Minor Complaint/Mini Rant

[RapBreon]

-snip-

This is a problem that can only be addressed in one way; removing content that requires optimal - or close to - play. When content restricts your margin for error so tightly everybody becomes very sensitive to everyone else's play. The mindset you describe is very common in dedicated raiding communities, of both this game and any MMO with a serious raiding end-game. This game however has made Alex Sav fairly accessible, but extremely tight right from the very first trash pull (Faust); which is another problem in itself. So, now we have those typically not 'dedicated raiders' acquiring the 'play optimal or leave the party' mindset simply because they want to actually kill the boss.

The specific issue of tank accessories would be simple to fix; make it so accessories are class locked, forcing tanks to wear VIT. It would solve your current problem, but I guarantee you it would just shift blame elsewhere as the underlying 'problem' (I don't consider it a problem per se) is still present. Somewhat hyperbolic examples; 'Dragoon why are you wearing this piece of gear, you're 23 points over the acc cap for this turn', 'White Mage, why did you only cast four stones instead of five?', 'WAR why did you only get two Fell Cleaves inside of Berserk instead of three?'. So and so forth.

[Shining_Tiger_Excalibur]

I -hate- this feeling of having to make specific tradeoffs and how potentially judgemental the community can be. It's a no-win situation.

They'll love you in either stance (it's duty finder, ya' know,) since you're practically set up to do As1, 2 and 3 if you grab all the left side equipment you can as you climb the floors. As it stands with my setup (I don't even have one crafted accessory,) I can do a dungeon and still hold my own against dps that outgear me by a healthy margin. Just today, in fact, there was a bard in Fractal with four 210 pieces on (2 left, 2 right I believe,) that I had to go up against. I immediately noticed since their hp was over 13.8k compared to my 15.2k and took that as my signal to only be in Sword Oath for Bosses; while in Sword Oath for bosses he came extremely close to yanking hate from me on the first and second (somewhere in the realm of 95-98% of my aggro bar.) The player was, however, more than likely tip toeing around my equipment predicament because on the last boss he showed me what he was packing by stealing hate from me directly after a Flight or Fight+Shield Lob starter while in Shield Oath. I got aggro back from them on Savage Blade and the rest was a non-issue and went perfectly.

The point I'm trying to make is that the Bard knew and so did I concerning what we were in store for given the situation. And that's also what the majority of the player-base knows as well. They know we're tearing our hair out right now trying to be the best we can be and figuratively tripping over our own feet to do everything perfectly; ESPECIALLY if they're in these very forums and on youtube/twitch. We all hear and see things.

In the off chance that someone gives you sass, there's only two words you need to say---"I'm sorry." The ones that give you sass almost EXPECT you to fight back because more than likely people did the same with them. You haven't failed anyone because Lag happens, Real Life happens, and you can sure as hell bet the game can break sometimes. I was in a Syrcus Tower run, over half the raid wiped before Xande's Death Meteor touched the ground......it touched down and......nothing. Alliance chat went ballistic laughing with disbelief. We did die, but it happens.

[AnimaS]

There is no debate as to which is correct insofar as raiding content and high end instances warriors need STR, they dont need 25000 health........ if you didn't know that then you have only been doing daily roulette and trying to do the circus raids (24man )

[Kydi]

The issue as I see it stems from a lack of useful tanking stats. If tanks were forced to have "proper" stats, and as mentioned by someone earlier in the thread, bosses were virtually (or actually) untankable outside of tanking stance we wouldn't have the same issue as to whether tanks should be in VIT accessories or STR (which they can't roll on but do need at present).

I would agree with the earlier poster that there needs to be a shift to really change the focus on each role doing what they are designed to do. Tanks should be the only ones, in my opinion, who can stand in front of the boss, take a hit and not get dangerously low on health (notwithstanding attacks like blinding blade needing to be shared).


