Fending Accessories

[Instrumentality]

I don't think the goal should necessarily be to mandate Fending accessories. That just replaces one useless set (current VIT) with another.

Strength jewelry wouldn't be pointless if the two strength melee dps continued to wear it since presumably they would receive no benefit from vitality jewelry?

Tank jewelry pieces eliminating (or reducing to such a degree that it doesn't matter) tank stance damage down penalties does sound nice, though.

[Zarzak]

What would you like to see on fending accessories?

They need to put defense and magic defense on the fending jewelry. As long as it gives no defensive boost beyond 1 hit worth of hp people will not favor it.

[Rbstr]

I really don't have a problem with how they are now. Don't need a ton of HP? Put strength on. If you need more HP, put some fending on! It works.

I haven't seen a reason why fending should be mandated. Why not change fending accessories to STR instead of vit and balance accordingly? It's all the same in the end.
The whole thing is balanced around roughly arbitrary numbers to create gear/skill checks. A tank buster does X damage so it's Y threatening to Z geared player with Q room for slop.
If you add a bunch of defense to fending accessories the only real difference is that they'll make the raids hit harder to balance it out and DPS checks become harder to hit (or are adjusted lower to be the same).

[Yorumi]

Tanks actually have some level of choice right now (high/mid/no STR) which is cool, it's just that the no STR option is super weak and has no real place in the game.

I don't think tanks really have a choice, there's still and optimal setup. One the other MMOs I played and have extensive tank experience in is swtor. You would think tanks have real choices to make there because there are 3 tanking stats(well 4, endurance which is just like vit here and equally as useless), shield, absorb, and defense. Well although it changes with each ilevel there a single optimum spread of those stats for maximum mitigation. It's the same here, str vs vit, there's only one true correct answer.

That said tanking in swtor is in a MUCH better state than ff14 and that's pretty much how you make fending accessories useful here. They need to provide actual mitigation, fix parry, add def/m.def to them, add elemental resist etc.

[Zarzak]

I haven't seen a reason why fending should be mandated. .

Because we are tanks? Same reason any other piece of fending gear is mandated?

[Ralvenom]

Because we are tanks? Same reason any other piece of fending gear is mandated?

So, because we're tanks, we should be FORCED to take lower strength gear over moderate strength gear? I'd hate to be in your raid group...

[Yorumi]

So, because we're tanks, we should be FORCED to take lower strength gear over moderate strength gear? I'd hate to be in your raid group...

Why are mages forced to use casting accessories, healers forced to use healing, melee dps forced to use slaying. The idea that a tank should want to gear in tank stats is not an idea born of lunacy.

[karateorangutang]

So, even if they did pigeonhole us into fending accessories, then we would still be pentamelding strength onto crafted fending accessories.

We would be the only set of classes almost forced to buy crafted equipment. It would be great for the goldsmiths, but would force tanks to pay way more gil for perfomance.

Kinda skews the population.

[Yorumi]

So, even if they did pigeonhole us into fending accessories, then we would still be pentamelding strength onto crafted fending accessories.

We would be the only set of classes almost forced to buy crafted equipment. It would be great for the goldsmiths, but would force tanks to pay way more gil for perfomance.

Kinda skews the population.

They could always fix tank stats and make them actually useful.

[Rbstr]

Because we are tanks? Same reason any other piece of fending gear is mandated?

Fending left-side is defined by the defense it gives compared to others (and the availability of parry as a secondary sometimes, I guess...). The stats are otherwise identical to any other melee gear.
There's a reason for that defense: So attacks don't threaten tanks as much as they do the squishies. It enforces the idea you need a tank.

That part is taken care of...so why do we need to bother with the accessories and eliminate one of the only places you really have agency in a job "build"?
If you add a meaningful amount of defense to the fending accs you open all sorts of worm-cans. You have to rebalance boss damage to make the defense desirable plus you have the availability of large amounts of defense to whatever class unless you restrict accessories by job.
It's not like they're going to forget to balance around the now tankier tanks. High-end raiding will be the same level of difficult.

Alternatively you could just make Fending the best of both worlds and give it vit and str. Or just Str and balance fights against that.
But that's just kind of boring.