The Life of a Rune Fencer

[Einalem]

Grekumah: thank you for the input.

I'm sure as a community rep, you've had to deal with players and their weird expectations that might not mesh with game reality.
This is the source of everyone's discontent: Aegis.
Paladins who have it, love it.
Paladin's who don't have it complain they need it to be competitive.
Rune Fencers feel they can't compete with it.
The worst part is, it's equipment.
It's not a Job Ability, Food Effect, or Spell, so it isn't subject to various Dispelling effects or recast timers; As long as it's equipped, it's a constant, not a variable.

Rune Fencers have two defensive checks: Evasion (B+) and Parry (A+)
Paladins have three defensive checks: Evasion (C), Parry (C), Block (A+)

Just off this, I would expect Rune Fencer to take 0 Damage from attacks more frequently than Paladin unless you are in a situation where Evasion is close to it's floor for both jobs (ie, end game content)

If a Rune Fencer and a Paladin are going to be hit by 4 attacks that deal 1000 damage each, and Rune Fencer has a 25% Parry chance normally, Versus a Paladin who we will assume doesn't Parry, but has an Aegis at a 50% block rate for 75% less damage (if I'm reading this link right)

Rune Fencer: 1000, 1000, 1000, 0000 = 3000
Paladin: 1000, 0250, 1000, 0250 = 2500

This isn't including any difference in Physical Damage taken on the gear, or the actual Defense Value that these jobs can equip.

If Rune Fencer has anything other than Battuta for increasing the Parry Cap above 25% that would affect this calculation, great! Get that information out there! Combat player misconceptions!

The main concern of Rune Fencers is physical survivability.
Let's suggest some out of the box things as well.
If you don't want to increase the Parry Hard Cap, consider a Parry Soft Cap; a percentage of ranges where Parry doesn't fully activate to negate all damage, but can shave off a chunk of it.
A Trait like this could give Rune Fencer some passive survivability complementing it's tanking methods without breaking Parry.

Who knows, though. Maybe having some Epeolatries out in the wild will correct the imbalance, but we aren't quite there yet.

[Martel]

but has an Aegis at a 50% block rate for 75% less damage

Except that's base block rate, not actual block rate. And that page is wrong anyway, since Aegis has 5% higher base block rate than a size 3 shield, while the page claims they're the same. Also, while it is technically true that Aegis itself has -75% dmg reduction on block, a PLD using Aegis will get -81% due to shield defense bonus. So -81% would be the value you need to use in any calculations.

But anyway. Aegis is NOT going to be getting a 50% block rate on Anything decent level.

Let's see... as an example of Aegis vs high level mobs, my last test on lvl 126 mobs yielded a 11.91% block rate.(The test sample was 4,172 total hits, btw.) That's a total damage reduction value of -9.6%.(for comparison, Ochain against the same mobs yielded -46.3% total damage reduction.)


To put it simply, Aegis' physical defenses suck against current high level content. The lack of ilvl updates hurt it quite badly compared to modern shields considering the extremely high lvl mobs can be now. However, It maintains usefulness via it's MDT II. But while being near immune to magic, physical vulnerability is greatly increased compared to other shields.

You can make arguments for reprisal and palisade helping with Aegis' physical lack, but those, and the buffs needed to maintain reprisal are subject to the same dispelling issue RUN has with it's other buffs.

Hmmm... I'm getting Deja Vu... I could swear I've done a Aegis PLD vs RUN defenses comparison on here somewhere already.. Well, I don't really feel like looking for it. And in any case, the main point was just to correct inaccurate information, not to go all PLD vs RUN.

If Rune Fencer has anything other than Battuta for increasing the Parry Cap above 25% that would affect this calculation, great! Get that information out there! Combat player misconceptions!

Well, how about Inquartata? Assuming there even is a parry cap, and I tend to doubt these things till I see it proven, Inquartata certainly bypasses it. I have data with RUN at higher than 25% parry rates.

Although, I doubt RUN is going to hit significant parry rates on high end content. Stuff is just too high level.

[Einalem]

I love data updates like this!
If you can find that other thread a link would be great, sir!

[Martel]

I love data updates like this!
If you can find that other thread a link would be great, sir!

Well, that's a nice enthusiastic response.

Here's a small parry/shield comparison. It's a bit less in-depth than I had vaguely recalled. Really just one data set at a given lvl with Aegis. But still interesting.

I did a quick search for my RUN related posts on this forum, and came up with this. This is a comparison of PLD and RUNs enmity generation.

While I've done a lot more PLD related testing that RUN related, there's probably still more floating around on these forums. Using the advanced search with my name(exact name checked) is a pretty good way of going through it.

As a game mechanics resource, I'd recommend http://www.bg-wiki.com/bg. Particularly http://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/RUN.

The BG forums are also an excellent resource. And sometimes things discovered on the forums don't make it on to the wiki. But there's a ton of stuff to sift through.

The FFXIAH forums are also a pretty good resource.

[Zhronne]

Instead of increasing Valiance range, how about making Inspiration undispellable, just like Valiance/Vallation? At the same conditions (i.e. when used with 3 runes up)

[Olor]

lol... so how many idris GEOs are there? 4? 7? 3 on each server? using as an example someone with a mythic or mythic equivalent is silly...

[Malithar]

lol... so how many idris GEOs are there? 4? 7? 3 on each server? using as an example someone with a mythic or mythic equivalent is silly...

Non-Idris Geo is still stronger for Acc and Att (-Def really) wise than a Brd. I mentioned Idris Geo cause it's far and away stronger, not just a lil stronger.

[Bebekeke]

I always find that RUN is better as a supporting tank. PLD+RUN or RUN + a group of DDs, even RUN + RUN bouncing hate. RUN is very good at mitigating damage, though if it's very hard-hitting mobs, you'll quickly run out of MP spamming near insta-cast stoneskin. The other thing that RUN has going for it apart from magic and parry is a reasonable evasion. PLD will never expect to evade an attack, other than the 5% floor, whereas RUN can expect to evade at a much higher rate, particularly when using swordplay and during TP moves when using foil.

Not to mention it's fairly easy to get -50% PDT on RUN, and not too hard to reach -55%

[Darthmaull]

I agree with Afania. I've gotten to the point that I mainly only use Run, Dnc and Geo. Primarily Run though. I used to have a static that we used my Run for and we would win with no problems on the chaper 1-5 fights. I left the game for a while and when I came back the new AA fights were in. My old static now had just about all level 119 gear and a Pld with Ochain. Coming back and now trying to compete with that Pld was hard. I couldn't keep up and I blamed it on the job and eventually quit the static. Since working mainly on Run and gearing it to full 119 gear and getting different macro pieces to enhance certain abilities, I can say that Run can tank high level content. Having good gear and skill in a job is a major factor.

[Bebekeke]

I still find it astonishing that people think RUN can't tank Delve, considering that when Delve 1 was still hard, lots of PUG (particularly JP) were shouting for 2 RUN for every delve run. 1 to put in each DD party. This was before people realised that they could use RUN as a SJ and just carry on with all MNK/RUN.