Fending Accessories

[Donjo]

The only way to "fix" Fending Accessories is to make them necessary, either by making it impossible to survive anything without wearing them or just plain locking out both Slaying Accessories and the ability to meld Strength to crafted Fending Accessories. Regarding crafted accessories: I find it incredibly strange that crafted battle gear as a whole was nerfed in Heavensward, but accessories for Tanks are just as powerful as they have ever been. It's almost like they missed a spot during Spring cleaning.

But... Tanking is just sad right now. In this game, Tanks revile defensive stats and are shunned if they maximize their main stat. Let that sink in for a minute.

There is nary a thing about Tanking in FFXIV that isn't horribly broken, and the relationship between Strength and Vitality is at the center of it all. And you know what? I'm honestly not sure if SE has actually realized what Tanks are doing these days. Just look at how long it took them to acknowledge the DPSing Healer.

[Faeon]

The thing is, people want choice and that is the key. The best way to-do is make the raid / tome accessories that you get have slots in there that you can meld. But problem with that is then the crafters loose out too in someway.

[Casper]

The only way to "fix" Fending Accessories is to make them necessary, either by making it impossible to survive anything without wearing them or just plain locking out both Slaying Accessories and the ability to meld Strength to crafted Fending Accessories. Regarding crafted accessories: I find it incredibly strange that crafted battle gear as a whole was nerfed in Heavensward, but accessories for Tanks are just as powerful as they have ever been. It's almost like they missed a spot during Spring cleaning.

But... Tanking is just sad right now. In this game, Tanks revile defensive stats and are shunned if they maximize their main stat. Let that sink in for a minute.

There is nary a thing about Tanking in FFXIV that isn't horribly broken, and the relationship between Strength and Vitality is at the center of it all. And you know what? I'm honestly not sure if SE has actually realized what Tanks are doing these days. Just look at how long it took them to acknowledge the DPSing Healer.

Tanking in this game is actually the most fun i ever had in a mmo ever i think, it is a blast. Tanking in "regular game" is much more boring. Having to weight your defense against your offensive capabilities, using CD offensively at the risk of not having them as backup, etc, make for a much more engaging gameplay. Crafted accessories is the only thing i find really "broken".

Also, locking tanks out of strength on accessories would remove a LOT of the fun out of it. It would force you to have much more HP than you actually need -- which means you would have a safety net for you or your healers to slack, without any way for better players to demonstrate their skill by being more agressive.

Look, i totally understand that it can be frustrating when everyone and their mom is trying to tank agressively without understanding the ins and outs of it, and make things harder on everyone. But it is just people doing crappy stuff. Meanwhile, the system allow great tanks to shine compared to both bad tanks trying to be agressive and failing, and lazy tanks that use super safe gameplays allowing for more margin for their errors.

[Kumori_Kumo]

There is nary a thing about Tanking in FFXIV that isn't horribly broken

Play Global Agenda sometime; you'll appreciate FFXIV tanking a lot more. :P
Now it's true that it isn't optimal, but frankly it kinda doesn't have to be. Sometimes you want gear for bleeding-edge engagements and other times you just want to have an enormous health bar and laugh at the pitiful bugs trying to harm you.

About the only thing I'd like to see is a way for Parry to be useful as anything more than fuel for some random abilities.

[Asterian]

Don't know if it's already been mentioned, but I was always a fan of the first incarnations of WoW's "Vengeance" mechanic for tanks.

For those of you that aren't familiar with it, the tl;dr is taking damage increases your Attack Power by a percentage of damage received, up to a percentage of your max health, and this is a stacking bonus that ramps up over time.

This would allow Vitality to continue to serve as a health buffer, while also contributing a portion to your DPS. Obviously there would need to be a lot of work and testing but I think the basis of the idea is nice.

This could also help to serve in dungeons where the DPS overgear the tank, as the extra damage from Vengeance translates directly into more threat.

[ValkyrieL]

Can't add str. To fending as SE will consider the 155 str on tanks during testing.for dps check on raid. Thus making crafting advantage 0

[Paikis]

There are a couple options that could increase the defensive value of Fending accessories that wouldn't be completely broken, or abused by other classes.

1. Add Def and M.Def to all fending acc. Something like 50 to each on the i180 stuff would be the equivalent of adding a second helmet if you used all Fending. Not a huge bonus, but enough that it would make a difference. You would still need to do something to address the 25% loss in damage/hate though.

2. Increase your damage (or even just hate) done by scaling your Vitality. Going from my tanking set to my DPS set, I lose about 25% of my damage, and only gain about 3500hp. Currently 1 point of STR gives 1 point of Attack Power. What if 1 point of VIT gave 0.5 points of Attack Power?

