PLD: Do you tank with Sword Oath on? I do.

Yoho all, this is just more of wondering if anyone else dose this too but I consider myself quite good at Tanking and keeping so one day I decided if I load my PLD with STR gear and stick Sword Oath on would I still be able to Tank 2.5 dungeons ok? The answer! Yes I can!

I kina like Tanking like this in the dungeons, it makes the dungeons go quicker due to me having a boost in DPS, I now have to be abit more careful Aggro holding thus making it abit more go in, Flash once and Combo once on enemy. It's mainly the healer who grabs aggro now due to me needing to heal me more. P.S Healer doesn't mind as it's my other half and heck she even finds time to Holy and Stone II enemies while keeping me alive.

Also for those wondering I equip Tank acr and have Shield Oath on for EX Primals and Coil. I'm not that brave lol. So anyone else dose this and dose this mean the dungeons are too easy on Tanks and healers if I can do this?


Acr Set is all iLV110 and 1 iLV120 Brace

Our WAR doesn't do anything non-Final Coil w/ Defiance on. He rarely uses it in Second coil.

Our PLD Tanks a majority of T10 and T12 in Sword Oath.

Definitely very viable and should be done on most content.

Clarity : Obviously in mass pulls/ speed run pulls for dungeons you should have shield oath up. This is inferring single target or small 3 mob packs.

I use Fending accessories and Shield Oath for mass pulls, Slaying accessories and Sword Oath for bosses. The awesome gear set system we have makes it really easy to swap in and out of tank gear fast. ^^

In FcOB if the healers and everyone else is comfortable with the fight but still need to squeeze in that little DPS, having the PLD in sword most of the time helps out. They only really need shield oath for big hits, like the Rip from Emegud in T10.

For dungeons, I'm not really sure. Sure you hit harder but you will make the healer have to heal you more and in turn they won't be DPSing as much. Though If your significant other can find the time to DPS and heal a PLD in sword oath then props to them.

Do you steal hate from PLDs using Sword Oath? I do.

It all depends on your party formation/gear. As a BLM I'm constantly getting hate, even with quelling strikes and people tell me to hold back. Tanks are asking a BLM with nuke dps to hold back so they can do 50 more dps on autoattacks between skills. As a WHM assisting with AoE dmg to kill big pulls faster I steal hate and so do others, resulting 3 or 4 people getting hit by mobs and holding dps back as more heals are actually needed, so tanks can do 50 more dps with autoattacks. I'm not saying PLDs should only use shield oath, but why would you even want to use Sword Oath with such low numbers on dps, holding back others'. I would understand it if dungeons had tight DPS checks like raids or if sword oath affected skills aswell. Sometimes it doesn't really matter as mobs would be stunned while nuked if WHM uses Holy, but sometimes they won't. New dungeons monsters will always do more damage or unstunnable even. If you manage to keep hate with Sword Oath against good geared nukers, good for you. If your healer doesn't mind healing more, good for you. That's all.

For every one tank who can actually pull that off there are several others who can't in my experience. Playing healer I've come across quite a few tanks who thought they could tank with sword oath but the hate was everywhere, fairy death, dps aggro, they just couldn't handle it. I hope this doesn't become the norm for people who can't hold hate because it only makes everybody elses lives more difficult.

I actually had one tank the other night who refused to go into shield oath and who only used fight or flight, trying to say he shouldn't have to be using defensive buffs because they cut into his dps time, as if it didn't matter that he was taking so much damage that I could barely get any dots up after shadow flare. He was pulling about 6 mobs at a time in snowcloak but could only hold hate on 3-4 of the mobs on average. He finally caved when the ninja in the party pulled the boss off of him and then switched to shield oath. The rest of the run went fine but there was a lot of resistance/blame put out there.

That said, I'm all for capable tanks not using shield oath or defiance but please know whether you can actually handle it or not. Just don't sit there playing the blame game if you're the one losing hate please because holding hate is your primary job in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Edeline

Do you steal hate from PLDs using Sword Oath? I do.

It all depends on your party formation/gear. As a BLM I'm constantly getting hate, even with quelling strikes and people tell me to hold back. Tanks are asking a BLM with nuke dps to hold back so they can do 50 more dps on autoattacks between skills.

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This is precisely why I don't tank big pulls in Sword Oath. Not only is it significantly less taxing to the healer (to me, using Sword Oath is the equivalent of not using a major defensive CD), but the added enmity helps me keep trash packs together for the REAL dps to take care of it. My damage doesn't count for much when I'm spamming Flash rather than attacks anyway. Sword Oath is only really an option to me in single target situations.

