Live Letter 3.2 tank changes, vit effects tank attack

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Since HP regen scales off max HP, more VIT will equal more HP regenerated per tick. It will also affect the strength of StoneSkin. I'm just wondering what other impacts a larger HP pool can have beyond the obvious gain in HP.

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Does the natural regen tick even happen during combat? lol

I honestly don't know/never noticed.

I don't know how real ballistic helmets work so I just used a child's imagination(you get the idea). But yeah raw HP is defense but not on the level of pure mitigation since mitigation effectively reduces the healing requirement. For the most part, raw HP is only effective in the first instance of damage or something like that. Literally half the effect of pure mitigation as others have pointed out. Which is why you see Defiance is almost equivalent to the other stances thanks to the combination of rawHP and bonus healing to supplement the former.

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Originally Posted by Claymore65

Quick clarification for anyone confused in this thread, when people say "More Vit doesn't raise your Defense", they're correct. Vitality doesn't affect your Defense stat, which reduces damage. People who say "More HP raises your Defense" are wrong within the context of the game.

It is, however, correct to say more Vitality (and thus HP) adds to your survivability. So, while this change won't provide a Defense upgrade, it will allow tanks to survive a couple of hits when they wouldn't before. I'm personally all for Fending equipment becoming the ideal tank equipment. It'll make my leveling up a lot easier.

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/slapsforehead DERP. Survivability!

Quick clarification for anyone confused in this thread, when people say "More Vit doesn't raise your Defense", they're correct. Vitality doesn't affect your Defense stat, which reduces damage. People who say "More HP raises your Defense" are wrong within the context of this game.

It is, however, correct to say more Vitality (and thus HP) adds to your survivability. So, while this change won't provide a Defense upgrade, it will allow tanks to survive a couple of hits when they wouldn't before. I'm personally all for Fending equipment becoming the ideal tank equipment. It'll make my leveling up a lot easier.

Having a certain threshold of health is only good for burst damage. Such as crits, tanks killers, millions of mobs mauling on your face at once. It doesn't mitigate damage at all. It increases survival rate yes. Health is great for raw damage tho.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

Does the natural regen tick even happen during combat? lol

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According to what I found online this afternoon, yes it does, but at a reduced % compared to the regen out of combat.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

/slapsforehead DERP. Survivability!

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lol, I like survivability. It's fun to still be there when the dust settles and poke the boss again when he thinks he just squished you.

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Originally Posted by Agrios

What does this mean for paladins? I know that paladin is the CD heavy brick wall of the three but do they have more VIT? If so, are they going to be looked down on less? I'm just curious, since I enjoy switching between the three tanks but lately it's war/drk or GTFO.

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Currently, at iLv205, my VIT tank has 21k HP. I threw on two pieces of STR and this changes my HP to 18k.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Since HP regen scales off max HP, more VIT will equal more HP regenerated per tick. It will also affect the strength of StoneSkin. I'm just wondering what other impacts a larger HP pool can have beyond the obvious gain in HP.

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The Paladin's Divine Veil will shield others for more going from ~1600 hp to ~2100 hp at i210 if the shield % stays at 10% Paladin's hp. A 30% increase is nothing to sneeze at.

They just said on Duty Commenced that if you have str accessories they hope you have or get vit ones because you will do less damage if you use the str ones in 3.2. Makes me think the vit attack modifier will be higher then the str one.

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Originally Posted by Nalien

So... Are they going to adjust Parry as well? Because honestly that's the main reason I dislike VIT accessories...

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+1, Main reason that drove me to crafted fending/slaying acc's. Still not going to want if it has parry, just now I won't be able to freely swap it for a piece of slaying.

I think STR will still be a viable option. They can't really go too far with this because the left side gear has both STR and VIT. They said that both stats would have a weight in attack power so it has to be some sort of fraction of a sum for each. They end result of attack power will probably be X% on VIT, Y% on STR, with a total that lands close to what we already have right now. So, depending on the weight VIT and STR gets, we can expect that STR accessories may still have their role depending on what other stat they have. For example, if a STR accessory has Determination and would allow the tank to reach minimum Accuracy, it probably will end up being an excellent choice over the Vit+Parry+Skill Speed in the same slot.

I think it's going to be very interesting to play around with different pieces of a same tier + crafted accessories. The BiS won't be as obvious anymore.

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Originally Posted by AeliaBlitz

I think STR will still be a viable option.

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They've explicity said multiple times that wearing vitality and placing all of your bonus points in vitality will be the only way forward in 3.2, and that wearing strength jewelry will result in decreased damage compared to vit jewelry.

