Head doesn't drop until turn 5, which may be why.
Tanks +1 relics because they look shiny, get AF2 first if you want better survivability.
I'm pretty sure most +1 their weapons first because of the cheap price tag and and you can hold out for Allagan gear in Coil.
If you're in full DL, then replacing the body and legs with AF2 would give you the strongest returns.
Yea, I saw the STR chart, but since Paladin doesn't get anywhere near as much DEX as STR (I'm in the 190~ range), I was under the impression that the tiers would be similar, but the values between the tiers smaller. Thanks.
I suppose that's one way you could look at it, but the problem I see with that is that you're essentially playing the slot machine with that route if you try to hold out for Allagan armor. Sure, you potentially could luck out, but then you could also just as easily (and more likely, actually) not get any tank armor or accessories. Instead, you could grab the body at 825 (which already by itself does so much more for your survivability than the sword and shield), then the next week you could grab the Hero's Ring at 375 (if you don't want to wait another week to grab the Head, at which point you would grab that so that you're not stuck with Militia/Hoplite which is the route I'd go, but it's another option) which is BiS, alongside the Allagan Ring. At four weeks in, you'd have two pieces done, whereas if you went Sword+Shield, your fourth week would put you at 300, with nothing purchasable at that price range.
The order I did my current gear is:
Hands (had DL Body/Legs, never bought DL Hands) ->
Head (used Hoplite Body at this time, though in reality Militia would be better) ->
Body ->
Feet (at this point, I would have used Militia Trousers if I hadn't already gotten the Allagan Legs)
My plan for next week is to grab the Hero's Ring of Fending (replacing Darklight Ring), and then the week after that, I'll grab the Holy Shield +1 since the remaining Allagan accessories are all BiS. In the meantime, I'll replace my Hoplite Ring with a Rose Gold Ring (HQ), and probably meld it for Strength if I'm close to the next tier, Dexterity if I'm close to the next tier (unlikely, I'll have look into this more), or Determination/Crit Rate. To my knowledge, Vit/Parry/Acc would already be at the item's cap, but I'll double check when I get the ring, and if they're not, they'd take top priority, but I feel they already are.
Why on earth would you do rose gold ring melded with STR vs gryphonskin melded with VIT?
That's just silly.
Only rose gold piece you need is ear screws.
I have not checked a single materia listing ever but seeing as DPS generally can't add more STR and nobody else needs it, I imagine it's a decent bit cheaper than VIT materia.
VIT and STR are same price on my server at 1k-3k a pop for T3. It's not like a difference between melding heaven's eye vs. savage aim.
The Rose Gold Ring is about more than just the Vitality; it'd also be giving me Parry. Vitality Materia III are about 15k each on my server at the moment, and Battledance (Parry) Materia III are even higher at around 30-40k each; meanwhile Strength Materia III are in the range of 5k, probably a little less. Additionally, it'd take more slots than available (since it caps at five slots) to reach the base stats on an HQ Rose Gold Ring (10 Vit would take three slots to make up, 9 parry would take three slots as well to make up), in addition, any materia after the first slot is going to be like pulling teeth to get slotted (especially at the fourth and fifth slots) leading to large amount of money loss when a lot of them eventually fail, and since this is only a stopgap ring to hold me over until Allagan eventually drops, I don't think it's worth the investment.
I guess the bigger point I'm making is that I think opting for the parry over the STR / DEX / Crit bonuses is dumb (at least as it stands with Turn 5 not being cleared / farmable) since you can easily tank turn 4 in HDL gear and DL accessories.
I'd take the DPS boost as my FC isn't going to be able to make serious attempts at Turn 5 probably before 2.1. If you genuinely think yours can, have at it. Until I hear that the +40/50 parry / +25 VIT you get from Allagan accs over full Gryphonskin HQ is a make or break for Twintania it's my opinion that Gryphonskin melded with crit are better than Allagan fending. Hell, I want Allagan striking (those are the STR/Crit right?) over Allagan fending for my PLD / WAR.
