Strength vs Vitality while leveling

[Alistaire]

STR all the way. There isn't a dungeon while levelling that even remotely requires a turtle tank. Do keep your gear up to date though. Defense >>>>>>>>>>>> VIT.

Nothing in a levelling dungeon will one-shot you unless it's something you should be able to dodge, so your survivability is ONLY a matter of if your healer can keep up, which defense will help you with, and VIT basically won't.

[Jpec07]

There isn't a dungeon while levelling that even remotely requires a turtle tank.

Stone Vigil would like a word. Show up to that in "up to date" STR gear from leveling, and you're gonna have a bad time. The extra VIT really helps.

Also, you should never rely on your healers being super crazy geared. Giving them as much wiggle room as possible ought to be best practice, especially while leveling (and if you'd tell a new healer who queued in leveling gear to "git gud", please leave this game right now and don't come back).

[Malicewolf]

Stone Vigil would like a word.

Have to agree here. I went into Stone Vigil NM with my fully geared tank and in large pulls, I was still experiencing a pretty harsh up and down on my hp. I ended up lagging a bit in a bigger pull and my god, when my connection came back, I was on the cusp of dying because of all the aery AoE's that hit me. However, I was in my full STR gear and did live, but I also wasn't in Shield Oath... (I forgot as I've been leveling NIN lately... ._.)

As for all the advice that's been coming in here. I will agree with the statement that up until lvl 50, the left side accessories won't be stacking high numbers by any means, but I will say, as I leveled, my PLD's STR stat was pretty much evenly rising up with my VIT stat. If you go full VIT, you will probably notice about 50-70 difference (in the stat attributes) pending your lvl at the time. There is no doubt you can go either way. As for which is "better", it's really user's preference. Both WILL work.

I think the best advice so far was really the combo rotations given earlier. But some advice to add to that combo. It works well when you do small mob pulls. It has a flaw if you pull bigger, or if your DPS aren't burning enemies quick enough. That is that your mana supply isn't unlimited. When you don't have tank stance to help you build aggro, it all of a sudden makes keeping hate (especially against AoE DPS) extremely hard. If you find you're MP is down to about 1/3 AND there's still too many enemies surrounding you (meaning you know you'll need more flashes), you'll want to abandon your RoH combo (unless you are VERY good at micro managing your hit rotations across all of them) and switch over to riot blade to upkeep your MP (and therefore your flashes). This should really only be the case though if you do larger pulls, your DPS aren't burning them quickly AND you do not have Shield Oath. Unfortunately, because Shield Oath is a lvl 40 for PLD, this combination can happen often if you are trying to speed run. If you simply don't do large pulls, you probably won't run into this scenario much though

[Merkava]

Stone Vigil would like a word. Show up to that in "up to date" STR gear from leveling, and you're gonna have a bad time. The extra VIT really helps.

Except it's not really, Stone Vigil is definitely a step up in terms of difficulty from previous dungeons but if a tank uses their cooldowns efficiently then you're going to be fine regardless of the stats you have.

At that point accessories are largely irrelevant since they offer, at most, 3-4 in a particular stat (and chances are you won't have the full right side). A few points in VIT isn't going to really make a difference as efficient tanking in FFXIV is all about proper cooldown usage (ie. use them, don’t just save them for the boss). Even during big pulls I would go full STR as the extra HP is rarely as huge of a deal as cooldowns, altho I'm not a big fan of big pulls as a PLD as they tend to last 2-3x longer than with a WAR or DRK due to abysmal AOE DPS (big pulls only get dangerous if they go on for too long).

Honestly, you can level all the way to 60 with full STR just fine. Of course, a person who is in the process of learning could always add some vit here and there but an experienced tank has very little use for it.

IMO, use 2-3 vit accessories (bonus stats and the other accs with STR) if you aren't confident and just add in full STR as you get more and more confident in your abilities.

Vit to HP ratio should at least DOUBLE if it ever wanted to remotely compete with STR…

[Rivxkobe]

Stone Vigil would like a word. Show up to that in "up to date" STR gear from leveling, and you're gonna have a bad time. The extra VIT really helps.

I disagree. I very recently did a full-run of Stone Vigil as Full-STR PLD and it was the smoothest run I have ever had of that godforsaken place.