Live Letter 3.2 tank changes, vit effects tank attack

[Tsilyi]

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.

I believe that come next patch they have said mainstat will no longer be allowed in melding (str/dex/int/mnd/vit/pie).

[Arkenne]

I believe that come next patch they have said mainstat will no longer be allowed in melding (str/dex/int/mnd/vit/pie).

The ban is on overmelds.

[Istede]

@Alex

You can correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that you are saying that a VIT build allows for a suboptimal mitigation rotation in Thordan. What is the benefit of taking a heel with only foresight? I can't think of any part of that fight where I would breathe a sigh of relief as a healer because the tank ate a heel with arguably the worst defensive CD in the game. Won't rampart and/or sheltron be up for all of them, and I am not even sure those are the best ones you can use.

So I take your point, but I don't think that's a great example. If anything that's a bad thing, because it's just another excuse for people to progress by doing the absolute bare minimum.

[AlexiIvaniskavich]

......

Lost in translation, I guess.

There is no benefit for taking a heavenly heel with foresight. It is dumb. Dumb mitigation, poor planning by the tank and it is a TERRIBLE WAY TO TANK (not yelling just emphasizing). But it is possible to do. Everything you said is absolutely correct. I am not promoting this in any way (revisit the part that i fear on that post)

[RiisWolf]

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.

Oh great, we're going to talk about how skill is everything and how this somehow under minds your skillz again.
Enough with the idealism! And talk real.
Squishy tanks are tanks that takes less to kill you. There is no if ands or but about it. You have significantly less HP which makes you easier to kill. You use more forms of mitigation than otherwise because you are easier to kill. You require less heals to be 100% because you are easier to kill. Healers having to heal you back up to from 25~50% back to 100% more frequently than someone with more HP is because you are easier to kill. Easy to kill=SQUISHY. Clearly in your mind skill is the only thing that matters. Clearly you can beat savage naked with your back turned, because you're so skilled. Go on tell me how that's going to turn out. No wait. If it involves a kick, being carried, and/or simply because you can't then keep it to yourself and don't come back to me mindlessly spouting skill is everything. It's not and neither is power. I don't even have to spoon feed that last bit but apparently I got to stress that without power your skill means nothing, and without skill your power means nothing, because again, to you skill is everything when it is in fact not in this game. That alone is not an opinion.

Even in that quote I said no more squishy tanks by low HP. Not negligence! It baffles me as to how you think NEGLIGENCE is worth bringing up. This is a good thing, but NOPE here you come saying that absolute none of this matters as though this and what I say means we don't have anything anymore.

More HP is more Defense, no matter how little or big it is. The very fact it makes you in someway harder to kill is the very definition of what defense is. This isn't WoW, where numbers are ludicrous compared to here, so much that 500HP tacked on your 1,000,000 means nothing. And you do know how much HP pure str tanks even have right? Some pure STR tanks that have 15K could of have 21K and effectively 2100 more from stoneskin. That is an 8,000 HP difference. That's a big jump where our tankbusters commonly do 10Ks and 20Ks. Some of us would rather not boil our options against sword knight in Thordan EX down to Hallow Ground or DIE. Healers would love 500 extra HP to their heals and barriers. It adds up and we're not even at non-crit 10K heals and barriers.

Additionally in my post about this is a DPS boon. More HP/defense in the form of making Vitality, a defensive attribute, be our tanks' source of attack power will help Healers, whom you rely on to DPS to beat A1S, A2S, and somehow A3S, have more room to fight while not negatively affecting threat so that DPS can do whatever they want more. Was it ever a problem before? I don't care, it's not going to happen anymore, at least not unless you did literally nothing.

And what do think you're trying to argue by bringing up something even pure STR tanks already and most importantly WOULD do if they could. The game even in its hardest most broken fights conforms to the worst possible vitality instead of enforcing the need for more defense from the very start. It's obvious because WoW at one point had the exact same problem and also if the parry stat ANY indication at all. T9 was just simon says; people were doing solo tank method early because that's how little it hurts. And yet here instead of enjoying how much better things will be, you go worrying that THIS will now under mind skill or your skill for that matter. Some of those players do less because they know they can get away with it. Sometimes it's stupid because they count only on a perfect world to succeed and they fail because of it. Other times it's smart because why blow it all when there's worse things on the way.

