The endless battle - Tank attributes

[Kothos]

The endless battle - Tank attributes

Disclaimer. This not a rant, a nerf or buff post either a Tank wishing to make the DEEPS.

My experience
I've been a tank since early T5 old days. I don't like to call me a hardcore raider but I have cleared all of them before in an acceptable timespan. MT PLD during 2.0 and OT WAR on 3.0.

I'd like to rise a rational discussion about this never ending saga about tank main attributes. All tanks know (hopefully) that our entire life hovers around 2 attributes STR and VIT. And during this game lifetime we experienced endless patches, nerfs and buffs. It's almost like SE can't solve this after all this years.

History

During 2.0 and 3.0 gordias era.

During this era tank attack power was based only on STR. During this tank accessories would hovers around pentameld or slaying crafted crafted gear or fending. There were some options. All involving Craft. And during gordias things got out of control and high end tanks ended up using slaying gear to beat the strict DPS checks of gordias.

The good.
Can't deny it was fun.
Tanks had options to customize their build.

The bad.
Forced to spend millions of Gil on pentamelds.
Tanks hp pool was messed. Bringing suffering to healers (not everyone. But running non raid content with unknown healers was really bad)
Fending gear made useless
LOL vit potions. Useless

3.0 midan and creator the balance.
SE did her homework, now we had a dense system that linked our attack power on STR and VIT. Even though I considered it initially a bad design it worked somehow and made tanks life easier.

The good
First time using fending gear lol it's nice to be rewarded with a loot from the raid!
Did a good job establishing tanks hp pool. It was worthy to use it.
The bad
Messy system. Try to explain how it works to a newcomer!
No options on accessories melds. You were forced to always meld str on accessories. (Some edgy tanks equipped one or two slaying accessories with VIT on it. IMO not worthy. But it's another topic).

4.0 era ????
And we are back to STR now. But with slaying accessories locked (I'm not going into ilvl 270 discussion). Well it works. But…

The good
Well… it's easier to explain.
Since accessories are locked should have some stable hp pool over tanks. And DPS.
The bad
It's not really rewarding to roll a new accessory. (It haunts me to know it is bad and I can't use some slaying because it's locked.)
The same old thing. All tanks will meld str over it. We can't really play with secondary attributes..
There's a major concern about how it will scale over time. Since we will only get str from materia. Our DPS output and aggro will not scale the same of other jobs. SE will need constantly adjust enmity values.

Edit:

After all that was spoken on this current thread and among others across the forum I came to a conclusion.

Tank accessories in my opinion should be STR.

This might seem crazy at first be here are some of my reasons to this conclusion

First VIT as it is nowadays is not a main attribute for tanks because:
Once you hit some hard limit, more vit is useless.
All tanks abilities scale from STR(even healing scales from Attack Power!)

If STR was the main attribute on tanks accessories we could meld VIT like other jobs do, by my experience during raid progression is usual to some dps meld vit to stay alive, why can’t tanks do the same thing?

It would end all discussion about tank dps, square could just adjust the Attack Power per STR ratio.

Of course, if we had no vit from accessories Square could adjust base tank vit stats.

AS crazy as it sound, this leave us free to use anything like other jobs!

[Chrono_Rising]

Agreed, our equipment is easier to explain but it is frustrating to know the only upgrade I have from V1 is a belt when potentially 6 pieces will drop.

This is another example of where I don't think the developers have realized that they have likely forced tanks back into a practice they tried to get us out of in 3.2, which is pentamelded accessories. Right now they seem fascinated with putting tenacity on our accessories, which means in addition to not gaining any attack power we are essentially losing secondary stats as well. Pentamelded crafted seems like the only way we will get some choice in our stats. We may not be able to meld primary stats after the first slot, but would you rather have 140 tenacity or 48 of almost anything else?

Honestly if this is he route the developers want to go then please take the primary stat restriction off melding and I'll put in the effort to meld what should be on my gear.

What about 270 slaying? I fully expect them to patch this out in the future so I'm not holding my breath here.

[Kothos]

What about 270 slaying? I fully expect them to patch this out in the future so I'm not holding my breath here.

I'm not really expecting to use then. Anyone bragging about then it's a joke I have done some runs of Laki and Suzano with then just for fun. Don't expect a real raid prog wearing then

[Vejitta]

There's a major concern about how it will scale over time. Since we will only get str from materia. Our DPS output and aggro will not scale the same of other jobs. SE will need constantly adjust enmity values.

If I understand correctly, enmity won't be a bigger issue here, only thing that will change is the gap between tank dmg and DPS dmg.
Problem with enmity that was just solved in 4.01 was due to the fact that VIT was removed from damage formula and enmity scaling was bad. That's why they adjusted it. .

