Warrior Tanking

[Paikis]

Macros

These are not required, and are suggested purely to make playing the Warrior a bit easier. I don't use any of these myself, as I find it removes a certain level of control, but other people find them useful, so they will be included. These macros will not work if you just copy+paste them into the game for some reason. Type them out and they work just fine though.

Marking: For quickly marking the target you're pulling. You can remove the party chat message, as spamming chat can get old fast.
/mark attack1 <t>
/ac "Tomahawk" <t>
/p Please attack target 1.

Heavy Swing: Keeps your minor buffs on cooldown. It is preferable to not using them at all. Remove lines for any buffs you don't have.
/micon "Heavy Swing"
/ac "Heavy Swing" <t>
/ac "Foresight" <me>
/ac "Bloodbath" <me>
/ac "Mantra" <me>
/ac "Awareness" <me>
/ac "Internal Release" <me>
/ac "Mercy Stroke" <t>

Provoke: Uses provoke and then either Tomahawk or Butcher's Block depending on range.
/micon "Provoke"
/ac Provoke <t>
/ac "Bucther's Block" <t>
/ac "Tomahawk" <t>

Vengeance: Uses Vengeance and Bloodbath together. If you're going to do this, it would be a good idea to remove Bloodbath from the Heavy Swing macro.
/micon "Vengeance"
/ac "Vengeance" <me>
/ac "Bloodbath" <me>

Thrill of Battle: Uses Thrill of Battle and Convalescence together.
/micon "Thrill of Battle"
/ac "Thrill of Battle" <me>
/ac "Convalescence" <me>

STR vs VIT, gearing and minor stats.
Previous to 2.1, there was much heated debate on the merits of the Gryphonskin set with tanking melds versus just straight up VIT heavy ilevel 90 gear. I was a proponent of the Gryphonskin set and successfully used them to tank everything except Twintania (which you need the extra health for because of Death Sentence). While you had less actual health, you had more mitigation (STR and DEX increases parry) and larger self healing, as well as extra enmity generation and damage. The trade off was well worth it in my (and others') opinion. With 2.1 however, and the large reduction in healing from Inner Beast, the argument is over. 30 Points in VIT is now the only correct choice. Threat generation went from comfortable to laughable and while tank damage is still relevant, the healing provided by the extra damage was cut drastically. As such, if you're tanking, you want the highest ilevel VIT heavy pieces you can get while still maintaining enough accuracy to hit things. You will still want a set of Gryphonskin, but this will only be used on content that you vastly outgear, or if you're going to be off tanking and not taking any large amounts of damage. You can safely skip this set if you wish.

I wasn't going to list any Best in Slot lists, as they've been done elsewhere and the differences are so minor as to be almost pointless, but as this is a guide and it will be expected I've done the research for you. Please note that the difference in effect from the secondary DPS stats (Determination, Skill Speed and Critical Hit Rate) is very minor, as shown by Gamemako (emphasis mine)

Let's say you've got only the lowest strength possible in all ilvl90 equipment: 209 base strength (Dunesfolk) + 156 (all ilvl90 main pieces) = 365 non-party strength. In a party, that's 372. Valk's heuristic returns at 372 strength and 202 DTR suggest the following theoretical gains from 5 ilvl90 accessories (11 max DTR per, 16 max CHR/SSPD per):

DTR (202->257): 3.16%
CHR (341->421): 2.72%
SSPD (341->421): 3.15%

All told, they're not too far apart in general, so if you're trying to maximize potential by focusing on one over another, it's going to be rather meaningless. Note that none of these stat setups are possible due to limitations on the ilvl90 accessories -- you can't choose to maximize any of them, really, and your choices for ilvl90 are pretty trivial.

Also note that after you have reached the Accuracy cap (475-482, depending on where you are and who you ask) Parry is the only stats you should really worry about. All other secondary stats simply increase your agro generation by small amounts.

Best in slot list for MT, credit to Gamemako:

This set is maximised for VIT and parry.

Best in slot for an OT build; you're going to want a set of melded Gryphonskin and some changes in the armour setup.

The melds should all have VIT4, XXX4, Parry 3, Parry 3, Vit2, where XXX4 is a rank IV materia of either skill speed, determination or crit as you chose (image shown has Spd and Det melds). If you are ever in the situation where you can get away with using STR jewellery (i.e Striking or Maiming gear) then you should just come as a full DPS, because you don't need a second tank.

Some notes on gear:
- HQ La Noscean Toast will give you the best tanking stats. Once you are full i90 geared, you will get 1 extra point of Vitality out of the HQ Finger Sandwiches and 1 less parry. Based on the cost, the benefit is not really worth it.
- Dual Haken may be worth grabbing until you have the Bravura Zenith and can even then be worth using due to accuracy concerns for Warriors.
- The Allagan Battleaxe hits harder and has more VIT, but has 0 Parry. As such, the Bravura Zenith is strictly a better tanking axe in terms of mitigation. The Allagan Axe will give you more damage and more health though. If you're trying to maximise your eHP, take the Allagan axe, it you're going for max mitigation, Bravura Zenith is the way to go. Ultimately the difference will be minor either way.
- The Heavy Darklight Flanchard comes with a large chunk of accuracy and can be very hard to replace because of this.
- The Vortex Ring of Fending is cancer. Use almost anything else instead.
- The crafted Heavy Darksteel Armour is a better chest than the Heavy Darklight Armour once you have melded materia to it. It is going to cost more, though it will be cheaper on Philo tomes. This is also true for the Gauntlets.
- The Crystal Tower tanking set has very low amounts of Accuracy and should be used as a filler for any other upgrades you get, and not as a complete set.
- Good first purchases for your Myth tomes are: Bravura Zenith, Hero's Ring of Fending, Warrior's Gauntlets and Warrior's Burgeonet (helmet) after that you should use your tomes to fill gaps (probably the Warrior's Cuirass unless you've gotten lucky in BC).

STR Tiering
The most important thing to know about Parry is that we don't know how it works. We know the basics, as you increase STR you reduce more damage when you parry, and adding parry and DEX will increase your parry rate. Beyond that, there are two models that both fit the available facts.

The STR Tiers Model
This model goes on what you can see on the screen. That every 40-41 points of STR you get another 1% reduction on your parry, and any amount of STR that doesn't get you to the next STR tier is wasted (in terms of parry). This model works on what you can see on the screen; at 404 STR you get 24% reduction on your parry and at 405 STR it goes up to 25%. Any amount of STR between 364 and 405 has no affect on your parry reduction.

The Linear/Rounding Model
This model looks at how the rest of the game works, notices that there is no tiering for anything else at all in the entire game and says... well it's just been rounded to save screen space. There actually is benefit in STR for every point, but they didn't want to have huge amounts of text floating on the screen and so they simply rounded the number displayed to the nearest whole percentage and called it done.

The tiering model is the safe approach. With that setup, you know 100% without a doubt that you are getting something. If you go with the rounding model, then you're essentially trusting in SE to not have changed how this one part of the game worked with scaling. On the other hand, any amount of STR gained will increase your damage by a noticeable amount, so even if you don't get the next tier (if they even exist), you're still getting some extra damage and threat.

Players can assume simply that as the stats that affect this grow larger, the effect will become greater.

The above quote was made in relation to Critical Hit Rate. Still not definitive proof, but it is another point of circumstantial evidence against STR tiers.