Why don't people like to pick/use Tenacity over Determination?

[TwitchingFool0]

I'm someone that's fairly new when it comes to tanking and I don't think I've had a full explanation as to why its not used much. I noticed some people complaining about the new Eden gear having Tenacity over Determination.

Anyone care to explain both their differences and why one is used over the other one to me?

[Quri]

Differences is like 2% if that, when it comes to damage. Full tenacity is doesn't cover a healer God, so it was deemed useless. But like I said before, 2-3% damage difference, when you compare the optimal build.

[Kalise]

Determination offers more damage than Tenacity.

That's about it for why Tenacity is not favoured.

Tenacity will provide damage reduction which Determination does not, but it is often not necessary to use since it will rarely save a Healer having to spend an extra GCD on a heal to top you off.

In addition, even if it DID save the Healer having to spend a GCD on a heal, it only means that they'd spend the GCD on a damage spell instead. Which would be worth less damage than if you simply had a better stat instead of Tenacity boosting your own damage instead.

Even with all this, there's still only one Tank that actually wants Determination, which is Warrior. Other Tanks would prefer having Crit and Direct Hit for higher damage, while Warrior gets less damage from Direct Hit due to their job mechanics providing guaranteed Direct Critical Hits and so gets more damage from Determination than Direct Hit.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Lengthy answer ahead. If the first two posts didn't feel like enough, this one will.
====================================================
Short Answer: It is an "OK" stat, but it is not the prefered option since other provide larger benefits of damage.

Long Answer:
==========
All jobs in this game have a preferred stat order, in the case of tanks it is:
PLD / DRK / GNB: Skillspeed to desired GCD > Crit > Direct Hit > Determination > Tenacity
WAR only: Skillspeed to desired GCD > Crit > Determination > Tenacity > Direct Hit (majority of its' damage contribution forces DH)

The reason for the stat order is simply the gain in damage you get, with having a perfect aligning rotation being the highest, Crit being 2nd highest, etc. This does not mean Tenacity is a bad stat for damage, just not the best one (and we have 5 stats to pick). It is best explained if we look at how much of a stat we need to pour in to get the result.

Statistic intervals creditted to Nemekh & the TheoryJerks, bless their honest work.


Based on those tables, we see we need 254 DET to gain +1% damage while we need 330 TEN to gain that 1% damage + reduction. So if the desire is mainly to increase damage, it makes sense why TEN is hardly favoured over other stats. But now to what makes Tenacity its own thing - its' built-in passive mitigation.

First of, as different damage buffs and stats work multiplicative (i.e. (20% + 20% = 44%, not 40%), so does mitigation. But the catch with mitigation unlike damage is that instead of getting greater results by stacking multiple damage multipliers, mitigation is victim to diminishing returns. The more %-based mitigation you use, the less effect the next one has when used. To give you a basic example with Warrior's cooldowns:

Rampart / Raw Int alone: 100% - 20% = 80%; you take 20% from the 100% original.
Rampart + Raw Int paired: 100% - 20% - 20% = 64%; the first 20% is as above, but the second mitigation takes from the remaining 80% instead (thus 16%)
So using Raw Int with Rampart diminished the total mitigation by 4%. This is still commonly used on tankbusters though, so don't think too hard about it.

The issue with TEN largely comes from us tanks having a large pool of mitigation options at our disposal to deal with basically every mechanic in the game. That on top of diminishing returns should make things clear.


However, to give you a second / third opinion by some of the fellas from theory discords such as Theoryjerks and TheBalance:

Mox Xinmagar 04/08/2019

Does Tenacity suck??

Tenacity is an efficient stat for what it is, both increasing damage and mitigation at a nominal rate. Tenacity is currently regarded as a progression stat, in a similar vein to Vitality melds of old - helpful on occasion and can save your life, but not enough to warrant continuous, future use. The gain of Tenacity is not in reducing healer load. The gain is in the “insurance policy.” Tenacity could be useful. It could save your life. But you won’t see tangible benefit from Tenacity until that moment where you almost die.

-Theoryjerks Discord / Emiin

What does Tenacity do for us??

Tenacity allows the whole party to make some mistakes.
Missed a Feint or Addle? Shields? Cooldown dropped a second too early?
Tenacity's got it.

Words of closure - having Tenacity on gear is not "bad", just not preferred. However, it is likely going to happen that your best-in-slot piece might end up having Crit + Tenacity on it. Due to Crit generally being the most sought-after stat, that extra Tenacity will generally be ok to have on your gear. Ok on gear, avoid to meld.

Hope this helps.

[Risvertasashi]

I'm someone that's fairly new when it comes to tanking and I don't think I've had a full explanation as to why its not used much. I noticed some people complaining about the new Eden gear having Tenacity over Determination.

Anyone care to explain both their differences and why one is used over the other one to me?

Tenacity will never make a perceptible difference in the amount of healing you need. It will never be the breakpoint between a healer choosing to spend resources to heal you, vs doing damage or something else.

