Four Ways to Die - why the Tank Meta feels "off".

[Alahra]

More HP doesn't make it easier to heal. Mitigation stats (DEF/MDEF) make it easier to heal.

Not this old canard again. Having more HP does decrease the burden of healing, assuming a rhythm in which the healer caps off the tank and then does something else (usually DPSing). A higher HP total means the healer has more time for other tasks, whether DPSing, avoiding mechanics, or healing other members of the party before needing to refocus attention on tank healing. That makes the healer's job (healing) easier.

Even if you increase the incoming damage by some arbitrary amount, tanks will still find the minimum HP required to survive.

It's still possible for the minimum HP to be set too low (which seems to be the case for HW so far in comparison to raiding in ARR). It's one thing for tanks to start focusing more on offense as their gear, their healers' gear, and group familiarity with a given encounter all increase. It's another for offense to be the focus from day one.

[Deezee]

Not this old canard again. Having more HP does decrease the burden of healing, assuming a rhythm in which the healer caps off the tank and then does something else (usually DPSing). A higher HP total means the healer has more time for other tasks, whether DPSing, avoiding mechanics, or healing other members of the party before needing to refocus attention on tank healing. That makes the healer's job (healing) easier.

"This old canard?" A cure hits me for about 4k hp right now. In order to give a healer even one extra GCD to dps, I'd then need to have 4000 more HP, right? Anything less and there's a chance I could die. I'm already running melded accessories and STR spec; even if I spec'd full vit and had BiS 210 fending accessories (which I couldn't just do overnight due to not having the drops, pages, esos and gobcoats to obtain them) - I don't think it's even possible for me to have 4000 more HP.

And even if I did that, that gives a healer all of what, exactly? One extra GCD for a stone 3 that could miss in savage? Meanwhile, I lose how much STR and how much damage on every single one of my GCDs?

That's why VIT isn't a trade off and why the STR meta is a no brainer.

[Alahra]

That's why VIT isn't a trade off and why the STR meta is a no brainer.

I never said VIT was better than STR, but the viewpoint that having more VIT doesn't impact healing difficulty is something I've seen on these forums many times. That's objectively untrue. Now, is the amount by which VIT eases things for the healer enough to justify *not* going STR? Presently, no, as the content simply doesn't require much VIT at all and it *does* require a lot of DPS.

And as an aside, you're also underestimating how much HP VIT actually provides (which is also common whenever someone says VIT doesn't help the healer). On my DRK, I go from 12796 HP with STR accessories to 16240 just with i170 Fending. That's almost 4k right there (and I'm not VIT spec'd either). Surely i190 or i200 Fending accessories would provide more.

[Deezee]

And as an aside, you're also underestimating how much HP VIT actually provides (which is also common whenever someone says VIT doesn't help the healer). On my DRK, I go from 12796 HP with STR accessories to 16240 just with i170 Fending. That's almost 4k right there (and I'm not VIT spec'd either). Surely i190 or i200 Fending accessories would provide more.

I'd gain 129 VIT if I swapped (4 melds and 1 210 slaying); I'd lose 171 STR in the process. I just swapped 35 STR to 35 vit to test, and I went from 16609 HP to 17326. (717 HP gain divided by 35 equates to about 20.5 HP per vit.) I'd gain 2644.5 HP (3361.5 if I swapped from STR stats to VIT stats, but then I'd be losing 206 STR compared to what I'm currently running) over what I had if I had BiS 210 fending, which isn't even enough to free up a single GCD.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I'd gain 129 VIT if I swapped (4 melds and 1 210 slaying); I'd lose 171 STR in the process. I just swapped 35 STR to 35 vit to test, and I went from 16609 HP to 17326. (717 HP gain divided by 35 equates to about 20.5 HP per vit.) I'd gain 2644.5 HP (3361.5 if I swapped from STR stats to VIT stats, but then I'd be losing 206 STR compared to what I'm currently running) over what I had if I had BiS 210 fending, which isn't even enough to free up a single GCD.

Going off of i150 crafted Vit/Str Accessories makes a mess of things.

The gap between Full Fending and Full Slaying at i210 is roughly 5k HP (20695 vs 15672 for a Midlander with Vit 35).

[karateorangutang]

Going off of i150 crafted Vit/Str Accessories makes a mess of things.

