ARR Attack Magic Damage Test (beta3) Int, dtr & acc

[Molly_Millions]

I'd have a hard time coming down on that decision until some more rigorous Dex testing is done (by myself or someone else). From a purely "how much health am I getting/mitigating" word of mouth says (I forgot to look myself, so I'll just have to take others' word for this) VIT returns ~8 HP per point, though other numbers have been quoted. Based on my findings, DEX returns ~0.13% increase in mitigation rate (mitigation in this case refers to in incident of either Block or Parry) per point. Each mitigation incident will block 14%-11% damage on a STR based PLD, resulting in an overall increase of 0.018% damage mitigation over time. On an enemy that hits for 1000 damage, that's going to result in a reduction of ~0.18 damage per attack (averaged out, in reality it's going to be a much more extreme distribution).

VIT is a sure thing, it will give you a flat buff to your survivability, at the cost of your healer's sanity (and MP). Dex is a gamble, where the more Dex you add, the higher your chances of winning but with higher returns than HP on a win. Stylistically, I want Dex to be a viable alternative. At this point though, I would need to find something very interesting at higher Dex/Parry values to make it worthwhile. It also depends on how high you can get your Block value with STR. If Block value can get up in the ~25% range, pumping Dex and trying to get that "win" to come up more often makes more sense.

Here's something to consider. You can almost always add DEX to your tank gear, but you can almost never add much VIT. If you cap DEX, you can sometimes still add a little VIT. You have to consider how stat caps work in ARR, we can't simply add 5 VIT materia onto a chest piece any more.

As for STR, the value comes not only from damage mitigation, but from greater DPS and greater enmity by extension. That being the case STR is the best choice for primary stat. However, it also follows the same rule as VIT, the best tanking gear is almost always capped on STR. Really the debate is not over if STR and DEX are better than VIT, it's whether VIT is better than DEX, as STR is the best stat for a tank.