Please fix tank accessories already, it's been 3 patches

[Aana]

There are two methods suggested here, aside from my own.

1. 15-20 more strength. This equalizes the gear, more or less, but then you're at the mercy of raid drops. Equalizing the gear is a pointless change because it doesn't change the fact that, for the people who care, they're still going to get the crafted accessories. The tank accessories dropping here are still less beneficial than anything else showing up. The dynamic hasn't changed: It's a bigger benefit if non-fending drops.

2. Shift the weights. Make left side less and right side more. Isn't that just terrible? Suddenly your left side pieces matter less. You haven't fixed the issue, you've merely moved it to all your pieces instead of just the accessories. You've made fending accessories more desirable to drop by making fending armor less desirable. This is already the case on specific pieces based on their sub stats, but now it's for all of them. Grand. Oh, and the kicker? You have to do this for all the gear, and to do it to the degree where Raiding Accessories are blatantly better, you severely harm Left Side weights.

Because if you shift 150 strength from Raid gear left to Raid Gear right, then you're shifting, what, 125 strength from Craft Gear Left to Craft Gear right. Any equivalent shifting of stats harms Fending leftside more than it boosts fending rightside.

You thought accessories were bad? Enjoy the more expensive pieces that you'll probably have to use now instead.

Not quite. You arent just block shifting one time like "all accs now have +20 str". You are also shifting the progression of each ilvl to have more impact. Instead of Crafted pieces are only the best because the str stat goes up by miniscule amounts that the overload of secondary pentamelded stats can overcome. Rebalancing the str between left and right means the right side actually gains significant amounts of str so the extra 4 melds on crafted gear are outstripped by the raw str gain. Same as happens with DPS, just by a slightly lessened degree because the overall str of tank gear is still lower than DPS. That is just the bare bones 'simplist' solution because it is just a raw stat shuffle of existing stats and therefore impossible to F up and takes miniscule dev time. For comparison, including weapon, about 30% of the damage stat for DPS jobs gear is in their 5 accs. For tanks to reach that split accessories would need to have 64 str on 350 gear and 73 on 360 gear and so on. This is linear ilvl progression. The downside of this one is weakening our left side gear, but the upside is it leaves the relative values of everything else the same. Secondary stats, overall damage, etc will be entirely unchanged with this method. Not sure how you gather this will make crafted gear somehow more required. Weakening left side gear isnt really a 'bad' thing because right now it is the ONLY side that matters and thats a problem. It doesnt really matter how you view it. Left side matters to much, right side matters to little. Its just a different way of saying the same thing. Its uneven. This fixes that.

That said, I slightly prefer my second suggestion of flatly giving the same str on tank acc as DPS at all ilvls and lowering weapon damage by a flat % accross the board to counter the damage inflation. This would give us identical % damage progression in every respect to DPS via gear, though is slightly more work to implement (It is still just gear number changes, but requires some basic algebra to do properly, but that shouldnt be to much to ask), but retain the overall lower tank damage that we currently have and will continue to scale below actual DPS jobs.

[Kabooa]

Not quite. You arent just block shifting one time like "all accs now have +20 str". You are also shifting the progression of each ilvl to have more impact.

using your ratio, i370 gear according to you will require 81 Strength before strength melding to achieve the same equity for Strength as other classes do their primary stat.

This is an increase of 37 strength per piece, multiplied by 5 is 185.
Thus crafting using your formula is 21 per piece, multiplied by 5 is 105

The weight of items is from highest to least on left side, Weapon, Armor/Legs, Helm/Boots/Gloves, Belt, so it is only fair we shift a proportional amount.

Using Weapon as 1.0, the chest/legs are .907, H/B/G are .557, and Belt is .419
Doing math to find these values

The division looks a little like

Raid
Weapon 39
A/L: 34 x 2
H/G/B: 21 x 3
Belt: 15

Crafted
Weapon: 23
A/L: 19 x 2
H/G/B: 12 x 3
Belt: 8

Crafted Vs Raid minus this shift
A/L: 274 vs 288
H/G/B: 168 vs 177
Belt: 127 vs 130
Weapon omitted cuz weapon damage

Raid edges out, barely, and then Anemos comes in and kicks Raid gear in the face. Thankfully there won't be further armor from Eureka.

