PLD highest DPS tank single target

[Lyth]

I have to say, even scrutinising the fastest clears on Midas Savage at our present gear levels, there's still a surprisingly high tank stance uptime divided between the two tanks in A6S and A8S, so there's actually a lot of potential room for improvement. It's not simply a matter of turning off tank stance and pressing a six button rotation. Active mitigation is still important to keep you out of stance. Either way, I suspect that the PLDs who are pushing the envelope on the job's dps probably aren't the ones complaining about its damage output in single target.

I also note that a number of the fastest clears don't necessarily have a NIN present. It's certainly nice to have a NIN, and you should certainly take advantage of their skills when present. But by no means should you ever be reliant on another class in order to perform one of the minimum competency checks of your role.

Gearing for Parry is only bad because it requires you to give up more useful stats with better scaling. Block and Parry are not intrinsically bad. There is a very obvious difference in the total damage taken in a fight with physical autos when you compare PLD with any other tank. This becomes more pronounced the longer you spend actively tanking, and is no small part due to having a shield. It may be difficult to appreciate this in the short term due to stochastic effects, but when averaged over a large number of attacks, these "random" procs become much more reliable. There was a really good update to our understanding of block and parry on reddit earlier this week. It's probably worth checking out if you can dig it up.

[Sarcatica]

I have to say, even scrutinising the fastest clears on Midas Savage at our present gear levels, there's still a surprisingly high tank stance uptime divided between the two tanks in A6S and A8S, so there's actually a lot of potential room for improvement. It's not simply a matter of turning off tank stance and pressing a six button rotation. Active mitigation is still important to keep you out of stance. Either way, I suspect that the PLDs who are pushing the envelope on the job's dps probably aren't the ones complaining about its damage output in single target.

I also note that a number of the fastest clears don't necessarily have a NIN present. It's certainly nice to have a NIN, and you should certainly take advantage of their skills when present. But by no means should you ever be reliant on another class in order to perform one of the minimum competency checks of your role.

Gearing for Parry is only bad because it requires you to give up more useful stats with better scaling. Block and Parry are not intrinsically bad. There is a very obvious difference in the total damage taken in a fight with physical autos when you compare PLD with any other tank. This becomes more pronounced the longer you spend actively tanking, and is no small part due to having a shield. It may be difficult to appreciate this in the short term due to stochastic effects, but when averaged over a large number of attacks, these "random" procs become much more reliable. There was a really good update to our understanding of block and parry on reddit earlier this week. It's probably worth checking out if you can dig it up.

In A6S, the only phase that is "useless" to DPS is when Brawler (2nd boss) enters phase 2 and mostly it's a running session to either DPS balls or fetch green balls in tank stances. Tank stances are used everywhere else for maintaining aggro start. Swindler also has all the adds killed without LB, also a huge padding and lastly using LB on Vortexer which you will only see less than 1 1/2 cycle of Vortexer's mechanics.

A8S has a lot of situations where it's still kinda iffy to tank in DPS stance (MT in 4 robots phase when you tank both Vortexer and Swindler and OT fetching green balls, after 1st and before 2nd intermission where you take more damage from the Brute Justice), and also that there are a shit tonnes of "downtimes" where you don't have anything to DPS so you are better off in tank stance (1st, 2nd intermission).

Everywhere else? Get early aggro and tank in DPS stance to DPS.

There are only a few exceptions to NIN not being present in the speed runs of Midas. In the majority of the parses, you see NIN in that kind of run, clearly there has to be something going on?

I mentioned somewhere that Parry is not THAT bad, but you have to relate it to the other stats in the game and by far Parry is the most underwhelming secondary. I saw the update on the Parry calculation on Reddit. It was interesting but nothing new, the fact that Parry still sucks and it sucks even more with PLD. Parry Princesses anyone? Parry needs rework to be on par with other stats and until then, Parry remains to be the only secondary that is actively shunned by people and that's the harsh truth.