"Changing Tank Damage Calculation"

[Einheri]

Changes to potency's and coefficients makes the most sense as dps and threat are the largest concerns for tanks currently.

Adding damage to the flash trait for plds would be the most drastic change I could imagine and I find it unlikely. The no damage because they can still block no longer balances in the current meta.

as a healer parry and block are not very useful to my healing a tank as i have to precast my heal regardless if the tank blocks or parrys. So on top of the poor scaling the meta makes block/parry less useful. Even if they worked on magic. If they could just change the parry stat to straight mitigation or to make you uncritable would have far more use than making the stat scale better. Currently the only time/parry and block are useful are to boost tank dps lowblow/swipe or fights with a bunch of adds hitting the tank with no predictable burst to need to precast a heal for.

Though making storms path only usable after being the victim of a crit sounds fun to me

[Ashelia_Ferron]

snip

Content doesn't have to be old to skip phases.
Taking Thordan for example. He will automatically go into the "Leave arena and summon knights" phase if you push him to 70%.
You already mentioned Sacred Cross.
Killing the two knights faster prevents
1. More Holy Bladedances
2. Removes the "Sword Oath" buff, and eliminates the need to heal one of the tanks
3. Stops further double Holiest of Holies, resulting in easier time for healers.

And doing more damage allows you to burn him before some of the later phases as well.

And I guess it's "old", but A1S is still fairly relevant for the time being, and you can skip jumps with enough damage.


And it doesn't just apply to raids and trials. Even dungeons. The faster you can kill mobs, the less damage the tank takes because you're getting rid of enemies faster so you don't HAVE to burn through so many cooldowns/make the healer work.

The shorter the battle, the less damage you take as a whole.

I'm not discounting the fact that cooldowns, shields, prep, etc, is important, but killing things faster is a huge part to why the tank meta is to just have "enough" HP and then boost DPS to the max.

Though I agree that saying it's the "best" mitigation is a bit off, so i'll concede there. Still, there just isn't any reliable way to increase mitigation outside of cooldowns or healer prep other than killing stuff faster, since VIT accessories are, for the time being, not all that useful

[Gumbercules]

I still think they might just make vit the go to overall stat, it will decide your health pool and your damage done. makes it easy to just tune one stat to where they want tank survival and contribution to be at. But we might just be reading into it too much could just be as simple as they consider the "cap" on main stat melding to be sufficient enough.

[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.

[AlexiIvaniskavich]

Ashelia hit on this - we need to not just look at the statement in a bubble, but the context clues surrounding the statement. The devs were discussing this change because of the tank pentamelds, which they want to get away from, as well as the fact that fending accessories are less than desireable.

I have seen a few ideas kicked around in the forums on what 3.2 may. Personally, I think SE will remove strength entirely from tank damage calculations. If they leave str as part of the tank setup, I would expect that there will be a point where tanks still roll on full str accessories.

If they go VIT - I have previously voiced concerns about now and future HP bloat in tanks, forcing much higher damage output from bosses, potentially causing issues with damage dealt to other classes during aoe phases. (though this is likely not that big of a deal). Plus it would be kind of odd for tank gear to list stats as VIT, then secondaries, when all the other classes list Main stat - VIT, and then secondaries. I also recognize this is the simplest solution to implement, and I do fear laziness out of SE based upon the regurgitation of old content for the present relic weapons.

I haven’t seen anyone mention parry as the damage modifier. PLEASE NO.

Another solution I have seen kicked around on the forums is the creation of a damage stat that is exclusive to tanks. BRD/MCH/NIN have dexterity, healers have mind, casters have intelligence and physical melee have strength. Why not give tanks their own stat specifically for damage? Moving away from strength gives SE better future opportunities to add STR based dps classes (5 classes role on str now, do we really want 6+ rolling on one set of gear?). Fending accessories still become relevant, but in this version, with less hp bloat. (Hoping to all that is good and holy that SE realizes that tank accessories should have our damage stat on them).
****** I realize this idea would take much more work from the devs to implement. I also realize this would lessen the “options” tanks have for right sided gear. For those who would argue the later statement, remember no other class has this option.

