Silly tank melds

[Raim]

Because you guys don't seem to realize that very, very few people in the population of this game bother to even look up their ideal stats, let alone what each point of a stat does. They play the game and see tenacity does what it says it does for tanks, and assumes thats a good thing to pick up. They're unaware that they might gain more from other stats in the first place.

[Coatl]

To be fair, a new person who has no idea what is what and melds full on tenacity is still in better shape than people who melded full parry, or no melds at all. Tenacity is bounds better than parry but is in the same boat as skill speed in that it's not really worth melding (for tanks).

[KalinOrthos]

This would be better if you had the Sable Death Mask on in your picture there.

When you're right, you're right.

[LadyCeles]

its not 5%. That would be much better then it is now (2% give or take). But alot of tanks have tenacity builds in there materia because the stat wieghts where not out and pre xpac it seemed like tenacity was going to be the go too. More dps and more def seemed great. Ufortunantly the scaling wasnt to what the player base was looking for. But then again if it was it might have been too strong. After its been out a bit there will be changes. But for now DHit on the left side str/vit (pending accessories and availabilty) on the right side is what u should be going for

[Velthice]

This has to be the only game I've ever played where people not only knowingly make bad decisions, be it melds, accessories, choosing only to heal, only using ice spells, etc... but are actively hostile and stubborn when its pointed out to them.

Not to say I defend op either, he also came off as needlessly hostile.

[Avatre]

choosing only to heal

Sometimes, depending on how confident I am in my abilities(newer dungeon/long time of not healing), I may choose to just heal as I don't want to risk letting people die due to DPSing when over long. Or because I can't quite focus enough to be able to do both(out of game issues usually).

[dragonseth07]

This has to be the only game I've ever played where people not only knowingly make bad decisions, be it melds, accessories, choosing only to heal, only using ice spells, etc... but are actively hostile and stubborn when its pointed out to them.

Not to say I defend op either, he also came off as needlessly hostile.

It is a bit weird, yeah. There's a big streak of "I do what I want" in the NA playerbase here. If stat weights showed that Direct Hit really is the best stat, there will be people avoiding it at all costs just because they hate the idea of playing optimally.

It's a weird subculture, and it's STRONG here. RoH only PLD's that never leave Shield Oath. Ice Mages. Monks who "prefer Fists of Wind". There are a lot of players here who firmly want to play their own way, and party effectiveness can burn for all they care.

[Malzian]

This has to be the only game I've ever played where people not only knowingly make bad decisions, be it melds, accessories, choosing only to heal, only using ice spells, etc... but are actively hostile and stubborn when its pointed out to them.

Not to say I defend op either, he also came off as needlessly hostile.

It is a bit weird, yeah. There's a big streak of "I do what I want" in the NA playerbase here. If stat weights showed that Direct Hit really is the best stat, there will be people avoiding it at all costs just because they hate the idea of playing optimally.

It's a weird subculture, and it's STRONG here. RoH only PLD's that never leave Shield Oath. Ice Mages. Monks who "prefer Fists of Wind". There are a lot of players here who firmly want to play their own way, and party effectiveness can burn for all they care.

Okay, so I'm going to focus on a particular phrase here that gets thrown out a lot in these kinds of conversations: "playing optimally"

What does this particular phrase often boil down to? Typically it's, "How high is your DPS number?" This means pretty much everything you do in the game boils down to a single measurable value that is then used to determine your competency at a particular role or job. The problem with this is that there are a myriad of other factors that come into play when doing content that should be considered and many times that comes down not just to your own skill level but the skill level of the people you are playing with.

There are 2 general scenarios you can consider here, the first of which is what many people tend to default to: playing in a group with the same people as a static where everyone knows what each other is capable of and what they can do in terms of their role. When you are playing under this scenario you can justify expecting the optimal scenarios that the optimal setups and strategies require. Now, the fact of the matter is that for the vast majority of content, in order to complete it successfully, you don't need the absolute optimal performance. The trouble is that so many people view even a slight variance from this ideal as directly negatively impacting them. Are there instances where someone is doing an absolutely terrible job at their role? Yes, but that doesn't meant not being 100% optimal all the time is bad either.

The second scenario, and the much more common one for people to deal with, is running content with PUGs. In a PUG it is generally the case that you have no idea how good or bad the other players will be. Likely you've never played with them before, likely you will never play with them again. You don't know as the MT if the healer is going to preemptively shield or regen you before the tank buster. You don't know that the OT is going to shirk onto you so you can tank in DPS stance. You don't know if a DPS is going to mind their aggro meter to help assist a tank in DPS stance not need to use Halone or other things to maintain them enmity.

Once again, not all content is high-end, Savage raiding. The vast majority of content isn't going to be affected by a 100-200 DPS decrease from the tank. It may take a few minutes longer, but generally you won't wipe unless the tank is just demonstrably bad and can't maintain aggro or doesn't even try holding more than 1 mob. Optimal builds, optimal strategies are effective and efficient only in optimal scenarios. The chances of finding yourself in an optimal scenario in a PUG is abysmally low.

TL;DR: Optimal circumstances generally don't happen in PUGs, so you can't count on them happening. Doing what works to get you through content despite being not entirely optimal is better than your being optimal and your group failing because they can't keep up or adapt to the situation.

[dragonseth07]

TL;DR: Optimal circumstances generally don't happen in PUGs, so you can't count on them happening. Doing what works to get you through content despite being not entirely optimal is better than your being optimal and your group failing because they can't keep up or adapt to the situation.

Snip for length.

I absolutely agree, but that's a different conversation. We're not talking about choosing suboptimal play because of party deficiencies. We're more referring to willful ignorance: actively choosing suboptimal play without a good reason to do so.

[Malzian]

Snip for length.

I absolutely agree, but that's a different conversation. We're not talking about choosing suboptimal play because of party deficiencies. We're more referring to willful ignorance: actively choosing suboptimal play without a good reason to do so.

I understand that. My comment was meant to address the specific term of "optimal play" in how it is most often used, which is typically regardless of circumstance.

For the specfic conversation in how it relates to melds, I think there's 2 issues that SE has when it comes to that- 1) Role specific stats should, by default, be of greater benefit to that role than any other stat which currently is not the case. 2) The way in which those stats affect your abilities and, hence, your DPS is needlessly obscured and the effects of stats are mathematical "best guesses" by the community that need to be derived through testing.

If role specific stats made any sense in that they're actually really important to that role (such as direct hit) and the effect they have on your abilities were more readily available for people to know then there wouldn't be as much of a problem with them.