Not too long ago you clashed with me saying that even 1.6K barriers are useless and that you'd do none of the things that'd interferes with your parses. Now you're saying everything's fine so as long there's a healer there to carry you. And even gloating about being able to carry as heals. I can do it too, but you see me gloat about it. You apparently seem more intend on blindly spiting whatever it is I say despite whatever good it means for us all.

I say yay more HP/Defense=more offensive for everyone; you say boo no defense, everyone no skill.

[Odett]

Lost in translation, I guess.

There is no benefit for taking a heavenly heel with foresight. It is dumb. Dumb mitigation, poor planning by the tank and it is a TERRIBLE WAY TO TANK (not yelling just emphasizing). But it is possible to do. Everything you said is absolutely correct. I am not promoting this in any way (revisit the part that i fear on that post)

Exactly, and if anyone doesn't think that this could happen, realize that it's already a thing with other roles in the game, primarily DPS who play like crap because "high DPS isn't required for this fight, so it's possible for me to be lazy".

I hope the devs take into account the large HP pools that all tanks will have now when designing future content, as a STR build won't be viable anymore, and make monsters damage us accordingly, or it will just promote lazy play among lazy tanks.

[Odett]

misniformation

I suggest you do a little research before coming up with such a long and misinformed response. No, higher HP does not outright equal more defense, as a healer is healing you when you take damage regardless of your HP. Surviving a tank buster with 18k HP and one with 22k HP will make your healer heal you regardless. The main difference is how many heals you need in order to be topped off. Look at the tank forums and see the benefits that gearing up with STR currently bring, like stronger self heals (oh look, its own form of more defense), better agro, letting you use your utility combos instead of relying on your agro combo, and better DPS, letting you kill thing faster, which is its own form of mitigation.

Your last sentence/paragraph is you misunderstanding things. No one is saying that with the future metagame, more HP=bad, we're just discussing that if newer fights aren't tuned around a bigger HP pool, it might promote laziness within tanks, due getting away with not using cooldowns properly, like they can't do now in current endgame.

[SpookyGhost]

I think the problem with RiisWolf's mentality here (and I see this pretty frequently) is that healers aren't healing all the time, regardless of HP pool size. The reason for this is that Medica 2, Regen, and Fairy heals can cover auto attacks near completely - and outside of this we only have cleaves and tank busters. So for a healer, in a raid, they basically want to top you up for tank busters and cleaves - which will take less healing for a tank with lower HP. From there, the tank is hit with the cleave or the tank buster, whether he survives or not depends on how much HP he has. Everything past that amount is a cushion, something that allows for a crit auto attack (the biggest threat to your life) to still not kill you and leave your healer room to heal you up from all the damage. The less health you have past this point the easier you'll be to heal to full. Once you're at full, we're back to auto attacks and other mechanics. There's a vast difference between having too little HP and just enough HP - I think this mentality assumes the former rather than the latter.

That said, in 3.2, everyone will gladly take the extra HP - while it isn't necessary for survival (or it could be if they also increase boss damage) it doesn't come at the cost of something else, so there's no reason not to have it.

[Dhex]

I think the problem with RiisWolf's mentality here (and I see this pretty frequently) is that healers aren't healing all the time, regardless of HP pool size.

Yeah the problem with his thought process that is it assumes that by "topping" off or creating a cushion with excess HP means you will survive the buster & require less healing - when in reality and in practice the healing required to cap off and the heals to survive post-buster are within a cast or two at most. Not a appreciable difference; currently Tank DPS is a very real appreciable difference - and that is precisely why people build STR and push damage once they hit the "safe zone" with their HP.

Fights are scripted. Incoming damage is consistent if being mitigated properly - which it should be, since it's scripted, and so that means the amount of Healing output only varies when DPS eat extra damage or a Tank messes up their cooldown rotation.

More than half his post was rather unintelligible - or at least highly notional rather than factual or observable.

[Syzygian]

snip

While I'll be the first to agree that currently, Fending tank ≠ shitty player, this response is a little... whoa...

Can't we just all get along? All of this shit will be moot in a few weeks anyway and it'll be more clear than ever who is a good tank and who isn't.