[Brannigan]

Personally I preferred the 2.0-Gordias era because
-melds are fun
-strength accs are kind of fun too
the problem was early Gordias where sacrificing almost all of your HP was closer to "required" than "fun and optional"
Obviously the problem with this is that VIT accessories in this system are garbage and a trap for those too uninformed/poor to meld. The reason is, of course, that any HP over what was on the crafted accessories was really excessive. Getting away with accessories 20ilvls lower than the rest of your gear was easy peasy, because at the end of the day HP isn't that important or effective at keeping you alive when it counts.

Chrono_Rising makes a good point - since we can't overmeld raid drops, and they'll pretty much only offer more VIT (which is, again, a pretty bad stat), crafted overmelds will make their triumphant return as the best things around. Ironically, lower ilvl crafted items might be MORE effective at keeping you alive than the raid drop items because you can overmeld Tenacity, an actual damage reduction stat. They'll almost certainly be better at damage because they'll only be a few ilvls behind on substats, but you can meld extra crit or DHit or whatever in addition to your first slot STR. The only way this won't hold true is if they only have one substat, which is something that has happened before (2.4 or 2.5, I think).

So what can they do now? If they lock 270 (which I'm sure they will) and make crafted accessories have only one substat, then raid drop VIT will be the best by default. The problem with this is it's dumb and means that tanks will just have 25 AP in that slot for the entire expansion. It also makes future raid drops not feel like upgrades. I see a few possible solutions

-add some STR to VIT accessories. Feels like the best realistic solution to me. Make the STR cap lower so you can't meld extra, if they must do that.
-revert to .45 STR/VIT split. Seems like they don't wanna do it. It's kinda hamfisted. Whatever.
-add a materia slot each raid tier (current tier gets 2 slots, next tier gets 3 slots, final tier gets 4 slots) and just have us meld STR. This is also hamfisted, but would add scaling.
-give VIT a valid, useful secondary function like damage reduction or something. The problem with this is every job gets VIT on gear.
-give tank accessories specifically some sort of extra stat or effect that scales and feels good to get. No idea on this one.
-alter STR materia to scale somehow. Could have them function as a constant potion (i.e. STR VI increases strength by X% up to a maximum of 125, so that it scales as your left side ilvl increases)

Really, I don't know what they're gonna do, but they have to do something. Also, as an aside, is it odd to anyone else how completely worthless main stat materia is other than STR/VIT? Like you (and I use this word sparingly) literally cannot benefit from DEX VI materia right now. There's no i290+ Vitality accessories available to the Dexterity based classes, and Dexterity literally has no function for non-Dex classes. It's the same deal for MND* and INT. At least with elemental materia they actually are capable of providing some sort of benefit.

*this may affect summoner's physick, lol

[Khel]

I tanked a small amount in HW and doing it more now in SB. Was there a problem with tank damage scaling off vitality? They mentioned HP bloat but that really was a poor excuse for the change in stormblood.

[aqskerorokero]

If sam has 1 more defensive tool on low cd or just more potency on third eye...I think you guys won't even bring a tank in the party or whatever fight in the game = =!!

[Brannigan]

I tanked a small amount in HW and doing it more now in SB. Was there a problem with tank damage scaling off vitality? They mentioned HP bloat but that really was a poor excuse for the change in stormblood.

Tying damage to vit is a little bad because if they want to change the amount of vit we get then damage is affected as well. Actually, looking at item trends from HW: before the tomestone/raid stuff, STR/VIT was equal on gear. The i210 body gives 107vit/101str (~1.06) while the i270 gives 190vit/169str (1.12). Perhaps this time they don't want to increase the VIT:STR ratio quite as much to prevent tank HP from going out of control.

[Jonnycbad]

So what can they do now? If they lock 270 (which I'm sure they will) and make crafted accessories have only one substat, then raid drop VIT will be the best by default. The problem with this is it's dumb and means that tanks will just have 25 AP in that slot for the entire expansion. It also makes future raid drops not feel like upgrades. I see a few possible solutions

You get STR upgrades on left side gear from raids, you're fine. Besides tanks job is to absorb damage, dealing it is just an afterthought.

You're tanks not DPS, and raids are calculated based on basic tank damage output in tank stance nd DPS's damage rotations. Healers damage isnt taken into account, and obviously raid will be balanced around tank DPS in full VIT gear. So don't worry, babe.

[Brannigan]

Besides tanks job is to absorb damage, dealing it is just an afterthought.

The last few years of content design contradict this. Either way, I'm not concerned with the actual numbers of tank DPS. I don't really give a fuck if a samurai deals 40 or 4000 more DPS than me. What I'm concerned about is that we both scale appropriately and that getting items actually feels like an upgrade. VIT accessories didn't feel like upgrades from 2.0-3.1 and they probably won't feel too great now since more HP does less and less for you as you get better at fights and more geared.

Getting items in this game ALREADY sucks with how fleeting and boring they are. Tank accessories don't have to double-suck. Hell, if they actually put scaling mitigation on raid drops that'd be wonderful. Put free tenacity on every piece along with two other substats, that'd be fine.