More thoughts.

When considered in isolation, a defense boost is perfectly fine as a buff. It reduces damage taken at least some, and in a consistent, which is better than nothing, and the amount reduced is fairly comparable to the original proposed phalanx effect (at least for high-level mobs), which no one really seemed to have serious issues with. Much of the complaining, however, is because the players are considering things with respect to the larger picture -- what do you have to give up to get this boost?

As mentioned, with the Protect line of spells you give up nothing, so it's almost always worthwhile to use them (at least til you're fighting EP or lower mobs). With a Cor roll, however, you are intrinsically giving something up -- the option for a different roll. Plus, Cor doesn't get an analog to Pianissimo; if you're giving a buff to one person, you're probably giving it to at least half the party (can still keep the melee group separate from the mage group).

There are two things you're giving up with a defense roll: The potential for more attack of some sort (which is a fairly substantial loss if it's hitting the DDs as well), and the enmity that goes with the extra damage.

As for the attack itself? Honestly, if you triple a pld's damage output, you probably won't reduce the fight length of these tough fights by more than 5%. The pld will certainly take less damage overall due to the increased defense than due to faster kill speed if you changed rolls. The real problems are the secondary factors:

1) That damage done translates directly into enmity, and that doing damage is by far the best way to generate enmity in the game.
2) That placing the roll's effect on the DDs (due to not being able to single-target buffs) severely hampers their damage output potential.

It's possible to work around the second issue above through careful positioning (we did it often enough when levelling up pre-Abyssea). Annoying, but not crippling. The first issue, however, cannot be ignored.

Almost all the problems pld suffers from stem from deliberately inadequate damage output potential, combined with no other means of generating enmity that is anywhere near comparable with doing damage.



Camate mentioned a max of about +30% defense on an 11. I'd hope that that's without the job boost effect. In other words, I'd expect the defense bonuses on Gallant's Roll to basically mirror the attack bonuses on Chaos Roll (so up to +41% defense on an 11 with pld in the party). That would give a 17%-27% reduction in damage taken for the example scenario (though that's made somewhat less effective when combined with PDT gear).

If that were the intended buff levels, having reviewed the math for the resulting effects, I'd say that this is a fairly decent overall buff, *as long as* there are also plans to address the enmity issue for pld. Well, to be fair, it's a decent buff either way; it's just won't be used until those other issues are addressed.