Learning to Tank

[kukurumei]

Cure has some utility at low levels, but as you get higher and start to stack points into VIT while the healers around you are dropping theirs into MND, more and more you'll see your Cures becoming more and more pointless. The amount of damage restored no longer counts as worthwhile mitigation; You're much more likely to stay alive by using weaponskills and auto-attacks to speed the death of the foe than you are by slowing your death through cures.

You'll find that the abilities you get from MRD are too good to sacrifice a slot to Cure, especially when you graduate to PLD and lose most of your cross-class slots.

In theory, you could generate some decent cures by stacking MND over VIT, but that will outright cripple you endgame. Having power cures won't help much when you're on the ground after Titan one-shot you from full HP with Mountain Buster!

cure is still useful, but in terms of GCD/MP, it's not enough, so reason PLD stop using it around 30-40. Stoneskin is useful but really meant for 8-man full pts a lot more, when you have damage that scales with 8mans. (and stack mechanics becomes increasingly bothersome).

I would say cure until you get shield oath, and stoneskin after is the general turning point.

Before shield oath(40), you can't really afford the def, and you are expected to lose hate every so often because your rotation generally can't compensate for DPS (and realistically stuff don't hit that hard for dps to care).

After shield oath content seems to scale with it, as not having shield oath is a dead ringer for losing threat, and getting slapped so hard not even cure spam will save you.

Warrior is a bit more different since they never have threat problems from beginning to end, but will always have damage problems. Defiance only solves so much.