3. Make parry an offensive stat as well as a (useful) defensive stat. Increase parry DR to 30%, while allowing a player who stacks parry to parry up to about 50% of all attacks. Then, on 25% of all parried attacks, your character executes a Riposte and attacks back for 100 potency with a 3x hate modifier. This would aid with hate, as well as replacing some lost damage and even if you stacked Parry would still only have you Riposting about 10-15% of attacks. Hardly OP. Would probably need to do something similar with blocking.

[Nyalia]

Does anyone mix and match STR and VIT accessories? It'd be a little lower stats overall than fully melded crafted accessories, but it'd be a heck of a lot cheaper, and it'd have higher secondaries, which might balance that out some? Sadly, I can't model this on Ariyala to compare, since the site doesn't give the option of Slaying accessories on tanks.

So, let me try this here (I don't actually know acc caps or stat weights, so I have no idea which pieces are actually best, but still, quick check for validity):

Gordian Neckband of Slaying: 47 str, 30 acc, 42 det
Gordian Earrings of Slaying: 47 str, 44 crit, 29 det
Fabled Bracelet of Fending: 44 acc, 29 det, 49 vit
Gordian Ring of Slaying: 47 str, 44 acc, 30 crit
Fabled Ring of Fending: 42 det, 49 vit, 30 parry

That's 141 str, 98 vit, 118 acc, 142 det, 74 crit, 30 parry.

Fully melded 150 with pure primary stats on the melds gives:


Citrine Choker of Slaying: 31 str, 29 vit, 24 acc, 17 crit (if money isn't an issue, you can have an extra secondary materia here for significantly more)
Chrysolite Earrings of Slaying: 31 str, 29 vit, 17 acc, 23 det (if money isn't an issue, you can have an extra secondary materia here for significantly more)
Chrysolite Bracelet of Fending: 31 str, 29 vit, 24 acc, 17 crit (fending here because slaying has ss on it)
Chrysolite Ring of Slaying: 31 str, 29 vit, 24 crit, 17 ss (both have ss on them; if money isn't an issue, you can have an extra secondary materia here for significantly more)
Chrysolite Ring of Slaying: 31 str, 29 vit, 24 crit, 17 ss (both have ss on them; if money isn't an issue, you can have an extra secondary materia here for significantly more)

That's 155 str, 145 vit, 65 acc, 23 det, 82 crit, 34 ss, with the possiblity of 36 more acc or crit, or 32 more det, all for a ton more money.


So, compared to the mix above, melded is 14 more str, 47 more vit, 53 less acc, 119 less det, 8 more crit, and ss instead of parry. How much eSTR is det these days? If it's 0.11 or more, the mix has more eSTR. And then you're looking at acc vs vit. 47 vit on a PLD is about 960 HP.


Dunno. Not saying that the OP isn't totally right, just wondering if there's a viable alternative for me that involves dungeon drops rather than pentamelded tier IV materia...

[Casper]

Snip

First of all, secondaries value is closer to 0.08 eSTR at the moment. Secondaries got shafted, badly, during the 3.0 patch. The 14 STR are close in value to all the secondaries on the other side, pretty much, which leaves a 1k hp that you leave behind for nothing.

The second point is that you can meld much more than what you described indeed. You can easily go VIT IV * 3, crit or det IV * 2, using 4 slaying crafted, and one slaying 210. That's 2 less vit (40 hp) than the mix you suggested, but you are now 31 STR above the mix of 210 accessories, and less than 50 secondary stats behind. Basically, a 5% DPS increase.

Do not forget that you are considering full 210 accessories by the way. How long before you achieve that ? It is likely that by that time, i180 accessories will have been released (likely for 3.1). Until then, crafted are even better, and by a solid margin.

Look, it is not that you are "gimp" if you don't have crafted accessories. If you don't go into savage, don't bother dropping millions of gils on them, unless you like pretty numbers.

But if you are in a savage static and are serious about it, not world first serious, but just have any intention of clearing it before echo is put on it, you should get a set of crafted accessories. The difference in terms of DPS is really meaningful -- assuming you go with minimum vitality in both cases, it will be at the very least 10%, most likely 15% for a while as you don't have high level accessories to wear anyway.

[Donjo]

Tanking is fun

I'm glad you find Tanking fun. I find it fun too. The fact that it's broken doesn't inherently keep it from being fun. It just makes the bits that are solid shine more.

@Nyalia: Ariyala does allow Slaying Accessories to be visible to Tanks. Just select a Tanking Job and click "DPS Accessories" on the top bar. Same goes for Craftables.