Fending vs. Slaying accessories at this point in the game

[Evaddaragon]

There are merits to using both types of accessories.

What I see from most STR advocates, though, is a general tendency to greatly overestimate the average skill level of PUGs. While it's true that an overgeared tank will contribute more DPS on a fight when he's already overgeared, it doesn't matter if the rest of the team isn't overgeared/skilled enough. Therefore, telling people that an actual number of "x HP is okay for x content" is looking at only one tree, one must look at the whole forest.

I always rather have a slower, but assured, victory than a wipe. Calling a tank "bad" simply for wearing full VIT is a mistake I'd say, as Fending accessories were, in the first place, designed to be worn by tanks. Now, if they'd wearing Aiming accessories, on the other hand...

A solution I've seen some use is to go all STR on attributes, then one STR ring, the rest being Fending. You're at about 15k HP and more or less 700 STR at iLvl180 if you're a level 60 Paladin... Neither keeping aggro nor staying alive should be a problem. You should also put up some numbers, assuming you're doing your rotation right of course.

There are 4 players in a dungeon - any 1 or more could be not holding their share of water. But nah - if things go bad, check out that tank, he's wearing Slaying - that's definitely why we can't. He's the problem. Nope nope it's not me at all.

Sarcasm aside, that's about what I meant to say by "one must not look at one tree, but the whole forest instead".

[Brightsayge]

at this point in the game, it really doesn't matter.

once alex savage is released it probably will matter.

[Swordphobic]

Tanks: "You should be able to go STR and dps with the minimal HP and contribute more. If not, you need better healers."
Healers: "You should be able to switch to cleric and do some dps rotations before the tank needs healing. If not, you need better tanks."
DPS: "Why do mommy and daddy fight so much?"

Because most dps have been bad boys and mommy and daddy are stressed out picking up your slack.

[Seshayn]

When can we stop spreading this false information? Attempted parry stacking sucks. End of story.

OP: Fending until you are used to the content. You will make more mistakes, thus take more damage. This will somewhat mitigate that until you get used to the encounters. Slowly remove Fending in favor of Slaying til you are comfortable with how it feels in the end.

Show me the math. Link me the math. Tell me where to find the math. Everyplace I look to find ANY math that supports your claims on parry being worthless always lead me to some idiots thread about how crit/det/str are all better, and then a sane person comes in with actual math disputing it. At which point the OP turns it into a pissing contest and ignores the math. So.... Gimme math. Otherwise I will continue to value Accuracy -> Vitality -> Parry -> Everything Else and use my parry stat to deflect all you haters.

[SeraviEdalborez]

Is it worth pentamelding the current i150 HQ white items?

They're definitely better all round than any mix of Str/Vit 180 asuran items (a full set of i150 stuff should be the same Vit/Str levels as wearing 4 slaying AND 4 fending 180s), but I'm wondering if there were revealed plans that higher level crafted accessories would come in the next patch or two.

Late-ish reply, but it outperforms any mix of Slaying and Fending in terms of combined STR+VIT up to i220 or higher. It's a solid investment.

Even if i160 accs came out next week, it would not be a significant difference. Assuming VIT on Slaying accs, you would get +2 STR per piece, easier (but unnecessary) to hit VIT meld caps with tier 5 materia. Example:

i150 ring: STR+31, melds VIT4 x3 (total +24 of 29 cap) + 2 spare slots
i160 ring: STR+33, melds VIT5 x2 (total +30 of 31 cap) + 3 spare slots

160 is clearly superior, but not by that much.

Now if new crafted stuff is at least 180 or so we might have something. But we won't see that until 3.2 almost guaranteed.

[Perzeval]

Show me the math. Link me the math. Tell me where to find the math. Everyplace I look to find ANY math that supports your claims on parry being worthless always lead me to some idiots thread about how crit/det/str are all better, and then a sane person comes in with actual math disputing it. At which point the OP turns it into a pissing contest and ignores the math. So.... Gimme math. Otherwise I will continue to value Accuracy -> Vitality -> Parry -> Everything Else and use my parry stat to deflect all you haters.

It's not math, it's common sense. Parry is only useful when there is a large amount of incoming hits, i.e. during mass pulls or for tank busters that are devided into many small hits, for example the first boss in fractal continuum.

In most cases however, tanking the autoattack damage from a single boss is considered fluff damage. No one cares if you parry an autoattack or heck, even two autoattacks in a row. The only time healers are paying attention to your well-being is with an actual tankbuster incoming, for example, T13's Flatten. But guess what, no veteran healer believes that you are going to parry that next big hit. They are going to use their strongest healing tools and top you off anyway, leading to overheal eventually if you actually parried the hit. As long as parry is purely RNG, no amount of stacking would lead to any efficient result. If you are talking about speedrunning any 4-man dungeon with large trash pulls however, I agree that parry is useful.

[pandabearcat]

Perzeval has the right idea. Also why War are just as good if not better than paladins for straight up tank buster (always on demand 30%).

Though sheltron is utterly amazing and the most powerful new ability in the pali toolkit.

Anyway its not so much that, mathematically, over a long period of time, parry is a bad stat. Its just that it is random and will never save your life.

Similarly, it is like how crit (aside from class mechanics) has generally been very lackluster for healers - you never plan around a crit, and you will never get a crit when you need it.

EDIT: another, hugely disappointing thing about tanking in FF14.

Your stats don't matter. Literally. The only thing that matters is vit. You are a meatshield, that has cooldowns. A glorified dps with a butt numbingly simple rotation.

In WoW and other mmos, your tanking stats mattered quite a bit.

One of the big reasons was parry was actually 100% damage reduction. So even if it was random, it actually saved you a heal entirely. Here its...20% damage. Which isn't even significant. AND our parry rate is on average much lower than that of other mmos! AND bosses attack slower!

Voila, an extremely boring tank meta that basically revolves around trying to do max dps while just staying alive, with healers skill (more like healer GCDs) being 90% of the tank survivability and tank CDs being 10%, with no active tanking nor useful resource (warrior has some semblance of that with wrath stacks, at least).

Wonderful. I would much rather have a more skill based tanking where tanking skill is the vast majority of your survivability.

[stoxastic]

Wonderful. I would much rather have a more skill based tanking where tanking skill is the vast majority of your survivability.

If this happens then the tanking population drop lower than it already is. Most tanking duties need to be made trivial or else the vast majority of the population cannot do it. The average tank still has trouble with gaining enmity, mob positioning, and CD usage even in end game. Pre-3.0, have you seen bad PLDs try to play WAR? They pretty much just spam butchers block (no maim) and are always late with Inner Beast. I would like it to be more interesting as well but then it'll just make the job impossible to play for the average player.

[pandabearcat]

I don't think that is true, unless you think the avg FF14 player is worse than the avg WoW player.

People will need to learn at some point I hope, or else all tanks are identical.

[stoxastic]

I don't think that is true, unless you think the avg FF14 player is worse than the avg WoW player.

People will need to learn at some point I hope, or else all tanks are identical.

You think the average FF14 player is better than the average WoW player?