What they mean by "change the damage calculations of tanks"?

[Alahra]

Pretty sure it's a lot more simple than you're thinking it is.

That's not actually what I'm referring to. Stat values on gear are likely automated by certain baselines that are assigned based on the item's slot, and one of the things that I'm assuming is one of those baselines is that left-side gear has two main stats. Now, that may very well not be true, which would make future tank left-side gear with only VIT on it not an issue. However, I do suspect it's the case, especially when it comes to Aetherial stuff, and the fewer "exceptions" that need to be made when the server is generating random gear, the better, in terms of coding structure. Since Aetherial gear is going to presumably be a bigger part of the game from here on out with Exploratory Missions, the more of the itemization formulas they can apply to all classes, the better.

[Cynric]

snip

Well there are quite a few exceptions to the rules of itemization that may or may not exist already inside the game. Of course there's the most obvious which is Previous Mnk/Nin gear, then there's leveling gear which can hold more than one main stat while holding multiple secondaries as well. There's also the field commander coat from sieze mode which has all 6 primary stats on it as well as the lightning strikes event gear, then further on there's pvp gear holding morale, event gear having a resistance + on it. The stats on gear isn't exactly black and white as it is.

As for the new pink gear coming from exploratory missions I don't really have much to say about that one right now as we don't know the full details on how random the stats will be. It is an exciting thought but we'll see how it's handled.

[Alahra]

The stats on gear isn't exactly black and white as it is.

You're right on that account, and I actually do remember now that there are at least some examples of level 5ish gear that only have one main stat (though Aetherial gear itself doesn't show up until 15, if I remember correctly). So that difficulty may not be there as I thought.

I still suspect they'll go with a STR/VIT split for thematic reasons, but I was wrong about NIN being primary STR back in the day too, so I don't know that I'd bet on it given that I'd forgotten about the existence of other single-main stat gear.

[Cynric]

snip.

Don't feel too bad I thought they'd go with STR for ninja too but I wasn't surprised by the choice of dex either. I was in the camp of it being either one not really mattering in the long run. I honestly don't see them doing a split for a few reasons. Not that I would mind however, if they go for any kind of split we'll just stack the stat with more impact. So if they make it vit we'll stack vit, if they make it str , we'll continue to stack str. There's also the mindset they seem to have of keeping things as simple as possible, which to me means they'd try to keep it concentrated in one stat. Not to mention they're trying to do away with tanks melding primary stats, if they were to make it a split, melding would just be more potent not less potent.

Of course this is all my opinion, it's really hard to speculate what they could be doing with how vague they were.