PLD Cross Class Skills

[Evaddaragon]

Foresight is easy to get as MRD (ONLY level 2, so no reason at all not to get it) and is a cooldown you can add to your rotation. It should be a PLD's first cross-class skill, at all times.

Stoneskin would come second, but it takes a bit of leveling to do (level 34 CNJ). These two slots are your "must haves" I'd say.

You can pretty much vary your last three slots with whatever you want depending on your situation, as the other available cross-class skill all can have a use, EXCEPT for Skull Sunder. You have NO reason to use Skull Sunder (level 4 MRD). AT ALL. Even if it's a joke to get.

Cure (level CNJ 2) is very easy to get and is actually viable at mid-to-lower levels (think level 25 and under). At level 50, it's weak, but has uses when soloing and doing FATES while off-tank. You can easily spam Cure until you're out of MP, spam Fast Blade + Riot Blade, and repeat indefinitely to help lessen the burden quite a bit. It doesn't have much use in end-game, though. If you need it to survive a fight, chances are your healer's already down and you're about to lose anyway.

Protect (level 8 CNJ) is good for soloing, and is the same if you're doing a dongeon with 4 people with a SCH healer, since you're not getting ProShell. It's also fairly easy to acquire.

As for Bloodbath (level 8 MRD), it's more useful in groups, as it helps lessening the burden on your healers... but by a very small margin. It's not powerful enough to be considered useful, but, like Protect, it's fairly easy to get.

Fracture (level 6 MRD) will indeed slightly help with DPS, although it will slightly lower your enmity generation. Some people like it, I don't.

Raise (level 12 CNJ), as PLD, can only be used outside of combat. I'd say it has its uses, but I usually only set it up as my fifth slot. There may be a few instances when you actually will be glad to have it, such as being able to raise someone when you got raised yourself before reengaging a battle with two tanks, or raising poor people in FATEs or outside of battles.

Mercy Stroke (level 26 MRD) is fun to use on trash mobs in dungeons (with proper timing), and it's off the GCD. But I'd say that, just like Bloodbath, it's not powerful enough to be considered game-breaking.



Hence why I use Foresight, Stoneskin, Cure, Protect and Raise. Cure and Protect could easily be swapped for Bloodbath and Mercy Stroke depending on your playstyle and situation.

[Maelwys]

Hence why I use Foresight, Stoneskin, Cure, Protect and Raise. Cure and Protect could easily be swapped for Bloodbath and Mercy Stroke depending on your playstyle and situation.

This is pretty much spot on.

I'll add a few personal observations though:

+ Foresight is NOT particularly powerful, since it increases your Defence just like Protect (not magic defence like ProShell) instead of being a raw damage resistance buff. But it IS one of the few cross-class mitigation boosts you can get and is on a fairly fast cooldown. So it should never leave your Hotbar. I tend to pop it alongside Convalescence since they're both on a 120 second cooldown.

+ Mercy Stroke is quite useful for two reasons: When soloing or in 4-man groups, you can much more reliably time the hit to recover HP. In larger groups, it's very unlikely that you'll get the last hit, but it can be used as a bit of extra OFF-GCD damage (useful for on-demand "spike" DPS and a little extra Hate generation) and can be used as an indicator to let you know whenever your enemy has EXACTLY 20% HP left.

+ Stoneskin is your best survivability cross class tool by a large margin. Use it whenever you have an enmity lead in boss fights. Once you get used to a boss's ability rotation you can use it quite reliably to take a LOT of pressure off the Healers.

+ Bloodbath is actually pretty powerful at endgame once you are geared up. It's effectively a mini-regen that cannot be affected by healing or Max-HP debuffs, and the cooldown is fairly short. Along with Rampart, it fits very nicely in between Bulwark and Sentinel: Bulwark -> 45 Secs -> Rampart and Bloodbath -> 45 Secs -> Sentinel -> 45 Secs -> Rampart and Bloodbath. (With Conv/Foresight as "Standbys" and Hallowed Ground saved for dire Emergencies)

Those four actually never leave my bar.

