When is an i100 item better than an i110? - I.E. ST Hands

[AIex]

Stat Weights:
Stat weight for dealing dmg as physical
STR - 1.000
DET - 0.325
SKLSPD - 0.178

Comparison:
i110 noct has 39 STR, 0 DET, 0 SKLSPD - 39 + 0 + 0 = 39 dps rating
ST body has 34 STR, 27 DET, 26 SKLSPD - 34 + (27*.325) + (26*.178) = 47.403 dps rating

Conclusion:
The ST body CAN be better IF you can meet the ACC cap for whatever content you're doing and if you don't need the excess VIT (ie T6/7 doesn't hit very hard so...). I wouldn't worry about parry since its a RNG based skill that only applies to 1/2 the attacks you receive at end game (gg magic attacks). If the problem with you clearing a dungeon is that healers are having trouble keeping you alive, this isn't the piece for you to use.

Disclaimer:
People will argue "QQ don't worry about how much damage you do QQ" but it's my personal belief that you shouldn't hit like an 11 year old girl in endgame content. Priority #1 is to build yourself into a survivable tank, but don't over do it because it is possible to have excess HP (imo you don't need more than 9k hp as WAR and 7.2 as PLD with proper buffs and cooldown usage). After that Priority #2 is contribute to dps.

[Tyrial]

Stuff

It's great to do more damage, but we can't hold aggro with no TP. All skill speed is going to do is make you run out faster. If you were arguing for DET/Crit I'd agree, but Skill Speed is a useless stat on a tank period. The only way I'd consider using a piece with skill speed in a tanking build would be if it was necessary to reach ACC cap.

[AIex]

It's great to do more damage, but we can't hold aggro with no TP. All skill speed is going to do is make you run out faster. If you were arguing for DET/Crit I'd agree, but Skill Speed is a useless stat on a tank period. The only way I'd consider using a piece with skill speed in a tanking build would be if it was necessary to reach ACC cap.

Skill speed on WAR isn't useless because of 2 things. 1 - After a certain threshold, you can fit an extra attack during berserk. 2 - Faster generation of Wrath
Skill speed on PLD in my opinion has less of an effect and CAN be bad for TP, but if you can manage a stoneskin every 3-4 RoH rotations, your TP will last. (TP burn as OT for max dmg, RoH rotation + stoneskin as MT for damage mitigation + TP conservation)

[MythToken]

snip(TP burn as OT for max dmg, RoH rotation + stoneskin as MT for damage mitigation + TP conservation)

Way to completely ignore Defense and Vitality... Bravo for cherry picking stat weights.


160 Defense vs 162 Defense is a no brainer for just about everyone except for you.



In fact if any of you really believe that 100 is better than 110, and are want to Lose Vit, Lose STR, Lose Def, Lose Parry, for a little bit of DET and a little bit of Skill speed, then go right ahead. But you will literally be the worst tank ever.

And on top of that, if you were really smart, you would clearly see that you get MORE stats from the 110 as a whole, and could trade out a different piece ie an accessory and end up with a net gain in stats, AND more dps . *shakes head*


Ive got i100's in my BiS said no one ever.

[AIex]

Way to completely ignore Defense and Vitality... Bravo for cherry picking stat weights.


160 Defense vs 162 Defense is a no brainer for just about everyone except for you.

+ other garbage because you didn't read what I posted and decided to be a jerk instead

I literally posted in the post before your quote the priority #1 is to be a survivable tank which is inclusive to VIT and Defense... After a certain threshold though, they start showing less returns. What in the actual hell are you talking about lol? And when did I say i100 was BiS? All I'm saying is that it can be situationally better IE- you're the OT in T9 and just have to pick up golems but still need to dps

[MythToken]

I literally posted in the post before your quote the priority #1 is to be a survivable tank which is inclusive to VIT and Defense... After a certain threshold though, they start showing less returns. What in the actual hell are you talking about lol? And when did I say i100 was BiS? All I'm saying is that it can be situationally better IE- you're the OT in T9 and just have to pick up golems but still need to dps

It absolutely is not situationally better. According to your own words. Job #1 is to survive Job #2 is to dps

Why on earth would you add DPS to the slots in which your most efficient survival stats come from, IE the chest piece with Defense, Vitality, and parry.

