Casual Paladin Question

Hey, all.
I recently hit level 80 on Paladin, and am working on my gear. I should point out that I am by no means a raid tank. Healer and DPS, sure, I've been progging Savage with my guild as a Red Mage and Astrologian. But Tanking, I only do dungeons and the occasional trial. So, optimizing my DPS isn't really as much a concern for me as just being a solid tank and not dying. And I also know that, if I have a good healer and I use my cooldowns, it doesn't matter if I'm more squishy, but let's discount that view for a moment. Again, I'm only tanking casually, or to help out other players who haven't reached the endgame yet, and maybe have more to learn as a healer.
I originally slotted a bunch of Tenacity materia, since I had read it was good for those who play tank with the intent that I do. However, some of my guildmates told me that with how the scaling works now, tenacity is pretty much useless, and like every single other class, Crit is King. Wanted to see how some others felt about it. Am I wasting my materia slots by using Tenacity?

Tenacity is widely considered a garbage stat.

With that said, if you're not doing Savage on PLD, I wouldn't really worry too much about it. You're not likely to actually notice a difference. Heck, you could have no materia melded at all and probably still not notice. Slot some better materia in your future gear, sure, but I wouldn't waste your time/resources replacing any existing Tenacity you already have melded.

Tenacity is neither useless nor a garbage stat.
It is not the optimal choice of materia, but that is far different from being a terrible choice.

The extra damage mitigation you get from Tenacity isn't really large enough to make a noticable difference except in some very, very specific situations.
The extra damage dealt from having Tenacity is slightly less than that from having Crit/Det/DH, and since extra dps not only makes dps checks easier, but also makes fights shorter, the materia choices that give the best dps increase are generally considered best.
The difference is no more than a few percent though, so it really doesn't matter much which materia you use - you will probably not notice the difference anyway.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Tenacity is neither useless nor a garbage stat.
It is not the optimal choice of materia, but that is far different from being a terrible choice.

The extra damage mitigation you get from Tenacity isn't really large enough to make a noticable difference except in some very, very specific situations.
The extra damage dealt from having Tenacity is slightly less than that from having Crit/Det/DH, and since extra dps not only makes dps checks easier, but also makes fights shorter, the materia choices that give the best dps increase are generally considered best.
The difference is no more than a few percent though, so it really doesn't matter much which materia you use - you will probably not notice the difference anyway.

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To showcase how small the difference is: 1820 Tenacity (1440 Tenacity over minimum Ten at 80 and the amount you would get for melding VIII into all slots) is a 1.043 multiplier to damage dealt and a .957 multiplier to damage taken. 1780 Determination (1440 over minimum Det at 80) is a damage multiplier of 1.056. This is only a 1.24% difference in damage dealt.

I see, I see. Cool, thanks everyone!

To add to points above and to give my own example. I had a damage build for my tanks but now that my static is doing TEA, I re melded to pretty much all CRT and TNC (with some SkS in there for ease of rotation). Once I melded in the TNC my healers and I REALLY notice the difference. in ultimate it just kinda helps with passive mitigation, but in savage, its basically like auto attacks dont exist anymore. It reached a point that TBN (I switched to DRK main from PLD main for the thicc boi mitigation) wouldnt break and would fall off. On top of this mitigation boost, I could still maintain ~8.8K DPS in savage.

But, like other pointed out above, you could probably do any content in the game with no melds and still be just fine as long as you know what youre doing so I wouldnt worry about it and just have a good time :)

As others explained, you can go normal dungeons/raid without slotting a single materia, it only becomes more important if you go for hard content like extremes, ultimates or Savage.

I will usually meld tenacity/crit for the low end gear of a new tier and then dhit/crit for when my ilvl goes up. You can notice the difference of full tenacity with wall to wall pulls in dungeons. Then when you gear up more, you can switch for a bit more dps. Don't listen to "garbage stat" people. Meld what you like.

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Originally Posted by Wilveren

Hey, all.
I recently hit level 80 on Paladin, and am working on my gear. I should point out that I am by no means a raid tank. Healer and DPS, sure, I've been progging Savage with my guild as a Red Mage and Astrologian. But Tanking, I only do dungeons and the occasional trial. So, optimizing my DPS isn't really as much a concern for me as just being a solid tank and not dying. And I also know that, if I have a good healer and I use my cooldowns, it doesn't matter if I'm more squishy, but let's discount that view for a moment. Again, I'm only tanking casually, or to help out other players who haven't reached the endgame yet, and maybe have more to learn as a healer.
I originally slotted a bunch of Tenacity materia, since I had read it was good for those who play tank with the intent that I do. However, some of my guildmates told me that with how the scaling works now, tenacity is pretty much useless, and like every single other class, Crit is King. Wanted to see how some others felt about it. Am I wasting my materia slots by using Tenacity?

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Tenacity is a garbage stat if you are geared for content. The damage changes you take from sources aren't substantial enough for me to say its worthwhile at all. Healers are easily able to and regularly do already shield/mitigate and should be ready for heals needed for a tank since its basically normal for people to not be using tenacity.
Now, if you want to keep up with tenacity go for it, its only maybe a few hundred dps difference between the two stats.

Direct hit is the Paladin's best friend. If you have on par gear you don't need the extra reduction. The only place I can see using it is chuck those freebie tenacity materia in leveling gear to squeeze a little extra time out of that gear before you replace it.

Gotcha, gotcha. I appreciate all the advice!

Its good that you want to try and be the best you can, even in dungeons.

Its pretty much as everyone else in this thread has said. Tenacity is not optimal for most content in the game, only really seeing use in ultimate progression because of the sheer ammount of damage being dealt to everyone there.

However, i would ignore everyone in the thread saying "Doesnt matter if you meld or not" - You should definately meld, you might aswell, even if its a grade 6 that's still a big difference over time. It might save you a few seconds per dungeon run, or more. That adds up, that'll save you up to a few hours or more over the course of a whole patch depending on how much you tank...And i think it goes without saying, in extreme trials you should atleast have something melded.