Good or no good?

Currently i have my pld set up like this
this.
All points are in strength stat
I have all slaying accessories and all fending gear that i switch to and froe via GS change.
What do you guys think?

Not sure what your asking.

For my money stat points into STR yes, since one right side piece is more than all the stat allocation (35 points Vs 40 for a right side piece)

Having different sets for different occasions is always good.

Mostly I use Slaying right side .. Its very rare that I'll swap to Fending right side, the healers have to be pretty bad or if I'm MTing A4 in a PUG I'll swap to Fending, other than that I'm always in Slaying.

Slaying gives me near 15K Hp .. no reason to use Fending for 95%+ of the game IMO.

Yeah...pretty straight forward since a ways back when everyone realized we don't need all these extra HP's...they don't do anything useful unless you are a bad player. All my tanks all strength and all slaying all the time...get down!!!!

Basically, if you can survive tank busters then you are good to go. You don't need any more health than that, any more is usually detrimental in fact (puts more strain on healers, doesn't benefit you in any way). All points in str is also the way to go, as you generate more enmity and deal more damage that way (again, the extra health is useless). The "optimal" setup is full pentamelds, but that can be expensive and lower your ilvl (which generally isn't an issue, but can be in some cases).

I use 3 slaying and 2 fending right now, but that's because I'm still in i170 left side gear and don't want to spend the money on pentamelds.

This is what every tank should be doing. The only really caveat for Paladins is I would look to have all Fending on when doing trash AE pulls. The reason being is that PLDs don't do a significant amount of AE dmg where pulling in STR gear is going to matter. Better off giving the healers more of a buffer to throw out more damage themselves. This doesn't apply to DRK or WAR where both can see a significant different (~300-500DPS) AE pulling in STR gear vs VIT gear.

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Originally Posted by Litegrace

puts more strain on healers

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Having a shallow pool of HP puts more strain on healers, not less.

A tank with low health has to be keep topped off to prevent them from being burst down. It lessens the window that adlo, regen, and fairy heals can keep the tank vertical while the healer does other things. It makes using cleric stance and casting DPS spells dangerous, and instead forces the healer to nanny the tank's health bar.

There's a balance to be had where a tank equips enough strength to increase their damage, without risking random deaths and while allowing healers to chip in their own share of damage. That balance is more than tankbuster+1 HP.

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Originally Posted by Viviza

There's a balance to be had where a tank equips enough strength to increase their damage, without risking random deaths and while allowing healers to chip in their own share of damage. That balance is more than tankbuster+1 HP.

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This please. If I'm on my SCH and I can't Bane, Shadow Flare, and Miasma II at the start of a pull before I need to heal you, you are either a) wearing too many Slaying accessories or b) not rotating your cooldowns properly, with b) probably being the more common one. Good tanks are aware of this need for balance--anytime a tank pushes for DPS, theoretical healer DPS is lost, too, which can result in less total group DPS if the balance isn't properly struck. Bad tanks think all that's necessary is to use Slaying without understanding how that affects everything else.

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Originally Posted by Viviza

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You obviously want more than 1 hp after a tank buster, there's no reason to even argue that point. The fact remains that a large health pool doesn't help anyone. Once you have enough health to survive tank busters without being put in critical health (which actually has more to do with defensive cooldowns than HP anyway), then there is no use in having more than that. No tank abilities scale off of health, whereas a lot of abilities (and enmity generation) naturally scale off of STR.

On top of this, there is no loss in dps on the healer side for having less health, that makes no sense. The tank will be taking the same amount of damage either way, meaning you need to heal them for the same amount. If they have less health, you need to heal them more often. If they have more, you need to heal them for much more but less often. Either way, you are spending the same MP and time on healing them, meaning no dps loss for the healer.

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Originally Posted by Litegrace

Either way, you are spending the same MP and time on healing them, meaning no dps loss for the healer.

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That's not necessarily true at all, as if you need more healing you can use cooldowns to reduce the number of heals you need, so you can heal a VIT tank to full in the same number of casts it would take to get a STR one to full. This affords you more time for reapplying DoT effects and getting in extra Stone IIIs/Broils/Holies/etc. I lose DPS all the time with bad STR tanks because I don't have time to reapply all my DoTs as a SCH before I need to heal them again.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

I lose DPS all the time with bad STR tanks because I don't have time to reapply all my DoTs as a SCH before I need to heal them again.

