PLD Cooldowns Rough Guide?

So I'm curious how much damage is mitigated with the various CD abilities (on average) that we get. Obviously it depends on the monster type but assuming you are facing something that your CD can actually deal with how much mitigation would you expect? It is obvious for abilities with flat % (Rampart, Sentinel) but not so clear on some of the others.

Bulwark?

Awareness?

Foresight?

The Debuff of Rage of Halone?

I don't have the data to throw out offhand but bulwark really shines with groups of mobs (or occasionally, boss combos that multihit and are physical). In these cases, it works well coupled with awareness because crits override block procs. If you use it on Holy Bladedance please do couple it with something else though (ie rampart).

There are also some phases of bosses that tend to be pretty crit heavy, like Shiva bow phase, where awareness is nice.

Foresight, if my memory serves, works out to about 8% physical mitigation. It can work in conjunction with the others to help smooth out damage a bit.

Rage of Halone debuff is about 7-8% less physical damage taken I believe. Foresight works out close to 6-7% less physical damage taken when it's up (but obviously stacks mutliplicatively with other cooldowns).

Bulwark's mitigation depends entirely on your shield, as the amount of physical damage it reduces varies depending on Kite/Tower/Buckler type. Kite Shields are around 20-21% mitigated per blocked hit, Tower Shields more like 28-29%, so it's that amount with +60% chance to block on top of your actual block rate. You can generally count on -most- hits being blocked here, so in most cases Bulwark means you'll take about 20% less damage whilst it's up (from physical attacks from the front). It's not 100% reliable though so is better used for packs or multiple hits (like Holy Bladedance in Thordan Ex).

Crits in FF are +50% damage, and I think most mobs average about 5% crit chance, so Awareness is only going to be around 2-3% less physical damage taken. However, if a mob crits that crit cannot be parried or blocked, so Awareness sort of increases your parry/block rate a little when active. In general this is by far your weakest cooldown, the advantage isnt so much in the amount it mitigates, but more that when it's up you wont ever get an unexpected burst of damage from a huge autoattack crit that might catch healers off guard.

Interesting stuff! I wonder if anyone has done some detailed numbers (looking at the same mobs attacks using different cds).

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Originally Posted by Alex_Lenderson

Interesting stuff! I wonder if anyone has done some detailed numbers (looking at the same mobs attacks using different cds).

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The problem is that it is literally impossible to get specific numbers for some of these moves.

For example, awareness nullifies Crits. Crits are only around 5% chance at a 50% increase. So, we can theoretically put a value to it, but without knowing exactly how many critical hits were nullified in the time span that Awareness is up, it is impossible to know exactly how much dmg was mitigated. The same goes for Bulwark, though for different reasons.

Whereas it is entirely possible to figure out exactly how much dmg is being mitigated by Bulwark when it is active, that value cannot be applied to all Pld's, as varied types of shields, blockrates, and block strengths will skew the numbers. It's not a universally effective move for every Pld. Moves like Sentinel and Rampart, conversely, are a mute point when it comes to detailed numbers, because the effect is universal. It doesn't really matter what's hitting you. 50% reduction is a 50% reduction.

Interestingly, RoH is probably the one move that would benefit the most from specific number crunching, especially on bosses. Since RoH's debuff applies to physical output, it would be useful for a Pld to know which bosses are more or less susceptible to the dmg nerf. In A4, for example, it is almost completely useless. The boss itself does 0 physical dmg. So bulwark, Foresight, and RoH are rendered ineffective for any kind of Dmg mitigation in that fight (unless tanking the adds). This means that a Pld can effectively cease their RoH rotation on the boss and it would make no difference to the dmg mitigation of the fight (assuming they have solid aggro and are not at risk of losing it to Dps or the other tank). This means that instead of fretting over making sure the RoH debuff stays up, they can focus their Royal Authority combo and fret over keeping Goring Blade up with little ill-effect on their incoming damage.

The real benefit to Pld's is knowing which CD's work together and why. That way you can manipulate them accordingly.