Incoming PLD Adjustments

Should I have been killing the Hornets first? I do need a new pair of shoes but collecting three pairs to make one seems counter-productive...

the ones you'll get in return for your noteworthy expeditions into your shed happen to have fuzz near and around the heels, so imo, it's very-much-so worth it



best/quickest image google could find

Stated this as a "this is what it should be". I am aware PLD's weapon is mediocre both in base damage and delay, and I think it sucks. Blow for blow, PLD's enmity should be able to match other DD's enmity, so actions like Provoke, Sentinal, Flash, curing matches the enmity of the DDs power house WSs. This isn't the way it is, however, and why I believe PLD can't tank as they used to.

Won't matter, DDs will still cap and tank, while you'll be hit by JA lock, spell lock, casting time etc, while enmity decays. You'll just cap faster than before.

wait.. Kyaa...so you expect a pld to MATCH the dmg of 2h weapons...(you swing with 2 hands for more dmg........) and curing/ja should MATCH their WS? Please tell me what color the sky in your world is....cuz thats insanity....

That's not broken at all.

Thats what i said.

Now good 75% of this thread is boo-hoo remove the enmity cap boo-hoo up the cap for pld. Like i said above i keep hate and hold it if you are having problems level another job. NO WHERE did i say hate was the problem because it isnt i thought that was obvious. Its mainly a race to cap hate then making sure you attack quickly enough to be recapping hate faster than other DDs. I know full well that its the DDing aspect that people dont want plds tanking in abyssea even though its alot safer. Yesterday i was in a shout group doing T3 VNM atma in tahrongi all the DDs, some were doing good damage, kept taking too much damage from AoEs and dieing. I not only was out DDing them with CDC and 400-500 crit hits i was taking minimal damage. Mostly its more down to the player and how you equip/play the job i see so many lolpld in full perle and PDT- swords trying to tank.

As to your other post about the "Enough" damage. Im doing 2-5k, 5k being the TA kicked in, CDCs on NMs using GH/RR/AoA would SS/RR/AoA be better for getting more consistant/higher numbers? Havent had CDC long so still working out whats best. My gear sets are in the CDC equip thread.

Your post says, blah blah I can keep hate, I manage hate fine, blah blah. Night was commenting that nobody cares if you're holding hate or not, and that isn't the issue.
2-5k is a *** huge average, point still remains, other jobs can tank, hold hate, mitigate damage, and do more damage than PLD. Compare Empyrean to Empyrean if you're gonna factor that, Almace lets PLD do damage over no damage, this doesn't compare to the numbers DDs pump out (obviously) nevermind them owning an Empyrean themselves, so PLD still has a problem, and it shouldn't require an Empyrean to be "acceptable".

ALL YOU TALKED ABOUT IN THAT POST WAS HATE AND DAMAGE TAKEN. Hey look, I can use caps too.

But really, what did you expect us to take away from a post that focuses on "hate", briefly talks about "damage taken", and not once discusses damage dealt? How am I supposed to draw any conclusions about your DD capabilities from that?

Yeah, it is.

Blah blah blah focusing on WS damage with a whopping 3k variance in range and no discussion of TP phase damage or WS frequency. That's nice, really.

SS is better in situations where cRatio is relatively high, possibly when it's low as well depending on your TP/WS split but they're pretty close for the most part.

yes all i talked about was hate because like i said before 75% of this thread is QQers QQing about not having hate and them wanting SE to up the enmity cap, which wont do crap. You seem to be missing that out of the quotes you are doing of my posts.

Wses are every 30 secs mostly. melee hits are doing 100 normal and 200-300 crits w/o aftermath.

I feel dumber after reading the last few pages.

PLD IS A USELESS JOB AND SHOULD NOT EXIST. >:O

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_Chest

Poppers bro. I never leave the MH without a stack.

Holy has always needed an UBER boost in power (imo) for all that can use it.

seriously...

Used to be some serious AM level dmg (Back when that was huge) for 100 MP and instant cast.

I'll say I only had access to it since around end 2006ish, so at least since then it's been weak.

Yeah, this was before any NAs had played, barring those with JP clients, etc.

