Minor Complaint/Mini Rant

[Alahra]

My guess is that Heavensward was too far along in development when the offensive tank meta really started to gain ground for them to do anything about it. While pentamelded accessories were really good even back in 2.0, the STR focus for tanks didn't really start to gain ground in the greater community until sometime after SCOB, and wasn't really cemented until FCOB, at least from my experience. Since any changes they make to address this issue--and three classes not wanting the items the developers want them to want is a serious issue--will probably require adjustments across every tank accessory in the game (or a fundamental re-write of every tank weapon skill and ability), it's not something they can really introduce in anything but a primary (expansion) patch.

Something does need to be done about this from a gear perspective, as the game's entire gear system is designed around tanks wanting Fending gear. As is, an entire class of accessories is undesirable to a not-insignificant faction of tanks, and they're competing for accessories that already have two dedicated classes (bringing the total number of classes after Slaying accessories to five). That certainly isn't intentional, nor is it likely intentional that one (and only one) role values pentamelded accessories above all else. They already dislike pentamelded gear because of its ability to push progression (especially when it came to VIT checks in 2.0, which is why we saw them pushed back from that point forward), and I can't imagine they're happy about tanks bypassing gear lockouts either (since they can skip Esoterics accessories).

We probably won't see any changes here until 4.0 because whatever they do is going to have to be a massive adjustment I imagine, which means it's going to be a long 2 years for those of us that were tired of the debate 6 months ago.