Edit: And the HP numbers for PLD I've gotten from Church for T5 is 6100-6200. Easily achievable with Gryphonskin accs and even mediocre food. Let alone the food you SHOULD be using.
I'm already at 6100HP (which becomes 6500~ with party VIT buff + HQ Lava Toad Legs), but I don't feel that means I shouldn't still strive for even more survivability and mitigation; a tank's job (as I see it) isn't DPS, it's to hold threat and live. And while sure, I can easily do Coil as I am now, anything I can do to make it easier on the other seven people in my party while keeping myself alive (such as more Parry), I plan to do. If I can easily reach the next tier in STR (which I believe I can; DEX not so much) without sacrificing any of my other primary stats, I'd rather do that.
Only time will tell. As I see it, there's two viable theories of where to go from here forward with respect to tanking:
Theory 1: Focus on turtling up in preparation for future content that may be tank / healer checks.
Theory 2: Hit comfortable survivability level then focus on DPS / enmity generation in preparation for future content that may be DPS checks.
Every place you're scaling up your survivability week by week your DPS should be scaling up their damage output. I don't ever want to have to tell my DPS to slow down because all my extra VIT / Parry doesn't help me hold hate off of them.
Either way, it's just money. If I'm wrong I get T IV materia when more content is released. Whatever.
I understand and agree completely. I would never, ever think of telling my DPS to slow down or stop their damage if I was having problems maintaining aggro, but since I currently don't have that problem, and times in the past where I have have been rather rare, it's why I'm inclined to continue down the path of wanting to increase my survivability even more.
When it comes to DPS races and checks, the damage is either clearly there, or it's clearly not, and it's consistent on being one or the other; I've yet to have encountered an event where if I had been doing more damage in tandem with the DPS, that we'd have cleared. While I obviously can't predict what Yoshi P has lined up for Turns 6-10, if the pattern continues, we'll be seeing bosses in those turns that continue to hit for 2000, 3000, 4000+ before mitigation is taken into effect, and I'd like to be prepared for that, just in case.
I'm pretty fresh on the tank bus, was asked to tank AK for friends on a whim and ended up not completely sucking at it. I'm rolling with a piddly HQ Kite Shield right now, should I spam Wanderer's for the Darksteel one and/or could I potentially use this until relic?
Depending how easily you can finish Curtana, farming Darklight might be a waste of time. If it's likely to take longer than a couple days (if you have no reliable group to down Titan with), then I'd farm a Darklight Kite Shield.
This is what I've been going back and forth on as well, and I find myself coming back to mitigation repeatedly.
Regardless of gear/skill, I have yet to encounter DPS who give me significant threat management issues unless they're straight-up being stupid (e.g. BRD getting a proc-all-the-things string at the start of a fight and didn't bother to use Quelling cuz lazy), and I highly doubt the +1 sword upgrade is going to have enough impact on my own DPS to noticeably change anything in any fight. I picked up mist for +1'ing shield at a time when I didn't consider Allagan shield a likely gain in the immediate term, so what's done is done there.
Getting pressure to spend tomes on +1 sword, but I don't see enough justification to prioritize it over continuing to gather AF2. In an ideal world, I always want more DPS, but I'm not yet at a point where I can confidently say that execution mistakes from the people I play with don't happen. The less I need to be micro-managed as a tank, the more wiggle room there is to absorb mistakes from the group as a whole. My DPS isn't making or breaking anything, ever, and threat management isn't causing wipes, so while I think +1 sword is important, I'm not convinced it's any more important than boosting armor item level.
I'm definitely doing AF2 over +1 sword. No question.
My opinion beyond that is that mythology is a finite resource, gil and philosophy are not. Ultimately, if we're worried one way or another there's no excuse not to have a full set of dps and full set of hq tank accessories (or lot allagan and buy dps) by 2.1. Worst case you don't use them, best case you use dps gear once your group gets comfortable with each turn because why not.
Not like there is anything else to do in this game, lol.