No hard data to support this, but from what I know about them and the ones I own:

Inside Abyssea:
Almace 90
Badelair +2
Excal 90
Honourbound
Possibly Joyeuse.

Outside:
Excalibur 90 in the hands a of a competent player with the right gear sets, support, I think would beat Almace. Possibly even inside Abyssea.

Excalibur shits all over almace on anything you'd actually bring a Pld for.

I don't compare swords inside abyssea because I don't bring pld to abyssea. However If you must, pick up an almace. It takes like 2 days to make one tops.

I'd you're a broke pld though with no other options and aren't smart enough to solo/duo almace, then use honorbound.

Here are my thoughts on this whole PLD issue.

Having played since 2004, you tend to notice trends in this game over the years. I leveled PLD just because my previous Linkshells usually lacked PLDs that were online at the right time for events. So, I was pretty much as you would say a "backup tank." I remember the debate of who was the better tank in years past-- Ninja or Paladin. Eventually it fettered out to be based on being completely situational if you needed a blink-tank or a blood-tank depending on the xNM involved.

It was crazy seeing what were tanks in the past and how it changed over time. We went from WAR/WHM (pseudo-PLD), PLD/WAR, NIN/WAR, NIN/WHM (rarely saw this...), NIN/DRK during the CoP/ToAU days to even unconventional ones until SE "fixed them"-- RDM/NIN and BRD/NIN.

Then, SE adjusted 2-handed weapons and damage dealers are doing damage they should have been doing when the game started. Eventually we went from NMs to Zilart HNMs (Aery/BD/VoS) to CoP HNMs to ToAU HNMs/ZNMs to WotG VNMs and WoE to now Abyssea NMs (ANMs). Between each addition and update, the tanks changed hands every so often you'd think they'd be drug users sharing a needle. (I know, bad analogy.)

Then, we get to Abyssea. At first during the first 3 added areas--Tahrongi, La Theine, and Konschtat, PLD was pretty much the de facto tank with NIN playing second fiddle. As more areas were added and newer weapons, gear and eventually job adjustments, PLD slowly went to the sidelines because it was to the players' eyes it was inefficient and slow from how I see it now.

Players will almost always go with the shortest, most efficient route regardless if it affects a certain job(s). It's why over time you saw jobs get pushed aside like DRG pre-2H update to PUP and so on. Especially when merit burn parties were all the rage, certain jobs were just pushed aside because of players' attitudes changing everytime that something new comes along. It's also why you see players leeching their way to 90 from level 30 onward regardless if their skills (combat and magic) are subpar and gimped. Players don't want to spend too much time anymore doing anything. Plain and simple.

Honestly, it is stupid leeching your way to 90 and eventually 99 without even learning how to play your job and gear it well. But, I'll leave that discussion for another topic.

It's this attitude that ToAU merit parties created and carried over to Abyssea cruor and seal farming parties that I would say have changed many players' attitudes and honestly imbalanced the game. If we spend too much time doing anything, it's a waste of time. That's how I've observed and noticed more about these players.

My LS mate put it bluntly: "SE made everything easy except those outside Abyssea."

It's as if Abyssea is the only thing that matters to players now. It gets them what they want within a few hours or days without spending weeks or months camping an HNM outside Abyssea against a botting LS or spending millions of Gil on a Relic.

Abyssea is both a benefit and a detriment to this game just as how ToAU merit parties excluded many jobs from merit parties from BLUs to PUPs to RNGs even. Now Abyssea has excluded a lot of what a PLD is meant to do originally and that is being a primarily defensive tanking job.

SE has pretty much destroyed that concept with the addition of Abyssea. MNK and at times NIN tanking is the preferred tank now within Abyssea whether you like to admit it or not. Voidwatch was recently added and the debate continues but it seems PLD still has an edge there. But, that is probably the only area the old PLD still has some use left. Abyssea has put PLDs and even RNGs to the sideline, and at times even SAMs. And, even SCHs as my friend has noticed lately since Minikin Atma on WHM and RDM, and BLMs have shown more usefulness over SCH. The last time I saw a SCH in Abyssea was when the first three areas were added. Nowadays, I just mostly see SCHs standing in Jeuno showing off their AF3+1/+2 armors.

