Fending vs. Slaying accessories at this point in the game

[Tila]

The last number I heard VIT-wise for people to aim for is 900 Vitality, but that precluded any entry into A4S and the lesser beings still don't know how hard it hits. Without the game right in front of me to play with numbers, I'm inclined to say that 900 VIT puts a WAR between 21000-22000 in Defiance. You'll have to coordinate with your group to figure out how that number would work out.

Thats pretty much full vit accessories.

[Donjo]

Thats pretty much full vit accessories.

First, it's just the number I heard. Second, it's the amount one would have after applying party buff and food. It's not full VIT.

[Kaith]

For reference

STR Allocation
4/5 Melded accessory (2 have 24 VIT, 2 have 29)
1 Slaying accessory

That's 826 VIT (on a midlander) before food/party buff. So 5/5 melded accessories would be just shy of 900 with food/party buff.

If you're not willing to use melded accessories you'd need like 3 or 4 i190 fending accessories depending on how you allocated your stats I think?

[Iroukan]

I play SMN as a main and SCH close second. I can tell you that a thank using fending are easier to heal even in easy dungeon. It give me room to DPS (and trust me, SCH numbers are not too shaby) or to heal other party members that may need it. A death DPS is a lot of DPS lost.

I was in a dungeon today, and I was surprised to see that I could pull as much as 1.1k DPS as a SCH. Thats a lot.

[Beoth]

I wear 2 VIT 190 as WAR OT in A1S and it's wnough to keep me alive in dangerous situations and provide a lot to meet the dps check. I wish I could switch to full str acceasories but i'm worried anout my healers sanity if i do that :x

[UlricCraft]

I'm so glad there's this thread here.

Healer here.

I'm not a fan of Slaying tanks. Do you really need to push that extra 12 dps on your parser?

Whenever I see a full slaying tank in 'meets the requirement' ilvl gear, I die inside.
I literally become a heal dispenser from TF2.
If I even try to Cleric Stance you die.

You pull a full room with a party of DRK, MNK, NIN, AST.
It takes ages, I run out of mana, I macro Cure/Benefic to fire off 12 times in a row one after the other because that's literally all I can do.


All healers will do more DPS than you if you just wore some Fending gear and gave us a couple extra casts of Holy/Aero3/Assize/Gravity/Bane/Shadowflare...


Just a quick whine, I'll heal whatever, but if I had the choice I'd pick 90% Fending with a Slaying ring. :/

[Tila]

snip

I think in this case it comes down to the tank using its cooldowns properly. When I was DPSing a bit I saw plenty of slaying tanks, but few who actually used their defensive cooldowns on pulls.

In these cases I think you'd still be falling over yourself to heal, since a few extra HP isnt going to stop the tank from failing to mitigate proper.

[Asierid]

I'm not a fan of Slaying tanks. Do you really need to push that extra 12 dps on your parser?

More than twelve. Try a couple hundred. 20% over time is a rather large increase.

Whenever I see a full slaying tank in 'meets the requirement' ilvl gear, I die inside.
I literally become a heal dispenser from TF2.
If I even try to Cleric Stance you die.

1: The dispenser in TF2 was mainly used for ammo/building, the heal was lolworthy and only useful in canceling out burns.

2: Good healers can still cleric stance for the same amount of time with a STR tank.

You pull a full room with a party of DRK, MNK, NIN, AST.
It takes ages, I run out of mana, I macro Cure/Benefic to fire off 12 times in a row one after the other because that's literally all I can do.

I do agree that speed running is pointless now due to the decent AoE classes not having decent AoE anymore. That has nothing to do with STR/VIT and more to do with gameplay/balancing changes. This sentence makes no sense in the overall context of the thread.

All healers will do more DPS than you if you just wore some Fending gear and gave us a couple extra casts of Holy/Aero3/Assize/Gravity/Bane/Shadowflare...

No they won't. No cleric healer is out DPSing a stance dancing/STR WAR that knows what's up, hate to break it to you. You won't even come close.

[Allyrion]

2: Good healers can still cleric stance for the same amount of time with a STR tank.

That probably has more to do with how well the Tank is using their CDs than how good the healer is.

But also, the example had an AST which is pretty weak regardless for that sort of thing.

No they won't. No cleric healer is out DPSing a stance dancing/STR WAR that knows what's up, hate to break it to you. You won't even come close.

To be fair, he's talking about being able to use cleric stance vs not using it at all.
That means even if a tank does more dps, that's not a fair comparison.
You are going to do dps as a tank even in all VIT regardless, so the base DPS doesn't count.

You would compare the dps gained from the str gear vs all the dps of the healer.
So basically, the healer would only need to beat that couple hundred you cited earlier for an overall party dps gain.

That's, of course, in the given scenario where the healer has to focus the tank and not dps at all.
That's not necessarily always the case depending on the healer, tank (competency wise) and gear.

[Phoenicia]

I'm so glad there's this thread here.

Healer here.

I'm not a fan of Slaying tanks. Do you really need to push that extra 12 dps on your parser?

Okay, you have two tanks, tank A has 14000 HP and tank B has 16000 HP.

Tank A takes 13000 HP damage. 1000 HP left and you need to heal for 13000 hp.

Tank B takes 13000 HP damage. 3000 HP left and you still need to heal for 13000 hp.

Only difference between tanks A and B is that you will need to drop your clerics stance 1 GCD earlier. BOTH tanks take the same amount of damage. VIT does NOT reduce the damage you take, if it did, that'd be a whole other story, but it doesn't.

The difference between VIT and STR tanks in DPS can be as big as ~300. But as said above, the difference between VIT and STR in healing received is about 1 GCD. So on any tank, you will just pop 1 GCD less of DPS spells.

A bad tank won't let you DPS even if they had 30k HP because they will keep taking unnecessary damage. A good tank will let you DPS even if they had only 10k because they will know how to avoid unnecessary damage. The difference between what you lose vs what they gain is massive (1 or 2 GCDs of DPS spells vs 150~300 DPS) and "fully" justifies STR gear/stats.

If you are struggling to DPS while healing your tank, tell your tank to use their CDs properly and step out of the darned AoEs.