Goodbye strength tanks. Let us never be forgotten.

[Atoli]

I am Sera Malqir, and I've been a STR tank since 2 days ago and will forever stay one!
Simply because I do not care enough about tanking to actually invest in seperate gear for it..xD
Share that DRG gear, girl!

[Rosalynd]

As a previous str / mixed tank, i am glad for this change. It was always disheartening to see the rest of the group have the same HP, or a bit lower than you if you used mixed.

The concept of STR tanks also brought about a massive wave of bad players who wanted to DPS with a sword or axe, DF will be far better off without those scrubs.

[Corfish]

I'm honestly not sure where all the vitriol is coming from. Yes, STR tanks will hit a small DPS hit with the transition to full VIT, BUT! You will also have more HP and more survivability, allowing healers more time to DPS before they need to heal you. So assuming everyone is playing properly, the DPS will either remain similar, or depending on how many more spells the healers can sneak in, might even increase.

I get that it takes away some sort of choice from Tanks, but really, this just seems like you guys now get the best of both worlds to me.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

May my slaying gear rest in peace as well.

And lol at healers thinking this is even gonna remotely fix a tank that doesnt cycle cooldowns correctly, as this will just work to make bads even slower in dungeons.

While true, I think an important factor is it gives healers more time to adjust to bad tanks. That's an important for equally inexperienced healers trying to learn.

The only downside? The first few weeks in the DF will be a complete mess. I don't expect a lot of STR tanks to immediately change. Granted, for old content that shouldn't be an issue, but for the new stuff? They might well be murdered within a few seconds.

[Seisha]

I wouldn't be surprised if come tomorrow, the nerf to tank dps is more substantial than people expect.

[Odett]

Yes, STR tanks will hit a small DPS hit with the transition to full VIT, BUT! You will also have more HP and more survivability, allowing healers more time to DPS before they need to heal you.

Ehhhhhh, yes and no. A tank with more HP could make a healer take longer to get out of cleric stance, but a tank with less HP will require the healer to heal them less, since they also need less heals to be topped off, so it balances itself out. Conversely, a healer doesn't have to top you off, but if you have a ton of HP, while having the option to allocate those points to something else, and you're not being topped off, you're achieving absolutely nothing. It WILL be nice having the best of both worlds, but it was also nice to have some choice in how I geared up as well, you know?

Someone on another board also made a really good comment about how having more HP can make a tank lazier and slack on their mitigation. For example, a full Vit DRK can Foresight a Heavenly Heel and survive, but successfully going towards STR forces you to play more skillfully and have much better cooldown management, because if you don't Shadowskin+Foresight, or Shadow Wall a Heavenly Heel, the only thing you will be tanking is the floor. This argument is mostly aimed at the people who are saying that the bad STR tanks won't plague their groups anymore, but it will just encourage those same lazy players to eat unmitigated tank busters (or barely mitigated), and if addressed by a healer, will just spout the usual "We didn't wipe, so stop complaining" excuse.

Regardless of this change, lazy tanks will remain lazy, and good tanks will adjust. Having more HP doesn't necessarily make you tankier, and that's something that many healers will start realizing tomorrow.

[Gyson]

As you said, that is a personal opinion. Str or Vit didn't make you bad, it simply made the healers have very little wiggle room when you were gearing to have just enough health to survive the tank buster.

What makes a tank is 4 things really

1. Threat: If you don't have threat, you aren't a tank
2. Mitigation: proper cool-down usage to do everything you can to help your healers
3. Dodging: Nothing is worse than having to stop laying down dots and heal simply bc the tank was too lazy to move
4. Maximizing DPS: To be clear, this means raids dps. This could be many things, from not moving the boss needlessly, popping group cool-downs so healers can pump out more, and yes, maximizing yourself.

Good tanks do the first 3. Great tanks can do it all. And up to this point, even though yuo may not like it, I wasn't a big fan either, it is irrefutable FACT that in order to be a great tank and give everything you had to win, you had to wear str gear and trust your healers to not need the wiggle room because it was the ideal way to maximize the groups damage output.

And that's fine if you're in a static that's fairly familiar with each other's playstyle. However, rarely are those the circumstances for most tanks (or for most of their time spent tanking), and expecting random strangers to perform well with "very little wiggle room" is just inviting trouble. And for what? What has a STR tank pugging along with everyone else in Void Ark really added to anything? In the grand scheme of things a negligible increase in overall raid DPS at the cost of a respectable amount of health that requires the healers to babysit them more closely than they should need to. With as flaky as PUGs can be, a single wipe in a 24 man raid can lead to a vote-abandon. Why in the world would any reasonable tank increase the risk of causing that mess by not gearing for survivability instead?