Isn't it sad how the game evolved? And, how players attitudes have changed?

My friend told me that SE will probably fix this eventually. Maybe some new event will event bring back PLD, RNG and SCH to the game again that doesn't relate to Abyssea.

I've seen it first hand myself. Melee jobs, primarily WAR and MNK, simply do too much damage faster than a PLD can keep up hate. I've been a PLD tank back in the HNM days and it is completely different now. With the Atmas on a MNK with their improved counter ability, they can tank any or most of the ANMs inside Abyssea with very little issue. For example, tanking Teugghia with a MNK, the MNK was the primary tank for nearly the entire time. I was there as a backup tank instead of a primary tank. Every time the MNK did a WS, he would pull hate. I would only hold hate long enough until he did another WS again. When hate was reset, I would be able to pull it away from the WHM but the MNK would get hate right back. And, between the MNK and myself on PLD, the MNK took the least amount of damage. I was more of an MP sink regardless if I had 4000 HP or a lot of gear to mitigate damage, my PLD doesn't hold a candle up to what a MNK can do. It doesn't mean I'm a bad tank but it's the sad reality of it.

And, let's not forget about the oh-so-important (*sarcasm*) weakness triggers. MNK, NIN, WAR can do the majority of the weaponskill triggers unless something rare comes up like Archery or Markmanship. THF can cover the Dagger WS if those come up. PLD has... nothing besides sword that can be covered easily by WAR. There is nothing that PLD provides that is useful in Abyssea especially when the game is nothing but Abyssea.

Solara above gave a good suggestion on fixing this issue:

Making PLDs deal more damage or higher critical damage won't do it. The problem is enmity generation by the melee jobs themselves. It's wholly lopsided and imbalanced. Until SE fixes that issue, PLD will not be the de facto tank for the forseeable future, or until something new comes along that requires a PLD tank. MNKs generate enough enmity to hold hate just by using a WS and the damage it does. PLD only has Flash, Emblem, Sentinel, Rampart and Provoke (if subbing WAR). There isn't much in the way for PLD to get hate and keep it up consistently. The timers between job abilities pales in comparison to how many weaponskills a MNK can do before a JA is available to use.

Again, totally lopsided. Abyssea favors the easiest and fastest route out, and that's how it will be until SE fixes this.

*applause to Aselin*

Nailed it right on the head. I always liked your in-depth input on the game and its issues.

nice post, aselin

as i see it, abyssea is there to gear players for level 91+ content... voidwatch, the last stand, and whatever else they have planned. and as voidwatch has already shown us, when you don't have atmas, having a pld tank is very nice indeed.

on a different note, no job is ever useless if you enjoy playing it. i like playing pld lately just to be silly with a great sword

At least abyssea has allowed jobs that were sidelined through the majority of this game's history to get their time in the spotlight. Before Salvage, it was rare to see a MNK doing anything other than running around in Mind gear with a Kirin's pole boosting for 2 and half minutes. Now MNK is probably the single most efficient job in Abyssea after WHM.

I've been a PLD since 2003/2004. But I've been a MNK since 2002. If I had to choose between leaving PLD gimped as it is today, and going back to the game mechanics that rendered my MNK nothing more than a Chi-Blaster, I would gladly choose to leave things the way they are today.

SE started introducing content that was more melee friendly to allow for the involvement of 60% of the players.
To hell with the old SC>MB days, and to hell with the "don't feed it too much tp" days as well.
Why create so many physical classes only to have them spend half their playtime with their backs to the mob or disengaged?

If SE is just too dumb to be able to figure out a system where tanks tank, and melee classes attack, while mages cast, then they have no business being in the industry and should gtfo MMOs right now.

They just announced their 3rd MMO, while their most recent one; FF14 is sinking.
If this company had any business sense it would be focusing on fixing FF14 as priority #1, and perfecting FF11.

that about sums it up for me...

That's kind of ***. They got it right in FFXII!

and 12 wasn't an MMO.