If you wanted to add dps which I am in complete agreement with, you would add it via accesories, after accesories if you wanted more DPS you would switch your Main stat to STR instead of VIT.

What you absolutely would not do, is have fending accessories be specced into Vitality, and then try to add DPS through LESS STR and marginally higher secondary stats on your CHEST ARMOR. Least thought out suggestion I have ever heard.

And no you did not say i100 is BiS. But you should be considering that, because if you look at the gains from accessories over your measly gains from a main chest piece, you would see that you would end up with less overall DPS stat weights.
AND less survivability, by an extremely large margin. (let me re emphasize how important DEF is to a tank.... ITS THE MOST IMPORTANT.)

You absolutely must look at what you are saying in a Big picture format, because that chest piece is not better than the i110. I would also ask that you stop spreading such misinformation on the forums.

One more hole in your statement while VIT shows diminishing returns, DEF does not.

P.S. you havn't beaten t9 so how would you know

P.S.S not trying to be a jerk, but people shouldn't use math to try to tell people things that are not true, its damaging to the community.

[Zolentus]

It absolutely is not situationally better. According to your own words. Job #1 is to survive Job #2 is to dps

Why on earth would you add DPS to the slots in which your most efficient survival stats come from, IE the chest piece with Defense, Vitality, and parry.

I'm posting from work so I don't have all the numbers in front of me. However, I began to draw some estimates on the viability of specific thresholds that would offer some alternatives to the standard "stack VIT and STR" priority formula.

Having come from a long line of MMORPGs, I would like to clarify that the situation alluded to is the "Survivability Threshold", the point where you or your team's total damage mitigation and recovery exceeds what is necessary to confront particular damage-intake scenarios. While there is a master formula for this, it's so complex I don't think anyone has ever put it on paper due to how obtuse it is and how it does not account for all variables, so a margin of error must be estimated and planned for.

Instead, we must simply accept that there is a point where your team achieves an optimized range of "good enough" damage control for a particular challenge and additional actions or investment in this area suffers exponentially depreciated returns. The point where this occurs is debatable and depends on the content being run and the skill of both the Tank and his healer accompaniment.

That said, the idea behind a Tank building towards Damage while maintaining high-tier mitigation does depend in opportunity cost. This is most easily measured by iLevel and tertiary mitigation stat sacrifices (Parry and certain tiers of Dexterity -- 209, 241 and 273+- if I recall) in exchange for damage output modifiers (STR and Determination for baseline, Crit for variable opportunity burst, and skill speed for an opportunity multiplier).

First, let's observe the following standards:

* Strength and Determination are incremental modifiers.
* Crit's effectiveness operates as an increasing exponent the more it is stacked.
* Skill Speed only affects global cooldown abilities and not AA, but serves as a multiplier for Crit's effectiveness and aggro management in GCD.

So when all is said and done, we want to hit a comfortable optimized range embracing concepts of DPS, burst opportunity, and application speed while sacrificing as little survivability as possible. To do this, we must first examine some basic mathematical concepts in FFXIV's combat system.

* The default combat timer for active skills is 2.5 seconds.
* The standard crit value is somewhere around 5.33% (source: valk.dancing-mad.com/)
* Skill Speed awards -.01 sec per 9 points (this is a tiered value).
* Crit awards 1% roughly 14-15 points (this is an incremental value).
* (I don't have the details in front of me, so correct me if I'm wrong here.) Weapon Damage serves as a multiplier to the baseline effectiveness of the value of Strength and Determination.

Now, we have to assume situational deviation for certain scenarios, so a sustained formula is not always feasible. This is why burst is important when you are designing a build for a variety of situations (foes that die fast, enemies with invulnerability or phases where you must stop attacking to dodge, etc). So the question is: what is an effective goal for Crit and Skill Speed if I invest in those values, and how can I reach those without sacrificing too much Vitality or Strength?

With Crit, we want to reach a value where opportunities to crit on our strongest attacks become predictable, increasing our burst opportunity and aggro output. I don't remember the precise calculation, but it was somewhere around 18%. This puts us at around a minimum of 523 Crit for this optimization (20% is around 552).

