Alternative to Cure 5

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Originally Posted by Ophannus

Except RDM can use Shields natively and can't use Dual Wield unless they sub DNC or NIN. BLU gets it natively and has no shield skill. Also I'll remind you RDM gets Shield Mastery and +Shield Skill on our AF. So Shield fits more with RDM's 'theme' than dual wielding. So we're more likely to see Fencer bonuses than Dual Wield. Shield Mastery has helped me massively since I idle in PDT sword and genbu shield and macro it into all spells i cast with up until the spell is released. You haven't any idea how many times a shield block has prevented an interrupt(Shield Mastery) during an utsu or a cure4 which has saved my bum.

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Umm no, on anything that matters your chances of procing a shield block on right up there with parrying or evading it. Our skill is so low that we're at the floor for proc rate on whatever tier shield we're using. That is why shield mastery was a laugh fest, it's useless on us as we won't be procing a shield block to begin with.

The lack of DW is annoying, but so did everyone not NIN until very recently. Should a THF run around with a shield on until 80+ when they get DW 1? Should BLU's run around with a shield until they get the spells for the set points at 80+? How about WAR, BST, or even our dear Winja's?

No, your fantasy about running around with a sword+shield is just that, a fantasy. DW provides a 42% increase in DPS along with whatever stats we get from our off hand weapon. Your not getting anywhere near that with a shield on, the closest is /DRK for when I'm on stun duty. At least then I can spam Absorb-TP to built TP prior to running in and LR SE CDCing it up. Otherwise I'll keep my /NIN, 42% extra damage along with my various swords is simply awesome. That and the NI line of spells are useful for landing things, you probably completely forgot about those. +30 magic accuracy for 15 seconds on whatever element you want, juicy.

Not to start a fight, but you just presented a reason for shield use saevel. /DRK, and verymuch so you would benefit from a shield then, even if the selection of shields isnt good, i think he is looking at it as having fencer (which has a crit rate bonus) and vorpal blade, would allow us to atleast hit harder when not married to subbing ninja or dancer. And as for the statement to a theif, or blu, or war, or bst using a sheild, well yes. If you are unable to use a certain sub (as we can't change subjobs in the field) and are forced to use a one hand weapon (looking at you theif and blu.) then it would be downright foolish to have nothing in the sub slot. Even if shields are at this time ineffective, they still have two things to consider. They do NOT increase delay at all, period. And there are some with decent effects that may help round off a build. Granted some of those other jobs have other options to single wielding a weapon (war with greataxe, blu with staff at times) but if your thief is /rng to say track and claim a NM for you, and is too low to dual wield natively, then yeah, maybe he could use a shield. Or maybe your blu/thf at 75 using SA cannonballs could use a +def +vit shield.

I personally prefer to dual wield, but if i cant, i use a sentinel (3 str 1% haste) or a genbu sheild.

A happy thought about shields though would be if they released a general purpose shield, with a large job selection, that featured some pretty potent stat buffs (+10% critical hit rate, +5% crit damage, 5% double attack?) to make it atleast BETTER than NOTHING.

Anyway enough of the derail, this is a Cure 5 Alternative thread. I have an idea, it would make a lotta DDs mad but could be interesting if there was a spell that converted the target's tp into a potent cure. Dunno how it would work but 1TP for 10hp wouldnt be bad, 100hp for every 10 TP, but it would make some DDs MAAAAAAD as hell. Just figure its something else intersting and it could scale somehow based on percentages.

I use a shield on /DRK precisely because I can't use one of my off hand swords. I would much rather have DW then a shield buff. But if I'm forced to use a shield, then I'll go with the best option I possibly can. And I did do Sword + Shield back at 75, Joy + Viking as /WAR with vorpal spam. Was pretty good but you got knocked around a bit. Now at 95 the mechanics of the game have grown such that there is no contest, DW beats Sword / Shield, even if your stuck using Death Blossom.

He specifically was pushing for sword / shield over DW, a mistake about as bad as full AF RDM/WHM meleeing.

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Actually a better fix would involve changing a basic game mechanic. Introduce "Both Hand" in the form of anytime you have a 1H weapon equiped without a shield / sub weapon the game would treat you as using a 2H weapon. You could even equip a grip if you wanted. This would apply to the atk / acc formulas as well as Seigan / Hasso and DB type stuff. Would be an interesting fix indeed.

I didn't say DW was worse than sword/shield. I said it's more likely that SE will buff sword/shield options for RDM than DW. RDM doesn't have DW natively but we have shield/sword and shield mastery natively and SE said they were considering Fencer in the form of gear for RDM. This is evident that SE is considering buffing RDM's proficiency with single wielding not dual wielding. To that end I was requesting buffs like Fencer traits and disregarding DW because it already fits RDM's theme more than DW does. Giving RDM a B- Shield Skill and a few tiers of Fencer would be pretty decent for solo as stated before Fencer gives a crit bonus and TP bonus. It's evident SE doesn't want to focus on Dual Wielding aspect of RDM/NIN because even our Enspell II's only work on the first hit and not any offhand hits. So instead I'd like SE to explore making Sword+Shield somewhat more comparable to DW. Of course it'll never be stronger in terms of damage output but I give them credit for at least giving us Shield mastery which even at floor % still seems to proc often enough when I solo to prevent interrupts when I equip it during precast along with FC gear.