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Originally Posted by DoctorPepper

That said, I'm all for capable tanks not using shield oath or defiance but please know whether you can actually handle it or not. Just don't sit there playing the blame game if you're the one losing hate please because holding hate is your primary job in my opinion.

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Exactly how I feel about it.

Going into 2.4 dungeons in i110 gear is overgearing them by 20 iLvls. The gap is only getting wider. It's not farfetched to do such silly things when you start a patch cycle already overgearing the dungeon content. For example, I started a Qarn and performed my pretty much patented mistake of doing the first pull without any Oath on. Usually, someone notices at this point whether a problem happened or not and asks me to use Shield Oath. This time, no such thing happened. So, I decided to see what would happen if I never used an Oath for the entire instance. If I never lost aggro, would anybody notice?

The answer, most hilariously, was no. I only lost aggro on one enemy once and things went without a hitch otherwise. Not a single peep was made in chat about it. Sure, someone may have noticed, but it was never vocalized. The feat was only made possible by STR gear and general overgearing. Also, attempting to speedrun via. mass pulls in Sword Oath is just a poor decision. I wouldn't recommend it ;)

Edit:

A recommendation to all PLDs who wish to try tanking in Sword Oath. You have a lot of defensive cooldowns. Just cycle through them for the entire dungeon. You have enough that you'll have a nearly 100% uptime of something if you pop them one at a time. You can get away with not using your defensives in Shield Oath, but it makes healing that much harder in Sword Oath.

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Originally Posted by DoctorPepper

For every one tank who can actually pull that off there are several others who can't in my experience. Playing healer I've come across quite a few tanks who thought they could tank with sword oath but the hate was everywhere, fairy death, dps aggro, they just couldn't handle it. I hope this doesn't become the norm for people who can't hold hate because it only makes everybody elses lives more difficult.

I actually had one tank the other night who refused to go into shield oath and who only used fight or flight, trying to say he shouldn't have to be using defensive buffs because they cut into his dps time, as if it didn't matter that he was taking so much damage that I could barely get any dots up after shadow flare. He was pulling about 6 mobs at a time in snowcloak but could only hold hate on 3-4 of the mobs on average. He finally caved when the ninja in the party pulled the boss off of him and then switched to shield oath. The rest of the run went fine but there was a lot of resistance/blame put out there.

That said, I'm all for capable tanks not using shield oath or defiance but please know whether you can actually handle it or not. Just don't sit there playing the blame game if you're the one losing hate please because holding hate is your primary job in my opinion.

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I don't think he understood about how his Def Buff's don't interfere with his GCD :

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Originally Posted by Coatl

In FcOB if the healers and everyone else is comfortable with the fight but still need to squeeze in that little DPS, having the PLD in sword most of the time helps out. They only really need shield oath for big hits, like the Rip from Emegud in T10.

For dungeons, I'm not really sure. Sure you hit harder but you will make the healer have to heal you more and in turn they won't be DPSing as much. Though If your significant other can find the time to DPS and heal a PLD in sword oath then props to them.

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: yeah I use my Def buff's accordingly to the situation at hand and I do stick my Tank Gear set up for big pulls as I do know I'm not invincible.

As for when I have a BLM in my party I find that Fast Blade -> Flash -> Riot Blade -> Flash *with circle of Scorn in of course is the best way I find to keep aggro.

Another thing to consider:

Mass pulls are the fastest and most efficient way to clear a dungeon, as they allow DPS to get better use out of their aoe abilities. Even Arm of the Destroyer, one of the most terrible DPS aoes in the game, does better damage than Bootshine (PGL/MNK's other rotation opener) as long as there's four or more enemies. Against six or seven mobs? Or even more? Crappy, crappy Arm of the Destroyer is completely blowing away the damage output of even Rage of Halone. And that's to say NOTHING of what a GOOD DPS aoe can do.

PLD has pretty much only single-target attacks (Circle of Scorn is pretty aptly named :p). I could see a dolled-up STR PLD competing damage-wise with real DPS against single mobs or small groups - but targeting single mobs or small groups is greatly restricting the kind of numbers DPS are able to put out using their aoe skills.

Bottom line, make sure you're capable of handling large groups, but when times arrive where you're forced to face enemies in smaller numbers, feel free to bust out the DPS gear!

As long as you keep hate and as a healer I can continue to dps and keep you up. Otherwise if I have to stop dpsing your sword oath shenanigans have cost the group more dps than was gained.

