Is cure worth it for Paladin?

[Sapphidia]

I'm trying to find or at least create a rotation that works for myself and my DPSs which allows me to build good enmity while still putting as much damage as possible, but I'm having trouble thinking about Fracture or Mercy Stroke.

As soon as you start considering Rage of Halone, you're basically in a situation of a "sliding scale" between Enmity, DPS and Mitigation, and there's a number of variations. It's up to you to decide which you want to use, but here's a breakdown.

Let's do all of this theorycraft with the assumption that the paladin has a 2.4 second global cooldown. This is a lot of skillspeed, but with averages from Selene's buff and such, it's certainly not too bizarre to consider. The reason we want to test with a 2.4 second global cooldown is that this lets us assume that Goring Blade (which is a 24 second duration DoT) has 100% uptime of all ticks whether you're using a 9 or 10 global cooldown rotation. If you have higher than 2.4 sec gcd then a 10 gcd rotation will always lose a tiny amount of DPS based on the "gap" in the reapplication of the DoT, but it's minimal and very hard to calculate - a 3 second gap would lose a whole 40 potency tick, a 1.5 second gap would lose on average 20 potency etc. So let's just assume 2.4 sec GCD and 100% Goring Blade uptime.

We then have to calculate the Potency and Threat of our combo options. Reminder that Savage Blade and Rage of Halone are x3 and x5 threat modifiers, so they do 200 and 260 potency of damage but 600 and 1300 potency of threat.

Goring Blade combo Damage = 150 + 230 + 220 = 600 Potency Damage over 3 GCDs (plus maintains its DoT)
Rage of Halone combo Damage = 150 + 200 + 260 = 610 Potency damage over 3 GCDs
Rage of Halone combo Threat = 150 + 600 + 1300 = 2050 Threat over 3 GCDs
Royal Authority combo Damage = 150 + 200 + 340 = 690 Potency damage over 3 GCDs
Royal Authority combo Threat = 150 + 600 + 340 = 1090 potency threat over 3 GCDs
Fracture = 220 potency over 1 gcd.

Note that we never ever have to consider Shield Swipe, Mercy Stroke, Circle of Scorn or Spirits Within in working out a rotation - these are all off-gcd moves and will always be popped on cooldown. Changing the rotation of GCDs you use doesnt affect how you use the off-gcds.

With a 320 potency over 24 seconds, the Goring Blade combo will ALWAYS be used in any remotely optimal rotation unless you really are ONLY concerned about threat - in this case, spamming Rage of Halone combo constantly is by far the highest threat option, but very low damage. Therefore, our rotation choice are limited to: Goring / Royal / Royal, Goring / Halone / Royal, Goring / Halone / Halone (as 3 different 9-gcd rotations), and those 3 rotations with a Fracture inserted to make them 10 GCD rotations. Any other option will make Goring Blades DOT fall off for too long.

So let's look at the Average Potency per GCD for Damage and Threat for each of the 3 rotations with and without Fracture:

Goring / Royal / Royal = 220 Damage and 309 Threat
Goring / Royal / Royal / Fracture = 220 Damage and 300 Threat
Goring / Halone / Royal = 211 Damage and 416 Threat
Goring / Halone / Royal / Fracture = 212 Damage and 396 Threat
Goring / Halone / Halone = 202 Damage and 522 Threat
Goring / Halone / Halone / Fracture = 204 Damage and 492 Threat

You can see that in any 9 GCD rotation which involves a Rage of Halone, you will SLIGHTLY increase the damage per GCD by inserting a fracture, but you'll greatly REDUCE the threat per GCD by doing so. If you're not doing the maximum damage rotation of Goring/Royal/Royal then you're needing either extra threat or keeping up the Halone debuff, and you can see from the values that it's going to be much much more efficient to just slip in some Goring/Halone/Royal combos in between your Goring/Royal/Royal ones and ignore fracture entirely, as you'll gain much more threat per GCD by doing this, and this should enable you to pull ahead in threat comfortably enough to then swap back to the optimal dps rotation.

There's one other reason too - if you're keeping up your Rage of Halone debuff... remember that this debuff lasts ONLY 20 SECONDS. If you have a 10 GCD rotation (ie, one that includes Fracture), and do only a single Rage of Halone in 10 GCDs, you'll have 20 seconds uptime and 4 seconds without Rage. If you use a 9 GCD rotation of Royal/Halone/Goring then this is 21.6 seconds and thus you only lose 0.6 seconds without the Halone Debuff. You actually need a 2.33 second GCD in order to have 100% Rage of Halone uptime with a 9 GCD rotation, but generally dropping Halone for 0.6 seconds is fine.

I guess you can probably say that Fracture has a use if you absolutely MUST have 100% Halone uptime but care more about damage than threat - in this case, doing a Goring / Halone / Fracture / Halone rotation will keep the Rage of Halone debuff up 100% with no gaps and do sliiiightly more damage than just Goring / Halone / Halone. But given the Halone debuff is 8-9% damage reduction only, I can't see this being viable. There's really no encounter in the game at 60 where I can see this rotation being useful (though of course, this is technically the optimal DPS rotation for all pre-60 content as this does the highest damage per GCD without having Royal Authority). The Rage of Halone debuff just isnt that useful - it's good in certain situations where you want to reduce specific attack damage, like applying it before a Blade dance/Heel on Thordan or when you've got a lot of A3 vuln stacks, but 100% uptime of the debuff isnt ever a requirement enough to justify dropping Royal Authorities from your rotation.