More numbers:

Using Raid Rightside cuz stranth, this means you're working with 11 materia slots on the left side with raid gear and 30 materia slots with Crafted gear.

Using Raid over crafted gains 56 strength vs 6 VI slots and 13 V slots. Since Direct Hit is the easiest calculation, but not necessarily the best, we'll use that.

Strength at i370 is 2392 for a Mooncat. This means the difference is about 2.4% less strength with crafted. This equates to Raid armor being 2.5% more damage before applying materia.

396 direct hit is about 9.9% direct hit, or about 2.48% increase damage, meaning the difference between raid and crafted armor is closer to 0%.

[ArianeEwah]

suggestion of flatly giving the same str on tank acc as DPS at all ilvls and lowering weapon damage by a flat % accross the board to counter the damage inflation. This would give us identical % damage progression in every respect to DPS via gear

I actually don't like this approach. This will again make tanks special, and not in a good way.

Every job has the same WD on their weapon, no difference. Tank gear will be an exception yet again.
And how are we gonna fix this with lower/higher gear? Is tank-WD %-equivalent to any other job or by a fixed amount?
(If first: e.g. iLv 370 weapon has x WD, but iLv 375 raid weapon has x WD, too, because it's about same % as the DPS weapon?)

I guess every tank wants full strength on their gear to make them just as valueable as like for any other job.

So, either SE needs to reduce all STR values (as in numbers) on tank gear all across the board or they reduce the attack power STR provides to tanks.
And I think the later is better for SE to adjust tank DPS, since every damage they do is dependent on STR, and they wouldn't need to change every possible tank gear.
Right now, tank STR/attack power is about ~85% of a DPS STR/attack power. (With iLv 310 it was ~86.5%, now it's ~83.5%, already a 3% inflation.)
Even with full STR on accessories tank STR would be around ~97% of DPS STR. (Reason is job STR bonus and STR trait bonus, ~80 pts on Lv 70)
So, SE just need to set a STR multiplicator of 0.85-0.9 for tank attack power, and they can adjust tank DPS without changing gear values (in numbers), thus keeping raid gear more desirable than crafted.
There will be less inflation (probably around 0.5%), also no more STR melding, thus providing an opportunity to meld secondary stats.
Even if I might lose 1 STR point due to the multiplication result, I can handle that more than losing a WD point.

Still, this might trigger the other roles because still they might to meld VIT to survive certain mechanics.
This could be fixed by lowering the VIT value on tank accessories, just by a few points, enough to make VIT VI melds worth.
(Maybe always 25 pts below max value, or e.g. max +23 pts on iLv 350 and +25/26 on iLv 400)

SE came up with VIT/STR change with the last raid tier, now all suggested changes in this thread (or all around the forum/reddit etc.) wouldn't have any major impact on tank DPS like then. They might fix/"band-aid-fix" this even before 5.0. There is still hope.

[whiskeybravo]

using your ratio, i370 gear according to you will require 81 Strength before strength melding to achieve the same equity for Strength as other classes do their primary stat.

I don't agree with this particular suggestion, but my understanding was something like this:



Just an example of taking 15% str from left side and shifting it to right. For 350 I opted to round down instead of up which caused them to not match like the 370.

Regarding the superior WD suggestion:

I actually don't like this approach. This will again make tanks special, and not in a good way.

Every job has the same WD on their weapon, no difference. Tank gear will be an exception yet again.

