Turning DRK into a tank was a huge mistake.

[Kowen]

Why should I wear VIT accessories in 4-man dungeons if the healer is too lazy to do anything besides keep me topped off?

With a good healer who does DPS in between heals, I'll switch to my VIT set for big pulls to give them some more wiggle room. Even then, with proper cooldown use, the extra HP is unnecessary.

For my part, I absolutely hate strength tanks. I find them a pain in the backside to heal

Something isn't right if a small HP difference is a problem. Keeping your tank totally topped off is a waste of time anyway, you have plenty of time to throw out some nukes while they're taking hits. It's also a waste of MP as you'll be losing parts of your cures to overhealing.

These hot dogs are a plague to real tanks who actually put DEFENSE ahead of their parser numbers.

VIT does not affect defense in any way. Higher "parser numbers" mean things die faster, which means less healing.

[SuzakuCMX]

If you're going to speedrun I prefer you wear VIT gear as tanks have neglible AoE damage compared to the healers (except maybe for SCH now as all their AoE damage is DoTs). If I can get in a few more Holies/Gravities/Stone IIIs because you had more HP and I could ignore healing you for longer, then that's probably better than whatever AoE damage you're doing by spamming your AoE enmity tools that would keep hate on you anyways.

If you're just doing a normal 4-man run then I really don't care as long as you use your CDs properly so you don't die when I have to heal up the party.

[Khalithar]

Snip

I only do vit builds lately. As I play exclusively in DF, I'd rather have the extra hp and not take any chances. =/

As for drk being a dps, as someone that mained Drk in FFXI, I'm happy about it being a tank. The dark/edgy part of the class really did attract a lot of people to it (myself included, hey I was a teenager back then), it also meant that we got a lot of people that didn't know how to play the class correctly and just picked it up anyway. Not only that, but the class wasn't the easiest to do right, and it lead to years of "loldrk." It made it really difficult to get beyond that stigma even if you really knew what you were doing. By making it a tank, it forces players to either get good at it or not play it at all. Now if only they would change the drk battle stance, the sephiroth pose with a claymore style weapon simply does not work, it looks stupid.

[NovaUltimatum]

I wonder if this thread will come up again when Samurai gets released as a tank...

[Khalithar]

I wonder if this thread will come up again when Samurai gets released as a tank...

I feel samurai should be a class in the same vein as arcanist that can go for more than one role. Call the tank a Bushi and the dps a Ronin.

[RyuRoots]

Why should I wear VIT accessories in 4-man dungeons if the healer is too lazy to do anything besides keep me topped off?

With a good healer who does DPS in between heals, I'll switch to my VIT set for big pulls to give them some more wiggle room. Even then, with proper cooldown use, the extra HP is unnecessary.



Something isn't right if a small HP difference is a problem. Keeping your tank totally topped off is a waste of time anyway, you have plenty of time to throw out some nukes while they're taking hits. It's also a waste of MP as you'll be losing parts of your cures to overhealing.




VIT does not affect defense in any way. Higher "parser numbers" mean things die faster, which means less healing.

I'm sorry, I read this and all I can hear is "hurrr durr muh dps".

Healers find this annoying because a tank more concerned with his damage is squishier and his damage contribution isn't nearly as valuable as he'd like to think.

[NovaUltimatum]

I feel samurai should be a class in the same vein as arcanist that can go for more than one role. Call the tank a Bushi and the dps a Ronin.

I think they want to move away from what they did with split job roles. They seem to prefer going with multi-stance effects on the job (Sword Oath/ Shield Oath kinda thing)

[Khalithar]

I think they want to move away from what they did with split job roles. They seem to prefer going with multi-stance effects on the job (Sword Oath/ Shield Oath kinda thing)

I can understand that for sure. But at the same time, I think a class that starts out at level 1 might not be a bad idea. I think that the game is ripe for a new starter area and continent with 1-50 quests to do. I feel heavensward basically added nothing for players that weren't already at the level cap with their main story done. Adding some low to mid level content might not be a bad idea.

[DarkmoonVael]

Bring those inflated HP bars into my static's groups. We'll fix your opinion on str vs vit accessories real fast.

STR brings more aggro, more than anything. HP bloat is just wasted stats after a point. Even on large trash pools, HP bloat is worthless if incoming damage is higher than a healer's output.

Vit accessories aren't worthless, they have a place, but good tanks know the value of that extra strength, and healers know that hit points isn't how you measure a tank's worth.

.

Statics are a completely different situation. When in a static, you know how your other members are going to behave, and that level of predictability makes a hell of a difference between STR and VIT specced tank. Random DF STR tank =/= static based STR tank, this is kind of obvious.

Back to OP. Dont write of an entire job due to bad players playing it. I have come across DRK who have had a mix of DEX and INT accessories in DF. This is down to the player being an idiot, not the class. If tanks (any tanks) are full STR specced, then they need to take this into account in DF and pull accordingly. If they dont, its down to the player being bad and bot the class. There are many many many good DRK out there.

[Noira]

B....bb....but tanks ARE dps though, just more of a how to say a heavy armored dps.

We still deal damage even if smaller than DDing dps, we gotta keep hate somehow, spamming flash only gets us so far.

Even our tank stance is just basically " DEAL DAMAGE WITHOUT DROPPING FASTER THAN A DD STANDING IN AN AOE"

Our Off Tank stance literally means an Offensive Tank/DPS