Strength Tanks and You.

[Khemorex]

Real endgamers use str tanks with cleric dps healers that put out extra dps and still heal enough for the tank to not die. It's called being good.

we are not talking about raids here , also i would like to see your group doing t13 with 2 undergeared str tanks at ilvl125 (without echo ofc)

edit (obviously your dps and healer should be ilvl125 to else it would be unfair :P best with 2 warriors pls )
2 edit without tank buff ofc i mean u loose dps :P and only with lvl50 food lvl60 ones not allowed :P

[Gyson]

Must've missed the memo where the dev team said specifically they tuned fights so that parties without MTs with STR accessories wouldn't be able to meet DPS checks.

Probably because (as you're implying) fights aren't designed to require tanks in strength gear. That's just something players choose to do, basically exchanging one crutch for another.

As long as I'm using my cooldowns properly, avoiding excess damage where possible (e.g. AOEs, telegraphs, etc).. basically avoiding mistakes during the battle, I know that should I die (and that death results in a wipe) the fault is not mine - provided I've also maxed out my health pool. I have done everything possible at that point to extend my time until death. On the other hand, tanks who choose to nerf their health pools by several thousand hitpoints will always have a party wondering how things would have gone if that tank's life-bar were just a little bit longer.

Simply put, instead of wiping I've had way too many fights wind up just barely in the win column with a handful of hitpoints left on my character. On the other hand, I've never had a fight fail because I wasn't putting out a little extra damage as a tank. Folks in this thread can theory-craft back and forth all they like, but I prefer the actual data from my in-game experiences. I'm not saying there aren't times when all that extra health isn't needed, but when the stuff hits the fan it's good to have it. And since the very nature of stuff hitting the fan usually comes in the form of a surprise, it's better to be prepared in advance than caught with your virtual pants down.

[Darki]

I can NOT stress this enough.

Healing is a fun thing for some of us. But not when the Tanks are packing all STR accessories and ignoring the fundamentals of actually holding hate and not dying a horrible death cause they ate several Critical Hits without the extra health to sustain them long enough for a Heal to get off.

I am a seasoned Warrior and able to confirm this. I have experimented with the whole "STR gear" thing and I can tell you that if you wish to play tank and you want to hold hate, it's just better to invest in the highest ilvl weapon. STR armor/accessories just don't do anything to help hold hate compared to battle damage built into the weapon.

[Ayanno]

Why are people under the assumption that healers can DPS dungeons, but not raids?

Why are people under the assumption that tanks can DPS dungeons, but not raids?

[shinros]

This is a hangover from 2.0, when we tended to easily outgear even the most difficult content and could pull several groups, people demanded the tanks run in STR, now the mobs hit a lot harder, have a lot more HP and the mentality from 2.0 carried over. Cept for me, I never bothered with STR, I'm a tank, my job is simply to hold hate so the DPS can go balls to the wall without worrying about a mob eating their face off, the more HP I have, the more of a safety margin for the healer, that's basically it, I leave the DPS to the DPS and just focus on making sure all the mobs are trying to take my virginity..... again.

Yup I hold the same mentality as you.

[Freyyy]

I am a seasoned Warrior and able to confirm this. I have experimented with the whole "STR gear" thing and I can tell you that if you wish to play tank and you want to hold hate, it's just better to invest in the highest ilvl weapon. STR armor/accessories just don't do anything to help hold hate compared to battle damage built into the weapon.

Lol you're not a seasoned Warrior at all if you really are serious when saying this. The point of building STR is not holding better enmity at all. It's a nice bonus, that's about it. Yes, for every job, getting the highest ilvl weapon is THE go-to thing. But STR accessories (and you also said "armor/accessories" which prove that you don't really know what you are talking about as we always get both VIT AND STR on our armor) are a MASSIVE increase in damage which must be considered, with almost no cost at all when you are a good tank (I've argued enough about it in previous pages, not gonna repeat, you just don't need all that chunk of HP).

Probably because (as you're implying) fights aren't designed to require tanks in strength gear. That's just something players choose to do, basically exchanging one crutch for another.

For 2.0, fights were not designed to require tanks and healers DPSing, yeah. But Yoshida said specifically that now that high-end raiders are doing crazy raid-DPS by getting tanks and healers DPSing, they designed Heavensward encouters DPS checks with tanks AND healers DPSing in mind. It means that you will no longer be able to meet DPS checks if you only have 4 good DPS and tanks just tanking and healers just healing. You're gonna NEED these STR tanks swapping to DPS stance and these healers swapping to cleric whenever they can to ATLEAST meet the enrage timer.