They also just repeated this a few hours ago in Duty Commenced 10 where they explicitly say strength will be swapped with vitality and that vitality will be the new 'power of tank attacks'.

Edit: In other words, unless they are completely straight up lying, strength will be non-viable.

Did they mention reworking parry?

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Originally Posted by Instrumentality

Edit: In other words, unless they are completely straight up lying, strength will be non-viable.

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I'm gonna go with that because I obviously haven't seen the sources your refering to. But I think It's got to be more complicated then just a straight up stat swap because that puts tanks in a very unique and possibly game-bending (short of saying game-breaking) situation.

Tanks will then become the only class to receive a DIRECT buff to their raw attack power from food items? It it's really like what you describe (and I'm not saying it's not, i'm just saying I still skeptical), an almond cream croissant would be the exact equivalent of a food that would grant 30 STR points? ...that seems unlikely doesn't it? While all other classes only benefit indirect effects (Spell Speed, Skill Speed, Crit, Det...) tanks would get a DIRECT buff? Now imagine warriors eating Steamed Staves... ? Wouldn't that bend the game even just a little?

They can just change food to be +HP if they don't want it conflicting with the new change.

I'm happy with this change. It was obvious from the start that the devs intended VIT to be the way to go for tanks. There's a reason you're not allowed to roll Need on accessories which have no VIT on them, tokens merely bypassed this. If they're having VIT give you damage and survivability, what is there to complain about? I cannot see any disadvantage to this other than "muh customization" and let's be honest, character stats were always a poor place for that (seriously, why is the Attribute Point bonus system even there?).

What I'm really looking forward to is the PLD changes. The lack of damage is mainly what compelled me to go DRK to begin with (and this thread raises some valid concerns about Living Dead, which needs to be reworked in the first place, namely due to how long it actually takes to go off when you activate it).

It'd be nice if they did something with Parry though. Asides from the inherent benefit DRK get from Parry (uptime on Reprisal), it's a pretty poor stat.

I'd like to see parry to become a weapon property, the same way that block strength/rate is for shields. It would be much easier to control the stat's growth rate were that the case.

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Originally Posted by Instrumentality

They also just repeated this a few hours ago in Duty Commenced 10 where they explicitly say strength will be swapped with vitality and that vitality will be the new 'power of tank attacks'.

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Does this mean that VIT will completely be the AP then? The way that Live Letter made it sound both would be a part of the damage calculation, which is really the only thing I don't like about the changes. Just seems like they would be doing that to not go back and change the gear, which I think they should do to differ them more from the DPS gear and make room for tank secondaries, perhaps. Just seems halfassed if they do it that way.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I'd like to see parry to become a weapon property, the same way that block strength/rate is for shields. It would be much easier to control the stat's growth rate were that the case.

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I could get behind this as well as the stat option.

EDIT: The way I imagined it could go down would be to remove STR from the tank gear and put Parry on the left side pieces in it's place. To balance out Parry rates drop the Parry from all right side jewelry. Now Parry is still garbage but it's not part of itemization since it's on all left side pieces and none on right side pieces.

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Originally Posted by AeliaBlitz

I'm gonna go with that because I obviously haven't seen the sources your refering to.

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This episode of Duty Commenced posted yesterday.

They explicitly say they are 'switching from strength'.

Tanks wearing tank gear should be "common sense". I understand this hasn't been the case, and that's because there were clearly design flaws in the stats themselves. If a tank has to choose non-tank gear/stats, not only to min/max, but to avoid being a 'fail' or 'bad' tank, there is an absurd flaw in the system. Otherwise, there's no point to tank gear existing in the first place. So, parry needs a fix also.

Off-role should be a bonus, not a requirement. Right now, it isn't. Tanks choosing not to be in their defensive gear/stances should be a bonus that is identified, rather than a requirement. When a healer adds to the DPS, that should also be simply a bonus. When it becomes a requirement, it's an indication that game balances are off. Properly tuned content wouldn't allow for a tank to survive out of gear/stance while simultaneously being too much for the DPS classes to handle alone.

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

They can just change food to be +HP if they don't want it conflicting with the new change.

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The current best food in the game is +6%/37 VIT. The bare minimum VIT required to meet the 37 cap is 617, which is incredibly low. An i150 tank in unmelded, normal quality white vendor trash with matching accessories would meet that requirement. I don't think they will have to change food.

Well, let me rephrase, I doubt they will change food if tanks end up with lower AP than the other Jobs. At this point, it would be better for them to just start giving food that has core stats, since the secondary stat gains are so insignificant that only people who are on the cutting edge needs those boosts.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

According to what I found online this afternoon, yes it does, but at a reduced % compared to the regen out of combat.

