PLD highest DPS tank single target

[Lambdafish]

WAR - Highest DPS, Least Mitigation, Unreliable Mitigation, Medium Support
DRK - Middle DPS, Equal Mitigation (Magical), Reliable Mitigation, Limited Support
PLD - Lowest DPS, Equal Mitigation (Physical), Most reliable Mitigation, Extreme Support

The problem with this is that the different categories are not equivilent, and having better damage is almost always better than better support. Abilities like divine veil and cover are great to have but will not be used very often, whereas better damage is always used, this is why people want more damage for PLD. My point was simply that fixing this issue should follow PLDs design rather than cloning abilities from the other tanks.

[Sarcatica]

WAR - Highest DPS, Least Mitigation, Unreliable Mitigation, Medium Support
DRK - Middle DPS, Equal Mitigation (Magical), Reliable Mitigation, Limited Support
PLD - Lowest DPS, Equal Mitigation (Physical), Most reliable Mitigation, Extreme Support

WAR has the "least" mitigation because of how people play. If tanks are forced to be in tank stance, WAR will come ahead due to frequent IB + Infuriate. It's a trade off of either dealing huge DPS or mitigate damage.

[Sarcatica]

@Sarcatica: Autos and cleaves are a non-issue if you're tanking in stance, or if you're doing content outside of the current raid tier. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the rate of incoming damage is below that of the passive healing that you get from regen + fairy. If the rate of incoming damage is higher, however, you either have to heal more actively or mitigate more actively. In particular, eating an unmitigated cleave out of stance can potentially be dangerous, and it's generally the follow-up auto that kills you. You could theoretically offload all this onto the healers and only pop cooldowns on tankbusters if you're overgeared enough, but it costs us less resources to be competent then it costs them to compensate for us. Every little bit helps, and blocks and parry procs fit into this category, even though we don't gear to maximize this.

Not every group has a NIN. If you're on PLD, chances are that one of your melee slots is already locked down for MNK. There are situations where you will need to be able to adapt to not having a NIN in the party.

The preferred tank class for veteran raiders tends to be whichever class they spend the most time practising. With the most recent set of changes, the potential damage output for each job is close enough that if you're skilled enough on PLD, it's probably a bigger loss to the raid for you to swap. Swapping to DRK will not magically improve your dps if you're struggling with this to begin with. DRK has a tendency to amplify people's mistakes and make them a whole lot more visible. It's much better to be a good PLD than to be a bad DRK, and if anything, players tend to vastly overestimate their competence on related jobs to their main that they play less frequently.

Regular DM works for most of the cases that you listed (its main use in A5S is for the shock therapy sets that follow chimera/pigs and its main use in A7S is for the sizzlespark sets from the end of second jails onwards). DADM is more for those situations where, based on your HP threshold, you know that you have to choose between turning on stance or activating DA to survive the next hit. The Magicked Mark that follows the double Bio-Arithmaticks when tanking Swindler out of stance is an example of this. You can trivialise the damage by turning on stance, but it costs you MP and dps. Eating it out of stance will often kill you, especially if the heal timing happens to be slightly off. DADM is a worthwhile investment here, even though it costs you MP to do so.

TBH tanks are already doing DPS from the pull to end. That just depends on how good/familiar your group is. Parry is trash, there are a lot of datas supporting that.

NIN is not essential but you are foolish to not get one.

There are situations where swaps are part of the strats you do or it makes it easier for healers to heal through.

[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.

[Lyth]

It's actually not during Brawler. You don't need to be in tank stance for any of Brawler, least of all during orb phase when there are no stacks and the incoming tank damage is at the nadir of the entire fight. The only reason that I can see why you'd do this is if you're planning on letting one of your tanks go afk for that section to take a stretch break. I suppose speedruns can get tiring.

The bottom line is this: tank dps is about understanding the interplay between the defensive requirements of the fight and your need to maximise your damage output. Your defensive and offensive capabilities are intertwined. It has much less to do with complex rotations and a lot more to do with understanding patterns of incoming damage. If a player has an issue with with PLD dps in single target, chances are it's because they're not taking full advantage of PLD's superior physical defence and versatile toolkit to maximise their time out of tank stance. You can't be overcautious and still expect to do respectable dps.

Multi-target, of course, is a completely different story. My condolences.

[Sarcatica]

If a player has an issue with with PLD dps in single target

Reminds me of OT SwO PLDs in DFs doing MT's DPS (600-800) in tank stance. Can't SMOrc enough.

[Ryahask]

The problem with this is that the different categories are not equivalent, and having better damage is almost always better than better support. Abilities like divine veil and cover are great to have but will not be used very often, whereas better damage is always used, this is why people want more damage for PLD. My point was simply that fixing this issue should follow PLDs design rather than cloning abilities from the other tanks.

Actually fight design is the issue as opposed to the categories listed. Non-instant defensive support plays a limited role in fights as it's simply unnecessary, it's a crutch - not a mechanical necessity. This is partly due to the design of fights and partly due to Job design, in that only 2 Jobs have significant defensive cool-downs which aren't and as such they cannot be required.

