The Bottom Feeders: Moves You Never Use and Why (Ver. 2)

[bounddreamer]

As a PLD off tanking A4, I can stoneskin myself and take all the orbs on one side while running full str. It's pretty useful.

[technole]

As a PLD off tanking A4, I can stoneskin myself and take all the orbs on one side while running full str. It's pretty useful.

Better off just popping convo and other cooldowns like Rampart/Sentinel to eat, Clemency if you must. Use bloodbath and minor cooldowns only for containment.

[jinx_nanamaru]

I don't know why people are trying to defend stoneskin.

What if the fight is going well, nobody needs heals at the moment, there is no need for you to DPS, and you have full mana? Wouldn't casting it be better than not?

What if you know a high-damage attack is coming up, you have time to cast it, and you have mana to spare? Why not cast it to help reduce the probability of losing someone?

What if you're in Leviathan Extreme, and you need to heal the tank that has Briny Veil? Sure, you can use Regen to heal without receiving the debuff, but it won't be enough on its own, so Stoneskin is a perfectly reasonable way to additionally reduce damage on the tail tank without taking on any stacks from Briny Veil.

Stoneskin is not a healing replacement, but there are times when you can use it effectively. Just because it costs more and blocks less damage than a heal is no reason to eschew it entirely.

[technole]

WHM Stoneskin Pre-3.0 was good for a lot of things, and often times necessary. Today, the 10% version for the cost of a Cure II it's pretty much on the low-end of efficiency now. Mainly for covering weaknesses, or if you have an extra GCD to spare. WHM is mostly out of the mitigation business in-exchange for many instant heals and allowing AST to fit in the fold.

[Februs]

WHM Stoneskin Pre-3.0 was good for a lot of things, and often times necessary. Today, the 10% version for the cost of a Cure II it's pretty much on the low-end of efficiency now. Mainly for covering weaknesses, or if you have an extra GCD to spare. WHM is mostly out of the mitigation business in-exchange for many instant heals and allowing AST to fit in the fold.

For Whm's, yes. This is true. However, I still think Stone Skin is a very useful ability. It just happens to see more use from Pld's than it does from healers, at the moment.

Pld's can use Stone Skin to maintain their god awful Tp draw, but the main utility of the move is in how it allows the Pld to work with the healer. They can self-buff for Tank Busters, AoE's, or Cleaves instead of the healer. Self-buffing allows them to plan their defensive CD's more efficiently, because they know when they'll have Stone Skin instead of being at the mercy of the healer. They can also conserve defensive CD's for the same reason. As off-tank, a Pld can save the healer Mp by buffing the MT with Stone skin. They can also save squishier Dps from taking unnecessary damage, or save the life of a player who stands in too much stupid, without having the healer spend additional time and Mp.

Stone skin also balances well with Clemency. Depending on how scripted the fight is, a Pld can plan their Stone Skin's or Clemency's to completely free up the healer from healing one player (usually the Pld). A Pld who takes full utility of Stone Skin and Clemency often requires no action from the healer at all, giving them more time to Dps or heal someone else.

There's no doubt that Stone Skin took a huge (and extremely unnecessary) nerf after 3.0 for Whm's, but it's definitely a useful skill. It's even still useful for the healers, it's just that they see more use out of it when they're not the one actually casting it. Though, even healers can use it to extend their Dps time in Trials, Raids and dungeons if they plan it well. It's a commonly employed tactic during tight Dps checks in which it might be necessary for the healer to chip in, especially if they pair it with a Scholar's mitigation buffs.

[Ersahi]

snip

So it's "ok" for levi. The glorious use case of stoneskin.

I'm curious what content you're doing that you have full mp, no one requires any healing, and there's no DPS to do. That sounds like a time where stoneskin II would be the better case.

The entire tankbuster argument seems weak to me. All the heavensward fights are about tanks managing cooldowns to handle damage, and healers need to either be healing, DPSing, or managing mp. None of those support stoneskin use.

About the best use case I can make is that you screwed up and used clerics stance at the wrong time, and you're only tools that are full strength are benediction and stoneskin.

[technole]

No, PLD stoneskin is just as bad even at lower levels which deprives them from flash use. Second, it's not a real cooldown. The long cast time also means they can misjudge a busting cast bar mechanic that needed an actual cooldown and end up killing themselves because they didn't use the right skill.

PLD stoneskin utility is only there is nothing else to do, like the boss is away like Thordan EX and Ultimate End to help someone weak. Otherwise the PLD should be hitting the boss to keep hate and keep DPS going. Even extended Clemency use is subpar with it's longer cast time that a healer can restore faster. You only get 2 casts of that skill anyway with it's huge MP cost.

[Februs]

Snip

That's not actually true. Firstly, Pld TP draws are extremely bad. The have no active way of restoring Tp besides using Mp abilities. Flash does zero dmg and all bosses are immune to blind, so that's a useless waste of a GCD (assuming you have solid aggro, which you should). The only other options is Stone Skin and Clemency.

Further, Flash should never, ever, under any circumstances, be used in excess in a boss fight. The Pld rotation does not have space for a wasted GCD when fully optimizing their Dps, and it has zero utility. Even if you're out of Tp and cannot maintain your rotation, you might as well stand still for 2.5 seconds and do nothing, because that's basically what Flash does. At least Stone Skin and Clemency have the potential to actually do something in that time, and neither of them interrupt your regular Buff rotation because you should still be using your buffs at planned intervals regardless.

