Good or no good?

[Litegrace]

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My problem with this is that you are listing a bunch of points that only affect the healer. Why should a tank have to stack VIT (which doesn't help any of their abilities in any way) in order to make the healer's life easier? VIT literally does nothing but add extra health, which is useless beyond the maximum damage you will take plus some.

STR benefits most of a tank's abilities in a positive way however, and also leads to higher party DPS. So if you argue that a healer does less DPS with a tank stacking STR, then I will argue that a tank does less DPS when stacking VIT. Either way leads to less DPS, and I would rather not stack a stat that doesn't benefit me. With the gear I have now, I have more than enough health and my defensive cooldowns lessen the damage I take, meaning stacking VIT does nothing for me. Until they change how the stat works, there's no reason to stack it right now. I'm not saying I'm unwilling to make a healer's job easier, but there needs to be some reward for doing so, other than just a safety net (like some sort of damage reduction or mitigation on VIT).

[Sapphidia]

Why should a tank have to stack VIT (which doesn't help any of their abilities in any way) in order to make the healer's life easier?

I know I'm taking this out of context, but this sentence leapt out at me and made my spine crawl. The whole point of being a tank is to make the entire party's life as easy as possible so everyone can do their jobs to the best of their abilities. Ideally this will result in a run with highest possible total party dps but also one that's -safe-. Knocking 10 seconds off the speed of a run is fine, but if it gives your healer a heart attack and has heavy risk of wipes then it's probably not worth it.

Of course, as always, advocating additional Vit is purely something for those who are low geared. DF 4mans are tuned for people in 145-150 gear, so 180+ is far beyond. Yes, no point at all having a single Vit accessory when you've got 16k health from left side alone.

But don't dismiss healer dps as unimportant. Your whole post comes across as so selfish sadly. The damage a Scholar can do to a pack of mobs by just putting up 3 dots and Baning them is immense, and if a low geared tank is at so much risk of dying in 3 seconds that a scholar has to stay in heal-mode for a full pack then that tank is making the party do less damage even though they might have strength gear and do more themselves. +20% or so damage on a tank's output is significant, but if it causes a healer to do -zero- damage then it's not worth it. Of course, it's a balancing act, and that's an extreme example.

I know it's not how you necessarily meant it, but that sentence sounds like someone who only cares about their own DPS parse rather than the overall success of a party. That's not the tanking mindset. Tanks should do as much damage as humanly possible and make a run as swift and painless as can be, but if the best way to do that is to facilitate other members of the party doing higher damage, so be it.

DPS is important. The best tanks maximise it. But don't forget that a tank is primarily a "support" class, in a sense. Your role is to control the battlefield and ensure your party can do their job.

[Litegrace]

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I purposely edited that as soon as I posted it, as I realized it could be taken the wrong way. I'm going to assume you started writing your reply before I changed it, so I apologize if it sounded that way. I'm not unwilling to make a healer's life easier. I just don't see a point in stacking a stat that doesn't benefit me in any way. It's also just as much of a detriment to party dps for tanks to stack VIT instead of STR as it is for healers having to drop cleric stance more often to heal.

I would be more than willing to use fending gear if they added some STR or damage mitigation or really anything that would benefit me in some way. Right now, stacking VIT for me would only serve to allow the healer to dps more, and would prevent me from doing as much dps so I don't see it as a fair trade. Essentially I'm trading in dps and enmity generation for a healing safety net right now.

[Litegrace]

But don't forget that a tank is primarily a "support" class, in a sense. Your role is to control the battlefield and ensure your party can do their job.

I also want to point out that a healer is just as much as a support job as tank is. As for dps, tanks need to do dps in order to do their job. It's essentially a requirement for enmity generation, so dps helps a tank fulfill their job. A healer's job is to keep the party alive by healing and removing debuffs when possible, which means their job doesn't require dps to be done. Of course, this is nitpicking and ideally both jobs should be doing dps. But to say that tanks should reduce their dps to allow a healer to dps more often is counter-productive.

Again, this could be solved by simply adding STR or some sort of damage mitigation to tank accessories. Right now, tanks are the only job that require multiple stats to be effective (stats that currently do not both exist on the same accessories).

[Alahra]

STR benefits most of a tank's abilities in a positive way however, and also leads to higher party DPS.

There is a point at which, when the healer gives up DPS to heal the tank, the group loses more DPS from the healer than you add to the group's DPS by being in full Strength gear. The higher the item level of your left side, the more STR you can afford before you hit this point. The lower the item level of your left side, the less STR you can afford before you hit this point.

From your posts, I imagine you are a tank main and probably hovering around i190--you probably don't need VIT accessories at all in Expert dungeons. However, at lower gear levels, a tank sacrifices healer DPS for their own DPS, which is not always a good trade. It is entirely conceivable that a tank can cost a healer more DPS than his STR accessories are adding to the group.

If the SCH in your group can pull 500 DPS while not having to heal you but only 250 DPS when having to heal you in Slaying accessories, you need to gain 250 DPS going from Fending to Slaying for the group to break even and you need to gain *more* than that for it to actually be a positive DPS gain--and it had better be a positive gain, since you are adding a certain level of risk to the process. (These numbers are not in any way intended to be representative, they are provided only for the purpose of illustration and example and not based on actual hard data).

They desperately need to add strength to fending accessories.

It's sadly not that simple, as this would likely make Fending accessories highly desired for DRG and MNK in progression environments, and NIN would have no equivalent option for DEX accessories. The better option is probably to change damage formulas for tanks such that both STR and VIT are included in the calculations to some degree, at some ratio that encourages Fending over Slaying accessories.

[Miggiwoo]

It's sadly not that simple, as this would likely make Fending accessories highly desired for DRG and MNK in progression environments, and NIN would have no equivalent option for DEX accessories. The better option is probably to change damage formulas for tanks such that both STR and VIT are included in the calculations to some degree, at some ratio that encourages Fending over Slaying accessories.

That sounds like a good option, you could also make it so fending accessories can only be used by tank classes, or remove some secondary stats.

[Alahra]

That sounds like a good option, you could also make it so fending accessories can only be used by tank classes, or remove some secondary stats.

Adding Strength but removing secondary stats could work, though given the value of primary stats compared to secondary ones, this would probably require a lot of rebalancing, especially with the apparent devaluation of secondaries at level 60 compared to their relative worth at level 50. Even with no secondary stats, a STR+VIT accessory of top item level would dwarf a pentamelded accessory of 30 item levels lower (which appears to be the new standard).

[Viviza]

I would rather not stack a stat that doesn't benefit me.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we can't have nice things.

[Litegrace]

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we can't have nice things.

That's exactly my point. I can't have accessories that benefit me because you would rather me stack a useless stat. I also like how you purposely leave out the rest and take this out of context.