Fending vs. Slaying accessories at this point in the game

[DGladius]

In any other situation, that extra dps simply doesn't matter. It's as much e-peen as is higher HP.

It's always useful to be maximizing as much as you can in what you're doing. Providing more contribution to your party is better. When working as a team I want to give my best effort and performance in completing things and I would hope my team members will do the same in whatever role they're in also. Always strive to do better.

Since tanks are hitting stuff, dealing more damage while being capable of taking hits and surviving is more beneficial.

[Zfz]

Providing more contribution to your party is better.

It is that contribution that is hard to quantify. Raising your survivability so your healers can do extra DPS, or has that GCD to make that DPS feel safer instead of going a more cautious route to preserve themselves, that is also contribution, and it's contribution that won't show on the tank's dps parse, but on the overall dps parse.

While tank dps is definitely contribution to the party, requiring less heals and making the healers more confident doing dps is also contribution.

But if one argues against VIT saying "it isn't needed unless you are dying", then that extra dps in the same way isn't needed unless you're hitting enrage. Bottom line, in the grand scheme of things, when you take the whole party into consideration, focusing on tank dps isn't necessarily always the best way to contribute.

[Perzeval]

But if one argues against VIT saying "it isn't needed unless you are dying", then that extra dps in the same way isn't needed unless you're hitting enrage. Bottom line, in the grand scheme of things, when you take the whole party into consideration, focusing on tank dps isn't necessarily always the best way to contribute.

Extra DPS is always needed as it is useful and doesn't go wasted, and it's not about the e-peen either. Often, more than not, people die in raids, especially when you are not overgeared yet, with no echo available. One or two DPS die and have to deal with the weakness debuff and TP starvation after resurrection. While you might have just met the enrage timer by a couple seconds with your chill and peace setup, now you cannot and wipe. It's always nice to keep yourself ahead of the schedule in case something goes wrong.

[dragoelete]

Extra DPS is always needed as it is useful and doesn't go wasted, and it's not about the e-peen either. Often, more than not, people die in raids, especially when you are not overgeared yet, with no echo available. One or two DPS die and have to deal with the weakness debuff and TP starvation after resurrection. While you might have just met the enrage timer by a couple seconds with your chill and peace setup, now you cannot and wipe. It's always nice to keep yourself ahead of the schedule in case something goes wrong.

yes but whats stronger about 100-200 extra tank dps for going full str or the extra 500-600 extra healer DPS when they don't have to spend the entire time keeping your low health bar from going to 0...

[Zfz]

And in the process you make healers pay more attention to you, and their dps is lowered. It's not a black and white "tank lower dps means raid lower dps".

[Perzeval]

yes but whats stronger about 100-200 extra tank dps for going full str or the extra 500-600 extra healer DPS when they don't have to spend the entire time keeping your low health bar from going to 0...

Strangely enough, my healers never had any problems keeping me alive while doing DPS on their own (250 Scholar DPS pre-echo T13). Maybe you are just overestimating the impact of tank HP on a healer's potential to do DPS? Giving up 500 extra Healer DPS because the tank has 3k HP less... come on, no one is going to believe your claim. The healer's DPS is not crippled by the tank having less HP, it gets crippled because people (including tanks) screw up mechanics and eat more damage than the healer anticipated.

And no, my healers do NOT have to pay more attention to me just because I'm not running around with a 22k full vit warrior build. I know when tank busters are coming, I know when there are periods of sustained heavy damage, I use a apprioriate cooldown rotation for the fight and if the shit hits the fan somehow, I still have holmgang and Equilibrium.

I'm not a hardcore STR fanatic either. I would definitely use fending/melded gear when the fight is new and I'm maintanking, but not when it's on farm status and I'm offtanking.

[dragoelete]

Strangely enough, my healers never had any problems keeping me alive while doing DPS on their own (250 Scholar DPS pre-echo T13). Maybe you are just overestimating the impact of tank HP on a healer's potential to do DPS? Giving up 500 extra Healer DPS because the tank has 3k HP less... come on, no one is going to believe your claim. The healer's DPS is not crippled by the tank having less HP, it gets crippled because people (including tanks) screw up mechanics and eat more damage than the healer anticipated.

