Live Letter 3.2 tank changes, vit effects tank attack

[PArcher]

I'm fully expecting bosses to do a *lot* more damage than they are now.

Right now, my base HP in full VIT is 21,515. Defiance gives me 26,893. Full i210, no party buff or food.

This much HP basically allows you to ignore all the tank-busters in Gordias Savage right now, or you use one cool-down (note: Thrill of Battle gives me over 32K HP. Hypercompressed Plasma is around a 25K-27K hit on a WAR. Yeah. Heck, even just a Stoneskin or Adlo with this HP is enough to survive...)


This will also make healing tougher and more important. Heal potency isn't going to change a lot, but with more damage going out on tanks...less time for heal DPS. At the very least, solo-healing should be a real challenge until things are on farm.

[Alahra]

I'm fully expecting bosses to do a *lot* more damage than they are now.

Part of me isn't sure we'll see a significant increase in boss damage. I have to assume that they tuned Gordias Savage with a baseline of Fending accessories for tanks, which suggests at least a bit that they expected/wanted tanks to have bigger HP pools relative to the tank buster damage in the first place.

I do still lean toward the idea that we'll see damage increase somewhat, but I can also reasonably see why the damage may not change, proportionately.

[PArcher]

Part of me isn't sure we'll see a significant increase in boss damage. I have to assume that they tuned Gordias Savage with a baseline of Fending accessories for tanks, which suggests at least a bit that they expected/wanted tanks to have bigger HP pools relative to the tank buster damage in the first place.

I do still lean toward the idea that we'll see damage increase somewhat, but I can also reasonably see why the damage may not change, proportionately.

IDK. With the DPS checks they had, I'm sure they were at least expecting melded accessories, or a mix of STR and VIT (rather than the 1 melded/4 STR or full STR we use now). The tank busters were also just *easy* to mitigate in DPS stance (except for a couple in A4S, and once you got past 2 stacks in A3S. I mean, you have Vengeance and Thrill up for every Plasma in A1S; too easy), and when I'm topped off in defiance for the missiles in A4S I don't *need* to use cooldowns at all (they do about 13-15K unmitigated. Yes, I still try to have something up because healers are always busy in that fight, and my WHM has no problems with letting me die to stupid)

Sure someone mentioned it already, but the tank-busters in Coil were real tank busters. You had to have full VIT, use cooldowns, and have Stoneskin and Adlo to survive some of them while progressing. That's the kind of thing we need again.

[Alahra]

IDK. With the DPS checks they had, I'm sure they were at least expecting melded accessories, or a mix of STR and VIT (rather than the 1 melded/4 STR or full STR we use now).

The main reason I don't think this to be the case is that they didn't change anything about tank loot priority, though. They had a natural progression curve in mind and tanks were still unable to Need on Slaying gear, so I'd imagine they did their testing assuming that tanks would be taking the accessories that were what they had Need access to. If they had really intended for tanks to use Slaying accessories in any capacity, they probably would have also changed loot priorities in general. Given that they specifically mentioned not wanting pentamelds to feel like they were required back when they announced changes to tank damage were coming, I also rather doubt they balanced around them specifically, either.

[PArcher]

Given that they specifically mentioned not wanting pentamelds to feel like they were required back when they announced changes to tank damage were coming, I also rather doubt they balanced around them specifically, either.

I don't recall them saying that about the tank changes, but them saying it was unfair that tanks were basically *forced* to use pentas because of the dual stat nature of tanking. No other job needed to have two stats to be at top performance for progression, and they wanted to get rid of that.
Overmelding is actually being encouraged in 3.2 with all the new crafted gear and accessories coming out.

The main reason I don't think this to be the case is that they didn't change anything about tank loot priority, though. They had a natural progression curve in mind and tanks were still unable to Need on Slaying gear, so I'd imagine they did their testing assuming that tanks would be taking the accessories that were what they had Need access to. If they had really intended for tanks to use Slaying accessories in any capacity, they probably would have also changed loot priorities in general.

As for the drops, if you did BCoB progression, you'd remember there were *two* sets of slaying accessories; Maiming and Striking (same for Darklight gear actually. Oddly enough, Slaying accessories existed in 2.0, with the Myth gear; guess they felt that two sets would have been way too stressful on the 300/week tome cap). Yes, DRG could need on one, MNK on the other. And yes, DRG and MNK needed both Maiming and Striking accessories for BiS (and yes, there was a lot of crying when some random BRD won the Maiming accessory the MNK needed). They fixed that in 2.1, with Slaying accessories dropping from the EX Primals, and never using separate accessories again.

[Alahra]

I don't recall them saying that about the tank changes, but them saying it was unfair that tanks were basically *forced* to use pentas because of the dual stat nature of tanking.

Regardless of the exact wording, their general intent is the same, so why would they balance around something they didn't want to force people to do? If they didn't want to force people to use Pentamelds, why would they have assumed the usage of Pentamelds in testing?

As for the drops, if you did BCoB progression, you'd remember there were *two* sets of slaying accessories; Maiming and Striking (same for Darklight gear actually. (...) They fixed that in 2.1, with Slaying accessories dropping from the EX Primals, and never using separate accessories again.

I do remember, and their fixing of that is precisely why I don't think they would have assumed tanks were using Slaying accessories in Alexander. Fending accessories had never been so reviled as they have been post-3.0, though (as you mentioned earlier, Fending was much more useful throughout Coil—Slaying used to be something you did after you geared up, not something you did during progression), so they probably didn't see the necessity to fix the tank accessory conundrum until more recently.

It's also always been rather clear that the developers place far less emphasis on secondary stats than we do as a community, so they probably did their testing in BCOB assuming that DRGs and MNKs were using their respective Maiming and Striking sets for accessories. In their eyes, the secondaries are equal in value (and honestly back then, the difference between Maiming right side and Striking right side would have been small enough to have had no appreciable effect on encounter balance).

[PArcher]

I do remember, and their fixing of that is precisely why I don't think they would have assumed tanks were using Slaying accessories in Alexander. Fending accessories had never been so reviled as they have been post-3.0, though (as you mentioned earlier, Fending was much more useful throughout Coil—Slaying used to be something you did after you geared up, not something you did during progression), so they probably didn't see the necessity to fix the tank accessory conundrum until more recently.

The problem was they tuned fights for DPS checks, not tank checks. Like I said earlier, its *easy* to mitigate most tank busters in full STR (or using STR and 1 penta) in DPS stance. That's with 200+, but during real progression (<i200) tanks used pentas because they were just too good.

Lack of good tank busters = no need for Fending accessories.

Simply put, they balanced Gordias wrong. And Fending accs were useless.