tank gear

[Nedkel]

Tenacity is just not needed because of encounter design. Boss autos do basically nothing and as long as you execute mechanics correctly, you will have no problem clearing any encounter that you meet the ilevel requirement for. Tanks in particular will simply never be in danger to party mechanics due to the flat 20% DR and large health pool. The only thing that threatens you is a buster, which you have a billion cooldowns for.

Damage on the other hand is critical in savage content. Enrage timers are tight and squeezing out every digit of dps you can is important to clearing.

Until they redesign bosses to threaten tanks outside of tankbusters, tenacity will be the obsolete stat. At most you can stack it if you just want to spam roulettes with huge pulls.

Tell that to Eden raids.

[Absimiliard]

Tenacity is just not needed because of encounter design. Boss autos do basically nothing and as long as you execute mechanics correctly, you will have no problem clearing any encounter that you meet the ilevel requirement for. Tanks in particular will simply never be in danger to party mechanics due to the flat 20% DR and large health pool. The only thing that threatens you is a buster, which you have a billion cooldowns for.

Damage on the other hand is critical in savage content. Enrage timers are tight and squeezing out every digit of dps you can is important to clearing.

Until they redesign bosses to threaten tanks outside of tankbusters, tenacity will be the obsolete stat. At most you can stack it if you just want to spam roulettes with huge pulls.

New!Titan would like a word with you about autos doing next to nothing. Even the harder hitting autos of current savage content isn't enough to make tenacity a desirable stat, though. As you say, the damage is just too important. Personally I wouldn't even consider tenacity worth stacking for safety in mass pulling in roulettes either. 'bout the only time I would suggest that someone try using it is for bleeding edge progression where they're probably tackling fights well before their gear is up to the task. It might save your behind then, but it's never worth having otherwise.

[IntrovertAnt]

Because pentamelding obviously.

Oh, I thought penta meld tanks gear was not better than the higher ilev stuff given the loss of str and vit. Are people penta melding tank gear for this raid tier?

[Absimiliard]

Oh, I thought penta meld tanks gear was not better than the higher ilev stuff given the loss of str and vit. Are people penta melding tank gear for this raid tier?

Pentamelding will give you your pre-savage BiS. The higher item level stuff you get from doing savage will typically trump it, but there have been a few exceptions thus far. It's what we've done for a long time, really. Not something I'd call a necessity, however - unless you go for the bleeding edge progression, in which case it may end up being something worth looking into at the start of each new tier. Doubt you'd be replacing much of a full savage set from a previous tier, but once in a while you'll find a piece here or there that can be replaced with pentamelded crafted gear.

[BarretOblivion]

TL;DL I went into E1S with 2700+ Tenacity on DRK(because I need to be legitimate about my DRK complaints) and as a casual who wants to get into Savage as a tank, Tenacity stat REALLY needs to be buffed to make it worth investing in that isn't "budget stat" because Tenacity is like a lot people say, a dead stat... Like how DRK is a dead tank...

Here let me fix your comment for you. "Like how WAR is a dead tank"
Right now WAR is the least played tank and really only bring holmgang to the table. Im not a fan of Nascent flash as an OT move becasue the healing is cut by 50% that you would be healing for your MT that is getting slapped, you might heal... 1 auto attack and some change with it. The one good fight WAR is in right now is Leviathan. Holmgang 1st/3rd TB, likely share 4th. Since Leviathan auto's both tanks Nascent becomes good sustain if used well to help healers focus on mechanics/dps. Its not earthshattering but its enough to warrent WAR in that fight...
All other fights, just don't bring WAR. The downtime in 1 makes it feels worse than the other tanks as they all can hit multiple targets in 1 and in 2... I haven't noticed many WARs yet able to break 7k (might just be me though from experience) while on PLD I can hit almost 8k with only 450 gear and one DMG down.

Now onto tenacity... I would say tenacity should only be considered if you plan on doing Ultimate progression. Any tiny bit of mitigation may impact the difference between a wipe and a close call, but that's Ultimate. Savage... just bring DET if you can't meld DH for some reason. (Isn't BiS for all the tanks going to be crit once we hit 470?)

