Paladin BiS Accessory Reddit Discussion

[Maqaqa]

Its pretty much the only gear that a crafter can sell... and better than having one set of gear good for everything and mandatory.
If we discussed for ten pages... then it means the two sets are pretty well balanced!

[Exstal]

Its pretty much the only gear that a crafter can sell... and better than having one set of gear good for everything and mandatory.
If we discussed for ten pages... then it means the two sets are pretty well balanced!

It should make sense that i90 crafted comparable to i90 dropped but i70 compared to i90? Something is wrong with this. They'll either make i80 crafted somehow worse than i70 or i100 is going to make i90 look like you've just started playing.

[TaneshimaPopura]

Maelwys put it best. You cannot just see everything based on a fixed point of view. You need to factor in external factors and internal factors. The fact that going STR/DEX build makes each point healed more effective, gives you leeway in Enmity generation to Heal/Stoneskin, more power to your Inner Beast/Bloodsurge and making your Bulwark in to a more dependable CD.

Sure without external aid Vit is king. But you can't put a finger on things like snap threat, cause if you let someone pull aggro and take a hit that is already a lot of eHP/heal loss cause the healer has to heal someone else other than you that is unforeseen. Tell me the times when your Flash didn't generate enough enmity against that crit streak BLM or that time when an ambush mob came out and your healer just threw a big heal on you and had more overheal ticks incoming. How many times have you killed a mob faster and reduce that incoming damage that you can't reliably gauge it's damage? These are factors that should not be overlooked.

The fact that eHP Vit is king is true but eHP works only when there is no heal and where spike damage is involved to a certain extend. Outside that you'd want to depend on eHP/heal which is not what Vit provide. Then to top it all with more potential enmity is just an icing on the cake, don't be so tunnel visioned as to see our point is directed only to increase tank DPS.

[CianaIezuborn]

...

Here's the issue:

You're trying to lump in chance based mitigation with static based mitigation.

They aren't the same, over a long period of time (which is what avoidance based damage reductions rely on) static based mitigation will NEVER fail you and avoidance based mitigation will ALWAYS fail you at least once.

There is no situation where you have two tanks with equal static mitigation (DEF/MDEF/Shield Oath/technically heal% buffs though that's out of scope) and the same amount of constant healing coming in but differing avoidance rates that one will always die and one will always live.

They will either both always live or they will both always have a chance to die.

Luckily healing isn't a constant thing, healers are able to throw burst healing to match with the ebb and flow of damage. At this point avoidance and additional hp are providing the same advantage in different ways, they are reducing the stress on the human factor. Avoidance helps lower the frequency of the flows, while HP increases the amount of time a healer has to react to each flow.

AHp is a metric used to figure this and is the only reasonable one that has been determined to examine the effects of avoidance in simplified terms. By checking the figures I posted above, it's easy to see that there's a vast improvement in AHp by stacking VIT over Avoidance in current gear. This isn't to say that avoidance is bad, it's that HP and Avoidance levels in current gear sets are so low currently, that VIT is severely outweighing avoidance in AHp calculations.

As VIT and Avoidance both rise, Avoidance has the possibility of creeping up on VIT in value due to the fact that linear VIT gains increase AHP linearly, while linear Avoidance gains increase AHP exponentially.

But until AHP gains more from stacking Avoidance gear over VIT gear, there's no argument. You are becoming less tanky by doing so.

...

Again though, if your intention is to do more DPS/Enmity then yeah stack DPS stats.

[Maelwys]

AHp is a metric used to figure this and is the only reasonable one that has been determined to examine the effects of avoidance in simplified terms.

All of which is true, but AHP is still the wrong metric to use in this comparison. Because it looks at total time taken for a tank to drop from 100% HP to 0% without outside healing.

Which doesn't address the issues I raised above, namely that:

(i) STR/DEX equipment setups will be able to survive a greater amount of damage than +VIT setups (on average) before the healers start struggling to keep up with the incoming damage

and

(ii) that for any HIGHER damage, STR/DEX setups will only possibly die more quickly than VIT setups. Because of their increased enmity generation allowing them to use delaying tactics (Stoneskin, Stuns, Kiting, etc) without putting any pressure on the rest of the team to lower their damage or healing output.

You are correct that Blocking and Parries are a "chance" rather than always-on mitigation.

However this does not detract from the above statement.

Just because you cannot rely on them to kick in at any given moment does not mean they are less effective over the long term (particularly with Bulwark up).

Even in a worst-case scenario, such as fighting ADS where you have no chance whatsoever of blocking, then STR/DEX setups are no worse off than VIT setups as long as your healers never let you drop below 5% HP - and it's not as if you can't just swap back to +Vit accessories in those situations anyway

But until AHP gains more from stacking Avoidance gear over VIT gear, there's no argument. You are becoming less tanky by doing so.

That's the thing: you do NOT become less "Tanky" by stacking STR or DEX.

