How to optimize DPS as a MT in HW (PLD)?

[Ippiki]

Cyrus, that's not your only mistake.

Opening with Goring Blade has no bonus Enmity, and further delaying your Halone with Swipe doesn't help much either. Do we have concrete numbers yet on Shield Swipes additional enmity?

A good PLD pull would be like this:
Shield Lob(FoF), Fast Blade(SW + CnS), Savage Blade(Bloodbath or a defensive CD to smooth intake) Halone, then Goring.

Check threat after you place Goring, if DPS are getting high, Halone, if you're safe, then replace Halone after a Royal. Use Shield Swipe only as a TP saving tool, and it's ok to clip Goring Blade at 5-6 seconds due to the potency being so much higher than Royal.

[repoe]

As a casual player can someone please explain to me what so important about tank dps? I mean we are a tank we are meant to take punches in the face and survive especially as a MT.

Their is more then one way to approach fights, tank dps as some one stated can also correlate to time limit checks in raid, Efficiency, and people aiming improve their gameplay by Challenging themselves to be better and more wellk rounded player by experimenting with different play styles.

That being said, one should always focus on maintaining their main function of threat and damage mitigation prior to looking into improving their dps. Dps will improve with experience and understanding of the mechanics of the fight and their class. In my opinion at least

[Ladon]

Cyrus, that's not your only mistake.

Opening with Goring Blade has no bonus Enmity, and further delaying your Halone with Swipe doesn't help much either. Do we have concrete numbers yet on Shield Swipes additional enmity?

A good PLD pull would be like this:
Shield Lob(FoF), Fast Blade(SW + CnS), Savage Blade(Bloodbath or a defensive CD to smooth intake) Halone, then Goring.

Check threat after you place Goring, if DPS are getting high, Halone, if you're safe, then replace Halone after a Royal. Use Shield Swipe only as a TP saving tool, and it's ok to clip Goring Blade at 5-6 seconds due to the potency being so much higher than Royal.

I highly disagree here. Paladins should be opening with the Goring Blade combo now and be trying to get two Gorings in with the opener FoF.

A FoF shield lob + CoS + Spirits + Fast Blade is plenty of aggro at the start where DDs are still ramping up their damage as well. A shield swipe after the first Goring will solidify this and give you plenty of time to move into the Halone combo. I've been doing this with a ~900 average DPS Monk in my party and I have never come close to losing aggro.

The only exception to this might be fights like Ravana Ex where you likely want to get the STR debuff from Halone on him sooner than later.

[GeekMatt]

[edited because I'm a dummy and didn't reread the OP before posting]

You need to know how to do your DPS, then adjust how much aggro you need to build based on your partys aggro generation. Running dungeons I typically open with Gore Blade combo on bosses and still have plenty of aggro; from there I'll either Halone or stick to Royal Authority depending on whether or not the party's getting close on aggro.

If DPS is bursting aggro, or if I'm uncertain, then I open with Halone, but generally speaking its a priority order for single target. Do I need more aggro? Halone combo. If no then I'm prioritizing Goring DoT from combo over RA combo and only worrying about Halone when aggro generation is required. SW and CoS sit on CD at all times, and Fight or Flight is up front as my first skill which may or may not be ideal DPS-wise (more likely there's a place for it to fit where you can squeeze in an additional Royal Authority instead of a Fast Blade) after which it's kept on CD.

[SirTaint]

If I open with shield oath I go:

Lob > FoF > spirits > fast > CoS > riot > sheltron > goring > swipe > halone combo

If sword oath tanking then I open with halone to goring.

[Seku]

As a casual player can someone please explain to me what so important about tank dps? I mean we are a tank we are meant to take punches in the face and survive especially as a MT.

1. We're factored in by the developers into the damage calculations for raid DPS, stated in a live letter from the creator of the game.
2. More damage = more hate
3. More damage = monster dead faster = less damage you take. This is easily seen in almost any mass pull as when you start killing off mobs, it becomes drastically easier for the healer to keep the tank up.

[stoxastic]

With the new skills, Shield Swipe is actually an overall dps loss, I believe. It's useful as a way to conserve TP and gain a bit of extra enmity.

PLD dps is a pretty simple priority system. Keep up STR Debuff, keep up Goring Blade DoT, Royal Authority when those don't need to be refreshed, Halone if you need more enmity.

[SirTaint]

With the new skills, Shield Swipe is actually an overall dps loss, I believe. It's useful as a way to conserve TP and gain a bit of extra enmity.

PLD dps is a pretty simple priority system. Keep up STR Debuff, keep up Goring Blade DoT, Royal Authority when those don't need to be refreshed, Halone if you need more enmity.

Potency wise it is a decrease compared to royal and goring but still an increase over halone. The emnity buff also allows for more royal spam.

[Cyrus-Wallace]

Thanks everybody for their inputs! Sadly I can't try out shield swipe efficiency on a dummy, where I'm trying to get used to the new rotation. I'd assume it's a DPS loss since it takes a gcd which shortens the possibilities to re-appling the goring dot twice in the same pull. At the same time, Shield Swipe helps me to back-up my emnity generation and keeps me from doing an "oh-sh-" RoH because of the high DPS's emnity generation.

Alright, I've been running some tests, using STR gear (Shield Oath up) to make it more noticeable, excluding mentioning the off global cooldown skills as they are used the same way no matter what rotation I use as a filler between cds, but as soon as possible to have them available early in the fight again.

1st rotation: Shield Lob then FoF -> Goring + RoH + Royal / 2:51 min testing until I run out of TP: 518 ~ 540 dps.
2nd rotation: Shield Lob then FoF -> RoH + Goring + Royal / 2:50 min test until I run out of TP: 500 ~ 515 dps.

Shield Swipe might actually decrease these numbers as its potency of 210 is lower than RoH (260), Goring (540, if I'm not wrong) and Royal Authority (Sick 340). It don't know if TP wise would be an issue to have Shield Swipe as a ready-to-use whenever it procs, because I used to spam it back in the day to keep it up with the DPS and save some TP. Specially in fights like Bahamut, where you're hitting that winged fire breathing pinata for a whole bunch of minutes.

As an OT: Pretty straight forward. No hate rotation here. Just keeping Goring dot up and spamming Royal Authority puts me above 740 ~ 766 DPS sustained over 3 min until I run out of TP.

All these numbers without food, party buff, without pots. I don't know if these numbers are good since everybody is busy parsing both wars and drks.

[Ippiki]

Paladins should be opening with the Goring Blade combo now and be trying to get two Gorings in with the opener FoF.

If your DPS are any good (tip: MNK has slow rampup and 900 DPS is quite poor for single target) you will never be safe with Goring for threat.

If you have an enmity multiplier on Shield Swipe, please share it. Otherwise, the math looks like this.

1. Delaying Goring with Shield Swipe is a potency loss. Goring ticks for 40 potency every 3s, averaging 33 potency per GCD(this decreases as GCD decreases). Doing Halone instead of Goring to open is a massive threat lead, at the cost of 100 potency.

2. Delaying Goring with Shield Swipe will not let you apply Goring a second time under FoF. Unless your GCD is 2.0s or less for 24+ seconds, you are not able to Shield Swipe at all, during FoF, AND apply Goring a second time, ESPECIALLY if you have FoF up for the Shield Lob.

Cont.