Fending Accessories

[Tyrial]

Go in with ilvl 130 gear and at 11k hp and let me know how long you survive. Then we can have this talk about vit being no more important for tanks than any other class.

Thank you for completely missing my point entirely. The discussion here isn't ilvl or left side gear. We're talking about the benefit tanks get from using Fending accessories, which currently is absolutely nothing once a specific HP value is reached. VIT is only useful until you're no longer in danger of getting gibbed by a boss under normal circumstances. Assuming that you're a competent tank and your healers know what they're doing then after you hit that point VIT is completely useless aside from making your epeen tingle by seeing a larger number next to "HP".

Like I said before, VIT only does one thing and it doesn't even directly influence how we play our job. It has 0 impact on our outgoing damage, our incoming damage (stoneskin aside) or our enmity. STR, DEX, INT and MND all directly contribute to increasing the performance of their respective jobs. We are the only job that has two "primary" stats and that's what needs to be changed.

The best and probably simplest idea for them to fix this is to just add STR to VIT accessories. No DPS would sacrifice using an appropriate ilvl Slaying piece to gain extra VIT. In addition to this they should remove parry as a stat option or have it included in all tank gear in addition to normal secondaries. As it stands now it's completely useless and there's no point in stacking it because you'll never see a noticeable difference in your incoming damage outside of large trash packs.

Damage mitigation based on RNG isn't true mitigation, we have no control over it. Even if you stacked it on every slot and managed to have maxed parry value for each you're still only looking at an increase of 2~% or so parry rate with no change in the amount you parry for.

Their other option would be to rework how our skills work just like how they altered DEX when Ninja was introduced and have all of our damaging weapon skills be modified by our VIT value.

[Zarzak]

The vit isn't what's making you survive. Armor does actually provide defense on it. Go into an just about any mmo and ask them about stacking hp, they'll all pretty much tell you the same thing, cross the min survivable hp threshold(usually automatic) then get other stuff(usually mitigation, but in this game that doesn't exist so it's dps).

Thanks I've played them long enough. And since I've said several times they need to add defense/magic defense to tank jewelry... ya.

The hp threshold being met withotu jewelry is the problem.

[Tyrial]

Thanks I've played them long enough. And since I've said several times they need to add defense/magic defense to tank jewelry... ya.

The hp threshold being met withotu jewelry is the problem.

No, the problem is the lack of any sort of real diversity or defensive stat options. HP bloat doesn't equal defense and there's no reason why they should be enforcing vit accessories as a mandatory choice for tanks. Allowing the HP threshold to be met from left side gear alone allows for far more options for jewelry if they had some actual options for us to pick. But as it stands right now it's either: A) take Fending and give bad players more of a cushion or B) learn how to play optimally and use Slaying/Pentamelds to help increase kill speeds and actually mitigate damage by not dragging the fight out.

The only way defense being on VIT stuff would be appealing is if it was done as a raw damage reduction and it would have to be at a level that it was more beneficial than running with higher DPS.

[MeeYow]

Bump before this goes off the first page, because it is far more important than many other topics.

Three observations as to why tanking accessories need change:
1. It is unfair to expect only one party role to have to spend tens of millions of gil every patch cycle to do proper progression.

2. The entire right hand side of raid drops are inferior to pentamelds, meaning there are half as many useful rewards from raiding, making the tanking progression experience worse.

3. This requirement and lack of reward is likely discouraging to players that want to play their class optimally, therefore costing the community tanks, and specifically ones likely to be decent! The last thing the game needs need with tanks in such short supply.

[pouncing]

Honestly the easiest way to fix this to just make it so the a tanks attack power scales from vit. because as it stand right now 1000 STR = 1000 Attack power and since we have equal amounts of STR and VIT on our left side just make it so that 1000VIT = 1000 Attack power boom done now VIT acc's are awsome.

Then we tackle the problem of now we have a ton of useless STR on our gear. With this i suggest the replace it with parry. this way all tanks have a good amount of parry and all pieces will have crit, det, SS to deal with so an example piece would be this

57 VIT 57 Parry 37 Crit 15 Det

this would also solve the problem of tank BiS as we would not have all these useless pieces because now every piece has parry + the other 2 stats.

[Donjo]

Then we tackle the problem of now we have a ton of useless STR on our gear.

One could also just reinstate Parry Strength scaling off of Strength. It's baffling that they removed it when they could have just lessened the benefit of each point of Strength on Parrying instead.

[Alahra]

The main issue with adding STR to Fending Accessories would probably be that they'd become attractive to DRG/MNK in a fashion similar to the way Slaying accessories are attractive to tanks now. For progression, where VIT checks are sometimes an issue when tackling content at lower-than-intended gear levels, that would give those two classes a significant edge over NIN, which would have to pentameld crafted accessories instead.

They could achieve something similar, however, by changing the tank damage formulas to factor in both STR and VIT in some ratio that would make Fending accessories essentially equivalent to Slaying ones, except they'd offer higher HP totals. Slaying accessories might still be relevant to a small degree (for avoiding Parry, perhaps) but it would make Fending a much simpler "default" for tanks than it is now.

[MeeYow]

I think having STR as the main stat, with 1 minor (Which can be small amounts of VIT like PIE on healer gear!) and all having a notable level of defence/magic defence is the best approach, then make them WAR/PLD/DRK/MRD/GLA only. Bring out a set of VIT gear for people that like to use it for PvP etc.

Tank HP pools drop and damage rises initially, but the DEF and proper raid tuning will offset tank buster damage and weapon damage can be rescaled for the next patch or so to prevent tanks being more of a threat to DPS.

[pouncing]

One could also just reinstate Parry Strength scaling off of Strength. It's baffling that they removed it when they could have just lessened the benefit of each point of Strength on Parrying instead.

yeah i agree that was just food for thought, the main problem though is that strength directly affects a tanks ability to do damage/generate enmity when it should be vit. there is no reason that 1 role should have to deal with 2 primary stats as opposed to 1.

[fm_fenrir]

One could also just reinstate Parry Strength scaling off of Strength. It's baffling that they removed it when they could have just lessened the benefit of each point of Strength on Parrying instead.

Counterpoint: As a DRG, I was getting 30% mitigation for 20 seconds in 2.55 with keen flurry up. If they'd kept the STR affect on parry, raw intuition would have been absolutely absurd by the time you got to 60. Even more worrying, how much mitigation would a DRG get with 950+ STR?

Also, VIT stacking for DRK is actually, actively making your healer's life worse.