Minor Complaint/Mini Rant

[SeraviEdalborez]

I personally think that this is a much bigger problem than it sounds. It's the most visible mechanic in a set of systems surrounding Tanking that have coincidentally come together to allow such a bend toward Strength that Tanks can run off and almost completely abandon their assigned role... yet still not die.

Outcry regarding Tank DPS and the fight against Vitality and Strength has never been so loud as it is now. Even Japanese forumgoers are allegedly questioning why Fending Accessories aren't the best thing a Tank should wear, like every other job's accessories are. Square Enix cannot pretend to be blind to this.

Going into 3.1, they've claimed to have the data that "Tanks are having trouble securing enmity". It is very possible that they'll just pop in, buff Paladin enmity, and call it a day. It would keep things largely as they are. They could alternately openly buff Paladin DPS somehow. This would prove that the greater community has the ability to bully the developers into abandoning the intended design of a job. A terrible precedent. Finally, they could make a major change to systems that provides a clearer direction for Tanks to go.

The last thing we probably want, however, is wholesale nerfs to Tank DPS. Stuff like job locking accessories and nothing else. The outcry would get particularly violent if groups who relied on stacking Strength on the Tanks to get through Savage fights suddenly couldn't do so anymore.

No matter what, I think that we want dev answers to these kinds of questions regarding intent:

- Do you intend for Tanks to be collecting Slaying Accessories along with Fending?
- Do you intend for Tanks to be tanking stuff outside of their Tank Stance?

I would wager to say that most of the confusion around here is due to the fact that the answer to the big question of "What in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster are Tanks supposed to be doing!?" is just so... wishy washy. I could appreciate any change they make to this stuff as long as they put their foot on one side of the line and stick with it.

It doesn't really matter what the dev team intends. It matters what they allow because this is what sets the limit for how players shape the meta. And they have allowed STR or meldaccessory meta for a long time now. They purposely delay implementing crafted accessories for the sole purpose of trying to curb it, but the reality is that they can't stop it from being optimal because "too much VIT" is a ridiculously easy threshold to pass and even 2-patches-old accessory melds are better than current tier blue accessories for tanks.

When i150 melded accessories beat, in terms of combined STR, VIT, and secondaries, a mix of Slay/Fend all the way up to a theoretical 220, you have a problem with the already problematically simple vertical gear design. It's not just optimal in terms of stats, it's also optimal in terms of the most valuable commodity in the game: time. Specifically the weekly lockout. You skip having to buy 5 Esoteric accessories or having to get 5 Alex Savage accessories, meaning you can allot Esoterics to other slots or jobs sooner or not have to roll against another player for loot. And it's the best option on top of that.

The issue of Slaying vs Fending accessories is subjective as fuck, but melded accessories are where the real problem lies. Not in that they exist, but in that they are the unequivocally best option for multiple reasons. And this is somehow treated as a bad thing. When you lower the bar enough for a poor-quality player to be able to clear most content, you allow for a larger percentage of the playerbase to successfully perform things as arbitrarily simple as tanking without tank stance. If you make it hard enough to always warrant the tank stance, you exclude more of the precious casual customers who couldn't handle it with tank stance beforehand.

The STR meta is not going to disappear. Ever. As long as the game continues to revolve around tight DPS checks. Even if it someday does not, I would have a hard time believing nobody wants to clear a fight faster. Marginally or not.

It doesn't wholly matter what tanks "do" in any other MMO before or alongside this. In this game, DPS is an expectation because the whole game revolves around it. It doesn't even take any special effort for tanks in this game, yet people treat it like it's the most difficult thing in the world for the easiest role in the world.