Problem With Paladin. HP Build A Cheat. How Come?

Hey ghouls and gals.

I was having a rather interesting conversation with someone while hunting an NM the other day. Pardon my ignorance, which I have good reason for since I've been busy lately, but he told me that since the recent updates paladins have been deemed "useless". Unfortunately he never got the chance to explain because we both had to log out; it was late and we had to both go to work lol

It has also come to my attention that HP gear is considered a cheat for paladins.

My question to you all is, how come? Any clarification would be appreciated.

I've grown to enjoy paladin up to this point and wish to do so but I don't want to waste time on items that I'm persuing if these issues are the case and the things I am seeking are deemed useless. Honestly its become quite confusing seeing as I have a mixed playstyle to paladin and I adapt to certain situations with my skills and gear.

Thanks in advance.

Scroll down read every other thread telling you why PLD sucks, im sure people are getting tired of explaining it, no offense :/

Eh pld being useless is a debate for a reason. But in any case, a HP "cheat" is an old hate tool for plds.
How it works is you macro in gear to lower then raise your hp by a large chunk so you can cure yourself for however much HP in full enmity. This way you can gain all that enmity from curing without actually taken any damage. Hope that was useful

None taken. As i said earlier I've been out of the loop because I've been busy outside of ffxi. Just thought I'd make an attempt here regardless....

In short, most DD jobs at current state can do anything much better than Paladin, job lost its function and waiting at junkyard to be fixed, of course that would be when mechanics decide to handle.

See below post, where Nightfyre says everything I meant to just much nicer.

PLD's been a less than effective choice of tank for a long time now. Long story short there's two factors to tanking: survivability and damage output. As long as you can reliably stay upright long enough to kill them NM (ie don't MP sponge), your damage output is more important. DDs are more than capable of handling the former and are clearly superior in the latter department. Hate caps, so regardless of what the PLD does the DD will cotank anyway (/THF sucks, not a factor), so why bring a PLD at all? If survivability is in fact an issue (which these days is... never, barring 1hko moves), then other jobs are actually better equipped to handle those situations as well (see: RDM, NIN, MNK... and ironically two of those are DDs).

Like I said, been this way for a while now. It's just become painfully obvious of late with all the amazing atmas going around.

HP cheat: also known as a "cure cheat", it means artificially lowering your HP and then curing yourself (possibly with some HP gear equipped to maximize the amount cured) to generate hate. It's not actually cheating at the game itself.

I kind of figured as much. With what I have so far in HP gear (bomb queen ring, etc) I have had used when the sky ls i was with was doing things like Kirin. It proved handy for survivability. But now with abyssea I wasn't sure if it is still useful or even worth getting more HP items since 1: the atma stat boots and 2: I've been doing halfway decent tanking so far with what I have.

Also, you could argue that if we knew everything we now know about game mechanics years ago, PLD would never have been considered a particularly good tank.

Can lower your HP by canceling your cruor HP buff (it'll pop up again one second later), but with all Merit abyssites that lowers your HP far beyond your ability to cure yourself up in one go with Cure IV so a proper cheat is probably the way to go if you don't just DD for hate.

i dont care what anyone says Pld can still be a strong back bone.
i tank on war with marlboroman on aegis/excal pld. and he saved my *** a few times with cover and ***but having a pld like that around is still usefull :)

You're overcapping haste

Sadly, in Abyssea in particular, HP cheats only go so far. As Nightfyre mentioned, due to VE/CE caps, in any prolonged battle DD's will eventually max out hate (unless they are purposefully not fighting the NM, such as trying to build TPs for Red !! WS'es on side-mobs.)

In situations where atma-equipped DDs are full-out fighting an NM for any period of time, the PLD in question could be curing the entire alliance and all DDs who are getting hurt and still not pull hate back. Only if said DDs are hurt critically (i.e. enough to remove large amounts of hate that they are no longer at the top of the enmity list) can a self-curing/alliance-curing PLD gain any enmity ground back, and again that is not a situation of the PLD increasing hate as much as it is one of DDs losing hate.

if u had any brains ud check my title and body drac
+ on that not u no hauberk with RR atma is crap right go grab urself a walmart perle body cause berk aeint ***now

I love how so many LS leaders have and regularly use PLD (or have done so in the past). Not only does it instill the idea of them being a leader via being at the frontline of every fight, it's kept people thinking PLD actually does something.

Doesn't even take that long, maybe 2 minutes tops. I've seen our MNK cap in under a minute.

If I played I'd change my gear sets but from my AH history you can clearly see that I don't.

I see. Quite the eye opener-a little discouraging (not your fault)-but a reality check. It's a shame that paladins, the job I've come to like in the past few years, it has come to this. It does explain things now that I look back on the last few runs with the abyssea group I hang with. I've curebombed like a nuclear explosion and would have problems holding hate and I have my enimity merited and throwing out the usual enimity buffs along with the kitchen sink.

Best thing I can do it hope and wait until SE fixes this problem eh?

Oh well, its a good excuse for me to work on other things for the time being like my other jobs I guess, lol.

Also what the *** is up with your spelling

There are some cases, based on the mob's abilities, where a PLD tank is useful. Kukulkan comes to mind, because any DD tank (or tanks) facing him will eventually be shut down and whittled away into nothingness quickly, and the most effective stand tanking I've seen for it was with a PLD/WAR tank facing backwards the entire fight. Other NMs that tend to have some kind of similar disabling aura or ability (that shuts down DD output) tend to favour a PLD tank.

But as you will undoubtedly say, "situational tank is situational"...which is unfortunately true. :p

hey im EU what can i say u mad? HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD

Duely noted. And I'm the type of pld that adapts to certain situations rather than just come "as is". At least in some cases Plds are still needed thankfully.

No. Being from the UK doesn't make you an illiterate moron.

For example

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Hmm. If you're backtanking, DPS isn't an issue... BLU, NIN (backtank and nuke for hate and DPS if gaze is up), and RDM all would have been better options, in no particular order. All 3 still do damage (as opposed to PLD) while being sufficient if not better defensively in this situation than PLD. Hell, if you're that worried about his gaze then just kitenuke him down with a few RDM and BLM.

So... No, sorry, PLD isn't even situationally useful.

It really is a shame, because it leaves the job with no real niche to fill. I really hope SE addresses this at some point.

Very true.

LOL ok...I cannot argue with that reasoning at all (except out of sad nostalgia for the job.) :p

Yea, my pld mentor has told me of the days with the various ways he tanked. Sad to say I got into the tanking business just shy after pld got "sent to the shop" as explained earlier. For now I'm just making due it seems like.

^^ This

Personally I only use PLD (or any of my jobs atm) in small groups of 4~6. With a decent Sanguine set and the right atmas, (I use RR, Ultimate & Full Moon atm :S )You spend most of your time crit'ng for ~150 then doing ~1.5k sanguine blades. It does not overcome the issue that a Monk will still beat you to the hate cap & likely maintain it though. But at least allows you to share hate when they take damage & as mentioned you still help cure/cover.

less use, not useless.

If u have a even set up either in a 6 person pty or a full alliance pld works fine. But if ur using 15 dd or mages yea hate will be an issue.
Pld is only as usless and ppl want make it, ppl think using all dd or all mages is the only way to go now.

It only takes one DD to keep hate over a PLD.

Yea but there's something called moderation, ppl just go all out full force then wonder why a tank can't hold hate.