Quote Originally Posted by Sarcatica View Post
You make it sound like these players ignore survivability but it's remotely the main issue. Auto attacks from boss hit like wet noodles that healers only have to top up tanks within 3-4 GCDs. This makes it the most efficient play because anything more is a waste and better off tunneled into another metric that matters. Autos are the real reason why metagame is as such. Imagine if 1 auto hits for like 1/4 of your HP, your healers will have to take care of you more.
Uhm... that problem was covered by this line:
Quote Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur View Post
Tankbuster centric fight design that focuses more on properly timing cooldowns rather than continuous high tank damage fight design that benefits from improving average mitigation/survivability.
The meta comment was more about how the player base assigns weight to various stats.

Quote Originally Posted by Reynhart View Post
The meta was a result of a really poor scaling from parry. If it's effect was significant right from the start.
For the expansion, make the mobs hit harder so that they wreck tanks who don't focus on survivability, and the meta will change right away. Especially if having no parry makes them squisher than they are now.
Its more a carry over from the pre-3.2 meta where wearing Str accessories over Vit accessories was a dps increase in the realm of 30% or more (this was also a Warrior mitigation increase due to their mitigation from damage based self-healing). Along with little understanding of how much mitigation is gained from parry.

A lot of players are also missing just how small the player weighted difference between Parry all the way and BiS is at i270. According to the BiS calculator on Ariyala's, BiS is only a 3.3% to 4.8% gain over a full parry build* for the various tanks.

*Choosing all pieces with Parry and melding Battledance materia into left side pieces that can take them other wise BiS dps melds. Accessories are still melded with Str/Vit materia.