How is everyone finding the tank changes?

It's been a little while since the patch now. How are healers finding the changes to STR and VIT for tanks?

I've actually been enjoying healing a lot more again, most especially SCH, which had been my healer main until a couple months before the patch.

I certainly haven't been finding VIT tanks hard to heal (which was a "problem" that was supposedly going to happen after the change).

Off the bat it kinda felt like Tetra "hit" like a wet noodle on full vit tanks and that was a bit annoying but I have more or less have gotten used to it. Haven't had to adjust much in the way I do things so it's business as usual more or less. Err except for the accuracy issues! =_=!

I'm curious, what about the change is making it more enjoyable to you? I haven't noticed a significant difference so I feel like maybe I'm missing something.

Nothing has changed in my thought process behind healing. VIT tanks have more HP and deal less damage compared to STR tanks pre-patch. It's still business as usual for me as a healer. I do appreciate S-E making tank busters hit significantly harder to compensate for the increased HP pool but I anticipated that change to occur with the patch since we're gonna get huge tank HP influx this patch. I just need to spend a bit more MP now to heal a larger HP pool and thus higher damage output from specific bosses.

Don't get me started how I feel about the change from a design standpoint because I dislike what Yoshi-P and his Dev Team did for balancing this patch.

Scholar here. Iv noticed myself staying in cleric stance a lot more often and the tanks are dying slower. Its quite lovely.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hobostew

I'm curious, what about the change is making it more enjoyable to you? I haven't noticed a significant difference so I feel like maybe I'm missing something.

---

Mainly, it's that my experiences in Duty Finder with full Slaying tanks were almost uniformly awful, which made contributing DPS more stressful than actual enjoyable. So many of the tanks I ran with had no clue how to work their cooldowns and the like properly for full Slaying, making attempts to DPS nervewracking. With the change, I rarely leave Cleric Stance on SCH again, reducing the "stress" of needing to constantly bounce in and out to handle bad tanks. That's also quite important since Cleric Stance toggling is still occasionally unreliable—so the less I need to swap in and out, the better my experience will be.

On the other side of the coin, I enjoy tanking more now as well, as I don't have to flawlessly execute cooldowns at all times to do large pulls, and I get something approximating older, pentameld accessories without having to spend a fortune on melds.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ghishlain

I do appreciate S-E making tank busters hit significantly harder to compensate for the increased HP pool

---

This was my reaction to it, really. It's been fun from a healer standpoint where tankbusters are actually somewhat dangerous. Well, except Calcabrina, who seems to hit like a wet noodle half the time.

Well, the new dungeons are kind of pathetic in regards to incoming damage. Stuff might get a bit hairy if you mess up mechanics, but my average healing done per run in Expert roulette isn't significantly higher than what the Arboretum/Pharos required. However, generally speaking, I don't feel that much of a difference. Regen, Asylum and Tetragrammaton is still able to handle nearly everything. Each piece of gear I've gotten seems to have increased my healing output significantly more compared to going from 190 to 210, as well.

Normal Midas is surprisingly mean on the tank damage. Tank busters are quite frequent (even if they don't hit very hard unless you mess up) in comparison to things I've otherwise done, which is a welcome change from the Regen+Fairy, DPS all the time shenanigans. :p

As for serious content, I've only done Sephirot Extreme so far. I'm kind of enjoying the somewhat higher damage intake and needing to work to find those DoT setup windows, whereas the other Extreme Primals so far have had the issue of being very passive (though I suppose that speaks more of Sephirot's pace than other things).

On a side note, it was fun doing Antitower a few days ago. Me and two friends went in as a Paladin and two Summoners, but the White Mage had to afk just after the second boss. We cleared almost the entire hallway to Calcabrina before the healer had a chance to return, and the Paladin didn't even have to Clemency himself to prevent dying. Heil Vit! :p

Thus far I've noticed zero difference here in terms of it affecting my playstyle.