And no, my healers do NOT have to pay more attention to me just because I'm not running around with a 22k full vit warrior build. I know when tank busters are coming, I know when there are periods of sustained heavy damage, I use a apprioriate cooldown rotation for the fight and if the shit hits the fan somehow, I still have holmgang and Equilibrium.

I'm not a hardcore STR fanatic either. I would definitely use fending/melded gear when the fight is new and I'm maintanking, but not when it's on farm status and I'm offtanking.

yes and thats the problem while you may know when its coming not everyone does and this is sort of a guide for people on weather to use STR or VIT as a tank. so while you know what to use and when to use it some dont and will look at this like "o... look at all the people recomending str, maybe i should use it." while not haveing a clue on how to mitigate the damage they are taking properly. therefor it would be better to have the extra "cushioning" that vit gives you.

[SeraviEdalborez]

I'd just like to point out that having 1500 extra HP is like having a consistent 1500 HP damage absorption shield. Because overhealing is done regardless of how much HP you have. Actually, isn't it so that the less HP you have, the more overhealing there tends to be? Having more HP means more of that overhealing is turned into useful HP to absorb the next hit.
...
If you gear for best-case scenario, you gear for STR. If you gear for worst-case scenario, you gear for VIT. If you want middle ground and have the money, you overmeld and get quantitatively more overall benefit. It doesn't really sound that bad.

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Lastly, I'd just like to present this thought for the "faster kill argument".

Unless you're hitting enrage timers, a few seconds faster kill isn't "needed", it's useless, in the same way that you don't "need" that extra 1500 HP unless you're dying. The only time STR is "useful" is when you are hitting enrage timers or when that little bit of tank dps gain pushes a phase such that you avoid some critical boss ability---and in those situations, then yes you want to gear for STR to contribute whatever little bit of dps you can, simply because you would wipe otherwise.

In any other situation, that extra dps simply doesn't matter. It's as much e-peen as is higher HP.

In FFXIV, especially due to the severe lack of % based heals (especially since Lustrate's change in 3.0), VIT and more HP is not "mitigation". It's a buffer. When WAR pops Thrill of Battle or when any tank pops a VIT X/Draco potion, it's not mitigating. It's just ensuring a higher barrier of "not dying" to a moment of burst.

Because that is all the XIV tanking meta is: moment of high burst damage. Cure1/Physick/Benefic, Regen-esque ticks, and SCH fairies are all more than capable of handling "autoattack"-like damage. You consider total VIT needed when you consider how hard any given ability (Death Sentence, Ravensbeak, Mountain Buster, Blinding Blade) or series of abilities (Akh Morn, Perpetual Ray, a large amount of simultaneous enemies like in Alex 2) will tax your HP bar. Not necessarily your healers.

Having a higher HP pool lets you regenerate an insignificantly smaller amount of combat HP regen and have a larger Stoneskin (which, in terms of 1500 HP, is only +150).

What else kills people in XIV? Mechanics, as you said. Team jumprope where the punishment is death or otherwise severe debilitation. The less of these you have, the less healing needs to go out. One tank's contribution by using Meld or STR instead of VIT can be very significant. If you apply the same lackadaisical attitude towards damage ("tank DPS doesn't matter, it's only like 3 seconds shaved") on every job, that "3 seconds" adds up to more like 30, or 2 minutes if it was an essential phase push. If the healers and tanks aren't contributing their best, you are essentially losing damage equal to a 5th or 6th DPS. I don't know why nobody would want to essentially have 5-6 DPS in your standard 2/2/4 composition.

The point isn't about e-peen DPS, though that's certainly a side benefit. It's about ending the fight as quickly as you are able with a not-unreasonable amount of risk. It's also about pushing oneself to improve, especially against or alongside others.