The idea is to give full str on tank accessories so that there is an actual advantage to acquiring the higher item level accessories. The reason for suggesting WD reduction is solely based on a compromise with SE for keeping tank damage in check. If their reasoning for gimping tank accessories is because they don't want tanks doing a lot of damage, then we are saying "that's fine, we just want meaningful gear progression". They can use WD to balance tank DPS independently of gear if that's their actual concern. The fact that every job has the same WD is irrelevant, they all vary greatly in DPS output. And again, Bards having lower WD never hurt their ability to find raid groups. What are you going to do, not pick up tanks because their WD is lower? No, you have to have tanks lol. As long as it's the same for all 3 tanks then it just becomes a new baseline.

[Aana]

Edit: Seems Whiskey beat me to some of this already.

using your ratio, i370 gear according to you will require 81 Strength before strength melding to achieve the same equity for Strength as other classes do their primary stat.

This is an increase of 37 strength per piece, multiplied by 5 is 185.
Thus crafting using your formula is 21 per piece, multiplied by 5 is 105

The weight of items is from highest to least on left side, Weapon, Armor/Legs, Helm/Boots/Gloves, Belt, so it is only fair we shift a proportional amount.

Using Weapon as 1.0, the chest/legs are .907, H/B/G are .557, and Belt is .419
Doing math to find these values

The division looks a little like

Raid
Weapon 39
A/L: 34 x 2
H/G/B: 21 x 3
Belt: 15

Crafted
Weapon: 23
A/L: 19 x 2
H/G/B: 12 x 3
Belt: 8

Crafted Vs Raid minus this shift
A/L: 274 vs 288
H/G/B: 168 vs 177
Belt: 127 vs 130
Weapon omitted cuz weapon damage

Raid edges out, barely, and then Anemos comes in and kicks Raid gear in the face. Thankfully there won't be further armor from Eureka.

More numbers:

Using Raid Rightside cuz stranth, this means you're working with 11 materia slots on the left side with raid gear and 30 materia slots with Crafted gear.

Using Raid over crafted gains 56 strength vs 6 VI slots and 13 V slots. Since Direct Hit is the easiest calculation, but not necessarily the best, we'll use that.

Strength at i370 is 2392 for a Mooncat. This means the difference is about 2.4% less strength with crafted. This equates to Raid armor being 2.5% more damage before applying materia.

396 direct hit is about 9.9% direct hit, or about 2.48% increase damage, meaning the difference between raid and crafted armor is closer to 0%.

I neglected to mention that in in all this shuffle, we would also have to remove the ability to craft 25 str to accs to also match other jobs. ie: there would be a 125 net str gain on stock gear (which we already have by melding so not actually a large DPS increase. The only increase being 5 materia slots of secondary stats which is fairly minor all things considered). That essentially means that the 'swap' from left to right is 25 str less than youre projecting per piece.

With all the math done, the scaling from 350, 360, 370 would be like this:
(350 Current): (350 proposed)
(360 Current): (360 proposed)
(360 Current): (360 proposed)

Weapons:
315:268
330:278
347:291

Body/Legs
293:249
307:259
322:270

Head/Hands/Feet
180:153
189:159
198:166

Belts
135:115
142:120
149:125

Accs
68:115
68:120
69:125

All this does is really highlight how little progression there actually is because 5 slots have zero progression at all, so of course it looks bad when you even out the whole set. THIS IS THE PROBLEM. Tank progression is jacked. Tanks fundamentally have ~16% less str than melee dps in gear alone, but the same amount of secondary stats, so secondary stats have much more impact than str for tanks than DPS. Right now this is just entirely focused on pentamelded accessories, and if evenly distributed as above to match melees the power of secondaries is reduced on accessories, but increased on left side in direct porportion to the amount of str gained or lost, so yes, left side pentamelds would gain in relative power, but right side pentamelds would loose an equal amount of power. In this scenario the total number of primary and secondary stats remains completely unchanged, just where they come from.

All this stuff above is just the 'easiest' fix, but not neccessarily the best imo.

All that said, this is why I prefer the second option in which all primary and secondary stats are identical to DPS stats. This means a dramatic increase in overall str (accessories gain str= to dps accs), but you reduce the base weapon damage by a flat % to compensate.

