Strength vs Vitality while leveling

[Malicewolf]

Stone Vigil would like a word.

Have to agree here. I went into Stone Vigil NM with my fully geared tank and in large pulls, I was still experiencing a pretty harsh up and down on my hp. I ended up lagging a bit in a bigger pull and my god, when my connection came back, I was on the cusp of dying because of all the aery AoE's that hit me. However, I was in my full STR gear and did live, but I also wasn't in Shield Oath... (I forgot as I've been leveling NIN lately... ._.)

As for all the advice that's been coming in here. I will agree with the statement that up until lvl 50, the left side accessories won't be stacking high numbers by any means, but I will say, as I leveled, my PLD's STR stat was pretty much evenly rising up with my VIT stat. If you go full VIT, you will probably notice about 50-70 difference (in the stat attributes) pending your lvl at the time. There is no doubt you can go either way. As for which is "better", it's really user's preference. Both WILL work.

I think the best advice so far was really the combo rotations given earlier. But some advice to add to that combo. It works well when you do small mob pulls. It has a flaw if you pull bigger, or if your DPS aren't burning enemies quick enough. That is that your mana supply isn't unlimited. When you don't have tank stance to help you build aggro, it all of a sudden makes keeping hate (especially against AoE DPS) extremely hard. If you find you're MP is down to about 1/3 AND there's still too many enemies surrounding you (meaning you know you'll need more flashes), you'll want to abandon your RoH combo (unless you are VERY good at micro managing your hit rotations across all of them) and switch over to riot blade to upkeep your MP (and therefore your flashes). This should really only be the case though if you do larger pulls, your DPS aren't burning them quickly AND you do not have Shield Oath. Unfortunately, because Shield Oath is a lvl 40 for PLD, this combination can happen often if you are trying to speed run. If you simply don't do large pulls, you probably won't run into this scenario much though

[SpookyGhost]

Put all points into STR, go with full STR accessories until you find you need more HP, then add in VIT accessories until you're comfortable.

For some reason people in this thread seem to think that you need either all STR or all VIT. You don't. Just don't be stubborn and refuse to change some accessories around if you need to. This goes for everything all the way to 60.

[Merkava]

Stone Vigil would like a word. Show up to that in "up to date" STR gear from leveling, and you're gonna have a bad time. The extra VIT really helps.

Except it's not really, Stone Vigil is definitely a step up in terms of difficulty from previous dungeons but if a tank uses their cooldowns efficiently then you're going to be fine regardless of the stats you have.

At that point accessories are largely irrelevant since they offer, at most, 3-4 in a particular stat (and chances are you won't have the full right side). A few points in VIT isn't going to really make a difference as efficient tanking in FFXIV is all about proper cooldown usage (ie. use them, don’t just save them for the boss). Even during big pulls I would go full STR as the extra HP is rarely as huge of a deal as cooldowns, altho I'm not a big fan of big pulls as a PLD as they tend to last 2-3x longer than with a WAR or DRK due to abysmal AOE DPS (big pulls only get dangerous if they go on for too long).

Honestly, you can level all the way to 60 with full STR just fine. Of course, a person who is in the process of learning could always add some vit here and there but an experienced tank has very little use for it.

IMO, use 2-3 vit accessories (bonus stats and the other accs with STR) if you aren't confident and just add in full STR as you get more and more confident in your abilities.

Vit to HP ratio should at least DOUBLE if it ever wanted to remotely compete with STR…

[saber_alter]

i found the best mitigation was to simply kill the thing before it kills you.

however for levelling focus more on reaching a stable gearset for that level. just make sure the armor you use is tank gear and the jewlery you use is fending(yellow) or slaying(red)


unless it's stone vigil.

screw stone vigil.

[Rivxkobe]

Stone Vigil would like a word. Show up to that in "up to date" STR gear from leveling, and you're gonna have a bad time. The extra VIT really helps.

I disagree. I very recently did a full-run of Stone Vigil as Full-STR PLD and it was the smoothest run I have ever had of that godforsaken place.

[AriaEnia]

Keeping aggro in low level dungeons can be challenging on PLD especially between level 30 and 40. If your DPSes are higher level/better geared, and playing properly

Well, I've lived through that, and I can say I met many dps that played properly, but it's still easy to hold agro as a vit tank, eben before I got shield oath. You just need to know who to RoH, anticipate bard's and dragoon's single target's bursts, more flash for blm, smn and sch, etc. basically how agro works in this game.

[Freyyy]

Well, I've lived through that, and I can say I met many dps that played properly, but it's still easy to hold agro as a vit tank, eben before I got shield oath. You just need to know who to RoH, anticipate bard's and dragoon's single target's bursts, more flash for blm, smn and sch, etc. basically how agro works in this game.

Yeah okay but we're speaking about a beginner tank here who doesn't have the perfect judgement calling that an experienced tank would have, and wearing STR makes all of this much easier for them.

[Syzygian]

Yeah okay but we're speaking about a beginner tank here who doesn't have the perfect judgement calling that an experienced tank would have, and wearing STR makes all of this much easier for them.