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You said "bad". VIT won't save "bad". All VIT does is make a bad tank that doesn't use CDs last 1~2 hits longer than a bad STR tank. You won't get to cast all 3 DoTs + Miasra + Shadow Flare simply because a tank is wearing full VIT and having 2k more HP than a STR tank.

Using your healing CDs will also reduce the amount of heals you need to heal a full STR tank just the same.

Simply put:

STR tank will let you drop your cleric stance 1 GCD earlier to heal them back to full with 2~3 GCDs.

VIT tank will let you drop your cleric stance 1 GCD later to heal them back to full with 3~4 GCDs.

The only difference would be HP% based heals. But those don't exist anymore. I guess Stoneskin is the only healing spell that benefits "more" from a VIT tank by adding a negligible 200 HP buffer over a STR tank.

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

You said "bad". VIT won't save "bad". All VIT does is make a bad tank that doesn't use CDs last 1~2 hits longer than a bad STR tank. You won't get to cast all 3 DoTs + Miasra + Shadow Flare simply because a tank is wearing full VIT and having 2k more HP than a STR tank.

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VIT actually does save bad in my experience, in the case of making sure I have enough time to get DoTs up. Even most bad tanks will hit at least one cooldown for a large pull, and with the extra health, I usually get the extra GCD or two that I need. In part it's a UI issue--I don't know many healers that sit and tabulate health totals mid-encounter (nobody's a human calculator after all). They're normally relying on the fluctuating health bar to gauge the need for heals, which results in more frequent stance-dancing which is a flat DPS loss.

You're also using a lower number for the HP which makes your argument appear stronger. On my tank (a measly i173), dropping my Fending accessories costs 3444 HP (3557 with party bonus), which is about 1.5x your 2k HP estimate. That difference between all Fending and all Slaying is more pronounced at higher gear levels, naturally.

This is across a varying number of item levels, of course. Honestly, as long as I see the tank has around 16,000-17,000 hp (for DRK or PLD at any rate), they're as good as a VIT tank to me regardless of whether they're wearing Slaying or not in the Expert dungeons, as that's plenty of HP to do the majority of the pulls fairly safely in my experience. It's the sub-15k tanks that tend to give me pause.

But in any situation where I don't know the tank (i.e., most DF runs), I'm always going to be initially happier zoning into a Fending tank, as it's the "safer" option.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

Snip.

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I'm not arguing that having more HP as a total is not more comfy. What I was pointing out is regardless of how much VIT you have, the amount of healing needed is the same.

When I tank, I use my judgement based on how many things I'm pulling and how much damage I'm going to take during said pulls and when I want to use my CDs. For example, as a WAR, I would like to use Vengeance/RI during Berserk so there is a sort of delay on when those CDs are used. I would have "some" VIT (2STR 3VIT) in order to make up for the delay in my CD.

If I'm not tanking, I don't judge other tanks on DF since I don't know their skill levels. So when I see a VIT tank I think it's probably someone who's not comfortable with STR tanking or someone who doesn't trust random healers. Either way, it doesn't matter as long as this tank can hold hate, meaning if I'm DPS, I don't want mobs running after me the second I hit Deathflare, which due to SMN's nature, comes pretty late into the fight. And if I'm a healer, I Adlo+Stoneskin the tank prepull and I expect him to survive long enough for me to apply all 3 dots, bane them, add in Miasra + instant shadwoflare. As long as the tank can do that, I'm a happy camper.

In the end, I can't control how others play, but I can adapt to how they play and I try to make the best of it.

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

I'm not arguing that having more HP as a total is not more comfy. What I was pointing out is regardless of how much VIT you have, the amount of healing needed is the same.

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Oh, I won't argue that numerically the total number of HP that needs to be healed is going to be the same. But that's arguing semantics, as relative to healer DPS, it can lead to less healer DPS for any number of reasons. Whatever the numbers say on paper, I consistently spend less time in Cleric Stance when I'm with STR tanks (though usually not with ones I know personally), so I generally take issue with any sort of blanket statements that VIT is worthless (which is sadly common around here)--it isn't useful past a certain HP threshold, and that's the distinction that usually gets lost in the vitriol.