TLDR Rotations:
Goring / Halone / Royal = optimal mix of Damage, Threat and Mitigation.
Goring / Royal / Royal = maximum DPS.
Goring / Halone / Halone is for when all you care about is threat/mitigation.
Insert a Fracture as a 10th GCD if you're under level 60.

Also, as an aside, you mention Mercy Stroke - I assume you arent considering swapping between Mercy Stroke and Fracture on your crossclasses? Mercy Stroke, Foresight, Bloodbath and Stoneskin are ALWAYS your must-haves. If ever you put Fracture in for some reason, you'll have it in addition to those, probably swapping out Protect as Cure has no use past about level 20 (as this thread shows).

[Fernosaur]

I was looking into replacing Mercy Stroke with Fracture, since I have been only recently levelling WAR and thought it could boost overall damage. This was before I realized the good damage from Fracture was traited, which is why I came to the forum looking for a more definitive answer, which you've definitely provided!

In the end it looks like Fracture just gives an orphaned GCD that just messes with the overall rhythm of PLD's rotations, even more because at one point I always find it necessary to jump back into ShO for an additional boost in enmity gen mid-fight, which further screws things up a little bit with the one or two GCD lost from stance swaps.


However, Fracture miiight gain a little, more significant boost when paired with FoF, perhaps? Your maths make me think that keeping a 100% uptime on Fracture would most often become a sacrifice, wether of enmity or of damage, but perhaps by throwing it in every time FoF is active it could become more significant? I am not entirely sure if the DoT actually gains a damage buff from FoF, since it only boosts physical damage and the game can be quirky about some of that stuff. I would say yes, but I've never been a lab rat :P. If it does, however, it could work in the same way Fracture works in WAR's rotation (or so I hear), in which it's better to just use it in Berserk windows when you also have Maim up.


By the way, thanks a lot for taking the time and effort to write these super long and complex replies! I appreciate it a lot~

[Sapphidia]

I've heard a lot of people suggest that Fracture might be a DPS increase when used in FoF. My maths sort of suggest that... it's dependant on your skillspeed and probably isnt worth it, but could be a teeny tiny increase in some circumstances.

FoF lasts 30 seconds. With a 2.5 gcd you can get 12 GCDs into the duration - this is 4 full 3-part combos. The best way to juggle this is to pop it before your Goring Blade, then you get the Goring, two full Royal combos, another full goring blade combo, and the Fast + Savage of the following Royal Authority. With enough skillspeed you can get 13 GCDs in, and that would include the Royal Authority at the end of that combo. As soon as you reach enough skillspeed to get 13 GCDS into a Fight or Flight, Fracture is always going to be a DPS loss to use in it, because you can fit in the Goring Blade at the start, and then Royal/Royal/Goring/Royal combos afterwards. Fitting in a Fracture would drop either a 540 potency Goring Blade or a 340 potency Royal Authority (or 260 Halone) which are all higher potency than 220.

If however you dont have enough skillspeed to fit 13 GCDs into a Fight or Flight, and can only fit 12, the best way to do this is pop the FoF before the Riot Blade of the Goring. Then you get Riot + Goring, two full Royal Authorities, a full Goring blade combo, and a Fast Blade. Then, you can swap the Fast Blade out for a Fracture.

In this case, you gain 30% of the -difference- between Fast Blade and Fracture (220-150 is 70, and 30% of 70 is 21), so you're gaining 21 potency doing this, as we already established that putting Fracture into a Goring/Royal/Royal DPS rotation is no difference in DPS. This 21 potency drops to about 12 potency if you have Slashing Debuff up from a Warrior/Ninja. Now factor in that if you have low skill speed and cant fit in 13 GCDs, that means your skillspeed is low enough that you'll get a noticeable gap in your Goring Blades... which can result in a 40 potency loss from a missing tick.

So basically, Fracture is worthless to use here because you should either be going Riot Blade -> Fight or Flight -> Goring Blade -> four full combos -> FoF falls off... or your skillspeed is so low that inserting a Fracture will lose as much DPS from a gap in your Goring Blade ticks that it would gain from being boosted by FoF.

To say nothing that adding in a Fracture also increases your TP drain.

Also second question - you said you were considering swapping Mercy Stroke out for Fracture, but that implies you feel there's some other cross class skill better than both. Foresight, Bloodbath, Stoneskin are all great of course, but what else are you using that you feel is better than Mercy Stroke? Cure and Protect are both garbage, and if you include Fracture in your cross classes you should be dropping one of those and never dropping Mercy Stroke.