On the flipside, every small bit of damage counts. That extra 1%, or even 0.1%, might be the difference between wiping at 0.1% hp as the boss enrages and clearing.

[DRKoftheAzure]

@Reinhardt_Azureheim there is no info on the Tank Mastery Trait that tanks have since that is automatic 20% damage reduction, so the math is probably a bit skewed there at least for mitigation...

[Warskull]

Most people have no clue how the stats work and just follow the meta. The meta stems from the balance discord which pushes max DPS above all. People keep repeating it and using the best in slot gearsets without understanding them. The reason the balance promotes DPS is because a lot of them rush the content and spend more time optimizing and less time progressing. So they talk about progression less. People mistake this for progression being less important.

Tenacity is a fine progression stat. I wouldn't focus on tenacity for your gear, but melding tenacity works great. Then you just swap over to DPS as you get better gear. You burn like 1% damage to get 2-3% damage reduction. It doesn't seem like a lot, but when it counts it saves a run. It covers for little mistakes on tank or healer.

Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't, and most people don't understand things well enough to know when to use it.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

@Reinhardt_Azureheim there is no info on the Tank Mastery Trait that tanks have since that is automatic 20% damage reduction, so the math is probably a bit skewed there at least for mitigation...

The tank mastery trait that got introduced into Shadowbringers merely presents a baseline / fixated amount of mitigation and is supposed to fill the gap that the former tank stances left. Mitigation strength got adjusted accross the board (like Dark Mind and PLD Block only being 20% instead of 30%) to accomodate this passive trait for pre-SHB content (particularly Stormblood Ultimates). The only time you take Tank Mastery's mitigation into account is if you compare a tank to a non-tank, but not when comparing damage taken between tanks.

Furthermore to nail down the effect of this trait:
- Stormblood and prior: remaining mitigation got adjusted to accomodate a permanent -20% mitigation compared to devs expecting us to use DPS stance and giving us stronger % mitigation in return.
- Shadowbringers and beyond: damage calculations for tankbusters already take into account you having this trait, so effectively it is like us being in DPS stance in HW and SB, no difference.

TL;DR: We dont calculate Tank Mastery into basic calculation. Instead, the damage without additional mitigation is being presented as the new 100% instead.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Most people have no clue how the stats work and just follow the meta. The meta stems from the balance discord which pushes max DPS above all. People keep repeating it and using the best in slot gearsets without understanding them. The reason the balance promotes DPS is because a lot of them rush the content and spend more time optimizing and less time progressing. So they talk about progression less. People mistake this for progression being less important.

Tenacity is a fine progression stat. I wouldn't focus on tenacity for your gear, but melding tenacity works great. Then you just swap over to DPS as you get better gear. You burn like 1% damage to get 2-3% damage reduction. It doesn't seem like a lot, but when it counts it saves a run. It covers for little mistakes on tank or healer.

Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't, and most people don't understand things well enough to know when to use it.

This isn't purely about Balance promoting DPS-efficient stats, this is also about Tenacity at large not being useful as a mitigation stat outside of Ultimate or the final floor of the current Savage tier. Running a max Tenacity build does end up reducing your total dps by I believe 2-3%, but as you describe, it isn't as groundbreaking. But even so, the gain from using Tenacity is hardly ever worth it. The last time I saw some tanks going for a high Tenacity build was The Epic of Alexander (a friend of mine to be precise, who also happens to be among the players pushing high DPS), and even there it is hardly needed for progression.

And regarding melding Tenacity, keep in mind it takes 330 Tenacity per full percent (both damage and mitigation), so this would be 5.5 Tenacity VIII Materia you'd need to use, which given how small that increase is, could be spent better. Tenacity on gear is fine, but ideally you use a Crit Tenacity piece, with Det Tenacity being "ok too". The only time you should meld Tenacity if you go for a maximum Tenacity set and you can increase it further with melds (if not maxed out) or if you are Warrior and your Crit + Det on a piece is maxed out already and you have the Skillspeed you desire.

Also I would like to note that while Balance discord generally gives tips on how to improve your DPS, it is also helping people with questions other than DPS, such as "how do I do this mechanic" or "how should I use mitigation in a fight to get the best out of it?" or "I feel weak / I die a lot, I am probably doing something wrong, can you help me analyze how I play?". Even encounter-specific tips are given if asked for.

[msoltyspl]

I'm someone that's fairly new when it comes to tanking and I don't think I've had a full explanation as to why its not used much. I noticed some people complaining about the new Eden gear having Tenacity over Determination.

Anyone care to explain both their differences and why one is used over the other one to me?

In terms of having the same boost of damage as from some tenacity value, you need only 70% or so determination. The issue with tenacity is that its mitigation is in practice not something making real difference - so the tradeoff has little sense. It's essentially dump-into stat as soon as you filled up the rest and reached your desired sks tier.