What they mean by "change the damage calculations of tanks"?

[SwordCoheir]

Quite frankly, I would hope the change would be related to changing tanks main stat from STR to VIT. Even when we are fully specced for damage our DPS is already significantly lower than a dedicated DPS, so it doesn't make sense where we have to lower our DPS more and enmity generation by proxy in order to survive a big hit. It would also greatly kill any enmity adjustments that SE keeps having to make, because it would normalize stat scaling for tanks to be in line with the other jobs.

[Jonnycbad]

Quite frankly, I would hope the change would be related to changing tanks main stat from STR to VIT. Even when we are fully specced for damage our DPS is already significantly lower than a dedicated DPS, so it doesn't make sense where we have to lower our DPS more and enmity generation by proxy in order to survive a big hit.

While this does seem like the most elegant solution, it would break current balance, maybe not for PLD, but for WAR? A WAR in full VIT gear has like 30-35k HP, if VIT was also their main damage stat like STR is now, they would be at maximum damage and maximum HP pool.

You would be able to clear content with like 7 WARs and 1 healer because: why bring DPS that only have 12-14k HP (and are only ahead of WAR DPS by about 10-15%) when you can bring 7 WARs with 30k+ HP with DPS only slightly below dedicated DPS jobs?

DRG has like 14500 HP and has 1300 DPS.
WAR has 25000 HP and has 1150-1200 DPS (dont forget their defensive cooldowns that allow the healer(s) to DPS longer).

I would take the 7 WARs and 1 healer.

[SwordCoheir]

While this does seem like the most elegant solution, it would break current balance, maybe not for PLD, but for WAR? A WAR in full VIT gear has like 30-35k HP, if VIT was also their main damage stat like STR is now, they would be at maximum damage and maximum HP pool.

I'm sure a STR to VIT swap will come with a few of it's own problems, but every major gear patch we get SE has had to give us band-aid patches to our enmity multipliers due to scaling disparity of stats when tanks have to chose VIT over STR, so I think this would be a good permanent solution to that problem. As for the HP disparity, they'll probably adjust the way it scales so the gap isn't as big on WAR and I honestly expect them to homogenize the damage between tanks somewhat where that gap isn't so huge either.

[whiskeybravo]

While this does seem like the most elegant solution, it would break current balance, maybe not for PLD, but for WAR? A WAR in full VIT gear has like 30-35k HP, if VIT was also their main damage stat like STR is now, they would be at maximum damage and maximum HP pool.

This doesn't quite seem accurate, full vit 210 War should have around 21-22k HP out of defiance, and full vit war not doing 1200 dps.. Unless your talking about future item levels.

I don't think War having more HP would affect attack power. It would be based off vitality stat if anything, and all 3 tanks would have the same vit stat since they share gear (well, maybe not eso gear but it's all the same vit stat). If attack power was based off HP and not Vitalty, then something like thrill of battle and defiance would turn into dps cooldowns.

[Tyrial]

This doesn't quite seem accurate, full vit 210 War should have around 21-22k HP out of defiance, and full vit war not doing 1200 dps.. Unless your talking about future item levels.

I don't think War having more HP would affect attack power. It would be based off vitality stat if anything, and all 3 tanks would have the same vit stat since they share gear (well, maybe not eso gear but it's all the same vit stat). If attack power was based off HP and not Vitalty, then something like thrill of battle and defiance would turn into dps cooldowns.

Not once in his post does he mention HP being linked to attack power...he says if VIT became the damage modifier it would throw things out of balance if HP scaling was left as is.

[whiskeybravo]

Not once in his post does he mention HP being linked to attack power...he says if VIT became the damage modifier it would throw things out of balance if HP scaling was left as is.

Yea, I slightly misinterpreted his post, but, it seems to rest on the assumption that new vit would be greater than or equal to current str. And we don't know that for that sure. My point was more along the lines of, I don't see how there would be a huge disparity between war and the other tanks. 35k HP is a bit unreasonable, the only way to reach that is by using defiance and why would you use defiance if you're trying to dps. So take the high HP out of the equation, all the tanks would have the same Vitality stat and *likely* the same attack power.

More to Johnny's point, if vit = str then, it's true, there wouldn't be a need drag a dps along with half the survivability of a tank. So we can pretty much rest assured that whatever they come up with, new vit will not equal current str.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

While this does seem like the most elegant solution, it would break current balance, maybe not for PLD, but for WAR? A WAR in full VIT gear has like 30-35k HP, if VIT was also their main damage stat like STR is now, they would be at maximum damage and maximum HP pool.