I get that people who have to live the PUG life may not (be able to) appreciate this kind of tanking meta as much because of the uncertainty of their co-tanks or healers' competence. That's unfortunate, but it is not a reason to default to full VIT. You would be surprised how much you can get away with dropping (like, say, 1500 HP) and not significantly impact healing burden.

At the very least, I hope nobody is saying "all STR all the time". It does have it's time and place and wiping 5x because healers are slower than a snail covered in molasses running up a waterfall is not the time. It's not a reason "STR sucks" in this situation, it's adapting to the hand (bad healers) that you're dealt.

(PS: This is why melds are good. It is the mathematically best middle ground.)

[Yorumi]

To the opposition: I'm not sure why the burden of proof is on the "meld people" or "STR people" to prove VIT or parry is unnecessary. Clearly we can function, even thrive, without it. Why don't those of you who think Parry/VIT is so invaluable try to quantify it yourselves?

Well those saying parry sucks are making a definitive statement that can be tested. At least for me I'm saying I don't know that parry sucks and would like to see proof of it. All we have in this thread are emotional statements and people saying it's random which shows a fundamental misunderstanding of probability. Lets just I'm not inclined to blindly believe people with such a fundamental misunderstanding of mechanics. And on top of that we have the repeated straw man accusing people of suggesting they're stacking parry for tank busters.

The thing is we even have people saying the tanks stacking parry suck. Now perhaps the math will show that it's a bad decision but can we really blame a tank for stacking tank stats? But instead of pointing to a definitive analysis of gear builds we see a lot of emotion, misunderstanding, logical fallacies, and attacks. Forgive me if that's throwing up all kinds of red flags. I've seen time and time again where everyone in an mmo was certain what they were doing was right only for the math to prove it wrong. Counter intuitive things exist all over mmos. This is why you things like people claiming WARs are OP because they see one fell cleave, or people who can't understand how much swoard oath adds to damage.

When you google parry all you get is a bunch of bickering like in this thread. I would love to do my own tests but I don't exactly have multiple penta-melded accessories lying around. Given the conviction people have I would think there would be some link that shows an analysis of tanking stat builds and how they affect the raid. Yet if this thread is any indication it's clear no such thing exists. People say parry sucks because of group think not because they can point to some definitive evidence.

When you choose to mix and match fending and slaying accessories you have to choose which fending to give up, is it best to give up the ones with parry or not? When melding gear or your relic(assuming we'll still be able to control stats) you have a choice in what stats to put on it. Given all the different stats to consider and all the different situations it would be good to have a definitive analysis of what stat combinations are good at various gear quality levels.

[SeraviEdalborez]

When you google parry all you get is a bunch of bickering like in this thread. I would love to do my own tests but I don't exactly have multiple penta-melded accessories lying around. Given the conviction people have I would think there would be some link that shows an analysis of tanking stat builds and how they affect the raid. Yet if this thread is any indication it's clear no such thing exists. People say parry sucks because of group think not because they can point to some definitive evidence.

When you choose to mix and match fending and slaying accessories you have to choose which fending to give up, is it best to give up the ones with parry or not? When melding gear or your relic(assuming we'll still be able to control stats) you have a choice in what stats to put on it. Given all the different stats to consider and all the different situations it would be good to have a definitive analysis of what stat combinations are good at various gear quality levels.

People came to these conclusions from extremely old tests which have not changed. If anything, as mentioned previously, we are back to 2.0 levels of stat weights anyways right now (except slightly worse for not having STR and DEX influence parry potency and rate).

If parry had a very clearly more noticeable rate by stacking it, or had a higher reduction when it did happen (20% is insignificant outside of being forced with Raw Intuition or [while not parrying, is similar] Sheltron). Tank stats are more valuable in other games because they actually do something.

You don't necessarily need an indepth test. Do 5 runs of Ravana or Alex2/3 with a set prioritizing parry, and 5 with a set does not. The fact that you will not notice (by eye) or observe (with parsing) a significant increase is reason enough to share our ambivalence.

Is it groupthinky? Yeah, a bit. But it's because of the apathetic attitude SE takes towards secondary stats.