Live Letter 3.2 tank changes, vit effects tank attack

[Hayward]

From a tank viewpoint: This is well. All the better if this makes securing enmity easier.

Paladin viewpoint: I wonder what SE is planning. Waiting and seeing.

Healer viewpoint: The less often HP drops like a stone, the better. I can't say that Leeroy Jenkins is dead, but he may be less active.

[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.

[azlewood]

good grief dumb'n down the game again, Talos forbid that someone doesn't use the cookie cutouts. all the gear that has str is now trash, no variance allowed. hopefully they will do sweeping change to all gear and remove Str and add Vit, then i guess the gear names like Duelist,and Slaying are out the door.

[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).

[Kaurie]

Was kinda waiting for this. I'm a main healer and I sometimes hated having to heal str tanks cus they are so squishy! A the same time this feature provided a challenge, and I love healing challenges :3 So We'll see how this turns out

Just a heads up, having more VIT didn't mean you'd take less damage. A VIT and a STR tank are the same levels of squishy, but a STR tank will actually kill the enemy faster, and take less damage accordingly. A VIT tank just means you need to cast more cures/benefics/physicks to top them off.

From my perspective, tanks were the only ones who got to actually choose more than one stat to use, and this added some variety and customization. Instead of adding this to other jobs, they've just removed it from the one role that did have it. I'd personally rather see all stats affect all jobs. Make STR increase CRIT chance, make DEX increase accuracy, make MND/INT affect SK/SPS etc.. Then maybe a SCH would throw on some STR accessories to get those adlo crits, or a WHM would use DEX to get accuracy capped etc.

[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.

[Katana190]

So... Food will directly affect our main stat now? Food gives direct vit but no other primary stat. Inb4 food to directly give HP instead of vit :<
Note: Maybe someone mentioned this? Not enough time to read the whole thread D:

[Seraphix2407]

As a healer I'm pretty meh about it. I liked the current tank meta with str tanks and vit tanks. It made healing more exciting for me. In dungeons I would push myself to see how much DPS I could churn out before needing to turn off cleric stance and heal. Now dungeons are going to be even more of a bore.

I like this reply, and I mean A LOT! A bit challenge is always nice and like you said, not it wont be the same anymore. I actually loved using str on my tank too, needed to be aware of my cds more and needed to be better at handling things on big pulls, which alot of people who tried str setup failed at as well, not everyone could handle their cd's proppelly, now you barely need to focus on that, due to the high hp. Unless when you are in savage or other raid content that has big busters.

And nothing of value was lost. Thanks, dev team. Maybe I'll try tanking more with 3.2 making it actually *about tanking* a bit more.

It won't be more about tanking, because you have higher hp. Tanking is when and how to use cd's, hell even faster fights makes less mechanics which will be easier on healer and rest of the team.
The problem when a lot of people using str, they weren't good on using their cd's or the healer wasn't good enough, ive been in parties where both were dpsing and tank was in str gear, so fast. My record was almost 9:30 min neverreap with drg and ninja and me as warrior in str build and healer was dpsing alot. Maybe people done it faster but, without that much aoe as blm and smn has, I was pretty impressed. Now you try this with full vit tank and a dps who wont dps as much. I'm not going to tell you to dps if you don't want to, nor do I expect a tank to do a alot, but if I can get players who can, then why not. But I agree, there was too much focusing on tanking doing dps too, but that was because of the a3 and a4.

[HorseBoots]

Snip.

Even if that was the case. You still get more VIT than STR on equal ilvl accessories. For example, Gordian accessories give 49 VIT vs 47 STR. So going off your example you would get 1 whole point extra from Fending vs Slaying, on top of the larger HP pool. Even going off the thought that you can still meld primary stats on raid gear when that also comes in 3.2 it would still be stronger to wear fending and meld your one STR materia than to wear Slaying and meld VIT.

The purpose of adding materia slots to blue gear is two-fold. For one it is being in place to make it so that raid gear will always be the defacto strongest gear, which soften the blow on easy to access Diadem gear, as it will not be meldable. The second is to make it so that tanks don't feel the need to buy crafted gear to be on the cutting edge. Now, Crafted gear is going to be treated as a faster alternative to hit those benchmarks in progression but the poor are still free to just do what they can with their tombstone and raid gear they get every week until they can cross the next stat hurdle.