When I'm tanking with friends and we're failing a DPS check, I'll toss on some STR gear because every little bit helps. But most of the time, in most of this game, it is completely unnecessary and (I would argue) adding additional risk for nothing. I doubt most people care if a STR tank can cut a 25 minute dungeon run down to 23 minutes. They do mind, though, if said tank runs out of health and the resulting wipe wastes everyone's time with a lengthy run back to the failed encounter to spend even more time trying again.

These STR/VIT tank arguments go 'round and 'round as the people participating in them try to pretend that their STR builds are critical to tanking since everyone is (incoming B.S.) working on cutting edge content all the time. Yet we all know that just isn't the case for most players. A VIT tank is not bad or a "newbie" because they chose not to gear for STR for the majority of pugged content in this game - they're just wisely erring on the side of caution. I can respect that. I can not respect a tank who is choosing to instead risk significant delays for extremely minor gains and bragging rights on a DPS meter.

Using STR accessories instead of VIT definitely had its place. Great, settled. However, for the other 99% of scenarios (which always seem to be ignored in these discussions) it was a bad idea, and I'm super-happy that SE is removing that choice from the hands of players who couldn't figure out the difference between the right and wrong time to spec for STR.

Everyone in this thread will pretend that doesn't include them. And that was a big part of the problem.

[Odett]

And that's fine if you're in a static that's fairly familiar with each other's playstyle. However, rarely are those the circumstances for most tanks (or for most of their time spent tanking), and expecting random strangers to perform well with "very little wiggle room" is just inviting trouble. And for what? What has a STR tank pugging along with everyone else in Void Ark really added to anything? In the grand scheme of things a negligible increase in overall raid DPS at the cost of a respectable amount of health that requires the healers to babysit them more closely than they should need to. With as flaky as PUGs can be, a single wipe in a 24 man raid can lead to a vote-abandon. Why in the world would any reasonable tank increase the risk of causing that mess by not gearing for survivability instead?

Please educate yourself on the benefits that strength tanking brings other than more DPS before incorrectly equating Vitality to survivability. Most pro-VIT arguments come from misinformation, I wonder why.

I doubt most people care if a STR tank can cut a 25 minute dungeon run down to 23 minutes.

Lol, it's much more than that.

Lol, it is so sadly not.



What's extremely foolish is assuming you feeling comfortable with an encounter (while knowing next to nothing about everyone else in your dungeon-run/raid-group) is all you need to remove all risk and succeed.

If you think that having 270 less STR makes such a miniscule difference, refer to my first comment. If you still equate Vitality to survivability and fail to understand how STR also boosts survivability, again, read my first comment.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I feel I should clarify that when I defend ice mages and auto attackers and lancers in void ark I have never said those players are good. I do in fact believe they are bad but that I still think they should play however they want. I think STR tanks are bad because they aren't as good as VIT tanks at actually tanking. This entire argument of STR tanks vs VIT tanks comes down to subjective personal opinion anyway. I'm really just here cause I'm bored so I couldn't care less who is deemed right or wrong either.

Just because they pay a sub does not entitlement them to play at a piss poor level without repercussion. Sure, GMs aren't going to ban them or anything, but people in their parties to have the right to be a little miffed at someone refusing to hit positonals or play Black Mage properly. Now I will say this is not the same as being sub-optimal. A healer, for instance, can still be good without DPSing. While it may slow down the clear speed, they are still effectively doing their job, albeit not to its fullest potential. Ice Mages are patently ignoring a large portion of their skills solely due to laziness.

In short, while they technically have the right to play however they like. People have a right to call them out on it.

[Gyson]

Lol, it's much more than that.

Lol, it is so sadly not.

What, do you think you've been cutting dungeon run times in half or something by swapping in some STR accessories? Well that's a pleasant dream. Completely ridiculous, but pleasant.

Once you get enough HP to feel comfortable in an encounter, as long as you play your job correctly and use your cooldowns, STR will benefit you much more than extra HP will. If you're not doing cutting-edge content, and don't feel confident enough in your HP and want to make it bigger, that's fine too. To state that a STR tank is "bad" while knowing absolutely nothing about STR tanking from lack of personal experience, however, is extremely foolish.

What's extremely foolish is assuming you feeling comfortable with an encounter (while knowing next to nothing about everyone else in your dungeon-run/raid-group) is all you need to remove all risk and succeed.