I agree that PLD's should have more distinction, but I think that about every Job. Despite liking FF14 there's one area which is frankly atrocious and that's the level of homogenization present in every role. However, I personally don't agree that PLD's require buffs at this point.

WAR has the "least" mitigation because of how people play. If tanks are forced to be in tank stance, WAR will come ahead due to frequent IB + Infuriate. It's a trade off of either dealing huge DPS or mitigate damage.

What's relevant in in mitigation with Warrior is the reliability. Effectively all tanks have equal mitigation, but reliability is important. WAR's defensive CDs compete for resources with WAR's offensive CDs. This is untrue of the other two tanks. A WAR having to emphasize mitigation loses a substantial portion of their DPS, far more than a DRK or PLD doing so. This is all while requiring very precise timing, which even among good Warriors leads to massive numbers of wipes, and having to hold back resources on a constant basis. To give you a basic example of this - Warriors tend to have a difficult time managing the Serpent (no legs) add in Nidhogg Ex as most players don't time busters and to survive the second stack safely requires IB + Storm's Path + Vengeance, the third (if DPS is low) requires Holmgang.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting WAR is weak - not even close. My point is that people have a very optimistic view of what WAR can accomplish, the reality is a great deal less significant - unless the fight allows. Content where WAR can stay in Deliverance is an issue; that's where WAR starts to creep ahead of other tanks. Unfortunately there are a large number of fights designed in this manner, or with incredibly easy to predict timing which facilitates stance swapping. I want more tanks to see the spotlight than just WAR, but I hope SE accomplishes it through improving fight design rather than buffs which will likely leave one or more tank behind.

[Sarcatica]

What's relevant in in mitigation with Warrior is the reliability. Effectively all tanks have equal mitigation, but reliability is important. WAR's defensive CDs compete for resources with WAR's offensive CDs. This is untrue of the other two tanks. A WAR having to emphasize mitigation loses a substantial portion of their DPS, far more than a DRK or PLD doing so. This is all while requiring very precise timing, which even among good Warriors leads to massive numbers of wipes, and having to hold back resources on a constant basis. To give you a basic example of this - Warriors tend to have a difficult time managing the Serpent (no legs) add in Nidhogg Ex as most players don't time busters and to survive the second stack safely requires IB + Storm's Path + Vengeance, the third (if DPS is low) requires Holmgang.

I can't help to feel that DRK/PLD are used to mitigate huge damage while WAR gets the title of being the best reliable tank. Think about it, how hard is it to generate 5 stacks from attacking? You need a total of 8 GCDs to get that and use it for IB, and you also have Infuriate to do double IB if needed, coupling with other CDs are even better with up to ~50% mitigation on the high priority tank busters. Sadly of course the game rarely needs that much constant mitigation that people are better off using those to enable DPS stance more.

Off my experience, 3rd magical tank buster will wreck anyone, so you have to use Holmgang/HG/LD to survive, hence why you will want the other tank to swap earlier. Even then, this is mainly a DPS issue (all the adds melt so quickly in a good farm party) that shouldn't exist in a normal gameplay although there are so many players still doing subpar DPS that it's not funny anymore.

There are a lot of situations where using DRK/PLD to tank tank busters better. For example as the few hardest tank busters in the game, A8S Final Punches can be tank with a single tank with good amount of CDs, last Final Punch is where LD/HG shine.

[Lyth]

I don't find WAR's cooldown set to be any less reliable. Every tank needs a Rampart, Sentinel, and HG equivalent. The first two on their own are enough to get through a set of three tank busters spaced a minimum of 35 seconds apart. WAR has RI/ToB, Vengeance, and Holmgang. RI/ToB isn't all that great, but Vengeance is by far the most powerful mid-strength mitigation tool available to the three tanks in terms of recast/duration. Holmgang is fairly versatile as well.

Every tank has a shorter recast cooldown that they have access to. IB happens to be the most versatile, so you also end up taking at a 200 potency loss for using it. This isn't all that unique, however. Using DM to its full potential costs a DA. Sheltron is really the only "free" short recast cooldown, but it also requires tighter timing to use correctly.

IB's timing is softer than you'd think. Timing a 6 second duration cooldown might have been a challenge for tanks when starting out, but on PLD/DRK, you should be popping Sentinel/Shadowskin 18 seconds before a solitary tank buster to cut down on your recast times. It's not that different across the tanks once the fight gets mapped out. You should similarly have your stacks mapped out if you're planning on using IB in your cooldown rotation.

You shouldn't have an issue with either add in Nidhogg Ex. Stacks go out with 20s (out of 34s) on the debuff timer on the magical add and 4s (out of 12s) for the physical add. If your co-tank spaces out and doesn't taunt the magical add off you before the third stack, you use your ultimate. In fact, you can tank both together safely. The stacks even go out at different times, and you can use a single cooldown for multiple stacks.