You would be able to clear content with like 7 WARs and 1 healer because: why bring DPS that only have 12-14k HP (and are only ahead of WAR DPS by about 10-15%) when you can bring 7 WARs with 30k+ HP with DPS only slightly below dedicated DPS jobs?

DRG has like 14500 HP and has 1300 DPS.
WAR has 25000 HP and has 1150-1200 DPS (dont forget their defensive cooldowns that allow the healer(s) to DPS longer).

I would take the 7 WARs and 1 healer.

DPS classes should do more then just DPS. They should have their own utility and a lot of them do have utility. Defense is a utility. Tanks are DPS with Defensive Utility. DPS should be DPS with offensive or crowd control or buff utility.

Some DPS classes do need some buffs though. Which would be a great time to give them some much needed utility to add to the game.

If DPS classes also used Pentamelded gear their Health would also be very high. They just do not need to, which to me is kind of sad. They should be adding more ways for DPS to have to survive as well. However there isn't really any soft aoes in the game.

FFXIV is pretty simple and the formula has not changed much. However tanks dealing damage is not a bad thing.

[Rbstr]

While this does seem like the most elegant solution, it would break current balance, maybe not for PLD, but for WAR? A WAR in full VIT gear has like 30-35k HP, if VIT was also their main damage stat like STR is now, they would be at maximum damage and maximum HP pool.

Even currently, with full strength, War has vastly better defense and more HP than a DPS class.
Adding yet more HP to that mix doesn't really alter that dynamic. HP doesn't change the amount of damage taken. That's largely our problem, isn't it? Fending gear doesn't do worthwhile stuff because extra HP isn't worthwhile stuff.

But, also, it doesn't seem too likely that the current per-point HP and damage values would carry over unchanged.

[Jpec07]

I've been mulling this over for a few days now, and I finally have something meaningful to contribute to the discussion. I'll apologize in advance, because this doesn't address any of the conversations that have been had to this point; I've been focusing on the original wording and what it might mean.

Right now, a lot of people are afraid of this. Changing something as fundamental as our damage calculation has potential to rock gearing paradigms to the core, and to change how we play our jobs. It could also represent a shift in encounter design as well, depending on what the change in question is. This could either be a simple change, or it could be a deep change, and both of those present different levels of "threat" as regards to our current way of tanking (which is a dividing point for tanks right now). But change itself is not a bad thing. Indeed, this could be a way to bring all of our concerns into line, and we don't really have any clarity into what the developers mean with this change. But whatever it is, we'll find out in a week and a half.

But whatever it is, we don't need to be afraid of it. Stat priorities change all the time, and that is something that is basically a constant in the context of an MMO. If tomorrow a prominent theorycrafter was able to irrefutably prove that Dex is The God Stat for DRK, then DRKs might bemoan their gearing choices to date, but they'd all switch to Dex gear and move on. Because that's what we do as tanks.

Right now, the damage paradigmmeta exists because it's what tanks needed to do in A3S and A4S in order to be successful in early runs. Tanks who participate in the damage meta are going to have higher success in those fights than tanks that gear and play to the survivability meta. Some tanks love doing more damage, and enjoy not having to struggle under the crushing weight of heavy incoming boss damage (and also enjoy perfectly timing their cooldowns and stance dancing), but others dislike it, and think it's not what tanking should be. There have been numerous discussions to this effect, and both sides are right in their arguments--it's a matter of personal preference. But to play the game, tanks do what they must do to be successful, and so right now, the damage meta prevails.

Let me say that again: tanks do what they must do to be successful.

It doesn't matter if 3.1 comes around and suddenly tanks need to figure out how to stack Intellect in order to succeed, because if that's what we need to do, it's what we'll do. We may not like it, and we may take to the forums asking for a change, but we'll do what it takes to succeed. And I have a little bit of faith that Yoshi P and SE have at least some idea what they're doing here, and that it will make sense when it comes around.

Honestly, the part of this that really seems off to me is that this seems like a response to the fact that tanks are preferring Slaying to Fending in all gearing content, and that they haven't listened to the community that has identified the source of that mentality. We're saying pretty clearly that it's a problem of high-end encounter design that's having a trickle-down effect, or at the very least a problem with tanking stats, or stats on gear in general, and instead of tweaking either of those things, they're (probably) changing our DPS stat priority to align with our survival stat priority. And that they don't seem to be listening to our well-reasoned ideas doesn't quite sit right with me.

[DarioSkydragon]

... [/s]

My goal with this post is:

1) Try to collect opinions on the specific sentence quoted.

2) To offer my opinion on the current tank meta, which I approve.

As you said, we tanks always will do our best to adapt and improve our gameplay, whatever the meta for our job. However, as tank, I do not agree to SE if they want to reduce our DPS to half, only to fending accessories become relevant again.