Why leave your shield at home!?

saying a mrd or a pug can tank better than a glad is only saying how little you know about the game .
Also , idk who said glad cant do decent damage , glad have an excellent dot dmg , if you arent tanking.
Lets compare them to ffxi classes by example,

MRD is a WAR with MNK HP,
Pugi have the tanking abilities of a THF, not even a nin.
Glad have the defensive abilities of a PLD and can do DMG as a NIN.

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Originally Posted by Wooba

Here are the HP values from a R50 MRD in my Linkshell with 174 vit Base: 2383 (2595) Second number is obviously with gear. My base HP with 174 Vit at R49 is 2119. At R50 I'll probably get close to 2200 HP base. Even in full Plate, my HP will likely still be only close to the Base HP of a R50 MRD with capped Vit.
While i agree mrd have more HP , at 50 fully buffed i have on glad 2510 HP, do we really need more ? not really.If you put 174 VIT on MRD your offensive abilities will be under mediocre.


The only area a GLA is better than a MRD is in Defense. As far as I know Shield stats only come into effect if you are guarding, as when you equip a Shield your stats don't change. This means if you keep your shield up constantly, you will take less damage than a MRD.

Where MRD beats out the GLA is the fact that they can basically DD and Tank at the same time. MRD has a lot of debuffs, and Maim can let a MRD do some extra damage while tanking from the front. I've seen a setup for a MRD that had them casting Debuffs on the enemy via THM spells, as well as WS debuffs, and self-buffs. That MRD was easily the most damaging person in the party (except for maybe the Archers) and he was also Tanking. GLA are limited to Tanking only. We could try to hybrid tank it, but it likely wouldn't go well since our damage is pathetic.
Glad with Mrd abilities ----> Mrd with glad abilities ,,,X a million.Level mrd and you will see how big the difference is .

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Aegis Boon II for about 17 seconds using a Vintage Kite Shield
Deflection for about 17 more seconds
Sentinel + whatever else is up or cross-classed while the above two are down.

That shield, plus a few nice abilities GLA gets, make damage mitigation crazy good on GLA. No class can match it (except a thm with a few broken abilities atm, but that's an entirely different arguement). To say that GLA is the worst class in the game is a bit of a silly statement. It may take us a bit longer to kill things solo, but if we are playing correctly, we won't die.

And HP at the moment isn't that big of a deal, especially considering the damage reduction we can do. With the way healing is at the moment, if you aren't killed in one shot, you have enough HP.

If you can completely nullify 10 hits every minute or so on gladiator, then who the hell cares if they have less HP than a marauder? If you get low on hp, use a mitigation ability, throw up shield block and buy your healers more than enough time to top you off.

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Originally Posted by I_have_no_idea

If you put 174 VIT on MRD your offensive abilities will be under mediocre.

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Actually, not only will your offensive abilities be horrible, but your defensive abilities will be as well. Strength ups the effectiveness of guard, so if you don't have high strength, you are minimalizing what is perhaps your greatest tanking utility.

Assume that a mob will hit both an unguarding gladiator and a marauder about the same, at 250, and doesn't use weapon skills. Assume also that both of them will not cast a single heal (but abilities that heal are fine) in the course of attacking the mob. Assume the mob has unlimited HP and will kill them both in the end. Assume both of them have both jobs to 50 (and have the cross class's mastery ability on). Finally, assume the mob hits every 2 seconds exactly.

How many hits can each of them take? (trying to factor in affinity, here). Things requiring steadfast will be much more effective for marauders. Note that, with guard, I am being very generous to the marauder - on all but the biggest enemies it is more than 50% effective

Marauder :
Bloodbath II ( +250 hp/60s )
Defender II (+300 hp/30s)
Foresight II (+250 hp/30s)
Rampart (+125hp/300s)

Starting HP: 2500
Over first 20 seconds, the marauder is hit 10x for 2500 hp and uses all 4 abilities when the last has worn off (so as to get full benefit from each). Current HP = 2500 – 2500 + 250 + 300 +250 + 125 = 925
Marauder dies at 28 seconds after taking +1000 more damage.