Though I am actually quite for it as long as you meet the above requirements :)

If the content was added to the game before the gear you're wearing, by all means use sword oath. If you're pulling multiple groups in the newest content, stick with shield oath.

I'll go into Sword Oath when tanking coil or ex primals. But I only do it when FoF and Bloodbath are both off CD. I'll just pop a couple defesive CDs (awareness, convalescense, and bulwark) then proceed to wreak havoc. I hit a 1k RoH doing this. I almost ish myself lol

Not sure how well it would work in 8 man content when a STR built WAR off-tank is present. Even with defiance off, I'm pretty sure I'd have to hold back to not pull hate off a PLD in sword oath. If anyone is having to hold back that defeats the purpose of doing it. Fine for dungeons though. I rarely use defiance in dungeons myself.

I encountered a tank would switch like this in a Snowcloak I ran. At first I started face-palming thinking he wouldn't be able to keep hate from all the cures I'd have to throw, but he did wonderfully. Like others have mentioned, Shield Oath for pulls of 4+ and sword oath for the rest. I could have been irresponsible and pulled hate with Holy-spam I guess, but I can do that on some shield oath PLDs, so that's not saying much.

As an "average" main PLD, I currently have all my right side with STR acc. With a full i120 left side (except for the weapon), this build grants me 7.1k HP in group, without food.
It's more than enough to run any Lv.50 4 players dungeon in the game, plus a few 8-man like HM primals and stuff like Castrum/Prae for the roulette (I haven't test in ST yet as Main Tank with Sword Oath).

I'm now using Sword oath for a lot of content, but I still have some trouble keeping enmity up on a big group (4+ enemies) against BLMs. Since I have to Flash all the way until my MP pool is empty, I don't see a benefit from having Sword Oath up during these pulls (Flash doesn't do any damage... so Sword Oath is basically useless, except for CoS and auto-attaks, but that's really not a big point).

So, now I'm using Sword Oath for bosses if my Healer is okay with that and after a bit of time in Shield Oath if I'm sure that enmity is secured on my end.
For trash, if it's equal or less than a 3 monster pull, I put Sword Oath on. If it's more than that, I'd have to Flash mindlessly to keep up against big AoE damage, so I go with Shield Oath.

... And that's pretty cool to see a 900+ crit coming from Rage of Halone from time to time as a PLD :p

Sword oath is especially good for bosses with no real hate to worry about like Sastasha HM & Stone Vigil HM. Of course it's always fun to still be in Sword oath from one of those, forget you are, and then try to run a huge pull in a new instance without Shield oath up...

In big pulls in dungeons, I can holy bomb better than you can ST with your sword oath, including CoS. In FCoB, it's viable so long as you're overgearing the content and your healers are ok with it.

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Originally Posted by Edeline

so tanks can do 50 more dps with autoattacks

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Shield Oath also lowers damage dealt by 20% so Sword Oath is raising damage by a lot more than just autoattacks. That being said, big pulls/aoes make dungeons go faster than extra tank dps. That's why I'm full VIT on PLD, pull trash in Shield Oath, and wear Fending Accessories. Even by not needing as many heals our groups get more damage as healer dps > tank dps. On bosses sometimes it's different as I can often still hold hate in Sword Oath.

On WAR I'm full STR but only because I use WAR a lot for PvP, which is a whole different matter.

I'm only 104 and when I'm being grouped with DPS/WHM using zodiac weapons, I cry a little inside. I'm not at this step of even thinking of using sword oath over shield oath.

Doing trash pulls in sword oath is dumb, here's why: the optimal way to do trash pulls is to pull everything and flash until out of mp; whatever single target damage you can do is irrelevant to the time it takes to kill the pull as long as your party is doing AoE. Because flash does no damage, you're only outgoing damage during this time is circle of scorn, and your autoattacks, which are in this case, inconsequential. Flashing in sword oath means you get less aggro out of your full MP bar, with nothing in return. Sword oath all day in raids, primals, or dungeon bosses, put out that 400+ dps, but not trash pulls. Paladin's inability to significantly contribute to dps on trash pulls is also the reason that warrior is preferable for speedrunning dungeons.

If you want dungeon damage get hybrid accs and put on an axe. Still get enough HP for absurd pulls, also get epic damage with over power, main, unchained, zerk, bloodbath and i90 melded accs.

There's not much benefit for pld to drop their hp and def and pull 10 mobs only to spam 0 dps flash. Or worse do small pulls and single target.