For those uninitiated in the game damage formulas, Weapon damage is the foundation of all your damage and Str just multiplies that damage (which is then multiplied again by Det/Ten and then plug in crits/DH etc). So raw increases in strength are just a % multiplier in your overall damage and Weapon damage increases are also just a % multiplier to damage. We can increase one (str) and lower the other (weapon damage) and achieve identical damage output. So we can achieve even scaling like DPS accross all slots without any secondary stats overpowering ilvl by imitating DPS gear (raising our str and overall damage) then cutting weapon damage to maintain tank levels of DPS.

This gives more power to ilvl and less to secondary stats therefore pushing tank gear in the same direction as every other class. Ilvl is the most important stat. Raid drops superceed lower level pentamelds (Crafters survived when vit was primary, this wont kill them either as tank sales would just match other jobs crafted sales which still exist).

I actually don't like this approach. This will again make tanks special, and not in a good way.

Every job has the same WD on their weapon, no difference. Tank gear will be an exception yet again.
And how are we gonna fix this with lower/higher gear? Is tank-WD %-equivalent to any other job or by a fixed amount?
(If first: e.g. iLv 370 weapon has x WD, but iLv 375 raid weapon has x WD, too, because it's about same % as the DPS weapon?)

I guess every tank wants full strength on their gear to make them just as valueable as like for any other job.

So, either SE needs to reduce all STR values (as in numbers) on tank gear all across the board or they reduce the attack power STR provides to tanks.
And I think the later is better for SE to adjust tank DPS, since every damage they do is dependent on STR, and they wouldn't need to change every possible tank gear.
Right now, tank STR/attack power is about ~85% of a DPS STR/attack power. (With iLv 310 it was ~86.5%, now it's ~83.5%, already a 3% inflation.)
Even with full STR on accessories tank STR would be around ~97% of DPS STR. (Reason is job STR bonus and STR trait bonus, ~80 pts on Lv 70)
So, SE just need to set a STR multiplicator of 0.85-0.9 for tank attack power, and they can adjust tank DPS without changing gear values (in numbers), thus keeping raid gear more desirable than crafted.
There will be less inflation (probably around 0.5%), also no more STR melding, thus providing an opportunity to meld secondary stats.
Even if I might lose 1 STR point due to the multiplication result, I can handle that more than losing a WD point.

Still, this might trigger the other roles because still they might to meld VIT to survive certain mechanics.
This could be fixed by lowering the VIT value on tank accessories, just by a few points, enough to make VIT VI melds worth.
(Maybe always 25 pts below max value, or e.g. max +23 pts on iLv 350 and +25/26 on iLv 400)

SE came up with VIT/STR change with the last raid tier, now all suggested changes in this thread (or all around the forum/reddit etc.) wouldn't have any major impact on tank DPS like then. They might fix/"band-aid-fix" this even before 5.0. There is still hope.

Lowering weapon damage isnt an inherent problem. Brds have had lower weapon damage for the entire game. Mages magic damage is on an entirely different level of scaling all together. Books and staves have entirely different phy damage. Weapon damage makes no fundamental difference. It just sets the bar on how much damage a class does without changing the interactions of all the other stats in the game.

As for lowering the value of str (.9, .45, whatever) this also has negative consequences. The lower the ratio of str becomes, the more value the unchanged secondary stats become. This (in the extreme case) is why accessories are broken now. we gain so little str value (1 in 20 ilvls) that the increase in secondary stats is MORE important than the actual str gains and why the extra 72 secondary stats on pentamelds beat 20 ilvls of str. Lowering overall str values (like we have now) is the same thing as increasing the str number, but then lowering the str scaling. Both just make secondary stats more important.

However, if yuo raise the secondary stats to DPS levels (and therefore lower the value of secondary stats) ilvl reigns supreme. But to dial tank damage back, you cant just lower the value of str because that defeats the purpose of raising it in the 1st place. So you need to reduce tank damage in a way that doesnt affect str vs secondary stat relationship. Enter Weapon damage. It is a flat multiplier of ALL damage and doesnt discriminate. No side effects.