Gladiator (First # unguarded, second guarded):
Bloodbath II ( +150 hp/60s )
Defender II (+125 hp/30s )
Foresight II (+250 hp : +125 hp/30s)
Guard (+1250 hp/20s → 22s after first use, based on Decorated Iron Scutum)
Deflection (+100 hp : +60 hp/60s)
Obsess II (+60 hp : +35 hp/45s)
Aegis Boon II (+1200 : +700 hp/60s – 4 fully blocked hits, plus some healing from each)
Sentinel ( +100 hp : +50 hp/60s )
Outmaneuver (+60 hp : +30 hp/60s )
Rampart ( +150 hp : +100 hp/300s )

Starting HP : 2200
Gladiator uses guard and is hit 10x for 2500 * .5 damage = 1250.
In the first 18 seconds he uses Rampart (back up at 302s), Defender 2 (back up at 36s), Foresight 2 (back up at 38s), Obsess II (back up at 57s) and Aegis ( at 16s, back up at 76s )
Total HP = 2200 – 1250 + 100 + 125 + 125 + 35 + 575 (three negated hits and 200 healing) = 1910
One more negated hit from Aegis also allows him to spam guard to not take a full dmg hit.
Guard starts at 22s with HP=1910
Next 20 seconds, gladiator takes 1250 damage from hits again and uses Bloodbath 2 (back up at 82s), Sentinel (back up at 84s), Defender (back up at 66s), Foresight 2 (back up at 72s) Outmaneuver (at 40s, back up at 98s), Deflection (back up at 100s). He stacks Outmaneuver and Deflection at the end to mitigate the incoming un-guarded hit at 42s
At 42s Total HP = 1910 – 1250 – 250 + 150 + 50 + 125 + 60 + 80 = 975
Guard is used at 42s. Over the next 20s, gladiator takes 1250 damage from hits again and uses Obsess 2 (back up at 104s), Nothing else is up and he will die before guard finishes at:
( 975 hp + 35 = 1010 ) / 125 = ( 9 hits * 2 secs ) + 42s = 60 s

The gladiator will live a full minute, and this could probably be optimized quite a bit more. He will survive over twice as long as the marauder, even though the marauder has 20% more hp. If that gladiator could survive another 10 seconds or so, he would have foresight, a few other abilities and aegis popping and could probably limp along for another 30 seconds at least.

Gladiators are THE tanks, end of story.

See, my problem with Gladiators being "THE tanks" is that SE themselves made it look like you could choose to be a DD with Gladiator only to find out "Oh, you can't. Sorry." If they were going to make Gladiators pure tank they could have left out things like "or, some may choose to forgo a shield, focusing solely on their sword arm" that make it sound HIGHLY like you could have chosen to be a DD Glad if you wanted when really that's not the case.

For folks like myself who wanted to play a sword wielding class and not be a tank, that was kinda what we were hoping for only to get told "LOL no go use an axe or punch something if you want DD". And no, "go play Lancer" ISN'T a valid response for folks like us. I don't want to use a spear, otherwise I would have went Lancer from the get-go.

I sympathise, I too wanted to DD Gladiator when the game first came out, and was dissapointed with it to the point that I stopped playing Gladiator after the first 20 levels Pre Nov update.

Then I decided to give it another try and now love my Tank Gladiator. I would still like to see the option to have a DD Gladiator aswell.

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Originally Posted by ThugHunter

I sympathise, I too wanted to DD Gladiator when the game first came out, and was dissapointed with it to the point that I stopped playing Gladiator after the first 20 levels Pre Nov update.

Then I decided to give it another try and now love my Tank Gladiator. I would still like to see the option to have a DD Gladiator aswell.

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I feel the same, just because a job may be optimized as one role, it doesn't mean you can't choose to play as another role.

This is why I don't do much partying aside from duo fighting with my hubby the MRD. People in general will always expect you to do things the way they think you should, nevermind what you want. It's why I play XIV more than XI now, because solo play is more of an option here. I don't want someone telling me I'm playing the game wrong because I don't have PUG and MRD ranked up to support my GLA so I can be a better tank.

I play my GLA as a Redmage type with thm/con support skills and weapon skills from LNC and GLA. I seem to do just fine solo. And my better half ends up tanking on his MRD more than I do when we fight together. We might not be breaking time records or winning the DPS race, but it works well for us and we have fun.

Anyhow, on the OP: I too wish there were a benefit to not wearing a shield though, even if some find the original description of the class invalid, I like the 'focusing on the swordarm' part a great deal. It would add an interesting twist, even if it's just quicker stamina refill or something small. I do like smacking baddies in the face with the shield, but it wouldn't take much to convince me to stash it.

Anyway, I just like swords. I didn't start leveling GLA as a tank. I'm not keen on starting to do so either.

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Originally Posted by Lebannen

I hope that they add the option to use dual wield and two handed sword. this way you can use sword only.

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dude, that'd be sick. like double short blades or 2 handed bastard sword, or long kitana! im with you

I don't see why GLA HAS to be a tank they do decent damage. I think that's why they left it as equipping a shield as an option. Maybe equipping your shield/using shield abilities takes away from your DPS? Anyways I'm only 38 GLA theres alot of stuff I don't know but its definitely worth some time on the battle field comparing.

An idea could be a future trait from the guild that would allow 1 handed weapons to be wielded with 2hands for an acc/dmg bonus.