There's a point where excess survival doesn't really matter because the risk of death, providing healers and tanks are using their tools and their baseline gear is strong enough, is pretty much a non-issue. Especially with dragon glyph existing as supplemental to defensive abilities for a given tank. It was a much different time when such did not exist all those years ago and all one could change was auging for HP, AC or some mix as everyone was otherwise capped on mod2s, and we learned of things like DI obsolescence really impacting one's risk of death (much to the protest of the pro HP crowd that never provided any real parse data. I remember!). At that point, it's why there is that bias towards going for what provides more DPS when we're in an era that more DPS is still king for the sake of a raid and group. Where healers don't need to spend every cast solely on heals and can opt for more efficient casts while contributing as much damage as they can. Where once progression is over, which let's face it with the guilds knowing fights from Beta, doesn't take that long, as tanks get better geared they don't need to be as biased to defensive options because their baseline is just that much better. I can understand wanting to mitigate risk as much as possible in early prog, but things become much more of a snooze fest once content is on repeat farm. Then there's the general benefit to encounters dying in a fraction of the time by everyone doing their utmost. Fewer emotes, fewer timed aoes, fewer chances for a serious mistake to throw things off. It's such a massive difference watching other guilds stream their weeklies at such a quicker pace where the DPS is just that good, that you could honestly argue it's much closer to an easy mode than when events take 2-3x longer and attrition can seriously kick in. When things are drawn out, you can argue more for survival, but I know what my preference would be.
It's extremely questionable min/maxing would have any impact strong enough to make such a difference in event time. That has more to do with class composition and more importantly player skill/synergy. I'm not saying it's wrong to look into diminishing returns, but the impact is likely minimal if you're talking about shorter event times.
Individually, no, but at a macro level where as many present are maxing out, it does add up. It so happens that tweaking Heroic stats is low hanging fruit especially when you consider how much damage comes from melee crits among the tanks and that's before any adps bolstering it further. Glyphs and 7th you can argue matter a lot more, but the heroic stats complement alongside them. Adjusting player skill and synergy is a much taller order, not unlike if all Clerics present went from 0-minimal damage to 50-100k+ dps each.
The 9 pages of no consensus and min/maxers vastly exaggerating the differences in insanely hypothetical situations in which tanks 2H and perfectly play equally? I'll reread it, but the only data I saw was marginal differences. 50k DPS... if using a 2H. Just how many tanks would that take in a raid for that to be more than marginal? I'm curious if there is a right answer, and I haven't seen one. My baby warrior is catapulted way past what is necessary to tank group content by rotting raid gear, but I'm inclined to follow the advice one tank gave me to do half STA-focused type 5s with a mix of AGI and DEX for the rest. Unless I've missed something, I haven't seen obvious evidence it's a huge deal.
While this is based on nothingness and I will never step foot into a progression raid, this is the way I look at it. Warriors: best overall mitigation abilities - summary: hSta - larger health pool coupled with best reduced damage = win Paladins: self heals - summary: hAgi - reduce the damage coming in to allow heals to do their job = win ShadowKnights: life taps via melee - summary: hDex- increase melee capabilities to increase life taps. Don’t need a larger health pool or better AC if increased damage can keep you alive = win Again, based off of nothingness, just fun to think about each tank benefitting more from their own set of heroic stats rather than a “best overall”
Warrior - Group/Raid Sta or Dex Knights - Group dex or agi // Raid dex or sta Raid mobs are plowing right through all your Magelo-padded agility benefits, so either mitigate the damage with stamina, or up your dex game for all of the proc abilities that knights get.
