Let's Talk Stats

[Brian_]

It's first and foremost an issue with encounter design.

If fights had a lot more general damage -- enough damage to run healers OOM from non stop max-HPS spam, then the ability to minimize damage as a tank would be more important.

As is, the balance works as such -- I could stack more survivability and...? Or, I could stack more DPS stats and end the fight faster. One has a clear result. The other is situational at best.

If you wanted to fix the dynamic you just design encounters to change that relationship. For example -- I could stack more survivability and actually survive through the incoming damage. Or, I could stack more DPS and be 100% guaranteed to wipe the raid every time due to healers going OOM or just randomly dying to incoming damage.

Then, defensive stats actually become relevant.

Next, you would just have to fix the stats themselves -- so make parry not suck, unlink def / mdef and vit / str stat allocation from ilevels, etc.

You might think this flips the scales in the other direction and makes tank DPS irrelevant but that's simply not true. People will still eventually find the threshold where enough survivability is enough even if it's after you've over-geared content. Also, encounters can still be designed to give OTs the responsibility to DPS. So, offensive stats would still matter.

[Edewen]

As it stands, no classes have this kind of "choice" outside of tanks. That is a problem. Tanks shouldn't have a choice either.

Suggestion 1: Take slaying away from tanks. Make accessories class specific. Cut the vit on fending in half, replace the lost points with str. This will do two things. End the argument of str vs vit, and allow better tuning of bosses and of classes. It would be a lot easier to bring all tanks within 150 dps of each other.

Suggestion 2: Make parry actually useful and add def and mgc def to fending accessories to encourage tanks to use them, this would still run the risk of tanks doing exactly what they do now. So in turn se would make bosses hit harder and in turn bosses would more easily one shot everyone else.

[Kaonis]

As it stands, no classes have this kind of "choice" outside of tanks. That is a problem. Tanks shouldn't have a choice either.

Suggestion 1: Take slaying away from tanks. Make accessories class specific. Cut the vit on fending in half, replace the lost points with str. This will do two things. End the argument of str vs vit, and allow better tuning of bosses and of classes. It would be a lot easier to bring all tanks within 150 dps of each other.

Suggestion 2: Make parry actually useful and add def and mgc def to fending accessories to encourage tanks to use them, this would still run the risk of tanks doing exactly what they do now. So in turn se would make bosses hit harder and in turn bosses would more easily one shot everyone else.

Pretty much this. The more I play tank, the more I want to just play a DPS. No stressing over what accessories to get, or getting/keeping up to date 2 sets. And if I'm expected to maximize my DPS, I'd much rather just play that role instead of a psuedo-tank.

[Kallera]

I wish the stats did more, tbh. As a drk or a nin, i don't want to slap on only one stat and call it a day. I want to see piety or dexterity do something for me too.

A little more in the way of stats strengthening particular moves/abilities i think would be great.
There's no real thing to look foward to in terms of gear. the raid (and maybe the esoteric) will always be the highest, and they can't be customized. The crafted? Always a tier down, and held back by stat limitations.

[Hydrium]

They made encounters a little more interesting this time around but they still fail to go beyond putting DPS checks in the way. I would like to see more encounters that rely on situational awareness than just pure "beef up the numbers to make them push their buttons harder".

[pandabearcat]

The one thing I truly, truly want is WoW in a FF setting. And I mean that with zero sarcasm whatsoever.

WoW is an extremely polished mmo - but the graphics are 10 years old and I'm a bit tired of the lore.
FF14 is chock full of lore and childhood memories, and absolutely beautiful graphics. But the 2.5 sec GCD kills me. Animation locks kill me, and zero gear choice kills me too. Gear bloat, and massive grind are very reminiscent of Vanilla WoW.

We take a lot of WoW's innovations for granted...but seeing how not a single new MMO managed to emulate more than Vanilla and maybe BC at best...well, its sad. Maybe FF14 will become that in another 5 years.

But that is sort of off topic.

I would very, very much like tanking "skill" to be being able to mitigate the most damage possible, to make those clutch plays and save the raid. I want my survivability to be in my own hands, instead of a glorified meat shield that relies 100% on healers to survive.

I think tank stances are stupid and the idea of tank swaps needs to be better done. I think VIT needs to be solely based on ilvl and more interesting stats should take its place. I think class specific gear is well and good but should be on the token system a la WoW instead of solo buying with esoterics, so we can have more interesting raid drops. I desperately want this game to have some degree of actual randomness and procs - bring in trinkets and set bonuses, please...we've been playing the same class for years and years with no change other than our numbers go up.