You become (arguably, see above comment on enmity and stoneskin) slightly faster at dying under extremely heavy damage which is heavier than your healers can handle. But you become able to handle more damage before your healers start struggling, and you become better at holding enmity.

A Tank's role is to (i) hold enmity and (ii) weather damage. Increasing STR/DEX ticks both those boxes - you are certainly "tanky", you just have slightly less of a raw HP buffer between you and death.

The fact that Block/Parry is not a guaranteed chance to proc does not really matter, because even if the mitigation doesn't kick in, you lose virtually nothing - a STR/DEX-setup tank will remain identical in performance to a +VIT-setup tank unless their healers let them drop below 5% HP. And whenever their mitigation DOES kick in, it gives those healers a slight breather.

-------------------

aHP, like eHP, is a useful metric when comparing the amount of damage a tank can Take before dying. But it is NOT a helpful metric when considering how much damage a Tank can actually withstand before their supporting party starts to struggle (either with keeping up with healing the tank, or with having to hold back due to aggro control).

Bottom line is that STR/DEX gives better performance than +VIT in all but one situation: when an extra raw 5% HP would make the difference between you living and dying. And I honestly can't say I've encountered many of those.

I'm all for allocating all your character's Distributable Points into VIT, but being able to swap 25 Vit for 45 STR/DEX via easilly-unequippable accessories is a very nice trade in most endgame situations!

[CianaIezuborn]

I'm all for allocating all your character's Distributable Points into VIT, but being able to swap 25 Vit for 45 STR/DEX via easilly-unequippable accessories is a very nice trade in most endgame situations!

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you're going to sacrifice VIT for STR/DEX, this is the way to do it. 25 points for 90 points is extremely tempting and is the most efficient way to go about it. Especially compared to bonus points on a 1 to 1 ratio.

(i) STR/DEX equipment setups will be able to survive a greater amount of damage than +VIT setups (on average) before the healers start struggling to keep up with the incoming damage

That's the issue though, real world best case scenario on RNG neither tank dies. Real world average scenario, neither tank dies. That's because in both cases each tank has taken enough EHp to survive the predictable burst.

It's the increasingly worst case scenarios that EHp builds win out in. Strings of missed avoidance, healers mis-timing heals, melee dropping an ae on tank, and just plain old lag. In these scenarios you have a 100% chance for an extra 5% buffer vs a 1% chance at some buffer (lets just say an avoidance would be equivalent to that 5% buffer). Dirty math, but calculating specifics on the effects of avoidance in worst case scenarios is non trivial.

(ii) that for any HIGHER damage, STR/DEX setups will only possibly die more quickly than VIT setups. Because of their increased enmity generation allowing them to use delaying tactics (Stoneskin, Stuns, Kiting, etc) without putting any pressure on the rest of the team to lower their damage or healing output.

I can't make a clear connect between paper and practice so I can't really put an exact metric of value on it. Anecdotal I know, but I've never been in a situation where I've not been in such a lead on st damage that I haven't been able to afford to through out stoneskin/stuns whenever I've needed to. As far as kiting, that's pure flash cut spam, which I find the limiting factor to be mana versus a single AOEer (Double AOEers kill the mobs before breaking through enmity buffer)

There is a theoretical edge case where that 1% avoidance would beat out EHP where the incoming damage vs healing would keep the Avoidance tank 100% on average and drain the EHp tank 1% per second. I can't think of a method in which this could happen though where both tanks didn't have a chance of dieing from bad RNG or where both tanks could live with proper use of cooldowns.

When you look at it from the point of view of worst case scenario your EHp increases your tolerance to horrible situations where as your Avoidance reduces the frequency of such horrible situations.

I'll reiterate, if you're over-geared and in no danger of dieing to an encounter, stick on DPS gear, switch to sword oath, go nuts. But I can't think of any situation where I'd be like "This boss keeps killing me, time to drop 5% HP for 1% avoidance reduction".

I was on the other side of this debate about a year ago in Rift where I was arguing for a 20% increase to AHp over a .1% drop in EHp due to the huge amount of raw avoidance and hp. That's the type of hardcore EHP all the HP folks I've run into in the past. I'm all for including avoidance in the equation, but for me the cut off point isn't anywhere near where it is in this game. I'd have to see at least EHp over the reasonable burst and then double the % AHP gain over % EHP loss to consider it for purely tanking reasons.

Finally, this may seem like heated debate, but I have the uptmost respect for Mael and the theorycrafting he's done for the Pal community. I just figure after a few back and forth posts that had to be said =p

[Maelwys]

But I can't think of any situation where I'd be like "This boss keeps killing me, time to drop 5% HP for 1% avoidance reduction".

Turn 4? The incoming damage is quite heavy, all blockable and not on a regular spike timer due to multiple mobs being tanked simultaneously. (Also, I'd often love a bit of extra DPS to help me hold hate a little more solidly as an OT on both a Soldier and a Knight when the DDs start going wild on both...)

