(40*5)= 408 secondary stats.

14 str in exchange for 142 secondary stats. The melded stats are going to be more optimal than the random raid gear ones. If the 370 stat options were bad, it could be competitive. The gap is narrower for accessories (lulz 2 str), widens for feet/hands/head via the extra T6 and higher str gains, and will be insurmountable under any circumstance for big pieces like body/legs and even more so on weapons with base damage increases.

TLDR: It is unlikely any of this will be BIS, but it can definitely compete against certain 260 un-upgraded pieces that have poor secondary stat choices. There have been many times in the past where a lower ilvl piece trumped a higher one. Usually only by 10 levels unless its a belt or accessory though and then rare cases of 20. Don't be automatically discount them as unusable without checking the numbers. There are rare exceptions that work.

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Originally Posted by Aana

There could be some exceptions in extreme cases. For example, belts have not-many stats overall and 1 material slot. So a raid piece has +40

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It seems that way on the surface, at least.

Take a "perfect" example:

If:
122 crit
86 det

- Going to lose 4 Det since over cap (only +36 instead of +40)
- Assume DH 3 x 40 for 120, can't fully cap a 3rd stat
- Crit, Det, DH "capped" only leaves +40 skill speed

So there's only ~78 secondary stat difference between relic and crafted. You get slightly better secondary stat optimization of course, but I think at the end of the day even if the pieces are close from a DPS weight compared to raid belt there's still the minor problem of less defense and vit. Relatively unimportant in the grand scheme, but should be considered since we already lose a bit of vit by wearing crafted accessories.

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Originally Posted by Aana

There could be some exceptions in extreme cases. For example, belts have not-many stats overall and 1 material slot. So a raid piece has +40
370: 149 Str, 133+93+40=266 secondary stats.
350+5 TVI: 135 str, 122+86+(40*5)= 408 secondary stats.

14 str in exchange for 142 secondary stats. [...]

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There is just one problem with this theory. I can't work 'cause there is no 'relic' belt or something like a '5 slot' belt.

So, the stat difference between 370 and pentamelded crafted 350 is:
370+(1*VI): 149 STR, 133+93+40=266 secondary stats.
350+(2*VI)+(3*V): 135 STR, 122+86+(40*2)+(12*3)= 324 secondary stats.

Instead of 14 STR vs. 142 sec stats, it's 14 STR vs. 58 sec stats. The ratio is 1:4, not 1:10.
For both 370 options to be worse than 350 crafted, their sec stats must be (totally) worthless.

E.g. for healer piety + SS, while crafted has crit + det. In Deltascape tier, I think this was the case for healer necklace.

If we compare actual 350 relic gear to 370 gear (e.g. feet):
370+(2*VI): 198 STR, 178+125+(40*2)=383 sec stats
350+(5*VI): 180 STR, 163+114+(40*5)=477 sec stats

18 STR vs. 94 sec stats, a ratio of 1:5. The 350 could be better DPS wise, but the additional defense and vit boost from 370 probably outweigh that. Also, both (tome and savage) 370 stats would have to be so bad to even consider swapping gear.

I don't see why we need a complex solution to this problem, SE literally just needs to make STR on accessories both capped and scale correctly, that's all

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Originally Posted by Bec

I don't see why we need a complex solution to this problem, SE literally just needs to make STR on accessories both capped and scale correctly, that's all

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Indeed but hey, we're lucky we have any STR on them at all, if you recall at the start of the expansion there was exactly 0 STR on fending accessories until they caved and added minuscule amounts from all the backlash they got from that decision.

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Originally Posted by Thela

Indeed but hey, we're lucky we have any STR on them at all, if you recall at the start of the expansion there was exactly 0 STR on fending accessories until they caved and added minuscule amounts from all the backlash they got from that decision.

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They didn't do that over backlash over the decision.

They did that in order to pamper healers that were shocked at tanks still using the old 270 STR accessories with zero VIT instead and felt a lot tougher to heal for it. Their new job restrictions simply proved futile in achieving their goal, hence they put just about the same STR on the new accessories as the 270 ones had to make you wear the stupid things. If people hadn't flat out refused to wear the new accessories, they wouldn't have changed anything, no matter how many complains.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

-snip-

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Ah, so that's what we need to do to make SE move. Well, you heard it guys! Drop your Accessoires! We're going savage now! x'D

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Originally Posted by Zojha

They did that in order to pamper healers that were shocked at tanks.

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I'm terribly sorry that the tank busters hitting for 85-100% of your health pool was shocking healers.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

They didn't do that over backlash over the decision.

They did that in order to pamper healers that were shocked at tanks still using the old 270 STR accessories with zero VIT instead and felt a lot tougher to heal for it. Their new job restrictions simply proved futile in achieving their goal, hence they put just about the same STR on the new accessories as the 270 ones had to make you wear the stupid things. If people hadn't flat out refused to wear the new accessories, they wouldn't have changed anything, no matter how many complains.

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Well sure was part of it, but if they really wanted to stick to their plan they could have just blocked the 270 ones (and lower) from being used by tanks also and kept to their plans but they didn't.