PLD: Is Rage of Halone's debuff worth keeping up?

[dragonseth07]

Hello! I've been looking more into level 60 PLD play, and it seems like RoH is mostly ignored unless you need more threat. Is the debuff not worth maintaining? It looks strong to me on paper.

After initial threat gen, traditional advice is Goring-RA-RA-repeat. If I want to keep up Halone, it would have to replace one of the RA's. Am I overestimating the STR debuff? Is it simply not worth the DPS loss?

[SpookyGhost]

In general it's not worth it, the only argument that can be made at all is for tank busters which is only true if you reduce enough damage to convert a healer GCD into a DPS GCD. If you're learning a fight, however, it's okay to keep up RoH until you get your bearings.

[Jpec07]

I personally don't go through the effort unless the healer is fresh, I'm undergeared, or it's a fight I'm unfamiliar with. There are some bosses and phases where it's helpful (Calofisteri comes to mind, as well as A5S' Hummelfaust), but it's very situational.

The 10% Strength debuff isn't that helpful when such a large percentage of enemy damage is based on Int. It honestly feels like tanks were designed with WoW-style encounters in mind (where the effective 7-8% damage reduction would be extremely helpful), instead of FFXIV (where there just isn't enough damage going out to make it worthwhile). Tank design--outside of WAR--doesn't quite feel like it matches encounter design, and I'm hoping they address this in 4.0, to some extent.

[Khubla_Kha]

I personally don't go through the effort unless the healer is fresh, I'm undergeared, or it's a fight I'm unfamiliar with. There are some bosses and phases where it's helpful (Calofisteri comes to mind, as well as A5S' Hummelfaust), but it's very situational.

The 10% Strength debuff isn't that helpful when such a large percentage of enemy damage is based on Int. It honestly feels like tanks were designed with WoW-style encounters in mind (where the effective 7-8% damage reduction would be extremely helpful), instead of FFXIV (where there just isn't enough damage going out to make it worthwhile). Tank design--outside of WAR--doesn't quite feel like it matches encounter design, and I'm hoping they address this in 4.0, to some extent.

I know this isn't really the thread for it. But your point about tank design not matching content/game design is perfectly spot on. It's as though they developed Pld specifically for a completely different game than FFXIV as it's tool kit is rather poorly fit to the game, lol. I too hope this gets addressed in 4.0.

And to tack onto what has already been said no the debuff isn't really "worth" (for reasons already mentioned) keeping up, but it is good practice to do so in the event they ever change things to where it does become worth it.

[Cabalabob]

It would be nice if it got a buff, like say, changing it to just straight physical damage reduction rather than STR reduction (same for delerium but with magic). And upping the potency to 15-20%. This might make it slightly more worth it, particularly when tanking in sword oath where you need to use it for the extra enmity anyway and would help make up the loss of 20% damage reduction from not being in shield oath.

[Enkidoh]

I know this isn't really the thread for it. But your point about tank design not matching content/game design is perfectly spot on. It's as though they developed Pld specifically for a completely different game than FFXIV as it's tool kit is rather poorly fit to the game, lol. I too hope this gets addressed in 4.0.

And to tack onto what has already been said no the debuff isn't really "worth" (for reasons already mentioned) keeping up, but it is good practice to do so in the event they ever change things to where it does become worth it.

Well, to be truly fair for a great deal of ARR's lifetime Rage of Halone was really all GLA (and by extension, PLD) had as a weaponskill combo - the only other weaponskill you could combo was Riot Blade, and that was only really useful if you drained MP spamming Flash. So before the level cap raise and the new weaponskills (well, only Royal Authority is really new, Goring Blade was actually a returning 1.0 GLA weaponskill SE had scrapped from the class back in 2012!) were added with Heavensward, because PLDs had no choice but to spam the Rage of Halone combo over and over as their base enmity combo (and in fact still do if undertaking level synced content below 50), the STR-down debuff was kind of kept on by default, and thus no one thought anything of it. It wasn't 'poor game design', it went with the territory. It's only the current player meta that has changed this.

Personally I try to keep it up as any debuff to an enemy's attack is useful (and also I find I tend to hit my Rage of Halone combo out of habit), but I do see the other side of the arguement, especially in endgame. But then I don't do raiding or EX mode Primals so ignore my ramblings.

A final ironic coda is Rage of Halone was somewhat neutered compared to how it was in 1.0, especially from 1.22 onwards where it was a five hit attack (as shown in my sig ), but then, that's a whole different barrel of moogles...

[CompSci88]

Back in my days, we kept the debuff uptime 100%

[Reynhart]

It's only the current player meta that has changed this.

The meta has been cemented because because it's what currently works best with the design, especially with how Gordias was a real turning point. But instead of altering subsequent content design to keep the jobs' identity, they're shifting the jobs' identity to match the design. With the recent announcement that parry might disappear, it's even more blatant.

A final ironic coda is Rage of Halone was somewhat neutered compared to how it was in 1.0, especially from 1.22 onwards where it was a five hit attack (as shown in my sig ), but then, that's a whole different barrel of moogles...

Actually, I think the very first version was more interesting, with a several seconds uninterruptible casting time, and that damage received during the cast time would actually increase RoH's potency.