We Really Need To Talk About The State And Path Of FFXIV

[HyoMinPark]

I'm more of the mind that they changed the status effects because they thought the HP debuff was too harsh and sometimes made it impossible to survive attacks once you reached Brink of Death. Now the trade-off is 25%/50% of damage but no HP or MP loss. Pretty major debuff but I guess it fixed the issue of being unable to survive anything even if you tried.

That was why they changed it. I never said otherwise, or that the changes to Weakness/Brink were due to them wanting to change tanks back to STR, which is what you’re implying—they changed tanks back to STR from VIT because they took away the penalty to VIT from Weakness/Brink. I would suggest you re-read my post, because you seem to have misunderstood what I was saying.

HW Weakness/Brink of Death never affected the Vitality stat. It affected the maximum HP and MP numbers and the STR/DEX/INT/MND stats. -15% HP, MP and STR/DEX/INT/MND for Weakness and -30% for Brink of Death. The VIT stat only determined which what the original HP number the game would subtract from. Same for Piety. That system hurt tanks regardless because of the STR part of it. Tanks still used STR but the power addition was still a buff that was exempt from the weakness so yes that part's true. They still lost the STR boost but I guess it felt more like 7.5% and 15% since they made STR count as half.

It absolutely did affect VIT; VIT is what determines your total HP value. A reduction of your HP by 15% is because your VIT was reduced by 15%. It was -15% to all of your main stats (VIT/STR/DEX/INT/MND/PIE). Your MP went down because Piety was considered a main attribute back then, and a 15% reduction in your MP was caused by your Piety stat being reduced by 15%. Piety determined MP just like VIT determined HP.

The Patch 4.0 Notes confirm this:

The weakness and brink of death status ailments have been adjusted as follows:
—Weakness (Before): All main attributes are reduced by 15%.
—Brink Of Death (Before): All main attributes are reduced by 30%.

—Weakness (After): Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Mind are reduced by 25%.
—Brink of Death (After): Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Mind are reduced by 50%.

VIT is a main attribute; ergo, it was affected by HW Weakness/Brink of Death.