The Chart
Disclaimer: Let me say that my armor testing was in no way conclusive or elaborate. I did some testing against 3 types of mobs, recorded their damage on a spreadsheet, replaced a piece of armor and did it again. I then averaged the data, checked for standard distribution, then made my assumption that 500-600 def increase was roughly a 10% difference in the damage (for example: going from 40 to 44 damage taken per hit on average). I said "damage mitigation" on the spreadsheet, but damage difference is more accurate.
Now onto my thoughts!
The Stats
Accuracy: Paladin gets tremendous amounts of accuracy on their AF, I am not really sure why but that is the fact of it. In a raid environment will we actually need that amount of accuracy? I highly doubt it, yes, we will need to hit the boss to maintain hate, but with Shield Oath doubling the amount of enmity gained it just doesn't seems like Paladins need to be gods of accuracy in order to keep hate. For the purposes of this discussion I am assuming accuracy plays a minor role in threat generation and is otherwise useless to tanking.
Skill Speed: Warrior AF, similar to Paladin's, is just overflowing with skill speed; however, unlike Paladins, this is actually VERY good for their style of tanking. Warriors actively heal respectable amounts of damage through a fight, skill speed increases this, thus making it a psuedo-damage mitigating stat due to the reliable healing over time. But, this blog focuses on Paladin so we will not travel deeper into the merits of skill speed on warrior for the time being (expect something once Phase 4 hits though).
Defense: Still not 100% of the damage formula monsters->players so a lot of what I say regarding defense is speculative. Regardless, taking less damage per hit is better on your healers mana and heart rates. I won't start up the Paladin versus Warrior debate here, but that will also be in a future update.
Vitality: 1VIT = 15HP. Enough said, the more you have the more hits you can take.
Parry: I do not currently know the relation ship between parry rating and % of attacks parried. I am basically waiting for a working parser to come out in order to test this factor. For now, we include it as a position defensive stat, but judge its merit skeptically.
Materia Slots: These open up quite a bit of gear customization. For tanks, you can choose between Vitality, Parry, an elemental resistance, or upping a combat stat for threat/warrior active healing. At the moment, I am only considering Vitality, since there is no armor materia I am aware of and I believe it will provide the best general boost for tanking. (This does not mean that aquiring resist gear sets in the future may not be mandatory for on-the-edge progression encounters.)
Comparing the Gear
Artifact Armor (AF) is definitely better than in 1.0, it is a pretty decent set of (what I believe will be) easily obtainable gear. I would gather it just to be a completionist in the job even if they weren't required to get for some of the job quests. It is clearly the lowest set of gear in the "tier list" I have debated on for both Warrior and Paladin, but, it is still good armor to start you off in level 50 content.
Darklight Armor (DL) was epitomized as the "Best in Slot" gear of 1.0 by a lot of people. Frankly, Triple- and Quad-Melded gear actually surpassed it in quite a few areas, but I understand that it was really the best gear you could actively get outside of crafting relentlessly so I won't argue about it. Now, DA provides the most armor in the game for pre-raid gear currently, it is statted just like Paladin gear making it a direct upgrade for Paladins. I still consider it a hefty upgrade for warriors because of the armor bonus and additional vitality in lieu of skill speed. Having this gear will mean that you are absolutely ready for Crystal Tower in most cases.
Crafted Darksteel (DS) is something I originally had brushed off for a few reasons. It has the worst armor value, no parry, and considerably less BASE vitality than DL. BUT, then I took a look at 2 things; the iLVL (80) and those beautiful 10 materia slots. Level 4 VIT materia gives 7 per slot giving us a unparalleled amount of vitality by a decent margin. 134 VIT if fully melded compared to DL's 81. 53 VIT is going to equate to 795 HP for a Paladin and 993.75 HP for a Warrior with Defiance up. As a 50 PLD (depending on other slots) I have around 4600 HP and 702 def, switching from DL to this CRAFTED armor set with full melds would put me at roughly 5400 HP and 576 def. Yes, I am going to take a noticeable amount more per hit, but when you are adding almost 18% more HP by switching to a set of gear you can just buy off the market boards I feel this will negate a damage difference of 10% in the best case and 15% in my estimated worse case scenario. This is also where we may see some differences in the tanking classes gear choices, as a Warrior with Defiance up is going to take that 5400 HP and then sit at around 6750 HP. Again though, this set has the lowest armor and no native parry rating. If anything, I see this set being better for Warriors since it plays to their strength (HP).
Sentinel Armor (SA) is a set of armor that originally was obtained from beastmen strongholds, now it looks like it may be a dungeon drop/chest set. The individual pieces are pretty much AF with acc/skspd being replaced by materia slots (11 in total). Additionally, the armor value on SA is only 19 def less than of the DL set. Pretty amazing if you ask me! It is a set purely designed for tanking (parry and materia slots for the bonus stats) and I honestly love it. If this set were iLVL 75 or greater and able to use the tier 4 materia it would be the unquestioned best pre-raid tanking gear obtainable. As it stands, we are looking at 614 def (19 def under DL, 107 def over DS), 99 VIT (35 VIT under DS or 525(656) HP, 18 VIT over DL or 270(338) HP over DS) and it has 76 parry (26 parry less than DL, 76 more than DS).
Speculations
So, now we have a lot of options for tanking, but which one is the best you may ask...
Honestly, until we see the raid encounters, know how much the bosses hit for, how consistent and fast they hit for, how quickly the healers can heal, how the healers mana holds up, etc. We cannot yet fully determine which set of gear is going to be the best.
Tanks may need to stack tremendous amounts of HP to survive or they may need to stack as much armor/parry to mitigate damage because healers are having trouble with the keeping MP up for the duration of an encounter. We just don't know yet...
BUT, based off what we have seen in the mid level fates and dungeons, I highly doubt Healer mana nor HP will be a problem. Bosses seem to hit pretty hard, but they hit slow (likely hampered by the same lengthy GCD a lot of players are complaining about). With these bosses not hitting us so hard/fast that we simply need HP and cooldowns to survive, it looks like we should focus on gearing in 2 ways.
First, we want to have enough HP to give the healers a comfortable amount of time to heal us or for us to pop cooldowns and simply survive on our own.
Second, we want to mitigate damage so that MP does not become a problem and we eliminate some RNG screwing us over.
Because of this, I will personally be obtaining a full Sentinel's Set for my Paladin and a full Crafted Darksteel set for Warrior. Again, I like to play to the individual jobs' strengths. Shield Oath for Paladin gives them a flat 25% damage reduction (amazing!) and Defiance gives Warrior 25% bonus HP as previously mentioned. Because of Warrior's natural self healing, similar to a Blood Death Knight from World of Warcraft, I am currently predicting them to scale better with HP than Paladins concerning survivability. And why put Paladin in Sentinels then you might ask, because Paladin's self healing comes through cures and a couple JAs from Warriors I honestly won't use in all likelihood. Paladins can spam cures all day with Riot Blade once threat has been established (which is cake with Shield Oath doubling the emnity generated by skills). They will be a mitigation focused tank because that is the way all their cooldowns line up, Warrior lacks the amount of CDs given to Paladin and therefore cannot be played in the same style.
So, for the TL;DNR types out there:
PLD - Sentinel's Set > Darklight Set > Heavy Darksteel Set > Artifact Armor
WAR - Heavy Darksteel Set > Sentinel's Set > Darklight Set > Artifact Armor
If you have different opinions, questions, contradictions, or anything to say about this blog entry please leave me a comment! I absolutely love theorycrafting and interacting with readers!
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