I have "Cure" as my 5th currently, but very very very rarely use it in parties. In fact, I've used it twice in the last two months: Once to top myself back up on Turn 3 whenever I was the only one left alive (and had aggroed mobs some 7 floors down so I was still "in battle" and was not regenerating HP!) and once on AK's final boss when the Healer died. I could use Stoneskin/Bloodbath and Rotate Cooldowns to keep myself alive, then topped myself back up with Convalescence + Cure during his casting "Imminent Catastrophe".

Raise/Protect/Cure are all fair choices for that 5th spot. If Paladins could Raise during battle I'd take it over Cure in a heartbeat... but out of battle you can just temporarilly swap another ability for it anyway...

Edit: Forgot Fracture. Which kind of says how useful it is. It basically gobbles your TP and causes interruptions to your enmity-generating combos, for a ridiculously small DPS boost. If you want to do more damage at the expense of enmity generation, use Shield Swipe instead... as it does more damage than Fracture, doesn't interrupt your combos (only costing you a 2.5 second GCD) and actually consumes less TP than you regenerate whilst casting it.

[Viridiana]

Edit: Forgot Fracture. Which kind of says how useful it is. It basically gobbles your TP and causes interruptions to your enmity-generating combos, for a ridiculously small DPS boost. If you want to do more damage at the expense of enmity generation, use Shield Swipe instead... as it does more damage than Fracture, doesn't interrupt your combos (only costing you a 2.5 second GCD) and actually consumes less TP than you regenerate whilst casting it.

Err, 210 versus 220 potency, in Fracture's favor. And if you don't want to generate enmity, there's a decent chance it's because you're the off-tank, in which case it's going to be hard to block reliably to proc Shield Swipe. Otherwise, all valid points.

[Seezur_Undies]

Hence why I use Foresight, Stoneskin, Cure, Protect and Raise. Cure and Protect could easily be swapped for Bloodbath and Mercy Stroke depending on your playstyle and situation.

Awesome, all those i have seeing i Main as a WHM and other than Mercy stroke, i have all the MRD skills....Thanks for taking the time to explain, and thank you to everyone that has responded as well, all the info is useful

[Maelwys]

Edit: Forgot Fracture. Which kind of says how useful it is. It basically gobbles your TP and causes interruptions to your enmity-generating combos, for a ridiculously small DPS boost. If you want to do more damage at the expense of enmity generation, use Shield Swipe instead... as it does more damage than Fracture, doesn't interrupt your combos (only costing you a 2.5 second GCD) and actually consumes less TP than you regenerate whilst casting it.

Err, 210 versus 220 potency, in Fracture's favor. And if you don't want to generate enmity, there's a decent chance it's because you're the off-tank, in which case it's going to be hard to block reliably to proc Shield Swipe. Otherwise, all valid points.

In terms of raw potency, sure. But I tend to block more often than once every 18 seconds (Fracture Duration) unless I'm fighting something that deals only Magical damage. On average with an i90 shield and decent parry, block and parry each trigger roughly one hit out of every four (not counting Bulwark).

In the rare cases that I'm off tanking on a single boss mob (not adds) I tend to spend it helping to mitigate damage on the MT (via throwing out Stoneskins, Flashing, whatever) since generally-speaking taking some of the heat off the healer means that they can spend a bit more time in Cleric Stance and contribute more extra damage than I would by using another on-GCD ability.

The only situation I can think of where I'd consider using Fracture would be in a single-enemy DPS-race where I am main tanking, already have a large enmity lead and need zero damage mitigation. That's precisely one fight: Titan during the Heart Phase. Even on Demon Wall I'd rather stay in Shield Oath and Tank the bees to keep them away from the DPS. On everything else I generally consider it to be better for me to be generating as much enmity as physically possible so that I can either Stoneskin myself more often (Bosses) or throw out Stuns etc. (Trash mobs).

I'm not saying Fracture isn't a slight DPS boost (region of ~3% I think) but that there are usually better options available whenever you have a free GCD. If it lasted 30 seconds like the Warrior Traited version, I'd probably take it instead of "Cure"... but as it is, I consider it to sacrifice too much for too little performance. I know there are some PLDs out there who disagree with that viewpoint and use Fracture in their rotations. As long as those PLDs can manage enmity and not bottom out on TP, it doesn't bother me in the slightest