Rune Fencer Spell List

[Horadrim]

PLD's speciality is physical damage mitigation and its magic side is very limited outside of specialized gear and precious few abilities. RUN is the polar opposite in the tanking realm in that it is superb at magic damage reduction while leaving itself somewhat vulnerable to physical attacks without its also precious few abilities and specialized gear. It is possible we'll see some conversion gear or -(P/M)DT gear in A/R/E, but it won't be everything.

Your Empy set bonus idea is a nice touch though, however you should know well the activation rate on all empy gear is a sadly depressing < 10%.

I'm well aware of what PLD specializes in.

However, Paladin can reduce incoming magic damage by more than 50%. I don't want to see RUN super tanking mobs in Reives, but I do want them to be the main target of something bigger than a T mob without getting stomped into the ground. "Low man" tanking is not real tanking -- half of the DD's in the game can do it. If we're going to call RUN a tank, it needs to be able to handle big mobs like NIN and (with some modifications so this isn't a Ochain only option) PLD can.

The point isn't to make RUN a comparable PDT tank, it is to allow them to actually tank. Being able to reduce forth coming Magic damage is nice, but it is something RUN can do without being the primary focus of a mob. To be a tank, it actually has to be able to hold the mob's attention as well as not die in the process and doing that against any order of worthwhile target (i.e. a target that a MNK or SAM couldn't do it again equally well)

RUN needs to be able to take physical hits as well as magic hits. Its specialty and focus is to reduce magic, but it still needs to be able to eat hits from power NMs before it can be considered a tank in any real sense. Being able to reduce PDT by 50% without having to have a set completely dedicated to the task (PLD's Ochain/+2 converts and absorbs "damage" not specifically physical damage, and Aegis is -45% magic damage) -- RUN, in order to be able to tank even single targets of any amount of importance, needs comparable gear.

As such, reduction of Physical damage (be it converted to Magic damage which they can reduce with All for One/Shell V/Some new ability or improved parry/evasion-style mitigation options) is important to RUN's future as a tank.

EDIT:

PLD's +2 has about 15% activation, but Ochain activates on every Block and has a ridiculously high rate that can easily be capped at 100% depending on the target in question. I'd say even against the strongest mobs we see in Adoulin right now it is at least 70-80% block rate.