That extra HP makes zero difference in non-raid content if the tank is playing their job correctly (especially with the current pale expert dungeons which hit for nothing), and raiding progression is still the same formula of bosses hitting for nothing until mechanic or buster, and it's been balanced around a modern tank's HP.

What I do miss are trash packs dying faster with WAR's old DPS though.

I haven't noticed any differences but its probably since I never reached the point in the game where the HP difference between a strength tank and a vit tank were more drastic.

I figure tanks having more Health will give me more time to DPS but since they'll take a little longer to heal up (depending on how much damage I let them take) I'm probably doing the same amount of heals+DPS in the end.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by nexas506

Scholar here. Iv noticed myself staying in cleric stance a lot more often and the tanks are dying slower. Its quite lovely.

---

This is what I have noticed too as SCH. Between my Fairy and the extra passive regen of tanks with larger HP pools I just sit in clerics like 90% of dungeons. Even pulling half the dungeon there seems to be 0 risk if death.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kaisha

What I do miss are trash packs dying faster with WAR's old DPS though.

---

:(

/emoROE

I've been finding that on Seph Ex/Savage that my tanks are having a hard time keeping up with enmity with normal party healing. They both wear VIT but our WAR is sure that the calculations with enmity still favor STR.

The change was kinda underwhelming.

On one hand PLD dps is much better.

On the other hand, all tank dps was cut by ~20%/

So while PLD is about on par with DRK and WAR DPS, all 3 tanks now do substantially less damage. This doesn't hurt raids much (except for bleeding edge undergearing new content), but it does hurt dungeon speeds noticably.

The one thing that still hurts as a PLD is, no way to deal damage when TP is low, whereas DRK can spam Unmend/Unleash by using MP, and WAR can recover TP. Secondly, PLD has very poor AoE damage, which hurts in dungeons. I wish Shield Swipe was a cone AoE, or make Circle of Scorn into a regular GCD, bump up its potency to 150 and remove the DoT from it. Or...give PLD back Circle Blade from 1.0

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by nexas506

Scholar here. Iv noticed myself staying in cleric stance a lot more often and the tanks are dying slower. Its quite lovely.

---

Same, although as a WHM.

Cleaves stopped feeling like Tank Busters. Essential Dignity feels a bit weaker. WAR is freaking annoying to top off during multiple big hits (like it was back on ARR days anyways) and more room to stance dance!

But new content was made cleverly enough to prevent healers from ignoring healing and going mindless on cleric stance. There is a higher frequency of tank and party damage and mechanics as well. So in the end its all a lot more fun. Of course you can still find your way to deal damage, but its not as mindless as Gordias was.

New dungeons are ridiculously easy to heal. Literally the easiest time I have ever had healing new dungeons. I don't know if that is because tanks actually use bit accessories now or if there are other factors. Leveling dungeons are harder than this new stuff. I kind of enjoy a little challenge when I am healing.

I agree with many others. My gear (WHM) isn't even that great (only at ~203 or so) and healing now is ridiculously easy, even more so with tanks that are better geared. Way more time spent in CS now, which is.. well, I neither like nor dislike it. It just is.

More time for chatting and fooling around, which is nice :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by nexas506

Scholar here. Iv noticed myself staying in cleric stance a lot more often and the tanks are dying slower. Its quite lovely.

---

Will have to second this.
I've had a lot more fun as healer since 3.2, especially because in pre 3.2 a large majority of slaying tank weren't able to play it correctly, making dungeons with them really painful, add to that the fact that those slaying tanks were usually full of themselves and you get a pretty bad situation.
Now, the tanks are tanking and can soak a lot more. We've run some test with my static tanks' and we haven't found a lot of loss on the dps part, this can even helped them more, because the higher hp pool allows them to switch off tanking stance more.
So, at the moment, so far so good, thanks SE for making the right choice.

Same as the other more HP = more cleric !

But other thing is... Even bad tank are now healable XP that's cool.
On the other hand i become murderous if a tank dare showing himself with a str acc
I tend to ask him nicely first and then kill him without mercy if he is stubborn about not taking VIT acc