What do you prefer healing, Vit or Str tanks

As the title says, I kinda prefer the buffier tanks than the "dps" ones, specially when that translates into me being able to put up my dots on targets.

I personally think the "beefier" tanks are better. High VIT, decent STR simply makes more sense for a TANK. Our [Tanks] job is to pull/agro, take the enmity/damage and set openings for the DPS to do what they need to.

But, that's all just my personal opinion.
;)

Probably Vit tanks, just because it makes me feel safer when I go to get some dps in.

Even in full Str gear, so long as you're not dying in seconds from simple stuff, I'm happy with that, more dps never goes amiss.

Only time I will say something is when a tank is basically letting the fight fall apart to get more dps (We've all had those runs)

I don't mind a mix of VIT and strength but I dislike healing tanks in full str gear. I enjoy dpsing and the tank's hp plummets as soon as I switch on clerics.

I'd rather a tank not fall over in 3 hits. So Vit is always preferred, especially for "Speed running", because it's often those that are wearing tissue paper.

VIT tanks.
My Expert Roulette today featured a DRK decked out in full STR accessories and dear god is the difference noticeable.

This is not about healing for me, but more about dpsing.

The thing is when you have a full strengh tank, most of the time you won't be able to add as much dps as you would in VIT gear (sometimes no dps at all).

And the purpose of strengh tank gear is to add extra dps. But then you loose the healer dps.

Question is more about : is the extra dps added by the strengh tank gear worth whom of the healer dps that will be lost ?

Most of the time the answer is no because the healer add a tons of dps when the tank that already has some dps basis will only add a few more (reaching the healer dps numbers) while preventing the healer from dpsing. An idea in numbers would be healers with 400, tanks VIT around 250 = 650 in total while tank strengh alone = around 400-450.

This is even more obvious when you don't have a WAR since WAR has more option to dps.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Swordphobic

As the title says, I kinda prefer the buffier tanks than the "dps" ones, specially when that translates into me being able to put up my dots on targets.

---

I prefer paladins regardless of what their stat is. I find I don't have to watch their health as much as the other 2...

Specs aside, what gear I wear is dependant on what I'm running as a tank. If I'm in a dungeon 50 or below its always str. Higher level dungeons are dependant on what my healer is capable of and how much hate the dps is generating. Str gear isn't always about doing more dps yourself, sometimes its to prevent that blm or brd from pulling hate.

I prefer a tank that has an understanding of their job and changes their accessories to suit the situation. VIT for mass speed pulls, hybrid for normal usage, and STR for absolute trash that is painfully easy to heal. Adjust as needed to suit the group you're with.

Tanks doing speed pulls in full STR? Really? Please, no. Likewise, please don't do an easy healing boss in full VIT. You don't need that kind of HP buffer.

Vit tanks are boring... with their low power parry you have to spam heal on them and have less time to dps as a Healer.
3/4 Str & 1/4 Vit is good !

Strength please... prefer the higher damage and the returns from healing moves which provide more mitgation. I find vit tanks are much harder to heal at lower ilvls~

Healing-wise it doesn't matter much if the tank in question is good and rotates cooldowns accordingly. If we are talking about dungeons only:

On a PLD I tend to tank trash with full VIT accs, then swapping to STR accessories on bosses (you should always have at least two sets you can quickly switch between things on all tanks!). It's pointless to run STR accessories on a PLD during trash because you are Flashing your ass off most of the time. Nothing to be gained with the extra STR there, and you potentially lose some healer DPS.

On a WAR, I tend to tank everything in full-on STR accessories or then hybrid accessories (crafted, for VIT/STR). The damage you can dish out, as well as the self-heals that scale based on your damage, make it worth it. Everything within reason, though.

On a DRK... Well, I'm 58 right now and I tend to run VIT for trash and swapping to STR accs for bosses. I will probably do the same thing I do as a WAR when I ding 60, but for now, I am not overgearing the dungeons I am running and I'm mostly running with pug-healers who are sometimes new to healing and just checking out AST, etc., so I don't wanna put unnecessary stress on them by running STR accessories, even if I am confident in my own tanking.

For raids, I always tell our tanks to run mostly STR and hybrid accs in progression. Going full VIT has no merits. If we need to have a MT dial up their HP a little bit, it can always be adjusted on spot.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mclyde

Vit tanks are boring... with their low power parry you have to spam heal on them

---

Parry is now a flat 20% parried, regardless of your stats. (At least this is what I've seen, no matter what sets I've worn, and it's what I've seen tanks talk about on the forums too, since HW).

STR pls.

I'm not letting that tank go down while I dps. STR = Moar DPS, threat, parry, and self heal.

I will say the fastest I've ever left a dungeon is zoning into Neverreap and a full STR DRK is saying he's going to pull everything.

You can have all the HP in the world, if you're not mitigating properly, you will melt. Being a good/bad tank is what makes you easy or hard to heal, not having 1k extra HP

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OliviaBadger

You can have all the HP in the world, if you're not mitigating properly, you will melt. Being a good/bad tank is what makes you easy or hard to heal, not having 1k extra HP

---

That's one of my gripes about the stat system SE has designed. Vitality should have some influence on defenses, even if it's a small scaling.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vinta

That's one of my gripes about the stat system SE has designed. Vitality should have some influence on defenses, even if it's a small scaling.

