Quote Originally Posted by Whiston View Post
For those around for the 2.0-2.2 ish era, this meta didn't really exist.
It's actually existed since 2.0, but was only pursued by the higher echelon of tanks. Gryphonskin accessories were pretty much the best accessories we ever got - i70, STR + VIT + DEX, easily capped with plenty of room to meld other secondaries. These were ideal for everything up to T5 MT (when you had more gear, they were ideal for that as well).

STR was a huge benefit for 2.0 WAR, as our only form of "mitigation" was our self heal in IB, which scaled from STR. It also boosted Bloodbath + Berserk + IR + Unchained healing (super good in T4), and though still pitiful it boosted Storm's Path healing as well.

2.2/SCoB was the biggest boon for STR tanking and where melded accessories saw their biggest use. This followed into 2.4 with FCoB and eventually saw it's way into every tank's mind in 3.0 due to the popularity of Xeno.

It's sort of a popular misconception that STR tanking just showed up randomly in FCoB and in 3.0, it's been here the whole time and it's always been as useful as it is now. I personally don't have a problem with STR tanking, but I think if we went the VIT only route we'd need something akin to WoW or Tera's tanking model - active mitigation. Auto attacks currently hit for 3k~3.5k (5.k-ish crit) in Savage, which is essentially nothing. If we had abilities or even a stat (hello Parry wherefore art thou) that mitigated larger incoming damage to the reasonable level it's at now, then we'd have a reason to stack VIT. Obviously Parry doesn't work because it's RNG (even at a high %, larger spikes of damage randomly = nonono) but if it were shifted to something like +Defense then we'd have a worthwhile tank stat.

Anyway, it's really weird that SE hasn't done anything about this tbh. They know it exists but they really just can't seem to be bothered to fix it. Donjo's post implies it's an accident that the STR focus exists, but it seems like they're okay with it sticking around. I dunno, I feel like they forgot what tanks actually are meant to do and instead made DPS that occasionally press a CD to mitigate big damage.