Tank Balance

[Donjo]

As a preface, it is a known design decision that all accessories are wearable by all battle classes. Since this is universal, it cannot be logically surmised that this design exists specifically to allow Tanks to swap around STR and VIT.

If we want to ask if the existence of Strength Tanks is good design, bad design, or a completely unintended situation that arose from the above seemingly harmless design choice, we should look at things from two angles. First, what is a Tank's "main stat" as best the game has defined for us? Second, every job has a genuine use for more than one of the six Attributes(STR, DEX, VIT, INT, MND, PIE). How does a Tank's relationship with Attributes differ from everyone else's?

Main Stat

I do not believe that there is anywhere within the game or documentation surrounding it that explicitly tells each class/job "Hey. This is your most important stat. You want this one." This is probably bad. So what do we have? Well, let's first take a non-Tank example: the Monk. It is generally accepted that a Monk's main stat is Strength. How does the game suggest this to a Pugilist/Monk?

- With no items equipped or Bonus Attributes allocated, Strength is their natural highest Attribute.
- When in a party, their Party Bonus increases Strength.
- When rolling on gear, they can only roll Need on gear which contains Strength.

Now, let's examine these aspects of the design as they relate to the three Tanks.

- With no items equipped or Bonus Attributes allocated, Vitality is their natural highest Attribute.
- When in a party, their Party Bonus increases Vitality.
- When rolling on gear, they can only roll Need on gear which contains Vitality.

When it comes to Tanks, the signs point to Vitality being the main stat. Another thing worth noting is that if you do attempt to roll Need on an accessory that does not contain your main stat, it doesn't just say no. It explicitly tells you that "This item is not suited for your class or job". Pretty harsh.

So... Joe McTank bops through to 60, seeing the signs that Vitality is a good idea, and then encounters Pug McPuggington who asks why he's wearing yucky Fending Accessories and tells him that Slaying is better. To which Joe goes wait: The accessories with Strength that the game actually flat out said were not for me are what I'm supposed to be wearing? Uh... *Heroic BSOD*

I'd personally classify the "accessory problem" as an unintended situation. The potentially bad design comes later on.

Attributes and You

We all know that Tanks like to fight over Strength and Vitality. They fight over this harder than they fight actual enemies.

...But the other Jobs use Vitality too! Why aren't they fighting like this as well?

Well, that's because Vitality isn't the main stat of any other job. To everyone else, Vitality is decidedly secondary. They'll always naturally get enough to survive what's coming and once that number is hit they don't have to worry one iota about it anymore because any additional gains in the stat will not come at a sacrifice to their main stat. Well, unless you run off and wear a Fending Accessory... but the game says those aren't suited for you. Healers get the bonus round with Piety management, but that's fuzzier because Piety is treated more like a secondary stat(or property, as the character sheet defines them) than an attribute. Still, their goal is "get enough to not run out of MP" and pursuing more does not come at a cost to Mind, their main stat.

So, what's the problem with Tanks? It's that Vitality, their main stat, is treated the same way for them as it is for everyone else: once you can survive the fight, stop worrying about it. It is the only main stat that becomes less useful at certain thresholds. This is not good. The game pushes Vitality at Tanks, yet they're the only jobs for which the stat they're pushed toward isn't unequivocally the best stat to keep increasing at all times.

Basically, we have a situation where one of these things is not like the others. This is a red flag; a probable example of bad design.

Other Observations

- It's been pushed around very recently in this thread that the "one stat to rule them all" paradigm is a approach to gear design that is casual friendly. Now, SE has done MMOs before and has obviously taken inspirations in order to make FFXIV. They, like any other seasoned MMO dev, should know that Tanks tend to comprise the lowest population of players. Isn't it unreasonable, then, for them to purposely give Tanks the least casual gearing process of any job? This is why I believe this whole thing to be an accident more than anything else.
- It is true that Tanking tends to attract people of a certain mindset. Allowing Tanks to deal more damage can attract people who have different mindsets to the jobs. Mindsets that, naturally, clash with the mindsets of the first group. They clash rather... violently. This is the most horrifying result of the fight between Strength and Vitality and the most pressing reason that SE do something about it. It's fortunate that people appear to be starting to lean toward supporting "best of both worlds" solutions that allow both mindsets to have their cake and eat it too, as it could lead SE to make a change that doesn't drive many people from the role.
- In order to properly balance the Tanks against each other and encounters, it may first be necessary to balance them against the other roles.

[carbonx]

So, what's the problem with Tanks? It's that Vitality, their main stat, is treated the same way for them as it is for everyone else: once you can survive the fight, stop worrying about it.

I think this nails it. VIT is really only useful to survive a fight, but after that it's a fluff stat. At some point, people realized they would be better off putting more into Strength, which continues to provide benefit.

However, this itself causes problems, since it gets rid of the VIT safety blanket. This leads to the horror stories of "STR tanks" that don't pop CDs and eat shit while complaining about healers; they are impossible to keep up and actually need more VIT. Then, you run into someone with the same gear, who uses appropriate CDs and is easy to keep up. This build creates a larger gap in skill than previously existed when all tanks spec'd VIT.

