Good Swords and Shields

[Mayoyama]

A STR Shikagar is so ridiculously easy to make that I would say any PLD that doesn't have Almace/Excalibur should at least have this one. The only thing that could possibly hold you back is Flame Geodes.

Easy enough.. but very time consuming (especially if doing trial on pld instead of BLU) and I still think for all that effort you should work on an almace/woe sword instead... not to mention the sheer cost of flame geodes (and the scarecity of fire weather). I know you can garden for geodes now.. but thats going to take a looong time to get them

[Carth]

It's really not that long, even if you don't have BLU. I did mine on RDM and got mine done in a matter of four days. There was some luck involved, such as running into others doing trial themselves which sped up the process. But if you're willing to dedicate yourself to it, it can be done within the week.

[Zagen]

Honorbound

This is the best "easily obtainable" sword. The KI comes from a NM that's usually up or from gold chests. You can shout to give away the +2 items it drops or for people who need the kill.

To those suggesting the STR/Attack path, while it is relatively easy to complete assuming you can make the Firesdays, the gil it costs to make could be better spent on buying Briareus or Sobek pop sets to speed up progress on Almace as it'll give the biggest boost to "tanking". Here's some simple math to show the point:

Flame Geode 55 x 80,000 = 4,400,000
At 200k that's 22 pop sets, at 250k that's 17 pop sets.

Now you could say "well I'll get them while working on the sword" and that's true you will get some that way. I got an amazing 21 of them while making one for my BLU.

[Aethon]

http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Thuellaic_Ecu
Thuellic ecu! If you feel like being a pld with some eva and a little extra haste its a decent piece. Smaller shield so it blocks more often but for not as much. The sheer amount of def and -pdt gear though can offset what damage you do actually take.
http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Skeld_Sword
And for weapon, the Skeld Sword. VIT and shield skill to make you block more often.
Best thing, both are off the AH.

[saevel]

Fair enough, had momentarily forgotten about that lol

Touché!

Although for the time/gil investment.. I would recommend making an almace/WoE sword over a str one..

EDIT: Although this also comes back to today's strategies of "why tank what you can zerg instead".. o PLD you really do need to be fixed (along with the emnity system)

PLD is pretty useful for lowman orientaged groups, stuff like Meebles or Salvage II. In order to do those they need to change their mind set out of the "tank onry" mode. A PLD nowadays is going to need a full DD gear set, a Hybrid DD/DT gear set and a full turtle mode gear set. Use the full DD one for ash and trash, their basically just another DD at that point. Switch to Hybrid DD/DT set for NMs or somewhat dangerous monsters, then switch to full turtle mode for tanking big baddies. In low man your not having double BRD + COR super buffing to fight a level 120 mega boss capable of killing everyone in 5s. Of course any DD with a PDT set can do the same job, but hey with the current broken enmity system PLD's gotta find work where they can.