Skill Speed is a bit harder to run with. You could follow the same theory as Warriors to get an extra attack while your damage buff is active, but something noticeably more sustained would be around 10% (1 extra GCD attack every 25 seconds) which is around +225 Skill Speed (556?). To get 2 extra attacks during FoF (30 seconds), you would need +322ish, which is not achievable with current iLevels/configurations even with considerable sacrifices.

Mumbo-jumbo aside, the following theorycraft gets close to these values. (Running off of memory here, feel free to comment on optimizations.)

Main: i110 Novus Curtana (SS/Crit)
Sub: i110 Novus Holy Shield (SS/Crit)

Head: i110 Coil (Acc/SS)
Body: i110 Coil (Crit/Acc)
Hands: i110 Soldiery (Acc/SS)
Waist: HQ i90 Wolfram - crafted Par/SS (slotted 2 Crit IV, 2 Det IV, 1 Acc)
Legs: i100 ST Phlegethon (SS/Par)
Boots: HQ i90 Wolfram --forgot the baseline stats, similar slotting/config to belt--

Accessories: HQ i90 Crafted STR/SS (slotted 2 VIT IV, 2 Crit IV, 1 Acc/Det IV)

Food: Steamed Catfish

Long story short: on paper, this met virtually all the standard optimized multipliers while maintaining high enough survivability and HP for most content in the game (2nd Coil potentially aside) and sacrificing little strength. However, due to the amount of crafted materials, 2 coil drops and Novus requirements, I find this build and those like it highly unfeasible -- especially given S-E's addiction to iLevel increases every 2 updates (as we are now due), which immediately nullifies the investment.

If S-E ever stops increasing gear levels and introduces other advancement systems in its place, then theorycrafting like this may hold water. Until that time, I also recommend most of the advice mentioned elsewhere in this thread because maximized iLevels are harder to outdate than tertiary stat benefits when new gear and the challenges to obtain it arrives, since VIT and STR are the dominant stats and strictly tied to iLevel.

EDIT: Forgot to mention STR tiers for Block/Parry -- 404/405, 445, 471...

[Alistaire]

Ive got i100's in my BiS said no one ever.

That's kind of extreme. I came in here thinking this would be about healing hands. (for sch of course)

Scylla's: 21 MND, 23 crit, 12 pie
Weathered: 21 MND, 11 det 23 speed
Unweathered: 24 MND, 12 det 25 speed
High Allagan: 24 MND, 18 speed 19 pie

22 VIT on 100's, 25 on 110's

Casting belt is a contender as well, acc notwithstanding.

Scylla's: 16 INT 17 crit 9 det
Weathered: 16 INT 17 acc 12 crit
Unweathered: 18 INT 19 acc 13 crit
High Allagan: 18 INT 13 det 13 speed

loss of 3 vit sticking with i100.

edit: of course I agree with the replies about this being absurd for tanks, defense is about as important in this game as it was unimportant in ffxi.

[Kaonis]

Skill speed on WAR isn't useless because of 2 things. 1 - After a certain threshold, you can fit an extra attack during berserk. 2 - Faster generation of Wrath
Skill speed on PLD in my opinion has less of an effect and CAN be bad for TP, but if you can manage a stoneskin every 3-4 RoH rotations, your TP will last. (TP burn as OT for max dmg, RoH rotation + stoneskin as MT for damage mitigation + TP conservation)

But an added attack here or there means nothing if it drains your TP and you're GCD effectively becomes 3 seconds because you're waiting on every TP tic to be able to do something. I mean if you had a BRD willing to lower their DPS to get your TP back sure I guess, but good luck convincing them to waste MP/DPS just to get a tanks TP back.

[SwordCoheir]

But an added attack here or there means nothing if it drains your TP and you're GCD effectively becomes 3 seconds because you're waiting on every TP tic to be able to do something. I mean if you had a BRD willing to lower their DPS to get your TP back sure I guess, but good luck convincing them to waste MP/DPS just to get a tanks TP back.

He would also need something that would live long enough to actually get that extra attack down the line, and from personal experience anything that isn't a boss in Coil or ST really doesn't live more than a minute unless your with a terribly undergeared group.