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I just tested this on my BLM. Convert in combat to lose HP. 12365 max HP = 123 HP passive regen (truncated too, can't round that up for us!). So 1% of your max HP would seem to be your passive regen. With how often cures will push you up to max HP, I don't see an HP difference of something like 3000 (which is 30 passive HP regen) mattering much in the long run.

since all this "needed" changes are happening wether we want them to or not... my only speculation on the "change to VIT but keeping STR" theory is VIT will affect attack power as they say but mabye STR will be an modifyer/amplifyer of some kind (like maybe arrgo modifyer if in Tank stance & crit if not) I'm just gona wait for patch & continue my grind for the new relic till I see "what" they did & "How" it affects me... they due have a track record of half assing things... but so does any other company with time & lest face it Square has been at this a long time -_-! really wish I didn't think of them that way but I due (to use a character from a movie I saw a year ago, mostly with games lately, not just FF, I feel like the 1980's space guy from the Lego movie... just if he never got to build that spaceship in the end, so hyped... then so bumed)

EDIT: & just noticed I rambled about something off-topic/ personal, my bad... just ignore that last part

I could see SE using STR as a lesser modifier than VIT for 3.2 to simply "ease the transition" into these new requirements. This makes STR accessessories for tanks not completely useless at the start of 3.2, but IMO it will be blatently obvious that VIT will be significantly better than 3.2 str going forward. I would venture a guess that SE could set it up in such a way that even with a fending acc/parry build, it is still more valuable than a STR piece, allowing for STR to be completely phased out of the damage calc entirely for 3.4 or 3.6.

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Originally Posted by Instrumentality

This episode of Duty Commenced posted yesterday.

They explicitly say they are 'switching from strength'.

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Today's Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XXVII Digest backs this up also:

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Originally Posted by Cherzy

The method by which physical attack power is calculated for tank roles will be adjusted, and tanks will no longer need to allocate points into strength or use strength accessories. From Patch 3.2 onward, allocating points to vitality will help tanks deal more damage. Because of this change, you'll be dealing less damage if you’re using strength accessories after the patch, so please have your vitality accessories ready.

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Originally Posted by Ibi

Today's Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XXVII Digest backs this up also:

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The more direct translation in the Digest almost makes me wonder if they're going much more stark on the relative contributions between the two, with STR perhaps only contributing 10% to AP or so, which would make it relatively in line with secondary stat weights.

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Originally Posted by NovaLevossida

I just tested this on my BLM. Convert in combat to lose HP. 12365 max HP = 123 HP passive regen (truncated too, can't round that up for us!). So 1% of your max HP would seem to be your passive regen. With how often cures will push you up to max HP, I don't see an HP difference of something like 3000 (which is 30 passive HP regen) mattering much in the long run.

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Interesting. The number I saw quoted elsewhere was 2%, but that was prior to HW I think, so it could have changed. I wonder if VIT acts as a modifier on that passive regen rate also? So the higher your VIT the more you regen per tick - which sort of makes sense.

I just returned to the game after taking a 10 month or so break. Don't remember exactly but I remember/have penta melded str accessories to help me get to 10k HP for OTing T13 (cleared in Dec of '14 I believe). While it was fun and felt good to have the HP to tank as well as contribute meaningfully to DPS for clearing content, it was REALLY expensive. It took a good amount of grind and gil to get that gear. It sounds like str is going to be for tanks what str is to NIN who's attack power is based on Dex even though they are a melee class (all this is as of 2.5 so please correct me if I'm wrong).

STR should still affect the % of damage mitigated on a parry, iirc. But other than that I think the change is going to be good overall, it gets tanks back to not having to spend WAY more grind on their accessories and still contribute what is needed to the group.

As far as PLD changes... looking forward to them! Have my WAR to 55 as I am going through MSQ, but I'm looking forward to exploring all of my old haunts (PLD, NIN, MNK, SCH, etc).

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Originally Posted by Ehayte

STR should still affect the % of damage mitigated on a parry, iirc.

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STR no longer affects Parry/Block since 3.0, unfortunately.

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

STR no longer affects Parry/Block since 3.0, unfortunately.

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Ah, got it : D

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Interesting. The number I saw quoted elsewhere was 2%, but that was prior to HW I think, so it could have changed. I wonder if VIT acts as a modifier on that passive regen rate also? So the higher your VIT the more you regen per tick - which sort of makes sense.

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I claimed it was 2% in one of the STR threads, but a quick in-game check shows it as 1%. Given how easy it is to check, I'm surprised nobody called me on it until now. Either my memory got it wrong, it was changed, or I crossed it with MP regen which is still 2%.

NovaLevossida has in-combat HP regen right at 1% of max HP.