Personally, I've just switched to Eos full time for dungeons, as Whispering Dawn is almost always enough to give me the space for the extra globals to at least get DoTs up even if the tank is awful, but that is still potential lost DPS from the lack of Fey Wind.

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Originally Posted by Litegrace

there is no loss in dps on the healer side for having less health, that makes no sense.

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Yes it does. Hypothetical example. Consider a Tank A with 13k health and Tank B with 17k health. Assume they have the same defensive scores and use the same cooldowns. Now assume that they are losing about 2k health a second from a pull, net of any heals my fairy chips in.

As a scholar, I am going to try casting Bio II, Miasma, Bio I, wait 0.25 sec, then Bane. This takes 7.45s. Tank A died at the 6.5s mark. Tank B has 2100 health left and will live another 1.05 seconds. For Tank A, I must stop and heal. I do not finish my rotation of dots, I do not get to bane them. Assuming the average large pull is ~6 mobs, my DPS is cut by 85% or so until I finish my rotation later on. Tank B gets rescued with a lustrate and the pull carries on normally.

Now those numbers are made up, but you can see how having more time gives me more options. If a tank lives even longer without my attention, I can put up a shadowflare, aero, and maybe a miasma ii. In addition, a tank with a larger health pool gives me more options on how to go about recovery. Because I have more time, I can use more efficient spells. I can take a moment to heal the dragoon who stood in the fire too long. I can reposition myself and not have to worry as much.

I get your point that having a big fat pool of HP in itself doesn't make you tougher. It doesn't reduce the damage you take. But what it does do is afford the luxury of -time-, which is a precious resource.

Viviza says it best really, and I wish more tanks would realise this.

FF is a game where wipes are rarely caused by healers running out of MP (certanly not in 4mans at least). Whilst you do want to manage MP efficiently and not overcast inefficient spells, what kills tanks is a combination of either damage spikes or a burst of rapidly incoming damage that they can't be healed through.

Whilst I'd never advocate stacking Vit in most situations, there is a point where a tank that's undergeared can simply have too little Vit for a healer to be able to leave them on their own for a few seconds to do other stuff. If every single healer ONLY stood attentively and healed the tank and did nothing else, then every tank should only ever run full Str. But often when trying to speed run 4mans, a tank with really low health can slow a run down.

yes, the tank will do more damage with low health and strength build, but due to the mechanics of a Healer's Cleric Stance which necessitates wanting to NOT heal for as long as possible, tanks who go pure glass cannon in instances CAN end up making a run slower by preventing the healer from being able to do any meaningful DPS. Note that if Cleric stance didnt exist and healers could simply weave one DPS spell in between every heal, this issue wouldnt exist. It's purely the lengthy on/off toggle that makes it worthwhile for tanks to have a chunky pool of EHP when doing big pulls.

Of course, it only really happens when the tank is fairly low geared, but Vit is certainly not useless, and you need to evaluate on an instance-by-instance basis whether a glass cannon strength build is really the best way to go.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

But in any situation where I don't know the tank (i.e., most DF runs), I'm always going to be initially happier zoning into a Fending tank, as it's the "safer" option.

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There's no truth to that statement. Full slaying><Full fending brings me from 16k+ hp to 20k and change. A random Crit hit, or multiple hits from a pack knock that "advantage" right out in 1-2 seconds flat. Running full Vit is not safer, it doesn't allow say, a cure I cast instead of a cure II from a healer. There would have to be a large chunk of Vit from a higher tier set of accessories with the content staying relatively the same difficulty for that statement to ring true.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

Viviza says it best really, and I wish more tanks would realise this.

FF is a game where wipes are rarely caused by healers running out of MP (certanly not in 4mans at least). Whilst you do want to manage MP efficiently and not overcast inefficient spells, what kills tanks is a combination of either damage spikes or a burst of rapidly incoming damage that they can't be healed through.