That's what Yoshi said, we'll see in a couple of days when Savage mode comes out.

[Melixy]

Honestly, I used to hate STR-based tanks. Back when my previous static was in process of learning T13 (pre-echo), we had a lot of issues in the first phase because the PLD would just fall over dead from Flatten. Well, one day, I checked his gear and his right side was 100% STR. When I told him he needed to put some VIT in, he gave me a long lecture on how PLD DPS was important and something about "breaking server record" (I honestly think he was more concerned about breaking some record than actually tanking). Well, we went on for another week or so with the PLD falling over dead almost every other Flatten. Then finally one day, I focus-targeted him during a run and noticed that all of the times he was getting one-shotted, he had either forgotten to use a cooldown or had hit the button too late. Eventually, he left our group because we were "holding him back" or something.


We got a new PLD almost instantly who did a STR build with a few STR accessories. He didn't miss a single cooldown. It was worlds different from the first PLD and we cleared fairly soon after.

So, as a WHM main, I just ask that if you do a STR build, you remember your cooldowns and the fundamentals of your job. I do a lot of tanking myself and there's a sort of sick glee I get when I don my STR set of armor (especially on WAR) and wreck some mobs with 2k Butcher's Blocks. But just remember, part of your job is to stay alive, and healers can't do anything when you get one-shotted by Flatten because "lol what's a cooldown". Healer's job is to heal (with DPS on the side if comfortable), tank's job is to hold aggro/stay alive via cooldowns (with DPS on the side if comfortable), and the DPS job is to DPS. A good balance makes a good party.

[shao32]

somedays i want square lock the fending accesories to tanks and str accesories to dps, and end finally the stupid discusion of this threat.

im a full vit drk, and im tired when the str tanks say mi build is for noobs or someting like that, i kill everything except ravana extreme (hard to find partys like a tank) and mi skill whit tanking are not reflec whit mi built, have vit gear dont become a bad tank, a noob tank, a tank can do it they job no matter what built your use, the diference 1 to other is your dealt more dps or you can take more hits, thats depend you play style and you form to see how to help you party.

so stop say vit tanks are bad stupid square heads, i know tanks kill t13 before echo with full vit, agro problems? pff dont get me laugh any skilled tank can take the agro if know how to use they class, and dont say drk is easy to keep agro, is true but im use all tanks and no problem with take the hate.
and sorry for mi english.

[Zfz]

I ran into a PLD wearing fully penta-melded 150HQ RHS in A4N today and he was doing 430dps as MT. A full VIT PLD does about 330dps as MT. Basically a 100dps increase for a PLD. Compared to DPS who should be doing 800+ with the top-notch ones doing 1k+, it comes to about an increase of 2~3% of total raid dps.

It's not something worth throwing away your VIT for. If you wanna do it, go full penta-meld.

[Tsunenori]

snip

This isn't to refute what you've said, because in a lot of situations (especially involving PUGs) you're absolutely right in that the safety is worth more than extra damage. In my own in-game experiences however I have definitely seen fights won and lost by extra damage output done by tanks and healers far more frequently (both raids and dungeons) than it probably should be. I'm talking about repeated wipes at low percentages in half-PUG groups where I finally tell our off-tank to put on all his strength gear and the wipes turn into clears.

And as far as dungeons go, granted this is optimal conditions, but the tank I spend the majority of the time playing with is always in strength gear and frequently in Deliverance doing as much damage as he can. I spend my time in Cleric the majority of the dungeon, and no one's less safe for it. He's never in danger of dying, nor is the group, and the result is that we'll frequently have sub-20 minute runs of the Heavensward dungeons for it. As far as the opening post of the thread goes, I myself as a healer have the most fun in these kinds of runs instead of the 40 minute slogs with low damage output from the whole group due to a variety of reasons.

Ultimately this debate feels the same as the Healer DPS debate. If you're alone with PuGs or you don't trust your group members (or you're undergeared!) you should probably be playing on the safer side of things with your vitality accessories rather than going full damage. There's a place for strength accessories, and if your healers are struggling for whatever reason, or the group isn't really clicking, then that is not the place for strength gear. Sometimes I pull tanks from the Duty Finder who seem to have a yearning for the grave and do their best to take huge damage, stand in everything, and never pop cooldowns. Those are the runs I can't DPS much in, but I don't think that invalidates the DPS. Much the same, I don't think strength accessories are less crucial to good play just because they can be marginalized in a rough group.

Edit: I also forgot to mention big tank busters. If you're getting hit in the face with those you should also probably be using vitality accessories.