Crafted accessories are an issue.

[Tyrial]

Thrillhouse of Battle and Divine Veil are directly tied to VIT. Mercy Stroke and Sole Survivor too, technically.

Don't nerf crafted, buff Fending. Give it real (and strong) mitigation or some kind of group damage bonus or SOMETHING.

I forgot about Divine Veil. Mercy stroke doesn't count as the chances of you actually hitting it outside of solo play is slim to none. On the off chance that you do land it, having more STR increases the chances that your MS is the killing blow.

Hmm. This still doesn't really say anything. You're essentially just reiterating that we wear STR gear b/c its more efficient, not necessarily because its what is intended from a design PoV; these two concepts are not the same. It has everything to do with how we want to play, otherwise you'd never see people clearing on VIT gear (this does happen albeit like a month later). Your statements actually indirectly state that tanks are not tanks but DPS as you imply that a tanks primary stat would be not a stat that modifies mitigation but one that modifies their DPS, and 99% of the meta would agree, which I find so bizarre even though I fully go along with the trend because I want to clear content quickly in my relatively limited raid-time. I'm not criticizing you, just pointing out a flaw in the game really. It would make so much more sense to scale DPS checks and enmity generation to tanks wearing tank gear while having STR be a secondary stat (not literally like det or crit but secondary to VIT or whatever mitigation stat). Enmity modifiers should be scaled with a tank DPS ceiling relative to DPS DPS ceiling, and enrages should be designed accordingly, if they wanted to make VIT accessories viable. But for some reason we have this awkward choice to make that no other job has, and there's this awkward loophole in the design wherein developers have allowed us to get away with gearing our tanks like DPS and retaining all of the necessary mitigation to clear content, which could be seen as cheesing said content by bringing far more DPS to it than the basic outline of the jobs and their gear suggests is intended.

It really does feel like cheesing it, does anyone else feel this way? I'm wearing gear I can't need on, and scoffing every time I see my own gear, because of the massive gap between the two in terms of facilitating my progression in content. It literally makes Savage raids like midcore raids. Look at it this way: if you think Savage is Savage in DPS gear, imagine trying to clear it in tank gear. Does anyone else wonder if this is what they intended? It can't be cause like, then why can't I need on STR gear? If the fundamental mechanics of what jobs use what gear in the game dictates x but my subjective experience behind the scences observing what is efficient dictates y, as far as what gear I SHOULD wear if I want to beat xyz boss with my group, then why is this not acknowledged at some point? Its as if they're saying to us "Tanks, you're supposed to use tank gear... but uhh... off the record... you need to use DPS gear..."

Again, there's also this bizarre discrepancy in which the gear a tank chooses to wear, based on their interpretation of what their job is designed to do which as I've said, can be argued to be subjective, affects progression, while being independent of player skill. As much as we like to tease VIT tanks, as I've also said, its a logical fallacy to assume that because a tank has clicked different gear onto his/her character (and not like, gatherer gear, gear that is within reason to be wearing- you're a tank) that they are somehow less skilled at playing the job. Playing your job is muscle memory, control, hand eye coordination, and reactionary play using your tools. Its the same in vit gear as it is in str. So what we have is a school of tanks that can be every bit as skilled as the other, that cannot clear content as fast (or maybe they aren't as interested in doing so, but still would like to eventually) because they are wearing the gear of their job and not the gear of another job. And nowhere is it stated that this is intended and tanks are directly mislead to equipping inefficient gear! "This is fending, you wear this, you are tank" "Uh bro don't listen to THE GAME it doesn't know what its talking about. Wear this. But uh.... you can't roll need on it. You can't roll need on any accessory that is useful to you." Wat.

Still, I wonder what the devs are thinking. Has Yoshi P or anyone on the dev team ever been asked point blank why, yeah, every job in the game can equip any accessories but that tanks are literally the only ones that not only benefit from equipping another job's gear but suffer in progression from equipping their own? I'd really love to know his response if this has been asked, and if it hasn't, wow, how the hell is that possible.

At the end of the day, I'm really just trying to imagine exactly how the dev team intends us to play this game, and our jobs. Cause it seems to be the big mystery.

Right, I understand what you're saying completely and don't disagree. But my point is that we're getting mixed signals from what we're given.

We can only roll need on VIT stuff, but almost everything we do is greatly impacted by STR. That's without looking at the increased damage it allows us to deal. We have no true mitigation stat which is another huge issue. People might say Parry, but Parry is a joke on just about everything outside of dungeon trash pulls.

So if the Devs intended us to have VIT as our primary stat why doesn't it do anything for us besides give us a bloated HP pool? It offers no mitigation, doesn't help increase the effectiveness of the majority of our skills and our enmity generation/damage potential isn't modified by it.

Every other role in the game gets direct benefit from their primary stat and doesn't have to look elsewhere to get the stats that they actually need to be efficient.

Again, I'm not looking at this from an "I'm a WAR and I like my big numbers" point of view. I just find it aggravating that we're the only role that has to get special things to perform efficiently.