[Absimiliard]

Here let me fix your comment for you. "Like how WAR is a dead tank"
Right now WAR is the least played tank and really only bring holmgang to the table. Im not a fan of Nascent flash as an OT move becasue the healing is cut by 50% that you would be healing for your MT that is getting slapped, you might heal... 1 auto attack and some change with it. The one good fight WAR is in right now is Leviathan. Holmgang 1st/3rd TB, likely share 4th. Since Leviathan auto's both tanks Nascent becomes good sustain if used well to help healers focus on mechanics/dps. Its not earthshattering but its enough to warrent WAR in that fight...
All other fights, just don't bring WAR. The downtime in 1 makes it feels worse than the other tanks as they all can hit multiple targets in 1 and in 2... I haven't noticed many WARs yet able to break 7k (might just be me though from experience) while on PLD I can hit almost 8k with only 450 gear and one DMG down.

I suggest you take a gander at FFlogs. WAR's DPS is fine in every fight thus far. DRK really only beats it when it has access to the correct raid buffs. The two are kinda sharing the third and fourth DPS slots insofar as tanks at the moment, swapping depending on raid comp. Its durability is also fine. WAR is fully viable in every encounter.

[Juanpierre]

Public Service Announcement: If you are interested in gearing and melding and playing optimally, join The Balance discord channel. They give excellent info on stats and rotations that have been tested and shown to be optimal. I appreciate the work they do.

If you're not interested in playing optimally, please continue to meld Tenacity. I hear it's fun.

[xvshanevx]

Tenacity is a perfectly viable stat for early progression on any fight you or your party members do not understand. (I say this with the assumption that many of us suck in comparison to World First runners, daily streamers, or high frequency parse runners.)

Going with a full penta-melded set with TEN food will net you about 3300 tenacity, this equates to 9.00-9.12% damage mitigation and increased damage (http://theoryjerks.akhmorning.com/stats/ten/).

I went full penta-melded TEN build during week 1 and 2 and noticed the difference. This kept me alive in situations where I should've died. I have 1 VERY clear example with Levi's Temporal Current attack. Getting hit by it does about 120-130k damage unmitigated, but I got hit by it and lived with 1.5k health. I should've been 1 shot, but didn't and it's cause of running TEN instead of CRIT/DET.

TEN will never be in any BiS set seeing as it is sub-optimal, plus we gain defense and HP from upgrading to Savage gear, but never count it out for progression. Once you get to about 138-140k health, then TEN will be useless until Ultimate drops.

Keep in mind that we are all not week 1 clear players. so choosing the safest stats are not always the worst idea.

Public Service Announcement: If you're not interested in playing optimally, please continue to meld Tenacity. I hear it's fun.

The first and foremost thing players running EX Primals, Savages, and Ultimates should be to concerned with is to clear the fights at all costs, not to play risky. Playing "optimally" in this game requires players to be very greedy and taking chances that would other wise wipe the raid just to keep their GCDs rolling (i.e. always going to the same rock in es4 even if it is a 2-1 just to keep uptime). Playing "optimally" would be to have a TEN set for clearing the fight and a DPS set for re-clears and parses.

Edit: I also want to add that TEN here on Primal, is a very cheap Materia, so it is also cheaper to meld!

[Kabooa]

Tenacity is a perfectly viable stat for early progression on any fight you or your party members do not understand. (I say this with the assumption that many of us suck in comparison to World First runners, daily streamers, or high frequency parse runners.)

Are you absolutely sure all of us aren't just as good as them and thus emulating them is a great idea?

Hoo, I keep looking at that and the grammar alone confuses me, and I wrote the dang thing.

[xvshanevx]

Are you absolutely sure all of us aren't just as good as them and thus emulating them is a great idea?

Hoo, I keep looking at that and the grammar alone confuses me, and I wrote the dang thing.

I apologize! I didn't realize I was among the top 5% in these forums!