PLD Relic/mythic/emp Discussion

Everything worth bringing a PLD to builds resistance to stun.

Regardless, you guys are trying way too hard to tear this argument down. PLD TPs in 14% PDT/10% MDT with minimal sacrifices and can easily bump that number higher without dropping any haste, if you're really so unconfident in your ability to pay attention and hit a single button then feel free to mix in some additional defensive gear. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. I'd play it safe on Kaggen for example because of his AoE jump move (not lethal, but enough damage to make me nervous with no ready message), but Akvan on the other hand is a total joke and I'd feel completely safe in a full DD set. ***'s situational, use your brain and gear like it.

Thanks for your input. Regarding the bolded part though, it's less about my confidence in paying attention but rather my confidence in reaching that particular macro fast enough and not doing something else at the time it would be needed.
I may have to add that I'm playing with a controller solely and only use the KB to chat.
Which may or may not have to do with having problems to react in the matter of 1-2 seconds.

Since you mentioned hybrid sets being usually not too good, this is one you could consider. It prioritizes PDT/MDT/DT over haste, but zelus would be the best change for capped haste vs loss of dmg taken in some form. From what I can tell it doesnt miss much from the old days for tp, except maybe a lack of enmity or a little hp which is significantly made up by the DT difference. I do not believe i put anything in it that is too painstaking to get, though if I am wrong, I am sure there are other things you could find to replace the slot.

Even in this set, PLD would make a difference in damage dealt in total, as insignificant as it may seem rapid fire swings for low dmg + enlight dmg add up over time. If you can add a decent ws set and have a good enm/haste set for flash enm set for voke haste/fastcast/cure pot/enm set for cures you will build CE fast and should have no trouble maintaining VE. CE will just go up and down like always. Good ws's are, and always will be, a good way to gain CE.

Being a tank for about 6 years, in my experience for pld tanking tping in haste makes it much easier to hold hate due to plds lack of abilities to get CE (hence the creation of cure cheating purely to help generate it). So all that damage really does make a difference, which is all anyone above ever said not that it is a significant portion of the damage in total compared to other dd's although it can if the dd's dont get to melee full time and the pld does.

There are programs that you can assign unused buttons to(Start select and R1 are the only ones free on a PS2 style controller). You can set it up so hitting start will put you in PDT and select will put you in MDT. I use a controller and dual box my alt but between this and setting up some hot keys on my keyboard I can reach up and hit, I don't have many problems with this.

IMO this set is really good

Again, a moderate ability to account for variables can be mimicked and represented endlessly without physically having to play the job. Stop pretending otherwise.


Sure but, that doesn't mean it's better than another set up. If you want to fulltime x set because you can't hit a macro fast enough, then go ahead. Whether or not it's better for you doesn't mean that's the optimal choice. Which is what's in debate, optimizing.



Sorry what? CE is the enmity loss from taking damage, VE is the enmity that decays 60/sec, good luck keeping that capped with spells/JAs that all have casting/recast times. Swinging faster is the best way to keep your VE capped. A Haste set contributes to this. The enmity loss from damage taken isn't all that hard to recap (never mind shield blocks, VE is the harder one to cap to keep capped).


You realize this is a discussion about the swords available, and that both Almace and Excalibur offer quite a lot in terms of damage? How that can't be "serious damage" is anybody's guess.


It should be hard to maintain hate unless you're sporting shitty DDs. These limitations are placed on you via the game mechanics, pretending you have "absolutely no problem holding hate ever" is ridiculous. It's a lot easier for DDs to cap and recap hate faster than a PLD. That's why a DD build helps more than you think.


No but it'll help.


Sucky players are sucky, damage still remains the best form of enmity no matter what spin you put on it.

This so much.
Every PLD out there should go read up on how enmity _really_ works.
Hell, really, everybody should, but yeah..

They can, if anyone would go through the effort doing it. IF one would be making a model for every mob, taking into account how hard and fast they hit, how often they crit, how often you evade/parry/block, how much HP you lose vs the amount of dmg you do, etc etc. In that case, yes those speculations would be somewhat accurate.
Going out there pretending one would know a job without ever having played it, no, that doesn't lead to solid conclusions.


The bolded part is also what I'm saying all along anyway.
Suggesting that a haste/DD build is the way to go, however, only to try to catch up with enmity is not a good idea, in my experiences. This is due to the loss of defensive skills that go hand in hand with using certain items in order to achieve this build.
Don't get me wrong, I would like to use my haste set more too but, sadly, I haven't had to tank something yet (well, maybe some of the zilart VW stuff) where this would have worked out fine for me.

You are certainly correct by saying that swinging faster is contributing to accummulating hate but you also have to account for the more dmg you take in that set.
Excuse me, how is VE the harder one to recap if you can accumulate it with like every action you do and have large amounts of it from every thing?
CE is way harder since you're only sources are curing and dealing dmg and you lose it all the time (since you're tanking and taking dmg) as well.