Raise str. Fixes progression, brings pentamelds in line where they should be. Reduce weapon damage to keep tank damage where it should be.

[Kabooa]

Just an example of taking 15% str from left side and shifting it to right. For 350 I opted to round down instead of up which caused them to not match like the 370.

At a difference of 30 strength, this equates to approximately 1.3% less strength by using crafted over raid, which is about 1.35% more damage for using raid drops.

At x5 76 substats, again using Direct Hit for the sake of ease, this is 380 Direct Hit, or 9.5% direct hit chance. This comes out to approximately 2.375% damage increase. This redistribution still means crafted accessories are doing more damage.

[whiskeybravo]

I was just using 15% as a hypothetical, not trying to claim it's the magic number or anything.

[Kabooa]

I was just using 15% as a hypothetical, not trying to claim it's the magic number or anything.

Because people actually brought numbers into this, I spent a good hour yesterday trying different ratios before making my post.

They all come out the same. Equal transfer of stats doesn't change the outcome. You have to push it one way or the other, and in that respect, you are bouncing between Left Crafted / Right raid or left Raid / Right crafted.

So effectively this sounds great on paper, but it doesn't work. The stat redistribution would have to come from the weapon, but do that too much and suddenly Diamond Weapon is weaker than Tome if the substats align right.

This is my problem with stat shifting, or potency reductions, or any of that. It sounds great, but it doesn't hold up. There is no singular solution here that's going to work. You're either robbing power up front, or robbing power later, so we have to accept the bandaid needs to get ripped off, or we can keep toeing around the bush.

So I'll propose the bandaid being ripped off.

No more strength melding. Raid gear comes with the same increase DPS get. (43 crafted, 57 raid for current tier)

Using again, Direct Hit as the simple calculation, this is a difference of 380 sub stats or 2.375% damage increase.

70 strength in this new set up is approximately 2.8% more strength, so equating to about 2.9% more damage than the crafted gear. Raid gear is a about a .6% damage increase in addition to higher substat caps and vitality.

[whiskeybravo]

This is my problem with stat shifting, or potency reductions, or any of that. It sounds great, but it doesn't hold up. There is no singular solution here that's going to work. You're either robbing power up front, or robbing power later, so we have to accept the bandaid needs to get ripped off, or we can keep toeing around the bush.

IMO it was just for arguments sake, I never liked the idea personally. So we can both leave the bad idea alone to collect dust lol

No more strength melding. Raid gear comes with the same increase DPS get. (43 crafted, 57 raid for current tier)

I don't think this was the idea. Obviously if you take the 25 str out without giving it back it's going to upset the comparison. Like, you're nerfing the amount of str overall then we end up in a situation where the 270 accessories come back in to play because the str difference.

[Kabooa]

Raise str. Fixes progression, brings pentamelds in line where they should be. Reduce weapon damage to keep tank damage where it should be.

Alright, lets do this.

Using DPS oriented stats, a mooncat has 2864 primary stat vs 2392 for tanks. (or something in that ballpark)

This is about 83.5%. Increasing this to '100%' means outgoing damage as it stands has to be reduced by about 19%. Easy enough.
Diamond weapon becomes a fairly even 85 (85.05).

But wait, there's more.

Using a very simplified damage formula (Weapon damage x 1 + (Stat / 100)) we can look at the relative value of strength vs substats.

Using our new awesome stats, this is 85 x 29.6, or 2516 outgoing damage. Strength difference between crafted and raid is 70.
85 x 28.9 is 2456, or approximately 2.4% less. Damn these numbers are looking really similar.

*takes breath*

At x5 76 substats, again using Direct Hit for the sake of ease, this is 380 Direct Hit, or 9.5% direct hit chance. This comes out to approximately 2.375% damage increase.

So when all is said and done, raid accessories are doing around .125% more damage (as a 2.4 decrease is about equivalent to a 2.5 increase going up).