Can anyone give me some PLD tips?

[Yawnie]

That's why we PLD stay in Shield Oath when tanking multiple targets. We expect people won't be playing nice ( attacking different targets). In this situation Flash,Riot Blade combo, and Circle of Scorn (CoS) are our best friends.

We only go Sword Oath only if we are sure that the enmity generated by dps are really low.

Sadly I'm only lvl 30 right now :c

[Februs]

5% Strength debuff on a single mob who's doing all of 500 damage to you isn't worthy of note for its utility to mitigation.

What ... are you talking about?

Firstly, Rage of Halone is a 10% strength debuff after level 40, not 5%. Secondly, where are you pulling this magical number of 500 total damage from? The average mob in level 60 content hits for roughly 1200-2500 damage per auto attack (that's not including crits and non-auto attacks). The idea that mobs are only doing a total of 500 damage is a laughable understatement. It's more likely that you're mitigating 200-500 dmg every 2 seconds from a single target. Spread that across multiple targets (say, 4 or more) and you're looking at mitigated damage in the thousands over the course of your average mob pull.

Further, you're way off the mark on Goring Blade's application. GB hits for its full potency if, and only if, it is allowed to tick for it's entire duration. The full duration of GB is 24 seconds. The average Dps group in DF can clear a mob of 3 within that time (and yes, I have timed it using buff timers). Throw in a few Flashes, and the odds of GB going for it's full tick is very low, unless you happen to have very slow Dps team. Further, those 2-3 Flashes that you recommend blow off RoH's combined potency in favour of a whoping ZERO dps over 5 seconds. All this together means that the application of Goring Blade within mob pulls is almost always a potency loss over Royal Authority or even RoH.

The only thing you're even remotely close to being accurate about is utilizing SwO during boss pulls, and even then you're overstating by quite a bit. With comparable gear, there is no way in hell that you are holding hate on a boss over a competent Dps without using RoH at least once, especially not in a raid. If you are, then you're dps team are definitely below the average. Flash is not an option either, because it's a Dps loss of 100% in all single target fights ... so, what's the magical method here? Because the math certainly doesn't add up.

[Ebonwings]

Sadly I'm only lvl 30 right now :c

Don't worry at least you have the basic knowledge of tanking post 50. It's easy after you runs a few dungeons and get used to it.

[Ragnorak]

What ... are you talking about?

Lmao man I'm glad you said something cuz I literally got T R I G G E R E D reading that. Smh just Negligent

[JackFross]

Because the math certainly doesn't add up.

Lemme just...

1. RoH in trash pulls. It takes 27s to mitigate approximately 0.6 attacks from 1 mob in a 40s+ encounter. I never said it was 0 mitigation. I said it was "not worthy of note for its mitigation" in a multi-target fight, and I stand by that. It's just a waste of time. If you instead swap from RoH spam/cycle to GB spam/cycle, you can speed up encounters by ~3-4s (it's a difference of +300-400 dps!), which happens to stop each mob from using 1 attack that they would have used if I stood there spamming my hate combo (a total of 3 attacks for 3 mobs!). Which, as a point of discussion, would take approximately 42s to actually mitigate 0.6 attacks from 3 different mobs (a total of 1.8 attacks!). There's some math for you. I /did/ misrepresent the amount of damage a mob does, but none of that impacts the above discussion, which is true regardless how much damage they're doing.

2. GB does not need 24s of time to be useful. It only needs 6s to be more effective than RA in its place. RA only wins in potency if GB is already up on the target you're attacking. GB requires approximately 13s of time to be more effective than RA, including lead-up. Spreading GB to two targets requires approximately 20s to be effective. Three targets is approximately 28s. If you start with 2 Flashes - or even 3 - you're looking at a window of 33-36s of time in which using three GB is effective compared to using three RA. And, as I've said, most mob encounters take 40s or longer, even with competent dps. In a 3-target encounter, I'll GB 1 > GB 2 > GB 3 > RA 1 > RA 2 > and by then everything is usually dead - sometimes it needs a bit more after. With FoF, this rotation can hit upwards of 1000 dps against 3 mobs. RoH in the same circumstance is gonna be sub 700.

3. I hold solidly against BLM bursting for upwards of 2k with a single ShO RoH in my opener, not buffed with FoF. My opener is always FB>SB>RoH>FB>RB>SwO>FoF>GB>etc. I have never had issues. I did a run today with a BLM doing 1500+ on the bosses. I used 2 RoH in the first two boss fights and 1 in the last, compared to 8-8-12 RA combos used in the same encounters and 6-5-7 Goring Blade combos. The BLM was never higher than 80% on the aggro bar. But yeah, you're right. I'm clearly lying or encountering "below average dps." I've done the same with DRGs pulling 1500-1600. It's not novel or exciting or difficult.


You can talk about math not adding up all you want, but it clearly does if it's working.


Also, because your reading comprehension skills are apparently completely garbage, let me try to separate my two statements I made regarding Rage of Halone for you.

1. When you're max level on Paladin with good (i220+) gear, you should use few more than 3 Rage of Halone combos in every level 60 dungeon run you do. Once at the start of each boss if you plan to be in Sword Oath, and from there only used during said boss battles to replace a Royal Authority when you need extra hate. Beyond that, you should never press the button.

^This is completely accurate. As explained above.

2. Also with Shield Oath active, you should never ever need to hit RoH to maintain hate on a dungeon boss. Ever. I don't even need it to hold raid bosses if I tank in Shield Oath!

