PLD Cross Class Skills

[Kitru]

But yea, PLD cross class skills are meh except for stone skin. It is not a situation like with WARs who get access to those two great PLD tanking skills, provoke and flash.

Provoke isn't a "great tanking skill". It's a "required tanking skill". Tank swapping and tank death recovery are effectively impossible without it. The reason why it's a CC ability is because the devs decided that they didn't want to devote 1 of the MRD's class skills to it when they could just have WAR cross-class it from GLA. The same is true about Convalescence (it's one of the strongest CDs in the WAR CD suite).

Also, Flash is not a "great PLD tanking skill". Flash is horrible, especially on a WAR since WAR doesn't have the mp to use it more than 3 times and regenerates mp slower than anyone else in the entire game.

If you want to whinge about bad CC options, consider what your class would be like without any CC abilities whatsoever. PLD would still have basically everything they need and would see a negligible loss in effectiveness (Foresight is lol). WAR would see a significant decrease in effectiveness (no Convalescence, no IR, no Featherfoot, no Second Wind) and would be missing major tank functionality (no Provoke).

Classes are not balanced with the assumption that they all get the same benefit out of their CC options. They're balanced with the assumption that they will have specific CC options present to offset the lack of functionality that the devs could not fit into their class and job skills (which is one of the major reasons why Holmgang tries to do *way* too much: they needed to compress the functionality of 3 different abilities all into a single one because the MRD/WAR ability list doesn't have any placeholders, like the PLD does).

PLD has bad CC options because it doesn't really need anything from outside. About the only thing I would say they need is something to make their AoE damage not completely worthless (they don't need more AoE enmity, so CCing Overpower would be out of place), but that's better solved by addressing their own class/job abilities.

What level do they learn Stoneskin?

34.

[Zakalwe]

Kitru, wow, was it something I said?

I wasn't pleading for more PLD cross class skills, only noting what you yourself noted, that other than stoneskin nothing is really all that outstanding, and even stoneskin doesnt rise to the level of necessity unlike, say, provoke for WAR or swift cast for WHM.

Don't really see that as a whinge.

BTW, I generally like your well thought out lengthy posts.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Kitru, wow, was it something I said?

No, that's just Kitru for you.

[Jandor]

I cross-class Stoneskin, Protect, Foresight, Bloodbath and Cure. Cure is just for flavor but I get decent usage out of the rest.

I macro'd Bloodbath and Fight or Flight together and tend to open fights with it, it's all added enmity .

[Ashkendor]

I cross-class Stoneskin, Protect, Foresight, Bloodbath and Cure. Cure is just for flavor but I get decent usage out of the rest.

I macro'd Bloodbath and Fight or Flight together and tend to open fights with it, it's all added enmity .

I do this except I cross-class Raise instead of Protect since I'm normally running with some flavor or other of caster.

And yeah, FoF/Bloodbath macro ftw. I use it to increase enmity and to self-heal a bit in a pinch.

[Martin_Arcainess]

Foresight is not even remotely close to Rampart and is in no way better than Stone Skin.

Rampart is a flat 20% damage reduction. Foresight is a 20% defense increase.

Depends on the situation at hand. Stone skin is not good when a Big attack is coming up and you need a def boost now rather then waiting for a 2 sec Stone Skin cast.

[Ashkendor]

Depends on the situation at hand. Stone skin is not good when a Big attack is coming up and you need a def boost now rather then waiting for a 2 sec Stone Skin cast.

I end up using Foresight for things like tanking a single dread in T4. It would be fairly useless when I've got both dreads on me (I tend to save my best cd's for that obviously because of the massive amounts of damage they deal out), but it's a decent enough reduction when I'm only dealing with one.

[kukurumei]

Depends on the situation at hand. Stone skin is not good when a Big attack is coming up and you need a def boost now rather then waiting for a 2 sec Stone Skin cast.

Precasting. A good pld can time stoneskin to the point where the big hit will not interrupt the cast. The only problem is when there are multiple monsters to interrupt you.

Stoneskin is always useful when the PT is stressed to the point of breaking. Often you are over gear or fighting for threat so stoneskin is not really an option, but for anything that becomes a roadblock, stoneskin is near invaluable.

All the coils except perhaps t8 has it's fair share of "good to stoneskin" timing. And levi is also good since pld is OT 99.9% of the time and that means stacking on the healers for any extra heals they tap you.

It's another tool, but darn important tool, especially since you can stoneskin in MT or OT situations. Thus there are many situations when you need to help another tank out(t7 adds hit like a truck, stoneskin buddies can brute force through that phase nicely).

Finally, since pld have long CDs on defensive skills, stoneskin helps rotating those CDs so you don't run dry at a bad time.

Also stoneskin with shield blocking is good since the the reduce damage is enough to prevent most inturrupts.