[Fernosaur]

I've found uses for Protect in my particular group, which is why I have it around. I know it's not really good, but I also find most of PLD's cross class skills very.... udnerwhelming, save for Foresight and Stoneskin, of course. Bloodbath works a little bit, but since PLD doesn't have directly hard hitting attacks it never seems to make much of a difference, specially since we don't have an AoE HP regen like Overpower, or a massive hit a-la Fell Cleave. I am sure it has its uses, but none that I've found necessary. I'm all ears, though. In any case, it's nothing that can't be swapped around depending on circumstance or which fight I'm going into, I suppose~

[Malicewolf]

I'm really really curious. Does anyone have the field commander set here as well as lvl 60 healing accessories and a lvl 60 PLD? I know that's a lot of circumstances, however, I haven't been able to get enough time to get through PvP content as there's still so much I want to do outside of it and spending 45+ min in queue just isn't on my to-do list yet. Based on what I could test around, I found that cure is pretty close to a 1:1 ratio with your mind stat (like i said before, I think it's actually 1.2:1). But I REALLY want to see what maximizing the mind stat on a PLD can produce simply out of curiosity. By no means is the stat lose in VIT or STR worth the cures, but the curiosity in me is dying to know how much maximum mind build can cure!

[Malicewolf]

So, i'm double posting because of the time lapse. But I got curious and no one answered me. So I just did what I could based on what I have. After testing things out, I found that the ratio is actually closer to 1.34 per mind stat. With my base mind stat of 217, I pulled out 290 heals on avg. I decided to see what the healing accessories I had on me could pull off. I had accessories ranging from ilvl 160-185. This brought me up to 394 mind. With this, I had heals of 522 on avg. Not bad (not great, but not bad). Popping convalescence boosted it quite nicely and with crits, i'd hit 1000+ heals.

So now that I have a better ratio #, i decided to play with some numbers. All eso healing accessories gives you +235 mind. On top of my base of 217, this gives us 452 mind, putting us at an estimated 605 avg cure. But this makes up for an odd tank as you have the STR of a VIT tank, but the hp of a STR tank. And now you have a meh cure (but we all knew this wasn't going to work out haha. I just wanted to see the numbers).

So lastly, I decided to take a look at the Field Commander set again. This gives an additional +245 mind. With full healing eso accessories and a base of 217, this puts us at 697 mind. This gives us avg cures of 934. That's actually not too bad. And the interesting thing about the Field Commander set is that it spreads out your stats across all areas. This set is only ilvl 160 though and it's stats are right in the range of the avg ilvl 160 armor aside from the actual defense stat (which is kind of a big deal...). This defensive stat takes you down to something around ilvl 70 armor. But it's got quite a lot of magical defense in comparison (224) which is about equivalent to ilvl 130 gear.

Honestly, I'm a little tempted to try getting the Field Commander set now and using this as a lower dungeon set where my stats will get max sync'd regardless. Definitely not viable for end game content, but it may be fun for any lvl 50 and below.

Anywho, just thought I'd share what I found ^^ Happy Tanking ya'll!

[Kosmos992k]

A very interesting post Malicewolf, sounds very much like a whole lot of fun can be had using the field commander's set, in the lower dungeons. I've said to my friends that if you are behind the progression curve, the game becomes a lot more horizontal, and this pretty much reinforces that idea for me. I will have to keep mey eyes peeled for that set as I move forwards.

[Ashkendor]

A very interesting post Malicewolf, sounds very much like a whole lot of fun can be had using the field commander's set, in the lower dungeons. I've said to my friends that if you are behind the progression curve, the game becomes a lot more horizontal, and this pretty much reinforces that idea for me. I will have to keep mey eyes peeled for that set as I move forwards.

You have to win 100 games of Seal Rock: Seize to get the full Field Commander set.

[Kotemon]

Paladin + cure = Nope.

It's likely a legacy carryover from how jobs were modeled in 1.x off FFXI. Paladin doesn't have the mind for cure's formula. Not to mention WHM also has a trait that boosts its effectiveness. That's why Clemency and Equilibrium both have 1200 potency, when compared to cure II (650) and Tetragrammaton (700)

[Malicewolf]

Paladin + cure = Nope.

It's likely a legacy carryover from how jobs were modeled in 1.x off FFXI. Paladin doesn't have the mind for cure's formula. Not to mention WHM also has a trait that boosts its effectiveness. That's why Clemency and Equilibrium both have 1200 potency, when compared to cure II (650) and Tetragrammaton (700)

Not arguing with you here about whether or not it's efficient. It was just curiosity to see what a maximized mind PLD could put out. And the max +mind stats happen to be associated with the Field Commander Set (which yes... is hard to get as it's a PvP acquired set) which happens to give you equivalent ilvl 160 stats (which for most ARR dungeons, should be plenty honestly).

And regardless, I would bet you never thought a PLD could hit 900+ cure's and still be able to tank decently. Cause Clemency isn't available at lvl 50 sync'd dungeons. Now of course, sync'd, you probably won't be hitting 900 cures are your stats are all down, but whatever the sync is down to anyways, you're cure's potency % wise in comparison to health will still be decent. Not to mention, it'll cost a crap ton less. Not saying it's worth it. Don't get the wrong idea. Just interesting getting to see what can be done and to my surprise, find it's actually not bad