War stat priority

[Kitru]

The damage on a tank is generally abysmal, as everything that *would* be damage is actually 'fake damage' ("threat").

I'm not sure how bad your damage is, but, at worst, I'm do half of what a DPS does. Oftentimes, I'm pushing upwards of 2/3rds, and, in the case of pug runs, oftentimes I'm tied or overcoming one or more DPS.

Damage is not a Tank class's priority beyond what is necessary to hold enemy attention and generally have a large enough HP pool to give the healer something to do.

If the only damage that a tank needed to provide was what is necessary to hold aggro, I would barely ever be attacking because I can generate enough enmity in the first 30 seconds to hold aggro off of all of the healers and DPS for the rest of the fight (for longer fights, I would just repeat my 30 sec starting rotation every 2 minutes or so). A tank that only attacks to generate sufficient enmity to keep aggro off of the rest of the group is doing their group a disservice.

Since we're talking about gearing here, yes, tanks shouldn't be prioritizing speed, crit, or det above parry or acc, but it's impossible to *only* have parry and acc itemization. You're going to *have* to have some degree of DPS itemization on your gear and, if you're not optimizing said DPS itemization, you're hurting your group. Even if you *don't* think tank DPS is all that high, it's still DPS, and it does actually add up. 10 more DPS on a tank and 10 more DPS on a DPS are the same exact thing.

Ignoring tank DPS just because it's a secondary functionality is just as bad as a DPS refusing to dodge survivable bad shit. It's that kind of mentality that leads to PLDs swapping over to become utterly horrible WARs.

[Zourin]

Ignoring tank DPS just because it's a secondary functionality is just as bad as a DPS refusing to dodge survivable bad shit. It's that kind of mentality that leads to PLDs swapping over to become utterly horrible WARs.

Actually, to correct you, that's like DPS ignoring survivability stats.. which, if I'm not mistaken, is what every last one of the bloody glass cannons does anyway by default.

Yeah, tanks do deal damage, but that's mostly built in for solo combat balance. We DO have to kill stuff on our own from time to time and can't have a monk follow us around to handstand everything to death (Or lancers pogo-sticking, or Bards being grossly fabulous). Even at 50% of the output of a dps class, that means you're only accountable for 1/5th of the total damage output in the party. .001% per-point increases in offensive stats are not going to mark any significant increase in performance in the grand scheme.

By comparison, there isn't a tank out there that lacks stories of entire runs been saved by the skin of a few points of extra hp.

[Kitru]

Actually, to correct you, that's like DPS ignoring survivability stats.

If I were talking solely about discussing itemization, you'd be correct. I was referring to DPS in general. DPS are still required to take VIT, which is a survivability stat, anyways, and it's entirely the same situation as for tanks. The only difference is that, just like for tanks, there isn't any options concerning survivability stats so they just have VIT and that's it.

By comparison, there isn't a tank out there that lacks stories of entire runs been saved by the skin of a few points of extra hp.

Well, actually, I don't really have any of those stories. The only times I've ever dropped to single digits and not had the run wipe were those where I used Holmgang. The survivability stories I talk about are those where I completely ignore a massive attack like Death Sentence because those actually happen to me (and, honestly, they're a lot more impressive than nearly dying as I see it).

The more important point of all this is that you're acting as if the improved DPS we're talking about comes at the cost of survivability. VIT is basically a static value, and it's been said over and over that parry is still the most important stat to have as a tank. It's impossible to have a tank that *only* has parry rating so you might as well optimize the DPS stats that you're basically forced to have so talk of optimizing tank DPS via itemization is entirely appropriate since you're going to have those stats no matter what you do.