The gap between Full Fending and Full Slaying at i210 is roughly 5k HP (20695 vs 15672 for a Midlander with Vit 35).

I'm not a progression raider by any means, but isnt the line in the sand around 16 k hp to keep yourself safe from tank-buster land?

[Deezee]

I'm not a progression raider by any means, but isnt the line in the sand around 16 k hp to keep yourself safe from tank-buster land?

16k-17k for the MT on A3S is the wisdom of the day, yes.

[Ralvenom]

As a (former) Prot Warrior whose class was ruined by Active Mitigation, I am intimately familiar with it. WARs have it, DRKs have it (a little less), and PLD doesn't really have it at all. It is a design that works for some classes/jobs, and for WAR and DRK, I think it functions very well.

But the point is that they aren't using it.

Apparently, you went and forgot how it works. Or you hated how it worked for prot warrior (and therefore didn't understand how to use it for prot warrior). Either way, there is no active mitigation for warriors or dark knights in this game. If you think there is, you need to go back to WoW and play a Monk, Blood DK, or Prot Paladin sometime.

inb4 you try to tell me Inner Beast is active mitigation...It's not. Sorry. Not the way SE implemented it to work.

Not this old canard again. Having more HP does decrease the burden of healing, assuming a rhythm in which the healer caps off the tank and then does something else (usually DPSing). A higher HP total means the healer has more time for other tasks, whether DPSing, avoiding mechanics, or healing other members of the party before needing to refocus attention on tank healing. That makes the healer's job (healing) easier.

That's not how that works. It NEVER even works that way in MMORPGs where all healers do is heal (like WoW). Unless the meta was changed so that having a massive health pool was all tanks did (in which case, healers would have to have infinitely regenerating mana pools), then there's literally no reason for increasing vit over increasing str. All it does is make you a sponge that soaks up the healer's mana.
Don't believe me? Ask a healer how fun it is to heal a full vit tank in any savage run. Their answer? It's not fun at all.

On my DRK, I go from 12796 HP with STR accessories to 16240 just with i170 Fending. That's almost 4k right there (and I'm not VIT spec'd either). Surely i190 or i200 Fending accessories would provide more.

Wow...good for you. Talk about vit when you actually are in i190, i200, & i210 gear. You know, the gear people use to tank Savage in...

[SpookyGhost]

inb4 you try to tell me Inner Beast is active mitigation...It's not. Sorry. Not the way SE implemented it to work.

It's as close to active mitigation as you can get in this game. If tank stance is actually required, it can generally mitigate every cleave a boss will throw at you. While not actively mitigating all damage, it does mitigate something universally outside of tank busters, which is generally missing from the other tanks (outside of using the extended length of a CD to clip cleaves). It's also affected by GCDs, as nearly every GCD you use as a WAR gives you a stack of Wrath/Abandon and it used to be that fights were tuned tight enough that every GCD mattered. A prime example would be early T11 or early T13 WAR MT. You can even look at something as early as 2.1 WAR T5 MT. Now, instead of our mitigation coming from GCD to GCD, we're concentrating on our damage (which also comes from GCD to GCD).

In contrast, active mitigation gives tanks abilities that are used frequently, but affect their long-term survival in borderline fights. A skilled tank is the one who continuously makes choices that reduce the amount of damage they take, or reduce the amount of mana healers spend upon them and the raid. Unskilled tanks given the same abilities will use them at the "wrong" time, or at suboptimal moments that place a larger load on the healers and the rest of the raid, and can lead to a wipe on progression content.

- http://wow.gamepedia.com/Active_Mitigation

So while IB and WAR's whole mechanic system isn't spot on for Active Mitigation, it is about as similar as you're going to get in this game, and I kinda wish the other tanks had followed in a similar line to allow for more engaging tanking fights since atm every fight needs to be tuned so that all tanks can tank it.

[Ralvenom]

So while IB and WAR's whole mechanic system isn't spot on for Active Mitigation, it is about as similar as you're going to get in this game,

I think the phrase "Close but no cigar" applies here...

and I kinda wish the other tanks had followed in a similar line to allow for more engaging tanking fights since atm every fight needs to be tuned so that all tanks can tank it.

So, you want homogenization, which ruins that "class expectation fantasy"? Nah, had that in WoW; it sucked. It ruins all the uniqueness of a class.