Live Letter 3.2 tank changes, vit effects tank attack

[StouterTaru]

soo there's no point in customization?

When the biggest customization in the game (besides glamour) is trading max HP for damage, customization is pretty much dead. They might as well just remove stats and just do a generic ilvl for everything.

[RecklessLion]

These "custom builds" ended in era of second coil, since that its always been same STR focused build, also i didnt know doing 3 gearsets is challenge... I think STR might endup being our new best secondary stat instead crit/det, so with new materia slots it means more customization for tanks and other jobs aswell.

Have you seen or play with some the str tank? It like taking a drawing out of a hat. Today this one sucks, this one is only good because healer is good, this run omg he/she is amazing perfect stance and aggro, this one two mins into the run and we're already dead 5 times.......the list of random styles goes on for days. But I guess safe play is better overall.

[StouterTaru]

Have you seen or play with some the str tank? It like taking a drawing out of a hat. Today this one sucks, this one is only good because healer is good, this run omg he/she is amazing perfect stance and aggro, this one two mins into the run and we're already dead 5 times.......the list of random styles goes on for days. But I guess safe play is better overall.

That's not exclusive to STR tanks, and 3.2 won't make bad tanks not bad. At best, some of them might be less bad.

[AylmerOfFamfrit]

My guess is that the vit calculation will be lower than what people have been achieving with their str sets/melds but ima try to remain positive..

Gonna really miss my huge fel cleave crits if this somehow turns into a nerf.

Be funny if the vit calculation was actually higher but my guess is either the same as str was or lower still.

What I got from the notes is that Vit will be a main modifier and str will be a reduced secondary modifier. So it could still be great for WARs.

[RiisWolf]

It makes me happy. No more squishy tanks by low HP. No more pitiful non-threating dark knights! Building defense will in NO way negatively affects tank in hideous ways, namely a lack of threat due to a lack of power. No more disjointing CDs where one does better with high HP, but most others are powered by attack power. Stoneskin and Divine Veil will do more. Savage Tanks will be more capable of taking a hit, and this is a DPS boon.

Good thing the patch is a bit off cause I got 2 STR accessories to replace. And then I can finally run about with 32K~36K HP much more often as I have always wanted. (yes balancing vit, threat, other things relying on attack power got in way of that.)

[AlexiIvaniskavich]

It makes me happy. No more squishy tanks by low HP. No more pitiful non-threating dark knights! Building defense will in NO way negatively affects tank in hideous ways, namely a lack of threat due to a lack of power. No more disjointing CDs where one does better with high HP, but most others are powered by attack power. Stoneskin and Divine Veil will do more. Savage Tanks will be more capable of taking a hit, and this is a DPS boon.

Good thing the patch is a bit off cause I got 2 STR accessories to replace. And then I can finally run about with 32K~36K HP much more often as I have always wanted. (yes balancing vit, threat, other things relying on attack power got in way of that.)

BUT..... Fending accessories never had defense.. (why do people keep saying this?)
Divine veil - TBH an extra 500 hp shield on me isn't that big of a deal, it does mean more for the party which is quite nice.
Stoneskin..... really? again, 500 hp is a miniscule adjustment (but yes, something is something)

Squishy tanks are tanks that don't mitigate properly - never mattered if they were str or vit. A good healer could handle either type of tank that mitigated properly. Hell, I can heal and handle those types of tanks....

My biggest fear within all of this: I cringe when I watch today's VIT tanks mitigate tank busters using their weakest defensive CD. They do it because they have soooo much health, they don't have to think about what they are actually doing, Mongo just push buttons. Unless SE just simply doesn't tune fights to put out enough damage, these types of tanks are going to get wrecked, because they don't bother to learn how to mitigate properly.

[Raineer]

My biggest fear within all of this: I cringe when I watch today's VIT tanks mitigate tank busters using their weakest defensive CD. They do it because they have soooo much health, they don't have to think about what they are actually doing

This is a good point. It's analogous to WoW when TBC came out. Everyone used bears because they were the only ones with large enough health pools to survive tank busters (if you were really pushing content) - but healers would OOM trying to fill the giant bars. The same thing could happen here - and it will because bad tanks will still be bad.

As a tank, I welcome the adjustment if only to stop the whining from the other classes if you haven't gone all VIT. Now I'll be all VIT and hopefully that will be the build that also maximizes my DPS. Since SE decided to add so many DPS checks, more DPS matters - which was the point of the STR movement in the first place.

[Jpec07]

This is a good point. It's analogous to WoW when TBC came out. Everyone used bears because they were the only ones with large enough health pools to survive tank busters (if you were really pushing content) - but healers would OOM trying to fill the giant bars. The same thing could happen here - and it will because bad tanks will still be bad.

As a tank, I welcome the adjustment if only to stop the whining from the other classes if you haven't gone all VIT. Now I'll be all VIT and hopefully that will be the build that also maximizes my DPS. Since SE decided to add so many DPS checks, more DPS matters - which was the point of the STR movement in the first place.

I'm not sure how it's a good point? Damage goes out much more slowly in this game that it's okay for healers to be smart and refill the tank's HP more slowly. In fact, everything I've read about healing in FFXIV suggests not trying to keep everybody topped off. Big cooldowns should be used for tankbusters, yes, but having a bigger HP pool means you don't have to stack them, and can use the weaker ones more rotationally to help mitigate some of the lesser damage even more than you could have before (which might consequently enable tanks to spend more time out of their tank stances, which means even more DPS, so yay).

EDIT: Also, it is possible that the decreased need to stack huge cooldowns will lead to a situation where one tank could mitigate most of the tankbusters, possibly leading to easier solo-tanking strats, or at least fewer tank swaps.

[Istede]

I did not do any Coil progression, but I'm not aware of any tankbuster in this game where VIT accs allow you to save a cooldown. A tank with 15k HP and a tank with 21k HP can use the same cooldown and survive a TB, the 15k tank doesn't need to use two CDs. If a tank does need to use two CDs, the incoming damage is enough to squash them whether they have 17k or 27k HP. The difference is that the tank wearing VIT accs may be able to live through an auto-attack crit, or a couple auto-attacks/low damage attacks after the TB if the healer is slow on the draw, whereas the tank with 15k HP is probably dead if the healer messes up, even if he lives through the TB. In both cases, proper healing renders the wearing of VIT accs moot.

That's been my experience as a healer anyway. I don't see these changes affecting that at all. Boss damage will be proportionally increased, and the tank DPS meta will remain in place.

[AlexiIvaniskavich]

... Big cooldowns should be used for tankbusters, yes, but having a bigger HP pool means you don't have to stack them, and can use the weaker ones more rotationally to help mitigate some of the lesser damage even more than you could have before (which might consequently enable tanks to spend more time out of their tank stances, which means even more DPS, so yay).....

Well, my point was that there are tanks with ridiculous HP pools who mitigate the big hits with only the little cooldowns. *Foresight is a little cooldown

@istede
go check a couple of PLD pov Thordan EX clears on youtube. Last time I looked at the top results, most of those tanks had 20k (ish) health and would mitigate Heavenly Heel with only foresight ( and on some - holy blade dance). Their HP would go from 21k to under 4-5K, which would mean death to a STR build (damage totalling 16-17k hp). Of course on a VIT build with a better mitigation rotation, they would have gone from 21k to 11k health (I go 16 to 6 - ish).