This stat - once called “Vigor” on a previous post, would likely appear where STR once was on tank gear and would likely show up as str/vgr/dex on low level disciple of war gear.

[Einheri]

Changing str to something new doesn't solve anything. It just makes gear more restrictive. Instead of stacking str right side you would just stack will or vigor or whatever you call it.

[whiskeybravo]

Changing str to something new doesn't solve anything. It just makes gear more restrictive. Instead of stacking str right side you would just stack will or vigor or whatever you call it.

It does. It solves the problem of tanks rolling on slaying accessories.

I don't think they'd go that route, but honestly it makes more sense then what the other guy said about war=str, drk=int, pld=pie. So all the low level/shared gear would have str, vit, int, and pie? It just doesn't make sense really. But who knows.

I've said this before sorta and I still think it's true, you have to determine whether SE thinks current tank damage meta is OK, or acceptable/intended. We don't know this, really, so it's hard to say the changes are gonna be this and that with any sort of certainty. I for one think that tank damage is higher than they anticipated/intended, and their dps numbers are going to be adjusted downward. This is just my thought. However, we already have established certain expectations and strategies for content, so it would be rough to say "Sorry you guys have been doing 1000+ dps for the last 6 months, it's time to go back to 500 dps tanks". I'm sure a lot of people would be pretty upset with that. So they may just adjust it so that current damage is upheld, but moving forward it will not increase that much if at all from it's current point.

[AlexiIvaniskavich]

@einheri - every other class has that gear restriction - why should tanks be any different?. but yes tanks would still stack the new stat.

The point is, SE could (1) give right side gear both stats - build would be similar to present penta melds - or (2) SE gives us only VIT on rt side gear, but increases the value of the damage stat (either a larger number on left side gear ex. 109 -> 129 or larger multiplier in damage calcs) or (3) tanks finally get their damage stat on their right side gear like every other class in the game and vit values are/can be adjusted on left side gear.

I feel this route gives SE more options now and flexibility for future growth.
***I feel that SE has probably already thought of this and cited "ps3/server limitations" and will go the easier route of VIT base for damage [end sarcasm font]
I feel that those who have issue with the gear options being less need to realize that if SE goes with VIT damage, we will all be stacking VIT and thus still only have one option
****EDIT*** that wasn't directed at anyone in specific, I have seen the "But I wanna customize" argument made several times throughout the tank forums.
I feel that the addition of a tank stat c/would allow SE to have a full vit accessory and make a full *tank stat* accessory. Hey a tank can dream right?

I'm not saying this is a perfect solution, but I do think this is a more creative alternative than simply flipping the switch to VIT. I would love to see some creativity from the devs for all of 3.2.

…….I've said this before sorta and I still think it's true, you have to determine whether SE thinks current tank damage meta is OK, or acceptable/intended. We don't know this, really, so it's hard to say the changes are gonna be this and that with any sort of certainty. I for one think that tank damage is higher than they anticipated/intended, and their dps numbers are going to be adjusted downward. This is just my thought. However, we already have established certain expectations and strategies for content, so it would be rough to say "Sorry you guys have been doing 1000+ dps for the last 6 months, it's time to go back to 500 dps tanks". I'm sure a lot of people would be pretty upset with that. So they may just adjust it so that current damage is upheld, but moving forward it will not increase that much if at all from it's current point.

I’d just wonder how many tanks would stop tanking if SE nerfed tank damage. But I don’t discredit this as a possibility.

[Einheri]

@alex, all you are offering is more complication and uneeded work for the dev team.they could just as easily add str to the fending access and achieve what you are looking for.

[Claymore65]

@alex, all you are offering is more complication and uneeded work for the dev team.they could just as easily add str to the fending access and achieve what you are looking for.

Or they could do 50% Vit and 50% Strength. That way Fending is purely better, but all the Strength currently on gear still gets used.