Ah, now I understand you. Now that PLD has some nice items avaialable, you think PLD is a DD, is that it?
I'm sorry that I'm the one to tell you but PLD isn't, wasn't and will never be (hopefully).
I do agree that the swords are nice, that's why I also suggested at least going for Almace for more dmg dealt but it's still one of the weaker weapons compared to other jobs. So yea, things like CDC are the Atonement of today, nothing more, nothing less.
Don't try to make PLD out a DD or some uber-awesome melee.
It's a frigging tank job.

Lol. Seriously, you obviously have no clue whatsoever. You don't need to do a single point of dmg in order to cap and maintain hate, that's a totally wrong fact. I don't say that it doesn't help but it is in no way nessesary.
Everything is situational anyway, you can do whatever you want in every situation but generalizing is always wrong.

I wonder how ppl ever tanked wyrms which you can only sometimes hit or can't even hit at all.
NIN staff tanking, RDM staff tanking, PLD tanking Ouryu.
Hmm, because they all had a haste set that made their swings go up in the air to hit the mob, I suppose?

Don't need to deal dmg, no.
It's still the best way to get CE.
Back in the day, you could sub RDM or DRK, and spam spells for hate.
Blind, Bind, Dispel etc all gave a good amount of CE, and could be spammed with a good amount of refresh.
That's not an option anymore.
It's still possible with cure cheats etc, yes, but cure cheats gets worse the higher the level of the target is.
Aka, cure cheats give less hate now than they did at 75.
And at 99 they'll give even less hate.
DMG is and will allways be the best way to maintain hate in this game, unless they change how the game works.

The point is, you don't have to rely on it for enmity whatsoever and you also risk losing a lot of it or even more than you actually accumulate, by tanking in the wrong gear with very little defensive stats.

As I've mentioned a few times already, I just don't feel comfortable with a DD set most of the time and saying it would be nessesary in any way, is plain wrong.

With Ochain and near 100% blockrate, sure, go ahead. With any other shield, hell no. Might as well go /nin and dual wield a second sword because you need to desperately deal dmg.

I'm not really sure how much dmg a PLD takes and deals on tougher VW stuff, but I just did some quick rough math.
Let's say a PLD swings with capped haste gear + haste spell and march II, and need 16 hits for 100tp, that's aprox 30secs from 0 to 100tp + ws.
If he deals 30dmg\hit, and 60dmg\hit from ODD procs, and let's say 600 dmg CDC, having +23 enm in tp gear, and only +5 on CDC (from merits), just using my own rough gearsets here(PLD noob).
That gains you aprox 1746 CE in 30 seconds.
I know a PLD probably wont manage to hit non-stop for 30 secs etc, but this is just a rough estimation.
To lose more hate than what's gained in those 30 seconds, you'd have to take 1500 dmg, if the tank have 1500hp, which I'm gonna guess a taru pld have with good atmacites\gear on VW.

I'm gonna go ahed and say that it's rather safe to rely on DDing for hate, for the most part. Using DA gear etc, it's gonna be even better. PLD probably deals even more dmg than what I used as an example here aswell

Nice in theory. Taking 1k dmg in the matter of 30 secs is very possbile at times. Also, you cant always WS when you want in reality (amnesia), along with the fact that you probably shouldn't be meleeing 30 seconds in a row doing nothing else.

Furthermore, the only buff I do get most of the time, is haste, and that's almost only when I bring my whm mule.
In most other cases I do end up with being slowed most of the time even if the mobs casts slowga or does a move that inflicts it.

So yea, in a perfect world, where you get all the buffs in the world (including SMN and BRD buffs for less dmg taken) and the mob is debuffed correctly, then yes, go melee the ***out of the mob and just get cure-spammed, just like MNK+WHM in abyssea.

Which all doesn't mean that you are doing your job at all.
Get a DD to do better.

CE loss is ((1800*Damage Taken)/Max HP)

I have roughly 1600HP. Tougher mobs hitting for around 400 unblocked. So ((1800*400)/1600) = 450 CE loss.

If your shield blocks 60% of that damage, then CE loss on a block is now 180.

Factor in shield blocks, cycling reprisal, Palisade, and Sentinel, not to mention Utsusemi if you're subbing /NIN and CE loss is pretty low.

PLD can cure for around 400~ pending cure potency. That's 400*0.727 = 290 CE. Add in any enmity+ (let's say 20) 290*1.2 = 348 CE. (This will be slightly lower however, since the 95 values aren't determined.)

Debuffs like Slow/Para/Enemy missing an attack/Stun etc exponentially lower the amount of CE you should be losing on any given basis. Consider that over half the time, you shouldn't be losing more CE than that easily returned by a single cure.

VE is continually degenerating at 60 per second. Damage is the best form to maintain it at a high level. /RDM /DRK etc was nerfed sometime ago, there aren't many options available to keep this high, while DDs are continually recapping theirs, hence why the mob will turn to look at them.
I don't know why you think wearing a DD set is going to increase the damage you take by a serious amount, don't wear it when you're getting your *** kicked obviously, pretending that you can keep hate over DDs in a PDT/Enmity set is beyond ridiculous.


