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

[Alahra]

The only reasonable thing I see for them to do is make vit = AP, doing a STR/VIT split is pointless

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.

[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]

snip

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.

[Alahra]

Pretty sure it's a lot more simple than you're thinking it is.

That's not actually what I'm referring to. Stat values on gear are likely automated by certain baselines that are assigned based on the item's slot, and one of the things that I'm assuming is one of those baselines is that left-side gear has two main stats. Now, that may very well not be true, which would make future tank left-side gear with only VIT on it not an issue. However, I do suspect it's the case, especially when it comes to Aetherial stuff, and the fewer "exceptions" that need to be made when the server is generating random gear, the better, in terms of coding structure. Since Aetherial gear is going to presumably be a bigger part of the game from here on out with Exploratory Missions, the more of the itemization formulas they can apply to all classes, the better.

[Cynric]

snip

Well there are quite a few exceptions to the rules of itemization that may or may not exist already inside the game. Of course there's the most obvious which is Previous Mnk/Nin gear, then there's leveling gear which can hold more than one main stat while holding multiple secondaries as well. There's also the field commander coat from sieze mode which has all 6 primary stats on it as well as the lightning strikes event gear, then further on there's pvp gear holding morale, event gear having a resistance + on it. The stats on gear isn't exactly black and white as it is.

As for the new pink gear coming from exploratory missions I don't really have much to say about that one right now as we don't know the full details on how random the stats will be. It is an exciting thought but we'll see how it's handled.

[Alahra]

The stats on gear isn't exactly black and white as it is.

You're right on that account, and I actually do remember now that there are at least some examples of level 5ish gear that only have one main stat (though Aetherial gear itself doesn't show up until 15, if I remember correctly). So that difficulty may not be there as I thought.

I still suspect they'll go with a STR/VIT split for thematic reasons, but I was wrong about NIN being primary STR back in the day too, so I don't know that I'd bet on it given that I'd forgotten about the existence of other single-main stat gear.

[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.