Question: Ambidexterity?

[Physic]

Damage mitigation and keeping hate are the main duties of a pure tank. Instead of "turning mages cures into dps", it's much more practical to mitigate the damage to begin with to allow the mages to spend the time and MP on dots and buffs and debuffs instead of cure bombing.



Foresight II, Twisting Vice, Featherfoot II, Sentinel, Diversion, Punishing Barbs, Invigorate II, Comrade in Arms II, Emulate, Keen Flurry, Cadence, Hawk's Eye, Still Precision, Siphon TP, Contagion, Line of Fire, Bloodletter, Skull Sunder II

^ those are all better skills. Some of those aren't that useful in certain situations, though, so if you have AP to spare and really want to, then fine, go ahead and equip Discerning Eye.

pug tank doesnt fill the same need as a glad tank, the focus isnt on perfect damage reduction, we get high hp, better use out of second wind and deal damage. Evasion tanking is nerver perfect and you cant evade spells.
foresight isnt too useful on pug, we get good parry, but better to spend that stamina on featherfoot which can trigger on evade skills, the cooldown is long on sub, and on parry skills to be useful, and those will be less effective on pugilist
sentinel is a shield skill
twisting vise i dont got
featherfoot is always there
diversion i dont got
barbs is ehhh useful i suppose
invig is there
comrade is someone elses job
emulate dont got
keen flurry is for punks who think they gonna miss a BR
hawk eye is there
still precision is very anti pugilist
siphon tp dont got it
skull sunder is there

i think it comes down to playstyle, you are a glad so you see it like a glad would.
for a pug, discerning eye is hot, we probably get more damage buff from it, and at the very least a faster timer. a lot of those skills on sub become situational due to the cool downs, others of them would require a high level in another job, and are still pretty situational, like emulate. i could use discerning every 1.5 minutes and get an attack boost for like 20 seconds, wheras all i get out of diversion is dodging 1 attack every, what 2 minutes on sub?

Pug is a dps tank, i do more damage than a glad, but i take more, faster fights with higher risk. as a pug versus an one of the NMs two of us duoing was able to kill almost as fast as 2 glads and some other job of a higher level, they may have been more mp effecient, but we were more dps and survived the fight. its a different style of play. (we were both melee btw, lancer and pug)

the game actually allows for very different set ups from person to person. playstyle to playstyle.

[Alderton]

Just because you don't have certain abilities as main-class does not mean that damage mitigation shouldn't be one of your biggest concerns if you are main tank. To overlook key mitigation tools (like foresight) is silly. Both it and featherfoot will always proc before wearing off, on GLA, in full plate. You should have the same luck w/ those on pgl.

Some of this is excusable on the mid-range NMs, and to be honest, a bit of it on the bigger guys as well. But if you are trying to optimize your role within the group, let the DD do the damage, and give the mages room to breathe and do other tasks, instead of just healing yourself. Just like you said about Comrade, damage is someone else's job.

sentinel is a shield skill

It is actually a r36 GLA ability. Look it up, it's a nice one to have.

still precision is very anti pugilist

What?

BACK TO THE OP:

Due to the stamina cost, yeah, it isn't very useful. If you are using a shield with a very low wield rate and you don't have self-preservation, for some reason, you might be able to fit in enough abilities during its duration to make it worth it, but yeah...

I think it just wasn't balanced or is left over from when the design of GLA had dual-wield functionality.

And discerning eye amuses me, considering that it appears to have once been a GLA ability (the icon has a sword, not a fist).

[Physic]

Just because you don't have certain abilities as main-class does not mean that damage mitigation shouldn't be one of your biggest concerns if you are main tank. To overlook key mitigation tools (like foresight) is silly. Both it and featherfoot will always proc before wearing off, on GLA, in full plate. You should have the same luck w/ those on pgl.

Some of this is excusable on the mid-range NMs, and to be honest, a bit of it on the bigger guys as well. But if you are trying to optimize your role within the group, let the DD do the damage, and give the mages room to breathe and do other tasks, instead of just healing yourself. Just like you said about Comrade, damage is someone else's job.



It is actually a r36 GLA ability. Look it up, it's a nice one to have.



What?

BACK TO THE OP:

Due to the stamina cost, yeah, it isn't very useful. If you are using a shield with a very low wield rate and you don't have self-preservation, for some reason, you might be able to fit in enough abilities during its duration to make it worth it, but yeah...

I think it just wasn't balanced or is left over from when the design of GLA had dual-wield functionality.

And discerning eye amuses me, considering that it appears to have once been a GLA ability (the icon has a sword, not a fist).

an increase to parry on a 45 second cooldown on pug, ill put it down to playstyle, id rather have an evade. its nice but not really that great a deal. featherfoot is really mostly worth it for the jarring strike honestly. Ending a fight sooner means you take less damage, thats another means of damage mitigation, and thats what pug was designed for, its why simian thrash is a dd skill that works best for tanks, and also why discerning eye makes sense. Pug has the ability to deal damage while tanking, and due to the nature of pugs fighting style discerning eye is a better buff in a lot of ways than raging strike, pug has the ability to throw a lot of attacks out, and can attack 5 times in quick sucession, you can never get your damage buff to flurry from ferocity or raging strike. you will rarely get to damage buff jarring strike, or simian thrash, but discerning eye allows you to redirect some of the damage you take with reactionary skills, and skills that occur later in a combo. i think it might be the only skill currently that does that.

Of course if you believe that a tank has no need of dps, then you will say its a crappy skill, or if you arent a reactionary class.

in one discerning eye, timed after an enemy WS i can get a buff to dmg for like 6 actions at least. far as im concerned thats a pretty good skill.

essentially pugs job isnt to be the pure tank, the only time it will beat a glad in terms of pure dmg mitigation is if the monster has particularly low accuracy. pug has to add damage to the equation, because thats what they bring to the table, it is part of their design, high risk blood tanking. its what makes it exciting.

and yeah sentinel seems like a decent skill from the description.
and i did notice it was a sword ability, i was thinking it may have come from fencer idealogies though, or possibly a dual weild glad set up.