Idea to Fix Problems with Tank Main Stat & Accessories

[VaryaKimon]

I'm the person who asked YoshiP about tank accessories at FanFest 2018. It's a topic that has weighed heavily on my mind because I've been raiding in this game since the start of Heavensward.

The fundamental problem is that tanks are the only role who have a main stat that doesn't contributes to damage. Every other role (including Healers) have a main stat that contributes to their damage output.

Our main stat is Vitality, but our damage comes from Strength. The latter doesn't scale as well on our accessories, which is why tanks used to wear Slaying accessories when they could and why we wear crafted accessories now.

It hit me this morning that there's an obvious solution that wouldn't require too much work to fix on the development end.

Make Vitality contribute to tank damage and not contribute any HP. Then change Tenacity (which is currently a junk stat) to provide HP the same way that Piety provides MP. Adjust the jobs as necessary to scale their HP as they level, perhaps through a HP+ passive trait.

They could change the description of Tenacity to "Affects maximum HP. Only applicable when role is Tank." to make it similar to the Piety stat on your character sheet under the "Role" category.

Any thoughts on this from people who main and/or raid as a tank? Thanks!

[Lyth]

Many thanks for asking that question. That and the O11S question were the highlights of the Q+A for me.

The crux of the issue is not Vitality or Strength. The devs wanted to rein in tank dps. If you look at the Stone, Sea, Sky dummy HP from the start of this expansion, they anticipated that we would be doing less dps than even healers on a target dummy. That's pretty obnoxious. It's only later, after they made concessions with our accessories, that we pulled back ahead.

That's why the i270 STR accessory debacle was absolutely beautiful. Had they not made that critical error with scaling, they could have pretended that nothing was wrong. Even their responses were hilarious. What was that? You need to hold aggro? Here, have some enmity buffs. Yeah, okay.

There was a really easy way for them to avoid this altogether, though. The problem with STR is that it has a common meaning for both tanks and melee dps. So you can look at your tank accessories with 51 STR and compare them to melee dps ones with 171 STR. The solution would have been to give tanks their own primary stat, similar to how MND functions in healers. Now you have no way of comparing the two, and the tank primary can scale at a rate that you want it to.

I think that Tenacity is actually a really good candidate here. It impacts defense, attack power, and self-healing. Primaries are linked to ilvl, so their growth is regulated. You'd actually steadily improve in all of the areas that you want a tank to improve in over the course of an expansion, such that higher ilvl gear is always better than lower ilvl gear. And that should be the end goal of primary stat scaling.

[Zephera]

I like this idea, seems really simple to do but I doubt the devs would make VIT effect tank damage again though. The devs don't seem to like the idea of tanks doing any meaningful damage.

[Kalise]

I mean... They could just put more Strength on our accessories.

Since, it's not like every other piece of tank gear has pathetic amounts of STR on, it's just the accessories. Also, given the class restrictions on Tank accessories, it's not like MNK/SAM/DRG will be grabbing them and getting a bunch of free health.

That said, they could also push more towards Health = Damage with skills/traits. Sort of like with Upheaval (Also, a lesser extent Spirits Within) to allow for VIT to contribute to damage indirectly (Though, that would probably just buff WAR more given their tank stance gives health AND they can temporarily mitigate the damage reduction it gives...)

[VaryaKimon]

Thanks for the thoughtful responses. Much better than what I'm getting over on the subreddit.

The problem I have with "Health = Damage" abilities is it takes your DPS potential out of your hands. A lot of aggressive healers (read: my healers) don't keep their MT topped off and usually have them floating around 1/3 to 1/2 half for most of the fight so they can focus on DPSing without worrying about overhealing. I'm actually grateful that Upheaval is my only ability that scales damage based on my health because I'm sure I take a hit on that to benefit my healers.

[Canadane]

It's unfortunate that the response what that tank damage output was "problematic."
To me this sounds like they plan a nerf to our DD ability entirely for 5.0.
I sincerely hope that isn't the case.

[Kalise]

Thanks for the thoughtful responses. Much better than what I'm getting over on the subreddit.

The problem I have with "Health = Damage" abilities is it takes your DPS potential out of your hands. A lot of aggressive healers (read: my healers) don't keep their MT topped off and usually have them floating around 1/3 to 1/2 half for most of the fight so they can focus on DPSing without worrying about overhealing. I'm actually grateful that Upheaval is my only ability that scales damage based on my health because I'm sure I take a hit on that to benefit my healers.

Ah, I wasn't particularly clear.

In terms of the Health = Damage, I was more implying "Max Health" = Damage. Akin to how Upheaval gets BONUS Potency when you boost up your max health (Hence the lesser extent on Spirits Within as that just has the scaling down on Pot based on current health)

Meaning that irregardless of if you have 1 health or 100,000 health remaining it would do the same damage so long as your max health is the same (But also, where the issue would arise with WAR due to their 2 sources of max health boosting AND tank stance penalty mitigation)

Essentially, though, it would be just the same as Vit = Attack Power, just in an indirect way.

Also, as a side note... Anyone else find Upheaval odd given that WAR is the "Berserker" class, I would have thought they'd get a skill that scaled the other way, being more powerful at lower life...

[VaryaKimon]

It's unfortunate that the response what that tank damage output was "problematic."
To me this sounds like they plan a nerf to our DD ability entirely for 5.0.
I sincerely hope that isn't the case.

Truthfully, I don't care what my DPS is. I've been a Warrior since 2.0 and I play a tank job because I enjoy the duties of being a tank. I think it's more "problematic" that every job in this game is a DPS, but some have enmity tools and some have healing tools.

It's probably an unpopular opinion, but I would continue to play a tank even if they nerfed our DPS into the ground as long as we could still effectively do the responsibilities that I think we're supposed to be focusing on.

[VaryaKimon]

In terms of the Health = Damage, I was more implying "Max Health" = Damage.

Oh, I'm 100% behind that, then!

Also, as a side note... Anyone else find Upheaval odd given that WAR is the "Berserker" class, I would have thought they'd get a skill that scaled the other way, being more powerful at lower life...

Ha! I never thought of it that way, but that would be more fun ... especially if you pulled off an Upheaval after a successful Holmgang for max damage!

[Seraphor]

Wait, what?

Have Vitality increase strength but no HP, and have Tenacity increase HP?

Doesnt that seem backwards to you?