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I'm sorry but current meta disagrees. Speed runs are determined by proper defensive CD rotations as a "Glass Cannon", not how much health the Tank has, wherein You want both your 180 and 190 fending ring in SA1, unitil you get your Gordian fending ring, where now you have enough HP to swap in say your 190 slaying ring for the "Umph" to your "Booyakasha".

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Originally Posted by Iagainsti

There's no truth to that statement. Full slaying><Full fending brings me from 16k+ hp to 20k and change. A random Crit hit, or multiple hits from a pack knock that "advantage" right out in 1-2 seconds flat.

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"Safer" refers to the margin for error that VIT provides. STR provide less margin for error. There's less room for DPS to get hit with stray adds, less time to heal if the tank accidentally eats a ground AoE, less time if someone eats a boss cleave, and so on and so on. VIT tanks are therefore "safer."

I've seen a tank more than once accidentally get bound on one of the last pulls of Fractal and eat two lasers. These pulls have stray DPS damage and debuffs that should be removed, so the healer's attention is not always on the tank. A VIT tank has a better chance to survive a mistake like that, and therefore, that option is "safer."

You would also do well to remember that not every tank is fully decked out in i190 or better at this point in time. I've said before that past 16,000 HP or so, you have enough to do most of the large pulls relatively safely, but that doesn't deny that additional VIT is still safer in that it allows for more human error.

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Originally Posted by Viviza

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My problem with this is that you are listing a bunch of points that only affect the healer. Why should a tank have to stack VIT (which doesn't help any of their abilities in any way) in order to make the healer's life easier? VIT literally does nothing but add extra health, which is useless beyond the maximum damage you will take plus some.

STR benefits most of a tank's abilities in a positive way however, and also leads to higher party DPS. So if you argue that a healer does less DPS with a tank stacking STR, then I will argue that a tank does less DPS when stacking VIT. Either way leads to less DPS, and I would rather not stack a stat that doesn't benefit me. With the gear I have now, I have more than enough health and my defensive cooldowns lessen the damage I take, meaning stacking VIT does nothing for me. Until they change how the stat works, there's no reason to stack it right now. I'm not saying I'm unwilling to make a healer's job easier, but there needs to be some reward for doing so, other than just a safety net (like some sort of damage reduction or mitigation on VIT).

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Originally Posted by Litegrace

Why should a tank have to stack VIT (which doesn't help any of their abilities in any way) in order to make the healer's life easier?

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I know I'm taking this out of context, but this sentence leapt out at me and made my spine crawl. The whole point of being a tank is to make the entire party's life as easy as possible so everyone can do their jobs to the best of their abilities. Ideally this will result in a run with highest possible total party dps but also one that's -safe-. Knocking 10 seconds off the speed of a run is fine, but if it gives your healer a heart attack and has heavy risk of wipes then it's probably not worth it.

Of course, as always, advocating additional Vit is purely something for those who are low geared. DF 4mans are tuned for people in 145-150 gear, so 180+ is far beyond. Yes, no point at all having a single Vit accessory when you've got 16k health from left side alone.

But don't dismiss healer dps as unimportant. Your whole post comes across as so selfish sadly. The damage a Scholar can do to a pack of mobs by just putting up 3 dots and Baning them is immense, and if a low geared tank is at so much risk of dying in 3 seconds that a scholar has to stay in heal-mode for a full pack then that tank is making the party do less damage even though they might have strength gear and do more themselves. +20% or so damage on a tank's output is significant, but if it causes a healer to do -zero- damage then it's not worth it. Of course, it's a balancing act, and that's an extreme example.

I know it's not how you necessarily meant it, but that sentence sounds like someone who only cares about their own DPS parse rather than the overall success of a party. That's not the tanking mindset. Tanks should do as much damage as humanly possible and make a run as swift and painless as can be, but if the best way to do that is to facilitate other members of the party doing higher damage, so be it.

DPS is important. The best tanks maximise it. But don't forget that a tank is primarily a "support" class, in a sense. Your role is to control the battlefield and ensure your party can do their job.

They desperately need to add strength to fending accessories.

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Originally Posted by Litegrace

STR benefits most of a tank's abilities in a positive way however, and also leads to higher party DPS.