---

Yeah - or if they added some defense to accessories, it would justify wearing fending accs a little more.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OliviaBadger

You can have all the HP in the world, if you're not mitigating properly, you will melt. Being a good/bad tank is what makes you easy or hard to heal, not having 1k extra HP

---

This times a thousand and every run that I have healed the way the tank plays means infinitely more than the accessories they are wearing. I think a lot of people don't realize that a tank comparably takes the same amount of damage from each hit regardless of what accessories they are wearing as accessories don't provide any defense in and of themselves outside of an extremely negligible parry stat. Your tank shouldn't be getting low enough in a dungeon where 1000+/- will make any relative difference and while a bit of an HP buffer will let you DPS/heal for a slightly longer time, it shouldn't prevent you from DPSing and healing altogether based on the accessories the tank wears, slightly longer maybe but not out right prevent it period. As far as high level content goes, so long as the vit threshold is met everything else can be dumped into str.

If a tank isn't good with CD management, I'd really prefer if they stay miles away from any STR gear.

If they are good with CDs, I prefer that stuff dies before those CDs fall off. STR gear can help with that.

It doesn't really matter what a decent PLD uses to me. Warrior can keep STR, their DPS output is worth me not being able to DPS as much. DRK on the other hand can go straight into VIT and same me at least some the aggrivation of healing them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wizarus

It doesn't really matter what a decent PLD uses to me. Warrior can keep STR, their DPS output is worth me not being able to DPS as much. DRK on the other hand can go straight into VIT and same me at least some the aggrivation of healing them.

---

This isn't a problem with DRK..it's a problem with new DRKs. The learning curve for proper mitigation is just steeper than that of PLD. It's not quite as simple as "pop some CDs" - Managing MP and using self heals effectively takes some practice. I was probably squishy as hell on my first 60 dungeon because I was still learning the ropes.

For me its not really about how much mitigation, but how long it takes for his hp to get low enough to warrant me going out of cleric stance to heal him up. That's what those vit accessories give, time.

I always use vit asccessories as a tank so healers will feel comfortable healing and dpsing, heck healers have better aoe dps than tanks though.

Imho you shouldn't consider doing proper speed runs (pull as much as you can survive) if you don't have whm + a tank that knows what (s)he's doing. Though imo nothing beats whm+war combo with regen + aoe stun + bloodbathed overpower spam with vengeance on (reflected dmg gives you hp back with bloodbath.
And warrior full strength ofc.

As for strength vs vitality. When I used to heal at 50 I preferred tank's to be all str as long as tankbusters were doable with tank cd+ adlo+stoneskin

Having to heal tanks in their level 50 STR accessories in the new dungeons: GREATLY PREFER VIT GEAR. Your DPS is awful pre-60 anyways as a tank, the new mobs hit harder, AST doesn't have the tools to pull you back up, SCH fairies lost scaling and lustrate no longer is OP on WAR, I guess WHM might be ok if they have Assize at that point to supplement mana (and Holy is still OP mitigation).

Some bosses can hit you for 1/3rd of the tank's HP without warning. There is a lot of AoE. If you have STR accessories on and I have to focus on healing the party up so they don't die to the next AoE, I can't heal you even though you're at 10% of your HP. Your damage sucks. I can see it on my battle log that your abilities are hitting for half of the DPS's. I can see my mana running out because I have to spam Benefic II/Cure II/Lustrate on you so you don't get one-shot when the boss decides to use a powerful attack.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD IF YOU WANT TO USE STR GEAR AT LEAST SWITCH TO VIT WHEN WE GET TO A BOSS.

Leveling up AST, I greatly preferred VIT tanks. The lack of real emergency buttons often meant attempting to DPS was too risky for STR-accessory tanks, and the extra padding (as it were) was greatly welcome. I'm leveling DRK now and I started with 110-pentamelded at 50, though I'm slowly transitioning to VIT, at least for leveling (as I've noticed things getting pretty dicey already with PUG healers).

Once good crafted accessories are available, I foresee going hybrid again, though, if the accessories work like they used to.

prior to 3.0 i didn't care one whit whether the tank used vit or str either way they had about the same over all defense with the parry scaling to str, after 3.0 i would much prefer to heal someone using vit accessory's than str cause they no longer have that parry scaling. (though why sqex decided to do this i will never know and will likely always hate them for...)

VIT for now. Maybe once gear outpaces content more considerably, I'll prefer STR because it won't make much of a difference.

However, I can tell the difference between a STR and VIT tank easily at the moment. While healing a VIT tank I can hit over 500+ DPS on SCH; while healing a STR tank I'm lucky to hit 300 DPS on SCH.

Even more apparent while healing with AST.

Let's draw the lines here. When you mean STR tanks, do you mean a tank that is 100% str specced? 100% vit for the other one?

Well, Vit obviously. Who wouldn't? It gives you time to dps and the ability to pay more attention to the other players.

That being said, lower geared it tanks cant keep aggro... sooo... as long as the tank can hold aggro, I prefer Vit. Later in the expac/ patch though its not as important.

More important than any of that is a tank who knows how to manage their cooldowns/position targets.

For example. Had an OT in A3 last night who would move off the boss whe targeted. All melee dps had to dodge, or take the damage. The ot would take all the damage he could. Apparently he thought his DK damage was more important than the MNK and DRGs damage. I wonder why we hit enrage at 2% twice. Also the MT chose the method of tanking the Hand phase by taking the hands to the side and having the melee useless near the knockback time. Two bad tanks do not help a run...

I'm still fairly new, so I went 50/50 STR/VIT on my Marauder, thinking the STR would make my parries stronger. I now know that's not, in fact, the way to go. Either way, I'd rather focus on the STR tank simply because my basic heals heal for a larger percent of his health and he needs more consistent topping up anyway. As for which I'd rather actually HAVE in my party, I'd go for the VIT tank.

It honestly doesn't matter if they're STR or VIT in a non raid situation. The player behind the tank makes all the difference. Ideally I'd want a non idiot tank in STR gear, more than enough time to pop some hots and drop dots before I need to heal.