No but faster and higher damage is better than slow, low damage. It's an easier way to keep your hate high outside of certain variables like you said, Tiamat. Obviously you can't hit it when it's flying, no ***.


A "tank" is whatever job is holding the targets attention. Best way to do that is to do damage.

Tank =/= Holding hate =/= Doing damage


You can cap hate, as can DDs. I never said you can't. DDs will recap theirs immediately while you have to make do with Cure cast times and recasts to be able to do so.

I'm really sick of this by now and the topic is derailing enough as it is.
So you're saying that losing more CE is a good thing, due to having less PDT and shield skill and that you will gain a lot more CE by pretending to be a melee job.
That's cool, go ahead.
Also, you forgot to factor in that when /nin you're also losing CE and that being -25 per shadow, along with the fact that you're losing time while casting shadows (Ichi mainly) where you could be doing something else instead, like meleeing more.

If your defenition of tanking is dealing dmg and your argument is that you have to be more equal to DDs in order to actually keep hate, then I suggest you don't bring PLD to the stuff you do.

Increasing dmg and swing-speed is good but only to some degree and it's always situational.
Kthx Mr.PLD-DD.

2006 called, they want you back.
DD-PLD have pretty much been the norm since Atonement came out, which was like 2006-7?

If you want to fulltime PDT/Shield gear then go ahead. Don't forget to WS in it too, y'know, just in case you get hit during WS.

Edit: That and I never said to fulltime a DD set?

Naw, WSing in haste gear, to get that hate faster.

Welcome to four years ago. If you have something useful to say instead of blindly QQing about the way SE designed the enmity system then by all means say it, otherwise I suggest you get back in your time machine and go back to 2004.

2008
Anyways, this would have been badass back then:

I just made a chart for myself in order to see if im totally off with the way I'm seeing PLD and the way I understand game mechanics and enmity.

First off, I only took random numbers for this and only tried to factor in a few things like hitrate, haste, PDT, blockrate and block dmg-reduction.
Now, all the values aren't representative for all mobs but it's a model.

I took 1 set with 25% haste, +22 enmity, 10% PDT and 0 shield skill and a 2nd set with 13% haste, +15 enmity, 21% PDT and +32 shield skill.
I didn't take into account for DA or changing values for hit dmg, as it may or may not be improved by slightly higher att.
I probably forgot to take a lot of other factors into account but I don't care much at this point.

Turns out, the difference in CE accumulation is 400-492 between those sets (25% haste vs 13% and 40% haste vs 28%).
Whereas the difference between those sets (without much defense vs only 11% more PDT and shield skill) is more than 525 CE you would lose less.

So, with my model and even with 25% haste in gear and 15% from the spell, you would still gain more than 30 CE per minute in a low-haste set.

I conclude, that, even if the numbers and formulas I used are a little bit off, it shows that there should be little to no gain maintaining either set. And if my stuff is only somewhat correct, then it clearly shows that a haste-set has no value at all, compared to a real tanking-set.
Also, I think that you guys can suck it and may as well continue to use town gear for actual battles and be happy with it.
t^.^t

The door's that way >

/sigh

But you end up killing the mob faster in the full haste set, and you overall end up taking less dmg.

Which, I admitted, is a positive aspect of it.
The only thing I did not agree with was the statement that you would actually need something like a DD/haste set as a PLD, in order to keep hate appropriate and do your job.
Which has never been the case and still isn't the case, as far as my experiences go.

It certainly is a mean to do things, as is using MNK+WHM because you just don't give a *** and are able to use it.
But being insistent that there is absolutely no way in hell that a PLD could even remotely do his/her job (namely keeping hate) without the use of a set that is merely designed for meleeing/"DDing" purpose, rather than tanking, is a pure lie.
Even saying that you'd keep hate easier with a haste set now is pretty questionable after I ran some actual numbers. Before it was merely eyeballing and based on experience.

But anyway, I've all the proof I need now and will no more continue derailing this thread.

Math =/= parses and actual testing

Edit: Not to mention you didn't actually post your math. If you had, it probably would get ripped apart by these folks.

I looked and I didn't see a door that way :(

But Darkanaseur said that everything is possible even if you have never actually played the job, only by using formulas and models!!!

However, this isn't my belief either and I've had my own experiences, which aren't confirmed by parses though.
I don't judge by models a lot and I only used one to check if what I knew would be totally wrong.

EDIT: Well, since it's so simple to do your own maths, I suggest that ppl do those themselves then. It's not my job to teach other ppl.
And as I said, I don't go much by maths, I go by experiences for the most part and if something seems rubbish to me, it, most likely, is rubbish for practical use (for myself anyway).

If you're so confident in your results, post your math.

It's at the end of the hall.

I personally believe that there is no limit to what math can prove, given the correct formula's/theories.

With that said, I find data gathering (parsing) is a much more reliable source than any formula in this game unless its static (like cures).