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There is a point at which, when the healer gives up DPS to heal the tank, the group loses more DPS from the healer than you add to the group's DPS by being in full Strength gear. The higher the item level of your left side, the more STR you can afford before you hit this point. The lower the item level of your left side, the less STR you can afford before you hit this point.

From your posts, I imagine you are a tank main and probably hovering around i190--you probably don't need VIT accessories at all in Expert dungeons. However, at lower gear levels, a tank sacrifices healer DPS for their own DPS, which is not always a good trade. It is entirely conceivable that a tank can cost a healer more DPS than his STR accessories are adding to the group.

If the SCH in your group can pull 500 DPS while not having to heal you but only 250 DPS when having to heal you in Slaying accessories, you need to gain 250 DPS going from Fending to Slaying for the group to break even and you need to gain *more* than that for it to actually be a positive DPS gain--and it had better be a positive gain, since you are adding a certain level of risk to the process. (These numbers are not in any way intended to be representative, they are provided only for the purpose of illustration and example and not based on actual hard data).

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Originally Posted by Miggiwoo

They desperately need to add strength to fending accessories.

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It's sadly not that simple, as this would likely make Fending accessories highly desired for DRG and MNK in progression environments, and NIN would have no equivalent option for DEX accessories. The better option is probably to change damage formulas for tanks such that both STR and VIT are included in the calculations to some degree, at some ratio that encourages Fending over Slaying accessories.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

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I purposely edited that as soon as I posted it, as I realized it could be taken the wrong way. I'm going to assume you started writing your reply before I changed it, so I apologize if it sounded that way. I'm not unwilling to make a healer's life easier. I just don't see a point in stacking a stat that doesn't benefit me in any way. It's also just as much of a detriment to party dps for tanks to stack VIT instead of STR as it is for healers having to drop cleric stance more often to heal.

I would be more than willing to use fending gear if they added some STR or damage mitigation or really anything that would benefit me in some way. Right now, stacking VIT for me would only serve to allow the healer to dps more, and would prevent me from doing as much dps so I don't see it as a fair trade. Essentially I'm trading in dps and enmity generation for a healing safety net right now.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

But don't forget that a tank is primarily a "support" class, in a sense. Your role is to control the battlefield and ensure your party can do their job.

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I also want to point out that a healer is just as much as a support job as tank is. As for dps, tanks need to do dps in order to do their job. It's essentially a requirement for enmity generation, so dps helps a tank fulfill their job. A healer's job is to keep the party alive by healing and removing debuffs when possible, which means their job doesn't require dps to be done. Of course, this is nitpicking and ideally both jobs should be doing dps. But to say that tanks should reduce their dps to allow a healer to dps more often is counter-productive.

Again, this could be solved by simply adding STR or some sort of damage mitigation to tank accessories. Right now, tanks are the only job that require multiple stats to be effective (stats that currently do not both exist on the same accessories).

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Originally Posted by Alahra

It's sadly not that simple, as this would likely make Fending accessories highly desired for DRG and MNK in progression environments, and NIN would have no equivalent option for DEX accessories. The better option is probably to change damage formulas for tanks such that both STR and VIT are included in the calculations to some degree, at some ratio that encourages Fending over Slaying accessories.

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That sounds like a good option, you could also make it so fending accessories can only be used by tank classes, or remove some secondary stats.

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Originally Posted by Miggiwoo

That sounds like a good option, you could also make it so fending accessories can only be used by tank classes, or remove some secondary stats.

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Adding Strength but removing secondary stats could work, though given the value of primary stats compared to secondary ones, this would probably require a lot of rebalancing, especially with the apparent devaluation of secondaries at level 60 compared to their relative worth at level 50. Even with no secondary stats, a STR+VIT accessory of top item level would dwarf a pentamelded accessory of 30 item levels lower (which appears to be the new standard).

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Originally Posted by Litegrace

I would rather not stack a stat that doesn't benefit me.

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And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we can't have nice things.

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Originally Posted by Viviza

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we can't have nice things.

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That's exactly my point. I can't have accessories that benefit me because you would rather me stack a useless stat. I also like how you purposely leave out the rest and take this out of context.