"Changing Tank Damage Calculation"

[Merkava]

I really wish people would stop saying this, because it's not true. The best mitigation in this game is actually mitigating damage. Plain and simple.

Except you're talking as if proper mitigation and good damage are mutually exclusive actions. A good tank uses cooldowns properly and delivers good damage, the best mitigation is killing whatever is killing you as fast as humanly possible but that does not mean you're not going to be using cooldowns effectively. Enormous pulls in dungeons only get dangerous if said mobs take too long to die, to the point where the healer runs out of MP and/or you run out of CDs to use against the mob onslaught, one of the key reasons why doing humongous pulls as a PLD just isn't worth it with their non-existent AOE damage.

Thordan is also an excellent example of this, Good DPS means you can skip phases and you can reduce the overall damage the tank is taking. You can skip the tank buster in Phase 1 with good damage and imagine if DPS was so slow during the Knight Adds phase that they managed to Holy Bladedance 4+ times (exaggeration, DPS has to be horrible), no amount of CDs would make up for the onslaught of damage tanks would be suffering. Killing them during the first (or second) Divine Right drastically cuts on tank damage. The final phase before enrage is also healing intense to the point that it's MUCH better to just skip it and tanks contribute significantly to the raid damage.

The same stays true to every trial out there. The faster the damage source dies, the better. So even if tanks are adjusted or whatever, people will continue to stack as much damage as humanly possible (without getting killed as tanks).

This is the main reason why PLDs are, currently, considered the lesser tank.

[Februs]

Content doesn't have to be old to skip phases.

Except you're talking as if proper mitigation and good damage are mutually exclusive actions.

I didn't mean to imply that high Dps doesn't help. It does. Of that, there is no doubt, and you're definitely right that high dmg and mitigation are not totally exclusive.

As both of you pointed out, killing things quickly in dungeons prevent the need for Tanks and Healers from spending too much Mp or blowing extra def CD's, and burning Trial/Raid Hp bars quickly allows you to push phases, preventing additional dmg from repeated attacks as well ... but neither of these things are mitigation. They're prevention.

It's a bit nit-picky, but mitigation is actually taking the hit and mitigating it. Not taking the hit at all means that you're not mitigating anything. Further, in regards to Trials and Raids, specifically, High Dps might allow you to push phases faster, thereby skipping extra Tank busters, but pushing phases does nothing to help you mitigate the dmg you are actually taking. Skipping an extra Blade Dance is nice, but you still had to mitigate everything that came before. High Dps output does not change that you were using Def CD's. It just stops you from using more of them. Though, pushing phases in current fights is kind of a bad example, because there are long recovery periods after each skip-able tank buster that make extra CD burns irrelevant, and certain hits (like the 3rd H Blade Dance) are actually a mini-Dps check. If your team doesn't prevent it, you are highly unlikely to clear meteors.

Regarldess, you are both right. High dps is most certainly a big help in any fight. It does a wonderful job of preventing additional and unnecessary dmg, and thereby is essential for preventing unnecessary mitigation. However, actually mitigating hits is purely in the domain of Tanking/Healing. No amount of Dps will reduce the actual dmg you take from a hit. It might prevent additional hits, but it does not reduce the impact of the hits you actually take (except in extremely rare cases like Sacred Cross). This is why high Dps is not the "best mitigation." It's just extremely efficient.