A lot of people say that the cast bars make these two skills ineffective for Pld (and, granted, a swiftcast/surecast would be a nice QoL adjustment), but most people who say this are simply not using them right. The only excuse for having an interrupted cast bar is poor timing which comes from a lack of experience. I almost never have my cast bars interrupted as Pld, and when I do it's 100% my fault for not paying close enough attention.

Most casts of Stone Skin or Clemency are planned for parts of the fight in which the cast cannot be interrupted, and, advanced Pld's can time the cast of clemency to go off during the magic pixel of a tank buster AoE (which is actually a lot more forgiving than most people think). Given the extremely high heal potency of Clemency, I've gone through tank busters in which the healer did not have to heal me at all because my Hp was instantly restored to full immediately after the hit. It's extremely difficult to do, and takes a lot of practice, but it is possible. You can also do this several times, because Shelltron and Riot blade (which is part of the Pld MT and OT rotation) provides stretch Mp to allot for as many casts as you might need. You actually get 3 casts before you're dry, 4 on a stretch. Not sure why you'd need 4 though, because you never spam use it. Like every move in the Pld kit, it's use must be planned. Stone Skin is the same. If you plan it correctly, you can save the party a lot of extra trouble at minimal cost to your Dps (if any).

[technole]

Stoneskin is not a cooldown rotation. If you did such during the Turn 13 pre-echo days to try to "make up" for a real cooldown during the Flatten cast you would have been crushed to low HP and then die to the following three flare breaths. It required a strict cooldown rotation depending on first phase DPS. Rampart/Foresight, Hallowed Ground, and Sentinel. Stoneskin was the White Mage's job with the 9% buff to land before Flatten hit for extra buffer. If you had done any coil pre-echo, you'd realize how dangerous it is to self-cast a stoneskin over scripted cooldown use. It wasn't just one hit you had to mitigate.

I even get annoyed by the PLDs tanking the knight adds in Thordan EX thinking they are a healer with their two cast skills because that is just more time their knight is still up before the switch, and even not hitting the darn thing while in Sword Oath.

Flash I said for low-level, because you don't have a large MP pool to draw from and if you have to pickup adds because of being careless with stoneskins all over the place in a short period of time, that is totally on the PLD. You don't regenerate MP as fast at low level.

There is even a reason why WAR does cross-class flash in many instances even with Overpower It's because in the chance of having to pick-up adds when pacified there is still a way to run through them and not be helpless for those seconds while they munch on the White Mage.

[Februs]

Stoneskin is not a cooldown rotation. If you did such during the Turn 13 pre-echo days to try to "make up" for a real cooldown ...

I'm not sure where you're getting this idea from, because I never said that Stone Skin somehow "makes up" for a Pld's real CD's. I actually said that the Pld Defensive kit is planned. It's all micro managed. You don't just stop using other Def CD's because you have a Stone Skin up. You use it with your CD's. That being said, which CD's you use will change and can be planned around the extra mitigation of Stone Skin.

Foresight, for example, is super weak and is almost always used with another CD. However, if you couple it with Stone Skin for a single hit TB it's more than enough to cover the dmg without wasting another CD that could be used later. I would never advocate using Stone Skin in place of scripted CD uses. I would recommend using it with scripted CD uses for the most efficient mitigation you can get. It's basically stretch or bonus mitigation for any Pld who actually knows how to time the cast correctly.

Secondly, Pld Dps does not make or break the Dps check in Thordan EX. They should be contributing to the check, certainly (and stance dancing accordingly), but if the Dps can't make the check because the Pld took 2 seconds to cast a Stone Skin then the problem is not with the Pld's Dps. It's with the Dps. That being said, a Pld should not be using SS during that phase of the fight anyway. It's not required, and SS has limited use on a multi-hit tank buster like Holy Blade Dance. The only time I've ever needed to self buff with SS (or even heal up with Clemency) is if the healer was asleep at the wheel. At that point, you're happy to have the skill, but it's not something a good Pld would normally work into that stage of the fight. Knowing when and where to use the move is important.

Lastly, Pld's cannot really use Stone Skin in low level dungeons, so I'm still not sure what you're going on about here. Pld's get access to SS around lvl 34. Even if they got it earlier, none of the early level dungeons or trials have any instances in which on the fly buffing with SS is useful. In dungeons, SS is a pre-buff skill for planning your pull. It basically allows you to run from one set of mobs to the next without having to worry about how much dmg you're taking in between. No Pld in their right mind would try to use SS during the actual fight, because Pld enmity is too low and, honestly, low level dungeon mobs hit like wet noodles.

Maybe you've just run into some really crappy Pld's, but the downsides you're listing for Pld's cross-classing stone skin are ways in which the move should never be used in the first place. Like I said before, there's nothing willy-nilly about the way a Pld should be using the move, and they most certainly should not be using it as a replacement for their defensive CD's. Like all of their moves, they should be micromanaging it's use to fit in and work with their defensive kit. It's the same for any tank, really. They try to find synergy in their kit for which moves work with which and in what circumstances. The only move a Pld would ever use alone is Hallowed Ground (for obvious reasons).