When you look at it from the point of view of worst case scenario your EHp increases your tolerance to horrible situations where as your Avoidance reduces the frequency of such horrible situations.

Bingo!

This is why I'd consider DEX/STR setups to be generally "better" once you're at endgame and your team is fully geared up. Because for an overgeared party you simply don't come across those "horrible situations" all that regularly, and the benefits of reducing their frequency even further outshines having a slightly better chance of recovery if one was to happen.

Endgame teams are (very broadly speaking) rather skilled, and have multiple methods of turning such a situation around that don't involve their tank dropping below 5% HP.

Honestly, I really can't think of many situations where a tank having 5% more raw HP would actually benefit a solid endgame team (whereas I can think of plenty of situations where I'd rather have more DPS/enmity generation and a slightly higher threshold for the "crap hitting the fan"!).

That said, I agree that if a spike has the potential to drop you to less than 5% HP in one hit (I'm thinking mainly of Turn 5 here) then +VIT is the clear winner.

There is a theoretical edge case where that 1% avoidance would beat out EHP where the incoming damage vs healing would keep the Avoidance tank 100% on average and drain the EHp tank 1% per second. I can't think of a method in which this could happen though where both tanks didn't have a chance of dieing from bad RNG or where both tanks could live with proper use of cooldowns.

That's the slight edge in sustained mitigation I was referring to.

I agree that being able to take ~1% extra damage before you start dieing is pretty damn tiny in terms of mitigation. Especially whenever blocks/parries are not guaranteed. But given the alternative... in any situation where I'm confident that I'd never be in danger of dropping below 5% HP, I'd much prefer being able to take a tiny bit more damage over time over having 5% HP that I'd never use.

The thought process here is that "A tiny bit of something is better than nothing".

Maybe it makes me (extra) weird... but I just think that occasionally there's such a thing as "too much" HP, whenever you know you're not going to use it and could potentially swap it for something else that could give you slightly better performance.

I can't make a clear connect between paper and practice so I can't really put an exact metric of value on it. Anecdotal I know, but I've never been in a situation where I've not been in such a lead on st damage that I haven't been able to afford to through out stoneskin/stuns whenever I've needed to.

Sadly, as a VIT-built PLD I've been in that situation dozens of times whenever I'm tanking multiple mobs. Turn 4 is an obvious example. But it even happens occasionally on silly trash things like AK runs if the DDs are better geared than me, are not using enmity shedding abilities, and decide they want to deal spike damage. BLM's "Triple Flare" is a prime example.

On Bosses, extra enmity is generally not needed, aside from the odd flaky mechanic (Turn 2's -25% Tank DPS debuff) but when fighting multiple mobs it's very handy to have extra enmity generation.

As far as kiting, that's pure flash cut spam, which I find the limiting factor to be mana versus a single AOEer (Double AOEers kill the mobs before breaking through enmity buffer)

I think you're referring to kiting with Flash because of the method used in "speed runs"? (e.g. round everything up, keep flashing to hold hate, run in circles so any cones miss you and have to keep interrupting their attack cycle in order to move towards you)

I'm referring to "Jousting" with RoH rather than Flash spam - used on only one or two tougher melee-attacking mobs instead of huge packs of trash. You rotate your RoH combo on the mob just enough to hold hate, whilst attempting to stay out of autoattack range as much as possible. Make it chase you (possibly around Line-of-sight-breaking geometry) so that its attacks only very rarely hit.

There aren't very many geometry-breaking battles in the game, but a few do exist... An example would be AK boss #1: You can kite the Psycheflayer around a pillar constantly and take no damage. To a lesser extent, this "mitigation by not being there" tactic includes things like Circle-tanking the Hydra, and sidestepping/backing away from any mob AoEs.

Finally, this may seem like heated debate, but I have the uptmost respect for Mael and the theorycrafting he's done for the Pal community. I just figure after a few back and forth posts that had to be said =p

Aww. I love you too!

Never mistake a love of a good argument (or in my case, insufficient sense to know when to shut up) for a lack of affection!

And good grief, this has turned into quite the essay! Time for sleeps!!

[WowSuchName]

Rule of optimization speed run in any RPG game:
- Tank: Have enough HP to survive any 1 shot ability in game, then push DPS as high as possible
- Healer: Have enough heal power (power/pool) to support the tank above, then HP just to survive all non-avoidable attack.
- DPS: Have enough HP just to survive all non-avoidable attack, then go all DPS

While larger HP pool allow more mistake to be make but ideally it is not optimization for speed play.

But..... people do make mistake....

[Grembo]

Guys, random question but how do fully melded Darksteel Gloves and Flanchard compare to their Darklight counterparts?

I currently have a lot of spare materia and Philosophy tomes, wondering if it'd be worth swapping out my two DL pieces for Darksteel.

[WowSuchName]

@Grembo,
- Fully Melded Parry/Acc Darksteel HQ glove is definitely better than Darklight Glove
- Darklight Flanchard has both ACC/Parry while Darksteel doesn't have any of it....