Hmm, I feel like this highlights an issue with the STR meta; it trivializes enmity as a part of your job. I almost feel like new tanks should level with VIT so they can understand enmity and how to get it quickly and keep it. In full STR you hardly have to even monitor/tab between targets to check your party's enmity. Just toss an AoE here and there and hit whichever target you want to, and not even necessarily with enmity combos.

At the risk of sounding like a crotchety gtfo-my-lawn tank, I feel like I'm all the more qualified to run around in full STR because I know for a fact that I have the skill to hold enmity even in full VIT right side. Some newer tanks hit 60 without this full appreciation of how to effectively change their rotation/playstyle in a situation where enmity is an issue and DPS may have to come second until it is secured.

I definitely feel that the game is balanced for tanks to be able to keep enmity in vit and that STR breaks this system, for better or for worse. If you look at in terms of design; PLD has the hardest time holding hate and is generally considered the beginner tank, the tank that needs to learn that skill, first and foremost. DRK is the new, advanced tank and enmity is barely a part of the job, you practically get hate by standing there existing, with the difficulty and complexity of the job being found in far more intermediate and involved mechanics. The best DRK's tend to be folks that used PLD/WAR in 2.x, and the entire playstyle of the job lends itself to an already experienced tank, as if to say "yeah blah blah enmity you know all this, here's some crazy fun interesting shit instead and a hate combo strong enough to put it out of your mind for the entire fight" and that's great, and experienced tanks can do that on any tanking job, but it doesn't translate to newer tanks, at all. The whole get-aggro-out-of-the-way-in-3-gcds-then-pewpewtime workflow we endgame tanks have has to be earned, yet we lose sight of it because of how easily and naturally it comes to us now.

If you can get/hold hate while leveling in VIT, you'll absolutely never lose it at 60 in STR. New tanks that level in STR are more likely to not tab targets, check their own enmity in relation to their party members, focus their DPS' target in between AoE bursts, etc. Not necessarily because they are bad but because leveling in STR exempt them from the necessity of doing so. When you level in VIT you can't get away with just hitting whatever target you want and not watching your party's enmity meters on various mobs, and learning when its safe to use more damaging/utility based combos as opposed to those that are for enmity.

Definitely makes you wonder why people consider tanking in VIT easy mode when it actually makes the most fundamental part of the jobs a consistent challenge, and a mechanic that you are always involved/keeping up with.

All of this is to say that I think the game is designed for enmity to be a *skill* that you learn to master while leveling. STR takes the hard work out of this. And there's certainly no harm in wearing full VIT in pre-50 dungeons if you're prepared for that challenge and still know how to maximize what lesser DPS you are bringing for the sake of holding hate. I just feel like that's an important skill that a new tank that levels in STR gear may gloss over and miss out on accidentally. I'm tempted to suggest this is why we have a lot of bad level 60 tanks, is cause we told all those tanks while leveling to wear full STR and then they get to 60 and are going up against end-game-geared DPS and haven't had any of the growing pains/experience to teach them to keep an eye on hate, lest they lose it.

Anyway, just food for thought.

[SpookyGhost]

Do people really consider VIT easy mode? Every argument I've read re: VIT (including my own) is that it just doesn't help past a certain point varying from encounter to encounter, never anything about it making tanking easier. In fact, it can make a lot of things harder (Living Dead, topping up, etc).

I think that having a fundamental understanding of what VIT will do for you and what STR will do for you goes a long way for a beginner tank. Usually people say "put all your points into STR, wear full STR" without any explanation why. STR tanking becoming main stream has changed everyone's thought process from "meet HP threshold -> invest in STR" into "whats VIT -> invest everything in STR".

VIT = "I need more health to survive this pull/encounter comfortably"
STR = "I have enough health to comfortably survive this pull/encounter"

VIT is 100% about increasing your maximum health - it does nothing to affect your def/mdef, parry rating/strength, or in general how much damage you take. It only ever makes your HP number go up. STR, on the other hand, increases your DPS point for point (and, most importantly, is never wasted) while also consequently increasing the enmity you generate.

So there comes a point where you have enough VIT for an encounter to survive comfortably, and you're left with 2 choices: Invest more in VIT or invest in STR. I'd say if there were another stat, a tanking one, that increased your mdef/def or such, that would be something worthwhile to rival STR. But as it stands, having excess VIT doesn't make you any easier to heal and only with an excess amount will make you only slightly more survivable. STR will give you more enmity and DPS, in a way contributing to your survivability by making the boss die faster or have phases push faster so that you won't have to deal with X ability and neither will your healer.

It's a weird meta that's developed a lot since early 2.0 but has kind of mutated into an abomination. That aside, the stats are there for you to use as you see fit. Leveling up it doesn't really matter what you do, but keep in mind that VIT will give you more HP (very useful if youre getting gimped repeatedly) and STR will give you more enmity (if you're having problems with that) or more DPS (take less damage overall, need to worry less about defensive CD rotations in some cases, etc).

[Syzygian]

Do people really consider VIT easy mode?

"LOL, stupid scrub tanks just wanna sit in full VIT and get hit while not having to do any work, us STR tanks gotta maximize and bust ass for dem deepz yo."



Ring any bells? (I've seen statements like this littered across the tank forums for months.)