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

[Cynric]

In a vacuum it might be pointless, but the game doesn't exist in a vacuum and tank gear historically has STR on it on the left side, since *all* left side gear has one primary main stat and a secondary main stat (for most classes, the secondary stat is VIT, but the pattern is reversed for tank). In terms of coinciding with existing gear, they're more likely to do a split so they don't have to recalibrate the way stat budgets work for left-side tank gear.

Gear shared between Monk and Ninja had Dex and STR on it. Ninja didn't magically get stronger from the strength stat existing on that gear.

It's not really hard to say if Tanks don't need Str on gear then it doesn't have to be there. You're thinking too inside the box. Nothing is set in stone with game development. Especially itemization.

[Alahra]

Gear shared between Monk and Ninja had Dex and STR on it. Ninja didn't magically get stronger from the strength stat existing on that gear.

That's not exactly the same case, though--there was already precedent for melee classes sharing gear pre-50, while there's not a precedent for a class having only one main stat on it, which is what future tank gear would look like if they went all VIT. (NIN was also sort of a weird case in that it was released later and the other DEX-cased class had a handful of sets that weren't particularly thematically appropriate for NIN/ROG and MNK had one set in particular, in Fuma from CT, that fit NIN's eastern flavor to a point. But that's an aside.)

While I don't know for sure that the itemization functions don't require two main stats, I'd say it's fairly likely that they hold that as a fundamental. Assuming two stats are part of the assumption of the item budget formulas, they could a) adjust tank skills to function based solely off of VIT, and then also need to modify itemization formulas for just one category of gear; or they could b) modify the formulas to take both STR and DEX into account so they don't have to also make changes to current and future itemization. The latter is the more straightforward solution that fits better into the existing itemization paradigm, so my bet is that they'll avoid shaking the boat too much here, if only to save on development time.

Thematics are also somewhat important and I imagine they'll want STR to matter to some degree for WARs and DRKs, since they both have a higher STR-baseline than PLD does.

They wouldn't modify damage calculations unless they wanted to change tank DPS. Swapping to VIT does not do that.

The DPS doesn't actually need to change--the problem at present has less to do with the tank DPS and more with the fact that, as you note, they can't get a baseline on tank DPS. If in fact the baseline DPS for tanks is higher in 3.2, that's fine--because they'll just use that new established baseline when they design the raid content. Savage was designed, presumably, with a VIT-based DPS baseline for tanks. But they can leave tank DPS roughly the same as it is in the STR meta and simply use that as a new baseline when tuning future raid content. That's likely part of why they're waiting until 3.2 to make these adjustments, as we'll be starting fresh with a new raid tier.

[Cynric]

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Pretty sure it's a lot more simple than you're thinking it is. What do you need as a character in FFXIV? Health, Damage, Defences, sub stats.
Example of gear : 20 Vit, 23 Dex/Str/Int/Mnd, 6 Det, 7 Crit. This scenario increases damage , health, secondaries.
If Vit = Damage, It already increases your damage and your health. It would be no different in terms of itemization except you'd have one stat doing two things instead of two stats doing different things.
20 Vit, 6 Det, 7 crit , This is the same thing as the 4 stat itemization except in this case vit was lower than the other main stat so you lost 3 main stats. However on tank gear Vit is higher than strength so in that case it would be a gain.

[Rbstr]

In a vacuum it might be pointless, but the game doesn't exist in a vacuum and tank gear historically has STR on it on the left side, since *all* left side gear has one primary main stat and a secondary main stat (for most classes, the secondary stat is VIT, but the pattern is reversed for tank). In terms of coinciding with existing gear, they're more likely to do a split so they don't have to recalibrate the way stat budgets work for left-side tank gear.

They don't really have to do anything except use Vit instead of Str for damage calculations because it all sorts out with Vit as a primary attribute. They don't have to change anything about the gear either as they can easily leave the Str on there and just have it do nothing.
Plus several leveling sets are shared with Dragoon so you need to leave the Str on anyway. It'd be kinda like monk/ninja gear.
Sure, they could strip end-game gear of the strength but it'd really be inconsequential.

[Syzygian]

Enmity arguments are extremely poor imo as a good tank can keep hate regardless of vit or str spec assuming their left side gear isn't terribad. When i see people using enmity as a main talking point for these tank stat/damage discussions i can't help but wonder what they are doing when they play the job.