^This is also completely accurate. I have never once, in all my time playing on Paladin at 60, had to use Rage of Halone for purposes of aggro management while playing as the main tank in Shield Oath. (Sword Oath is another animal entirely, which I never once referenced in regard to my "never use it" discussion here, in case you weren't following!) The only time I ever did was during A3S, when the WHM I was running with was pulling 60-70% overheal in phase 2 and tearing the boss off of me. In the words of my raid leader regarding such a situation: "[That WHM] had more aggro than Eve. No one has more aggro than Eve." - referring to a WHM sub they had once, compared to the hate I crap out with my DRG opener/sustain, which regularly causes hate issues when my DRK tank drops Grit (since he eschews Power Slash) but strangely is never even close to an issue when he's in Grit, despite never using Power Slash.

{Hmm...}

[Violette]

@jack the only part of your math that bothers me is the final example: Is that a blm with or without qs? Because i understand that with qs the blm would never pull off of you, but without qs it'd be a bit more touch and go during the second combo.

[JackFross]

@jack the only part of your math that bothers me is the final example: Is that a blm with or without qs? Because i understand that with qs the blm would never pull off of you, but without qs it'd be a bit more touch and go during the second combo.

Oh, good catch, I didn't even think about that. He used QS on the first two, but not against Kuribu.

[Yawnie]

Don't worry at least you have the basic knowledge of tanking post 50. It's easy after you runs a few dungeons and get used to it.

yeah, hopefully I'll get better at it.

If I lose enmity to one mob I start freaking out lol :x

[Ebonwings]

yeah, hopefully I'll get better at it.

If I lose enmity to one mob I start freaking out lol :x

If that happens, just remain calm,use Provoke and Rage of Halone to get the mob back. If the mob is dying soon, there's no point in wasting provoke. The rule of thumb for a PLD is, if you are not sure of whether you are losing aggro or not, just use Flash. Also use CoS when it's ready. Tanking is a little similar to healing except you spend most of your time eyeing the aggro bar and your own HP.

[Februs]

Lemme just...

I understand what you're getting at here, but you're looking at a massive trade off for a tiny return. I was using a figure of speech when I was talking about "the math," but if we're going to get into the nitty-gritty of it, then I'll give you some rough napkin math to show you where I'm coming from.

The debuff is 10% for a duration of of 20 seconds, applied immediately upon application. The application of RoH takes 5 seconds. Going off of your example of a 40s encounter with roughly 1 auto attack every 2 seconds, that accounts for 20 auto attacks from a single mob over the course of the encounter (not including stuns, crits, direct attacks, unknown variables, etc). With a standard pull rotation of 1 Flash and 1 CoS, you're looking at a 2 second delay on your initial RoH, pushing it to 7 seconds. That accounts for 3 auto attacks that are un-mitigated on a single mob, followed by 17 auto-attacks that are mitigated. On the second mob, at an additional 5 seconds (12 in total), that works out to 15 mitigated attacks from the second mob. The third mob has the lowest return, at 17 -19 (if you throw in an extra Flash, for example) seconds. That works out to 11 mitigated auto attacks. Spread across all 3 targets, that's 42 mitigated physical attacks (again, not including direct attacks) out of a total of 60 (which can vary dramatically depending on the size of the pull and the type of enemies within it).

In terms of sheer volume, you're mitigating more than half of the auto-attacks directed at you by using RoH, not including any additional attacks that are on top of that rate. Compare that to shaving off "1.8 attacks!" or "3 attacks for 3 mobs!" Unless the damage caused by those 3 attacks exceeds the total mitigated amount of the immediate effect caused by RoH upon application, then the benefit to increasing your dps output is clearly outweighed by the thousands of hit points you saved just by applying RoH (which also increases your healer's dps time, if they are feeling inclined to be awesome). The only positive exchange here is speeding things along by an insignificant amount ("~3-4 seconds," as you said) for the sake of clearing the dungeon a whopping 1 minute faster than the average. I suppose, if you really have to pee that might be favourable ...

The point is, this is not a black and white equation. Is it doable? Sure. I've run entire dungeons in a very similar manner. There's even very few and far between times in which I'd say it's the favourable way to go, especially if you get that special Dps group who are so painfully slow that you start to face-plant your keyboard. However, that doesn't change the fact that we're still talking about dropping a widely underestimated amount of mitigation (literally thousands of hit points over the course of one instance) in favour of an abysmally tiny increase in dps ("300-400," as you said). It's certainly not something I'd recommend right off the bat to fresh Pld's who are asking for advice. I could get into further detail with GB and RA, but that's more napkin math than I'm willing to commit to, and it amounts to no more than peanuts in the bucket; so, to each their own with that one.

As for your boss rotation, that was admittedly a misunderstanding ... Though it was not caused by my reading comprehension being "complete garbage" so much as your inaccurate rhetoric and composition. You wrote, and I'm quoting here "with Shield Oath active, you should never ever need to hit RoH to maintain hate." Which, at first glance, indicates that you never use RoH at all, even in your opener (hence the words "never ever"). I think you can understand how someone would think that a statement like this is wildly misleading and flat out false, because it is. Proof of that is in your very next post you stated, "My opener is always FB>SB>RoH." That's quite the jump from "never ever" using it to "always" opening with it, but, regardless, a misunderstanding is a misunderstanding. Showing your opening has cleared it up.

As for Dkr's, that's a bit trickier. I don't remember the exact values that run behind their opener, but if I remember correctly a fully buffed C&S opener generates more enmity than a bonus applied to a Power Slash combo. They get a lot of additional hate from their oGCD's, so it's not abnormal to be able to maintain hate without the use of Power Slash while in Grit. Someone did a full breakdown of how it worked months ago, but I honestly don't remember which thread it was in ...