iLevel STR Gain Analysis Help

[Jeeqbit]

Let's be honest. They didn't have to embrace tanks DPSing. They could have left accessories without strength in 5.0, knowing our health would become so low with HW accessories that we'd struggle to do basic tank mechanics. They could have put the damage reduction penalty in the traits as well. But they know it would just upset us when they are trying to sell a new expansion to us.

Look how selling bowmage to bards worked out for them. A lot of them unsubbed and the entire job vanished from existance. It's not good marketing to upset your players with expansion changes.

They've clearly embraced the idea of tanks DPSing in every way, including by getting rid of enmity combos, allowing us to use tank stance without penalty and allowing us to match the strength of DPS jobs. I even noticed that the Tank Mastery trait we get at L1 grants a "bonus to damage dealt based on your strength attribute". Our potencies have been buffed. Some of these things may be accounting for the lack of an offensive stance, but they really have pulled out all of the stops to make us a blue DPS, haven't they?

Of course, the internal damage calculations could be where they hit the tank damage more than normal, but is that necessary when they can just increase all enemy health to account for increased tank damage?

When all the other changes are this positive we should give them the benefit of the doubt.

[ArianeEwah]

They've clearly embraced the idea of tanks DPSing in every way, including by getting rid of enmity combos, allowing us to use tank stance without penalty and allowing us to match the strength of DPS jobs. I even noticed that the Tank Mastery trait we get at L1 grants a "bonus to damage dealt based on your strength attribute". Our potencies have been buffed. Some of these things may be accounting for the lack of an offensive stance, but they really have pulled out all of the stops to make us a blue DPS, haven't they?

If they would've decided to change tank stances to be something actual benefical, that would be no problem. But right now (and HW, too) tanks stance is far too weak to compensate the damage penality. They could've shown a different interessting gameplay, but tank stance is mostly dull and restricting gameplay expierence.

And as you stated, boring gameplay can't be sold. They had to change design here, and I am actually happy with it. For design we've also to take synced content into account - because it still takes a large amount of (re-)playable content available, and SE did that pretty well here. We can use our full kits without any penalities or restrictions, and I like the changes to PLD and WAR especially - Gauge accumulation without tank stance (Defiance), and "highest DPS" combo without enmity gain attached to it (PLD - RoH).

As for the description of tank mastery: I bet the part about "a bonus to damage dealt based on your strength attribute" is to be taken in a "directional" way. It states that tanks gain damage as they gain strength, so that newcomers don't equip DEX, INT or MND. I don't think tanks will deal more damage than or equal damage to DPS now. On the other hand VIT does indeed increase tanks HP pool further. I've read a reddit post about the actual numbers, and iirc it was roughly about 30HP/VIT for tanks, 20HP/VIT for everyone else.