Why Crit for tanks?

[Carighan]

It forced players to actually think about substats

How so? Unless with "think" you actually meant "follow a guide, blindly".

[Asdif_Laoeg]

How so? Unless with "think" you actually meant "follow a guide, blindly".

The guides only had the starting point, BIS and maybe 1 or 2 recomendet steps to goe from start to BIS. But we had to decide if we change a Ring early and get a small DPS loss or wait until we get the Boots from the Raid to change the Ring without a DPS loss. It was not a "follow the guide, blindly" as it is today but a equipment by equipoment choice when we equip them and how to change the Materia to get the wanted results.

[Carighan]

It was not a "follow the guide, blindly" as it is today but a equipment by equipoment choice when we equip them and how to change the Materia to get the wanted results.

Nice rose-colored goggles, but it was actually just follow the guide. Maybe not blindly, granted, you need to read/see the guide.

[Espon]

The guides only had the starting point, BIS and maybe 1 or 2 recomendet steps to goe from start to BIS. But we had to decide if we change a Ring early and get a small DPS loss or wait until we get the Boots from the Raid to change the Ring without a DPS loss. It was not a "follow the guide, blindly" as it is today but a equipment by equipoment choice when we equip them and how to change the Materia to get the wanted results.

I remember old raiding gear not having materia slots. Only crafted gear could be melded, which made it really annoying trying to hit those accuracy thresholds as you had to use lower ilvl pieces. Not only that, but harder content required a lot more accuracy, so you either had to swap pieces or just go in with wasted stats when doing older content.

This was so inconvenient for healers that SE had to start putting bonus accuracy on their gear. This is why a lot of late ARR healing gear has direct hit as a third stat on it.

[Mikey_R]

I remember old raiding gear not having materia slots. Only crafted gear could be melded, which made it really annoying trying to hit those accuracy thresholds as you had to use lower ilvl pieces. Not only that, but harder content required a lot more accuracy, so you either had to swap pieces or just go in with wasted stats when doing older content.

This was so inconvenient for healers that SE had to start putting bonus accuracy on their gear. This is why a lot of late ARR healing gear has direct hit as a third stat on it.

Materia slots were added part way through HW, though I don't remember exactly when.

Tanks also had it rough. Enemies had different accuracy requirements based on where you attack the boss, rear had a lower accuracy requirement compared to flank, then front had it even higher. Since tanks had to account for being infront of the boss, more gear/materia had to be dedicated to accuracy. They tried to alleviate this by adding increased accuracy on tank stance (+5% IIRC), but since everyone was tanking without tank stance, it didn't make a difference.