Am I bad for actually "tanking"?

[Sapphidia]

The fact is that there is no justification whatsoever for Dps not being able to meet a check just because their MT is a Pld. That's a load of crap and is an excuse to cover up poor or lazy Dps. I agree with you that all of the party members should be contributing the best that they can. That includes the Tank. However, the tiny increase provided by a STR build should not be the deciding factor in whether or not your party meets a check.

I'm not going to say you're -wrong- here, but this is very much the opinion and attitude of someone who hasnt experienced Savage raiding when it first came out, and this is where most of the Str>Vit stuff has come from.

Back when Savage Alex was released, what you said was literally 100% False. DPS checks were so tight that actually having a paladin in the party WOULD mean your party failed the DPS checks. The "small" boost from being strength spec is actually about a 25% damage increase over an identically geared tank in vitality accessories. When that tank can put out maybe 80-90% of the damage of a pure DPSer by playing well, compared to a vitality paladin who'd struggle to do 30-40% the damage of a DPSer, the result was clear:

When it first came out, much of Savage Alex was -literally impossible- for a lot of groups running paladins and/or not optimising the DPS output of their tanks (A4S wasnt cleared with a paladin for ages after first kill, and whilst paladins were present on early A1/A3 kills, you can guarantee they were spending most time in sword oath and slaying accessories).

Now obviously gear has come along and people can do it, and these kind of DPS checks dont really exist in lower tier content. There's literally no reason a tank can't go pure vit spec in a 4 man and the run will probably be just as successful as a pure strength - provided the tank is good. When you're talking about lower tier content you're basically balancing threat/damage output and speed of the run vs.. a kind of cushion.

The issue is that on virtually all content where the DPS checks arent all that important (bar maybe Thordan Ex), the actual damage input isnt much either. If a tank can survive huge pulls in the Aboretum with 16k health, why would the tank use 22k health vitality spec? The backlash about bad tanks and bad healers is entirely due to this - you do not NEED the 22k health pool to tank 4 mans. Is it sliiiightly safer? Yes. But only an undergeared, bad or inexperienced healer would struggle to keep a 16k health tank alive on 4 man content, unless the tank themselves was bad. Of course, you don't NEED the extra damage from strength spec either, but you notice its effects more.

A pure vitality tank :

- does 25% less damage (aand threat) than a pure Strength tank
- requires exactly the same healing input as a pure Strength tank, if not more due to less self healing from Bloodbath/Abyssal/Souleater
- can survive maybe 1-2 second longer on big pulls without a heal if the healer is slow/bad/DCs

This is the problem. Vitality Spec seems tankier due to the much larger health pool, but in reality all that health pool is doing is giving you a buffer for mistakes. That's fine, if you want the buffer. But you shouldnt NEED the buffer, and anyone who does is unfortunately going to be tarred with the brush of being inexperienced or bad (either the tank or the healer). If you're doing Duty Finder and don't know who your healer is, then by all means mix in some extra Vitality just in case, of course. It's all about a balance.

A tank who only runs pure vitality spec and full fending accessories on ALL content, whether it's easy or hard, is just a BAD TANK, period.

Though likewise, a tank who only ever runs pure strength spec and full slaying accessories on ALL content, even when undergeared,including the stuff that can oneshot them if they dont have a big enough buffer, or when the healer is incredibly undergeared or laggy in a DF party... that tank is bad too.

Good tanks are the ones that truly understand what Strength and Vitality do for their class on an encounter-by-encounter basis and adapt their gear and build to the situation. It's just that when you overgear content, pure strength and full slaying is almost always the best choice as an option.