My suggestion in another thread was three specific tanking stats - Parry, Evasion and Resistance (general damage reduction and healing received increase). It would need a significant re-work of the tanking setup, and thus is very unlikely to ever happen, but I can dream. Each would have different scaling to differentiate the tanks - DRK for instance would want Parry to a soft cap and resistance, with the design being they mitigate many attacks, but have reasonable defence against ones which get through, WAR would go for Evasion, avoiding attacks as much as possible, but having a large HP pool and naturally increased healing from their stance to recover when they do get hit and PLD would go all out Resistance, minimising the amount of damage taken (per the idea that they are there as the defensive tank), but taking more hits as they would have low parry/evasion stats.

Couple this with overall increased single target damage from bosses (I would say an unmitigated auto attack be around 8,000) and increased damage reduction from tank stances (go to 40% and add 20% to WAR stance to make it viable on top of the healing+ it already has) it would mean that tanks needed to be tanks, not quasi-dps. Secondary stats would then mean that the overall damage was reduced to around 3,000 average per hit for a tank, or (with increased HP due to VIT stacking) approximately 1/6 of their total HP pool.

Like I said elsewhere, this is from an experienced MMO player, but not necessarily experienced FFXIV.

Edit: Alternatively, just make vitality worth something other than HP. If tank abilities scaled off it that would work, but perhaps instead think outside the box (and drive tanks away from this DPS>>>>>>everything thought process) to have it add passive damage resist, perhaps in the region of 1 point VIT = 0.01% damage resist. That would allow tanks with the current gear up to about 10% damage resist I think. That would allow healers to DPS more (to make up for the lack of extra tank dps) if required and would make VIT accessories desirable for tanks.

[MiniPrinny]

-snip-

The issue with implementing evasion as a stat is that it is very RNG-based and never really had a good place in any game and it always feels unbalanced.

As for the main thread, I made this suggestion in another thread, and I'll make it again here: Jewelry should be role-restricted, and fending jewelry, like fending armor, should have strength on it. This is really the biggest issue, our gear lacks what it needs, forcing us to take slaying equipment or overmeld normal jewelry, neither of which are very good options.

[AnimaS]

The issue with implementing evasion as a stat is that it is very RNG-based and never really had a good place in any game and it always feels unbalanced.

As for the main thread, I made this suggestion in another thread, and I'll make it again here: Jewelry should be role-restricted, and fending jewelry, like fending armor, should have strength on it. This is really the biggest issue, our gear lacks what it needs, forcing us to take slaying equipment or overmeld normal jewelry, neither of which are very good options.

this is why materia exists and crafted accessories.

[dspguy]

I think it makes tanking a lot more interesting since tanks are expected to deal damage. Tank and spank is boring. It makes our jobs a lot more dynamic and interesting. What sets apart a good tank from a great tank is that very thin line between eating tank busters while keeping maximum damage up on the boss.

My only VIT accessories complaint is that I'm technically #3 or #4 for slaying accessories in Savage. And VIT accessories will drop to the floor. Since IMO, I won't swap an i150 melded accessory for an i210 VIT accessory.

I think the playerbase is telling Square-Enix something: you want us to not use crafted accessories? How about making the raid dropped accessories come with STR+VIT on them. Instead of forcing VIT gear down our throats. Melded i150 gear is 29VIT/31STR. How about making a 40/40 i210 raid dropped ring?

And if SE is worried about unbalanced DPS with a little lower STR and high HP... make the rings tank only.

[MiniPrinny]

this is why materia exists and crafted accessories.

Clearly, this isn't the case. Otherwise SE wouldn't have gutted crafting across the board. And for many, this isn't an option, either due to lack of willpower (seriously, 5% chance to meld materia that costs thousands of gil?) or time (grinding gil, finding GSM that can craft the jewelry, making or waiting for more materia to appear, ect). Also, for when the next EX primal shows up in the DF with a minimum ilvl and you can't queue despite being the MT of your static because your ilvl is floating around 170, there is a problem.

[Trixxy]

Aesthetically Tanks get more "Robes" and Long "Coats" than Casters and Healers.

[ValkyrieL]

The only way to prevent tanks from using strength/crafting accessory on raid is for the tank buster to have a MAX hp requirements for each tank before mitigation/pots.

If that hp requirement is not met you will instantly die to tank buster regardless if stacking cd/holm/hallowed group.

Anyway I like crafting accessories, it's what I use.