Tanks, please use strength gear.. :(

[JackFross]

Everyone on this page seems to either be parroting or ignoring this post I made.

To reiterate: It's not about tanks pumping out more damage. It's not about telling people how to play. It's about discussing ways to maximize your role in the party composition. If you can do your job (survival and threat generation) just fine with less VIT, then dropping that VIT to increase your offensive output is a way to improve beyond where you are currently.

Please note, though. If one of the following is true:
1. You don't know the fight well enough yet to manage cooldowns optimally to keep yourself alive
2. You haven't mastered the dps rotation for your class, so running STR accessories gives you marginal gains for your suboptimal rotation
3. You hate how everyone always cries BUT DO MORE DAMAGE and you much prefer seeing those really really sexy health scores and shrugging off massive hits

You should probably not be running Strength gear. I ran a Sohm Al yesterday on white mage with a full strength DRK who was doing the same damage as a full VIT DRK could do. In that situation, you're forcing me to DPS less and causing an overall drop in DPS to the raid because you simply cannot use the bonus STR to its fullest.

Using STR gear isn't about "DO MORE DAMAGE" it's about optimizing the class. If you haven't done the base legwork to reach that optimization, taking this last step is not advisable.


(Though, important to note: You can still do so. It's fine. If you have more fun seeing bigger damage numbers, even if you're NOT optimizing damage output, and you aren't dying due to unskilled healers / inefficient cooldown usage, by all means GO FOR IT! Have fun, first and foremost! It's a video game, after all. C: )

[Sapphidia]

Everyone on this page seems to either be parroting or ignoring this post I made.

I'll actually respond directly here, because you make some good points, but I feel there's one key element that you've missed when comparing the tank dps thing to the other classes improving their overall performance.

I should probably make a new post on the topic of "Power Fantasy" and why half the playerbase is torn, but the basic concept is simple : Healers improve their DPS via optimising gaps in their need to heal, but still wear the same gear. They arent nerfing their healing output because it's due to how they play, and gearing up increases healing + dps together. If they suddenly need to pump out a tonne of healing, they just turn Cleric off and take full advantage of their gear. DPS players only gain more and more DPS with gear upgrades, but also gain increased survivability as a matter of course as they get free vitality on every left side upgrade. Maximising the class for these two roles is more about playing better, finding opportunities to do other things, and have a "one gearset fits all" system.

With tanks it's different. Now, I'm not going to argue against the merits of Str vs Vit, it's been done to death. Yes, Strength is better in most cases. Yes, Vitality is pointless beyond certain levels. But one thing is present that goes beyond just the stats and figures:

Vitality makes you "feel" tankier. You see big numbers on the health. You see your health bar going down slower.

Now this doesnt really mean much, but "power fantasy" is a key element to enjoying the game. Players who gravitate towards DPS roles generally love seeing big numbers on their hits, they love seeing huge crits pop up, they love seeing a DPS meter with their name at the top showing they've done huge amounts of damage, and they love how getting an upgrade increases all of these.

Now, tanks can also gain just as much enjoyment from this dps fantasy, but the power fantasy of a lot of tank players (particularly those gravitating towards the less aggressive styles, or the PLD class in general) is to be as tough as nails. They care about maximising their class, they care about doing lots of DPS, but they get MORE fun out of feeling like an immovable wall.

This is the problem a lot of players face - regardless of the actual facts, they have to make a SACRIFICE of Vitality in order to stack strength. It's not like healers. They don't just wear one universal set of gear and then maximise their dps by just playing better, knowing the rotations and stance dancing more effectively. They have to make an active choice before a fight starts that they are going to purposefully reduce their effective hitpoints, make themselves able to take less damage without healer intervention, in order to do more damage.

This is a tradeoff, not just a matter of being better. Yes, the best tanks will go strength and understand the lack of impact vit stacking has, but the psychological effect is there. If there's a wipe and the tank explodes, be it due to bad play or more likely something like lag, or the healer gets distracted, or someone accidentally pulls an extra pack... if that happens, some tanks just can't stand the idea that the pre-battle choice they made to nerf their health might have contributed to their death.

It's simply a power fantasy thing, and for players who DON'T have the power fantasy of wanting to feel like an immovable wall I can understand it's difficult to grasp. The game is telling them that they have to give up the feeling they play their class for and optimise towards a different feeling.

The best players will do it anyway, but they don't have to be -happy- about that.

A counter : imagine if Healer DPS scaled entirely off Intelligence and Cleric Stance didnt exist. Healers would be pressured to wear entirely INT gear on the right side, have 35 points in Int, and the community would be saying "just get as much Mind as you need to heal an encounter, then put the rest in your DPS". They'd feel like they were nerfing their potential healing output in order to optimise a secondary role. The best players would do it and it would be fine, but there'd always be that devout core of healers that gain most pleasure out of seeing huge healing numbers that would really resent it.

[Paladinleeds]

Snip.

And this is exactly the reason why I chose the PLD. As a PLD, I'm trying to be this giant titanium impenetrable shield that can shrug off tank busters like it ain't no thing. That's why I play a full VIT tank. Thing is, despite being i188 (I was i186 on my last A1S encounter), I was still the first to die every time. And we couldn't beat it. Now imagine if I had STR accessories, I'd be even more toasted!

[AnimaS]

And this is exactly the reason why I chose the PLD. As a PLD, I'm trying to be this giant titanium impenetrable shield that can shrug off tank busters like it ain't no thing. That's why I play a full VIT tank. Thing is, despite being i188 (I was i186 on my last A1S encounter), I was still the first to die every time. And we couldn't beat it. Now imagine if I had STR accessories, I'd be even more toasted!

i have seen this happen with another pld on 1savage tank busters, the Paladin had no idea how to rotate cooldowns.

[Paladinleeds]

i have seen this happen with another pld on 1savage tank busters, the Paladin had no idea how to rotate cooldowns.

Do ya wanna know what was even more embarrassing for me? This was on Faust... the adds on Faust specifically.

[AnimaS]

Do ya wanna know what was even more embarrassing for me? This was on Faust... the adds on Faust specifically.

oh well that is a group dps issue there so not uncommon you'd die first. You need to participate if grabbing adds but not much at all... at this point gear makes that check pretty easy if the party setup is right. Faust needs to be dotted alot too, I've seen him drop as he was casting that pressure increase enrage and party members were dropping , from dots.