If you find yourself doing Itty bitty pulls, then sure dps gear and sword oath, but you should really be looking for ways to pull more mobs instead. Defiance off on the forced small pulls, defiance, OP, and offensive buffs for big pulls.

Pld is in a weird spot. Big pulls it's all flash so tank up. Small pulls you could sword oath and dps you should avoid. Solution: war and hybrid accs.

There's actually a lot of benefit to drop the hp for str, just not for dropping shield oath, I would use rubies or i130 str all day if I ever lost my mind and did a dungeon on pld.

I typically only run Sword Oath on HM Primals and low risk single target battles. the big thing I'm seeing and I have been doing myself since Jan of last year is PLD moving away from stacking vit.

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Originally Posted by Martin_Arcainess

Yoho all, this is just more of wondering if anyone else dose this too but I consider myself quite good at Tanking and keeping so one day I decided if I load my PLD with STR gear and stick Sword Oath on would I still be able to Tank 2.5 dungeons ok? The answer! Yes...

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If you can hold hate then do whatever you want.

Seems like a really bad idea to run with Sword Oath on anything besides a single target.

Shield Oath isn't just a damage reduction, it's also a significant boost to aggro gain. You can literally drain your entire MP bar spamming Flash, but if you're in Sword Oath it'll do about as much good as screaming obscenities at your TV and hoping the mobs can hear you.

Further more, even sans Shield Oath you're not going to do impressive damage without DPS gear. And if you're using DPS gear, you're not in tank gear which just puts even more strain on the healer. All for a few extra points of damage? Not even close to worth it. Stick to doing what tanks do best. Tanking. Sword Oath should be reserved for specific situations, not an always-on solution...

..unless you're lower than level 40 ;)

It is good thing you have reliable healer to play with on a consistent basis. Good luck trying that on a DF roulette with a random healer. Heck as it is tanks lose aggro all the time or die before they get all gazillion of their mobs as it is, and having to heal thru crap like that is just healer abuse. What is wrong with slow and steady? Wipes only slow things down. The thing I like to do when a cray-cray tank pulls big trying to force a speed run without discussion or preparation is to holy the crap out of everything, and it is icing on the cake when the all mobs die along with the tank, and I get time to recharge my MP, while the tank walks back to the group.

All I see here is an opening post with the main purpose of bragging, with a retorical question at the bottom. Of course people use situational abilities under certain situations. It's what they're there for.

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Originally Posted by IlyaKannou

Doing trash pulls in sword oath is dumb, here's why: the optimal way to do trash pulls is to pull everything and flash until out of mp; whatever single target damage you can do is irrelevant to the time it takes to kill the pull as long as your party is doing AoE. Because flash does no damage, you're only outgoing damage during this time is circle of scorn, and your autoattacks, which are in this case, inconsequential. Flashing in sword oath means you get less aggro out of your full MP bar, with nothing in return. Sword oath all day in raids, primals, or dungeon bosses, put out that 400+ dps, but not trash pulls. Paladin's inability to significantly contribute to dps on trash pulls is also the reason that warrior is preferable for speedrunning dungeons.

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here's my reason why it's ok.

You don't need to spam flash you know? I can Circle of Scorn, Flash, Fast Blade, Flash Riot Blade Flash Fast Blade, Flash Riot Blade Flash etc and still hold Aggro fine in Sword Oath. Just because you get Less Aggro from it doesn't mean your getting enough in the 1st place. Also Fight or Flight combined with Circle of Scorn really helps.

Also not all part of the dungeon you can grab like 6-9 Mobs and even then I can do fine in Sword Oath, still keep the mobs on me, be healed fine and Healer has time to DPS.

So really, Sword Oath isn't as dumb as you think it's just how the party executes it.

Have gear switches on hotbars for PLD and WAR, shield oath+ full tanking gear for large trash pulls, one click switch to DPS gear, pop sword oath for bosses. stuff like main scenario roulette I do 100% sword oath.

Shield lob, fight or flight, fast blade, weave in GCD spirits within, savage blade, weave in Circle of Scorn, Rage of Halone starter gives a massive initial boost in enmity.

As long as you don't loose aggro, don't give your healers constant heart attacks and aren't forcing the DPS to hold back, Sword Oath to you heart's content. It doesn't really matter how you succeed at your job, only that you do.

But personally? I'd rather give my healer the freedom to Cleric Stance DPS, by taking less damage they need to heal, than me doing some piffy single target extra DPS.