Is it just me, or is this all pretty slapdash?

[Daniel_Fury]

You know, I've seen you mention this in two separate threads thus far and I feel like it should be called to your attention that damage output is also necessary for building and maintaining enmity, which is why people are prioritizing "DPS materia" melds and wearing 270 STR accessories over melding and wearing the newer Tanking stuff. On top of that, I feel you're not familiar with the fact that, in most cases, Tank gear is already designed to be at the maximum stat caps available for Tank-focused stats, which gives people a reason to meld that aforementioned "DPS materia" in order to shore up the damage stats that the pieces of gear lack.

On single target 8 man fights, you can literally "Shirk Jerk" your way through the fight thanks to provoke/shirk synergy. STR accessories for emnity doesn't even matter at that point.

[_Pigzig]

I only play DRK but I feel like they just screwed the job in general. 3.0 DRK was amazing to me, I loved that job it was near perfect for what I wanted. I wish they just trimmed some abilities that were too similar, added the blackblood meter with the blackblood abilities to replace any lost complexity and then left the job. I come back and feel like I am playing a different job now, I only play it because I like the lore and way the gear looks really.

But in regards to all the tanks - What's actually wrong with gearing for STR? It increases emnity anyway so it's still a tank stat.
If it was me I would've just adopted the STR direction for tanks. Maybe keep some entry content VIT accessories around for people who hit max level and don't have much health to start with but then no longer drop VIT stuff in higher level content.
I don't see any problem with the old system at all. I don't think it feels weird or that tanks should have to want VIT. I wish they didn't change it. The only thing is doing huge pulls and AoEing was a bit too much imo, but you can just tune the AoE abilities (which they did anyway) so smaller pulls are the most efficient way to run.

[Kinkoz]

On single target 8 man fights, you can literally "Shirk Jerk" your way through the fight thanks to provoke/shirk synergy. STR accessories for emnity doesn't even matter at that point.

Thus, when it isn't a matter of enmity, it becomes a matter of increasing one's performance and damage output.

[Daniel_Fury]

Thus, when it isn't a matter of enmity, it becomes a matter of increasing one's performance and damage output.

Exactly. This is the reason most players use them.
I prefer the HP from VIT personally. I usually pug everything, so the extra breathing space is nice for healers.

[Kinkoz]

Exactly. This is the reason most players use them.
I prefer the HP from VIT personally. I usually pug everything, so the extra breathing space is nice for healers.

And I never disagreed with that reasoning. The only reason I didn't call attention to it in that initial reply is on account of the fact that said explanations have already been stated hundreds of times already by others and I wanted to try my hand at explaining things from a different, potentially more understandable angle, since those who disagree seem to vehemently reject the notion that Tanks should rise above their station and provide respectable DPS as well.

As for the additional HP provided by Tank gear in lieu of actual Attack Power-increasing stats, I do believe a healer in another thread put it best: Having a large HP pool doesn't necessarily make it easier on healers to heal, since none of their spells actually scale with the increase to an allied target's health. Instead, it only makes it to where a healer needs to heal MORE in order to keep a Tank nice and healthy, and technically, you should never need to overinflate your HP in order to deal with things. So long as you have enough to survive mechanics, the rest of your stats should be built in such a way that increases your utility and performance which generally translates to damage output.

[_Pigzig]

I was just doing my 65 drk quest and it really hit me why the STR system works. In that you have to protect Rielle from mobs that attack her, and one part of it is a DPS race or otherwise she dies.


Why is it that they design even the JOB QUEST with this kind of stuff but SE can't see why gearing for STR was the way to go? The fact it's forgiving enough that you could probably do it easily in VIT too doesn't matter. You are still encouraged to DPS as best you can and having a lot of health is not really useful in solo content. In fact, you get more survivability from regen through STR.

Just bring back gearing for STR. STR is a tank stat anyway. It increases regen from moves that convert a portion of damage to HP and increases emnity.

[VenKitsune]

They made the DPS far too ridiculous, and now tanks are complaining they can't do enough DPS to be comparable

Thing is that the kit that all tanks have gotten since 3.0 release has mostly been tools for doing extra damage, and a bit of extra utility. Unfortunately this is the way they've decided to design their tanks and healers; do damage as an extra while doing your role.

[VenKitsune]

i personally think that they should either embrace the idea of tanks doing damage (as they designed them too, looking at you fell cleave!) OR they redesign the tanks, enmity and fight design to such a point where tanks play more around fighting hard for agro through a whole fight, and mitigating a lot of damage, instead of only mititating tank busters. Ofcource the 2nd option would cost way too much time and money, so they have unfortunately dug their hole so to speak in to terms of where they want to go for how tanks play, a complete 180 turn would be very difficult at this point and it seems the changes to 4.x tanks in terms of damage calculations was like a "actually we're gonna go the other way now" without actually committing.
This all being said though, looking at 3.x, the tanks are actually just as balanced if not better balanced now than they were though 2.x and 3.x, but its still not perfect by any means and needs changes.