Thoughts on PLD changes

[Hezzlocks]

Even in lower level dungeons when you don't have prominence unlocked, spamming total eclipse instead of shield bash is more likely than not better to clear out monsters, simply because the mitigation you'd gain by stunning each monster one by one by rotating your stun won't make up for mitigation you'd gain by dpsing down monsters faster (the faster they die, the less damage you take).

Hold on a sec, I'm not gonna make any points against the rest of what you said as I'm not nearly experienced enough to say what is and isn't most efficient for tanking at a high level of play, but having just fairly freshly come out of leveling through the low level dungeons where I didn't have the gear to chain pull multiple groups, I can say you're not actually correct here, at least not when you're just pulling small groups.

Shield Bash stuns for 6 seconds, and Low Blow stuns for 5 seconds. If you have 3 enemies on you (which is all I could handle tanking when I was in the low levels with gear bought from a vendor), you use two GCDs to stun 3 enemies. Two of them are stunned for 6 seconds, one is stunned for 5 seconds. The Low Blow'ed one will be stunned for basically two GCDs, while the two Shield Based enemies will be stunned for about 2 and a half GCDs. During this time they are doing no damage to you or anyone else.

For your own damage, the two that were Shield Bashed have taken a total of 220 potency, as opposed to the 480 they would have taken if you used Total Eclipse twice, meaning you've lost 260 potency between them. The third didn't take any damage, so that's 240 potency lost, for a total of 500 lost potency.

However, you have just pressed the pause button on the fight, basically, allowing the DPS you're with to essentially get in two extra GCDs in each. Now, this of course depends on the DPS you have, with Dancer, Bard and Machinist being among the better options. But even with, say, a Monk, using a 110 potency AoE, that's 660 free potency during a time when the enemies are no longer doing any damage. And that's just *one* of the two DPS. If you had two MCH with you using Spread Shot, that's 2160 free potency in a period where the enemies are not doing any damage to you.

You aren't ending the fight faster, no, not at all. But you also aren't taking more damage. As a matter of fact, you are taking *less* damage, as the extra damage your DPS is throwing in during a period where the enemies are doing 0 damage will more than likely make them die a hit or two earlier.

Obviously this has absolutely NO bearing on later on when you're geared up enough to mass pull multiple groups, and indeed I find myself using Shield Bash much, much less than I used to now that I'm able to do that in most dungeons myself. But when you're just starting out and you can only handle one group at a time, Shield Bash is actually very useful, it saved my lowbie ass many times. Once you can handle multiple groups at once, then yes, using your AoEs is much more efficient than trying to chain stun everything. That's all I'm saying, though, in the low levels it's an absolute godsend.

[Booden]

but having just fairly freshly come out of leveling through the low level dungeons where I didn't have the gear to chain pull multiple groups, I can say you're not actually correct here, at least not when you're just pulling small groups.

Oh, I had just assumed you'd be level synced to the max since you were talking about doing Baelsar's wall, didn't think about under level 50 + undergeared. Yeah I guess it can help newbie tanks, I wouldn't bother using it myself though.

However, you have just pressed the pause button on the fight, basically, allowing the DPS you're with to essentially get in two extra GCDs in each. Now, this of course depends on the DPS you have, with Dancer, Bard and Machinist being among the better options. But even with, say, a Monk, using a 110 potency AoE, that's 660 free potency during a time when the enemies are no longer doing any damage. And that's just *one* of the two DPS. If you had two MCH with you using Spread Shot, that's 2160 free potency in a period where the enemies are not doing any damage to you.

You aren't ending the fight faster, no, not at all. But you also aren't taking more damage. As a matter of fact, you are taking *less* damage, as the extra damage your DPS is throwing in during a period where the enemies are doing 0 damage will more than likely make them die a hit or two earlier.

Wait that sounds wrong, because whether the mobs were stunned or not, the DPS would still be doing their aoe rotations, so it's not free potency, and there's no extra damage coming from the dps here because the mobs are stunned. So there's just the aoe potency loss from the pld.

[Hezzlocks]

Wait that sounds wrong, because whether the mobs were stunned or not, the DPS would still be doing their aoe rotations, so it's not free potency, and there's no extra damage coming from the dps here because the mobs are stunned. So there's just the aoe potency loss from the pld.

I was more referring to how you said the mitigation you gain from stunning the mobs won't match up to the "mitigation" you gain from just killing them faster. With larger pulls where you can't stun them all without sacrificing many GCDs, you're absolutely right. With small pulls where you can stun everything for effectively 2 GCDs, it's like you pressed a pause button on the fight. 0 incoming damage whatsoever (barring dots, i guess). The DPS getting in two GCDs worth of damage during a time where there is 0 incoming damage, so long as it's more damage than you sacrificed to stun them (and it bloody well better be more or they are terrible DPS), it's basically increasing the damage done vs damage taken ratio in your favour.

Basically, the smaller the pull, the more valuable a stun is, as each stun is eliminating a large percentage of the incoming damage, and the less damage there is lost on each AoE you aren't doing. The larger the pull, the more valuable doing damage is, as a single stun is barely affecting incoming damage at all, and you're losing considerably more damage on each AoE you don't do. Stunning a single mob for 6 seconds in a single target situation is very valuable in that regard, though obviously single target situations are usually situations where either the mob is immune to being stunned, or you want to save it for stopping an ability. And obviously you don't want to use Shield Bash mid combo, either.