340 Tank Gear

So, you have been running R-4 Hard Mode and have been getting some of that sweet end game gear.  Maybe you have been lucky enough to score some Purple Upgrade tokens and have wondered, "where do I start?" or "is this really better?".  As far as DPS and HEAL stats go, it is a complete no-brainer, Purple > Blue all the way.  The purple 340 gear has more power at the expense of your endurance.  In short, you lose hit points to deal more damage, and this is what we want, more damage.  Power also means more healing.

For tanks the lines become a bit harder to read though.  Purple 340 gear gives us more endurance, but at the cost of both our mastery and defense stats.  This can be a hard choice as we are now having to pick between more health or more defense.  Personally, I am not a big fan of how this works.  I imagine the thought process is that giving tanks both an increase in hit points and defense chance would make them too "tanky".  When the math is all said and done, though, we end up losing about four tenths of a percent of defense for around 11,445 Hp.  I do not think that taking away a mere 0.38% defense chance amounts to much of anything, but that is where it takes us.

Below is the breakdown by gear type (much of the gear shares the same stat distribution).  My current tank build has a balance between blue and purple 340, mainly because Watchdog and Kanoth are two easy bosses to farm tokens for and getting them all puts us at the 50/50 mark.

Purple 340 gear pushes the stat balance toward endurance at the cost of mastery and defense stats.  As far as tank stats go, I am always trying to get the highest possible endurance I can.  Sacrificing both mastery (our main damage stat) and defense chance does not make a large amount of sense for a small gain in endurance.  My best recommendation here is to balance between blue and purple 340 gear.  Obtaining the Purple 340 Belt, Bracers and Relics is a small sacrifice of some mastery for the defense stat, makes total sense to me.

Having a mix of 4 purple 340 and 4 blue 340 from the Main hand, offhand, headgear, chest, gloves, pants, boots and earpiece category is where I am at and seems like a good balance to me.