Paladin Opener

[SpookyGhost]

You do realise that the damage reduction adds up when you take into account auto attack damage mitigated on top of attack damage mitigated right? You should be using RoH on most current content (especially savage raiding) that it is relevant to. You are not a DPS, and while tanks shouldn't be lazy with tank DPS, mitigating when possible is always better than pushing your DPS (especially on PLD, whose DPS contribution isn't great to begin with).

A6S is probably the best example of a clearly demonstrable fight to talk about this. On Brawler, you use my rotation in which you use RoH all the time, on Blaster, you do not use RoH and instead use RA (for a DRK and delirium, this would be the inverse)

In a world where fairy heals + Regen + Med 2 don't account (near) fully for auto attack damage by default, I would agree. I'm not too familiar with the inner workings of AST but afaik they have something similar. RoH's mitigation would have to actually add up to enough that it would save a healer a GCD of healing to convert into damage, and even then you're looking at a 90 potency loss every single time you need to apply RoH. Again, it's not a cardinal sin but you're not realistically gaining anything by doing it.

However RoH has a bit more merit on things like Brawler in A6S, Might in A12S, that purple Faust in A9S, etc. due to a variety of case-specific reasons. Just in general practice it doesn't do anything worthwhile for auto attacks since they're already negated just by passive healing that's going to be around whether you use RoH or not.

Also RE: "PLD doesn't do much DPS anyway so what's the point" -> That's not a good way to think about DPS. You take all the DPS from everyone, throw them in a big pile, and then you figure out how you can make that number go up. If RoH's mitigation makes that number go up more than RA's contribution, then RoH is better - I really don't believe that to be the case, though.

[Sarcatica]

PLD can do huge DPS too. That conception is really wrong. PLD's DPS is only low when compared to DRK but the job itself can still do good DPS. If you are just turtling in ShO, your DPS will end up pretty low just like WAR/DRK. ONLY if you are in SwO most of the times that you can actually do 1.3k++, if not it will be at 600-800dps (most even struggle to reach these numbers when in SwO /shrug).

EDIT: RoH is only useful to try to mitigate for physical tank busters, else also wasteful and only used for starting enmity. This is indisputable and by far a fact. RA is a better GCD to use by far.

[Fernosaur]

Whenever someone says "PLD can't do good DPS so why bother" my eyes bleed.

Anyways, my PLD opener for MT is as follows:

Lob > Circle > Fast Blade (Sheltron+Flight) > Savage Blade > RoH > Another RoH combo > Sword Oath > GB > RA

Putting Flight between Fast Blade and Savage gives me time to get GB and a full RA combo within the flight window, while also using the damage boost to make a bigger enmity lead. That is usually more than enough to keep me from using RoH ever again during one fight.

This applies on a case by case basis on important fights, though. I think PLD doesn't really have a set opener that is universal for every fight.

[Lyth]

One thing I am very much curious though is especially for opener, since you can only fit 13 GCDs in 1 FoF, will applying Goring at 4th combo instead be worth?

Not sure if I've understood the question correctly, but if GB is the fourth hit in the window (i.e. starting with RA as the first hit), then you have the same number of GBs in the window as you would if you started with GB as your first hit. However, you also have one extra RB, because you fit in two full GB combos instead of one truncated one. You fit an extra 30 potency into the window by doing this (as RB is 230 potency, while SB is 200).

[Sarcatica]

Not sure if I've understood the question correctly, but if GB is the fourth hit in the window (i.e. starting with RA as the first hit), then you have the same number of GBs in the window as you would if you started with GB as your first hit. However, you also have one extra RB, because you fit in two full GB combos instead of one truncated one. You fit an extra 30 potency into the window by doing this (as RB is 230 potency, while SB is 200).

The normal rotation is FoF>GB>RA combo>RA combo>GB combo> RA combo, FoF ends. What if FoF>GB>RA combo>RA combo>RA combo >GB combo, FoF ends? This way you get the full access to that extra 1 tick from not applying GB while not sacrificing anything much from the FoF duration. This is merely my speculation but I haven't been testing it too much. It's only a potential 50 potency gain every FoF though.

[Lyth]

The normal rotation is FoF>GB>RA combo>RA combo>GB combo> RA combo, FoF ends. What if FoF>GB>RA combo>RA combo>RA combo >GB combo, FoF ends? This way you get the full access to that extra 1 tick from not applying GB while not sacrificing anything much from the FoF duration. This is merely my speculation but I haven't been testing it too much. It's only a potential 50 potency gain every FoF though.

I think I see what you're saying. The cost of clipping a DoT is not the damage value of the tick. The damage ticks occur regardless of when you refresh them, as long as the debuff is up when the game checks. The cost of letting a DoT fall off is the value of the missed ticks for the duration that the debuff is off.

Let's use a simpler example to work with for a second. If I apply Scourge and then immediately reapply it the next GCD, I haven't lost any ticks. I have gained 100 potency from the upfront damage of Scourge, but it has also cost me a GCD that could have been spent on my base combo. On DRK, the average value of a GCD is 227 potency (Delirium). So clipping Scourge by 100% of its duration is 227-100 = 127. If you clip DoTs by a small amount, they add up over the course of the fight. If I keep clipping at 3 seconds, then eventually that will add up to 30 seconds, and I'll have lost one GCD. The cost of clipping by 3 seconds on a single occasion is (3s/30s) x (227-100) = 12.7 potency. (Strictly speaking, the true value of a GCD might be difficult to calculate if you clip by less than one full combo over the course of an entire fight, because I can't predict exactly which part of the combo would be truncated. You'd really have to go back and recalculate it by hand once you knew the fight duration. I'm just trying to keep this simple. It's much easier to calculate on SMN, where you're just substituting in an extra Ruin or Ruin 3 into that missing GCD).

For PLD, the average value of a GCD is 233, based on the RA combo. The average value of the non-DoT portion of the GB combo is 207. The cost of clipping RA by 3 seconds is (3s/24s) x (233 - 207) = 3.25 potency. The cost of dropping GB for a single tick is 50 potency. So it stands to reason that letting it fall off for an entire combo would be an even higher potency loss.