Fending Accessories

[Nadirah]

You can't CTC cap anymore. They deemed it broken, especially since only war/pal could.

Warrior can critically block now, and Paladin shield of the righteous reduces damage taken by a percentage. All tanks work off active mitigation like death knights with blood shield now.

[konpachizaraki]

i think giving strength to the fending accesories is the best
the amount of VIT- 10 so if it's i190 you get 30 str. so you get strength equal to the pentamelds when you can get 30 str but with more VIT
if it's not possible then give the fending acc more defense and magic defense in it
like i190 giving 150 defense and magic defense rather than just VIT

[Sapphidia]

I think the playerbase needs to agree on exactly what the problem is with Fending Accessories, and what's expected.

Is it Parity? Every other job role in the game has one single option for accessories - they wear the highest item level they can with their primary stat. Dragoons wear full slaying, Black Mages wear full Casting. Tanks are the only role that needs to maintain two sets of accessories, one of which they arent even allowed to roll Need on. Is this viewed as unfair?

Is it the power of Pentamelds? Tanks are also the only role where to truly optimise them you need to spend several millions on crafted accessories. The only time pentamelds are worse than item drops are when you outgear an encounter and just want to run full Slaying. In any situation where you need any amount of vit, Pentamelds blow Fendings out of the water bar the few edge cases where you're so horrendously undergeared that you need full vit spec and full fending to survive a single tankbuster.

Regardless, it's just unsatisfying that Tanks can't remotely get excited about "their" gear. Crafted gear should surely be for getting a tiny edge in bleeding edge content at the start, but then outdated by the drops in that content. It feels kind of lame that the crafted 150s I made when I dinged 60 are still better than anything that drops in the current hardest raid content. I have 210 fending drops sitting on my Retainer buffing her ilevel.

I don't think putting more defense on fending stuff will help at all - the issue is still the same. Tanks right now care more about damage output than survivability, and thus Slaying accessories will ALWAYS be more preferred except in bleeding edge cases. The issue is that a fending accessory doesnt help DPS in any significant way.

There's only 3 ways to make Fending Accessories desirable to tanks right now:
1 - Put strength on them too so they're either as good as Slaying or at least better than crafted pentamelds.
2 - Change tank skills in some way so that a lot of their damage scales off Vitality rather than strength.
3 - Make Fending accessories Tank Only, Slaying DPS only, and literally make it so Fending is the only thing tanks can equip.

Tanks need Vit and Strength and they get both in plenty off their left side gear. Are we happy as a community with needing to maintain multiple accessory sets, some of which are highly contested by non-tanks? Do we want Pentamelds to remain best in slot each time new recipes appear or do we prefer actual raid drops to always be preferable?

Personally, whilst I enjoy the fiddling of finding optimal levels of Str/Vit by fiddling accessories, I think I'd prefer it if Fending accessories were just flat out the best to use in all situations. Let them have Str and Vit on, make them tank-only if necessary. Maybe make full strength a better optoin for flat DPS, but at least put enough strength on them that a Fending accessory will always beat out a lower ilevel Pentamelded one in terms of total stats.

[Tyrial]

What they need to do is just give us a clear cut primary stat. VIT does nothing for our skills and shouldn't be counted as our primary, it's a bonus stat that everyone benefits from.

[Zarzak]

What they need to do is just give us a clear cut primary stat. VIT does nothing for our skills and shouldn't be counted as our primary, it's a bonus stat that everyone benefits from.

It does everything for our JOB aka to not die when a mob hits us

Defense on our gear reduces what would hit a dps for 40k down to 25k. Then through defensives we reduce that down more so that our available hp pool can withstand it.

The problem is that jewelry does not give defense AND HP like every other piece of gear. Tank jewelry needs to add defense and magic resist or some other form of permanent damage reduction.

[Tyrial]

It does everything for our JOB aka to not die when a mob hits us

Sorry...but this is wrong. VIT does nothing different for us than it does for any other job. VIT does nothing to directly influence how well we perform our job.

STR, DEX and INT increase damage for their respective DPS. VIT inflates our HP pool and nothing more. STR increases our damage and, by association, our enmity.

[Zarzak]

Sorry...but this is wrong. VIT does nothing different for us than it does for any other job. VIT does nothing to directly influence how well we perform our job.

STR, DEX and INT increase damage for their respective DPS. VIT inflates our HP pool and nothing more. STR increases our damage and, by association, our enmity.

Go in with ilvl 130 gear and at 11k hp and let me know how long you survive. Then we can have this talk about vit being no more important for tanks than any other class.

[Dante_V]

I think you are overcompensating the effect of defense on gear. It's negligible to certain degrees and adding defense to accessories would literally change nothing in regard to the meta involving str. The reason people are going with slaying and pentamelds is 100% because the fending accessories have no str. Adding defense to them changes nothing as active defense is primarily utilized thru cooldowns and debuffs as opposed to flat increases from gear.
Take a tank buster unmitigated with a full 180 left side and a ful 190 left side and you really aren't going to see much of a difference in total hp loss. This is why the vit meta is thing to begin with as opposed to a defense rating meta.

[Zarzak]

...

im not saying throw 50 defense/mag def on them and call it a day. I'm saying it should be added and events balanced around the jewelry. The same way a tank in 160 fending gear would get rocked by Hypercompressed Plasma a tank without up to par fending jewelry should get rocked.

Its like saying a drg went in with fending jewelry on their dps would be up to par.. It wouldn't and it shouldn't be. Just like our survivability should not be up to par going in without jewelry designed for tanks.

[karateorangutang]

im not saying throw 50 defense/mag def on them and call it a day. I'm saying it should be added and events balanced around the jewelry. The same way a tank in 160 fending gear would get rocked by Hypercompressed Plasma a tank without up to par fending jewelry should get rocked.

Its like saying a drg went in with fending jewelry on their dps would be up to par.. It wouldn't and it shouldn't be. Just like our survivability should not be up to par going in without jewelry designed for tanks.

This is all well and good, but the only real way to do that would be to add tank busters that leave the tank at very low HP. This would also be hard to implement because the ilvl gap for tank, and tank only, would be a very hard cap that could not be overcome with any amount of skill. Imposing a gear cap like that on one role and keeping the same for others would be a odd design choice and would push people from the role.

The only real way to overcome it is to give vit a more meaningful meta. If we wanted to keep it defensive why not allow vit to affect parry and block and give it a bigger proc rate. Then at least there might be some reason to wear it.