[Kenji1134]

As far as the 2 stat concern on left side pieces, they could make parry (and block) scale with STR again to make STR a useful tanking stat, without having to redo any of the existing left side items for tanks.

[Xenosan]

As nice as it'd be if VIT replaced STR in damage calculations (or at a ratio STR), there's a couple reasons I don't think that's what's going on..

I seriously doubt that their intended adjustment is to make higher damage dealing easier to do and more forgiving,

If SE is looking at Tank Damage calculations, it'd be because they don't like the Damage Results tanks are dishing out. If they were fine with tanks having high potential DPS they'd just leave things the way they are. In correlation they referred to hybrid accessories as 'exploits.'

Changing to a VIT modifier doesn't change anything from their perspective, it only make things easier for players. I think SE is struggling right now with raid design because they can't predict and account for tank DPS. How could you when aggressive tanks are pushing 800+ per raid and timid tanks stay at ~400-500? The range is so wide, my guess is they want to narrow that gap. Simplest and easiest way to do that is just throw a hard cap on tank's STR scaling. No I'm not vouching for it, I don't want to see a change like that.. But frankly what else would provide results of significant change.

They wouldn't modify damage calculations unless they wanted to change tank DPS. Swapping to VIT does not do that. Tanks broadcasting their ~900 DPS in SAVAGE content and you think it won't fall onto SE's radar? This LL comment was the sound of SE loading the nerf gun. When I consider this comment in addition to the hybrid accessory comment it all feels very foreboding.

[karateorangutang]

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Here's the catch though. People are playing tank because of that.

Lots and lots of tanks would just drop it if it meant that they arent gonna be capable of doing this kinda thing...

Tank in this game is fun because its so multi-faceted for alot of people. I know if they nerf tank damage more than 25% a ton of people are just gonna roll DPS and that goes directly against the whole intiative that tanks can do both in this game. Thus attracting new players to the role. Why would they alienate those same players when queues for all roles are way lower then in any of 2.0 content?

[Cynric]

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It's also another possibility that they could nerf outgoing DPS from tanks, only thing with that is there'll probably be an exodus of tanks if the meta changes. It's not like as a tank you do a lot of exciting things aside from trying to stay alive + maximize your DPS. If they make the role any less interesting they'll have an even harder time getting people to play tanks than they have so far.

[Rbstr]

Changing to a VIT modifier doesn't change anything from their perspective, it only make things easier for players. I think SE is struggling right now with raid design because they can't predict and account for tank DPS. How could you when aggressive tanks are pushing 800+ per raid and timid tanks stay at ~400-500? The range is so wide, my guess is they want to narrow that gap.

I agree on this point. What they want to do is make it predictable.

but I don't agree here at all.

Simplest and easiest way to do that is just throw a hard cap on tank's STR scaling. No I'm not vouching for it, I don't want to see a change like that.. But frankly what else would provide results of significant change.

You forget about how arbitrary issues of DPS really are in balance. It's about ratios rather than absolute magnitudes.
500dps into 1000hp is the same as 2dps into 4hp.
Tanks doing 600dps vs DPS that do 1000dps is the same as Tanks doing 6000 and DPS doing 10000.

You have one caveat in that if tank damage approaches DPS-class damage close enough you might obsolete the DPS classes.
Otherwise the actual number the tank puts out are irrelevant as long as they are predictable.
If damage is consistent all the devs have to do is adjust HP values/dps checks with that in mind.

The best way to get it to flatten out is to just make it so stats scale like all of the other classes: Make the class care only about one primary stat and give it the other one for "free". For DPS that's mind/int/str/dex to care about and the vit on the left side with the ability to need on the correct primary stat gear. So for tanks that can either be putting strength on fending accessories instead of vit or changing their damage stat to vit. Both of those things sort it out automatically. Or even inventing a new stat to slap on instead of strength and putting that on fending accessories.
Everything else is just using the newly predictable dps numbers for future content balance (Because those options wouldn't actually change any previous content. We already had strength tanks doing that stuff!)

edit: You could also role lock accessories and thus limit tanks to vit stuff. But that's a wholesale nerf to damage and those are rarely ever good options.