Personally, I don't think that extra gap is a bad thing, but no other role has it.

[Reynhart]

So, what's the problem with Tanks? It's that Vitality, their main stat, is treated the same way for them as it is for everyone else: once you can survive the fight, stop worrying about it. It is the only main stat that becomes less useful at certain thresholds.

Very interesting point.
It could be interesting to find an another effect that VIT could offer to counter this.

I think the problem is twofold :
- Vitality only gives HP
- Healing spells are too strong

Why is "more HP" a problem ? Because, unless you're at max HP, you actually don't care what your max HP is. If you have only 1000 HP left, one 1000 hit will kill you, wether you have 2000 or 25000 max HP
As for healing spells, the problem is that healers don't care about auto-attacks. They can keep you alive from auto-attacks for...well, forever, in fact. If their wasn't any tankbusters, tanks would be invincible.

So, what can be changed :
1) Vitality should add a constant mitigation. That way, if you have 1000 HP left, a 1000 hit (before mitigation) will not have the same effect depending on your vitality.
2) Healing spell's potencies should adjusted so that auto-attacks are a real thing, not a minor annoyance. That way, adding vitality would still be useful since its much more difficult to mitigate auto-attacks in the long run.

After that, it can be interesting to decide if Vitality would only be physical mitigation, and Mind for magical mitigation (And Dark Mind could be a swap between the two like Cleric Stance).
Or vitality could enhance heals received, to the same effect, having a constant effect on your mitigation/recovery.

As a sidenote, Piety is the same...enough MP to manage the fight, then the rest is useless...but nobody actually focuses on Piety, so, who cares

[Phoenicia]

Snip.

Personally I liked the way stats worked in FFXI. The whole system of "Main stat is the glass and secondary stat is the water" was interesting for me. i.e. STR raised the cap for your damage, but attack power was what decided how much damage you did. Each point of STR gave 2 power IIRC.

So you had corresponding stats:

STR = Power.
DEX = Accuracy/Crit.
VIT = Def
AGI = Evasion/Block/Parry
INT = Magic
MND = Magic
CHR = .... Yeah

Then you had abilities benefiting from different stats. Most of the great ax weaponskills for example had 1:1 damage scaling from both STR and VIT. (The weaponskill uses STR+ VIT equally as added WD). and some sword weaponskills used STR and MND. Daggers used DEX exclusively IIRC. BRD abilities used CHR as a modifier and Black Magic (since multiple classes used it) had INT.. etc.

Auto attacks were STR, THF abilities used DEX and AGI... etc.

Anyways, not to derail, I think a quick "fix" to tanks gearing would be to encourage tanks to gear for VIT by giving VIT additional benefits. VIT should have added defense and/or have a % of VIT act as pseudo-STR for tanks only.

[Reynhart]

Personally I liked the way stats worked in FFXI.

In FFXI, VIT was a physical mitigation on top of adding Defense. (And MND, a magical mitigation)

Since Defense is a passive constant mitigation in FFXIV, VIT adding defense would have the same effect, yes.

But I really think the focus should move a little towards mitigating auto-attacks, since they basically "don't matter" for now.

[Phoenicia]

In FFXI, VIT was a physical mitigation on top of adding Defense. (And MND, a magical mitigation)

Since Defense is a passive constant mitigation in FFXIV, VIT adding defense would have the same effect, yes.

But I really think the focus should move a little towards mitigating auto-attacks, since they basically "don't matter" for now.

Yeah, but if both our mitigation AND damage scaled from our main stat, like how healing and damage scales for healers, then tanks would be more inclined to equip VIT gear. Even if the added benefit is smaller than pure STR accessories.

I think also part of the problem is at the start in 2.xx, SE had tanks getting "at least something" from too many stats. We had STR for damage and block/parry values. We had DEX affecting rates. But they were at dismally low rates that they didn't matter. And lack of gear variety made it even worse. SE made a good "choice" by removing that dependency form those stats.

[Reynhart]

Yeah, but if both our mitigation AND damage scaled from our main stat, like how healing and damage scales for healers, then tanks would be more inclined to equip VIT gear. Even if the added benefit is smaller than pure STR accessories.

But, the problem is that every gear gives Vitality. Healers don't have high MND and high INT, that's why they have Cleric Stance (Besides, damage and healing do not scale from the same stat).
On our left side, we have the exact same "attack" and VIT bonus than any physical job. To work like healers, our STR bonus should be removed and we should have a skill to swap VIT and STR.

If we separate HP and Vitality, the VIT bonus could be removed from any non-tank gear, since their HP pool would still increase with their level. This way, VIT would really become a "tank" stat.

Another thing to consider is that attack and healing spells use three base stats : Weapon "damage", Attack/Healing potency and skill potency.
Maybe we can work with something similar for mitigation.