PLD highest DPS tank single target

[Destous]

I disapprove of this, Flash does need a rework, but making it LITERALLY overpower is not the right direction

As opposed to making it literally Unleash?

Overpower has a narrow cone. Flash could have a wide cone, like you see on one of those tree mobs, and maybe a 5s CD.

[Alistaire]

As opposed to making it literally Unleash?

Overpower has a narrow cone. Flash could have a wide cone, like you see on one of those tree mobs, and maybe a 5s CD.

Ohgod the special snowflake syndrome here. It being "literally unleash" or "literally overpower" in shape doesn't make you any less special. We don't care about special; we care about competent. And right now 2/3 tanks are competent in dungeon trash packs and other aoe situations.

[Lambdafish]

As opposed to making it literally Unleash?

Overpower has a narrow cone. Flash could have a wide cone, like you see on one of those tree mobs, and maybe a 5s CD.

I didn't say it was good as is, but PLD needs something that makes it unique. I wonder if a drastic cooldown reduction to CoS, meaning that you can have the DoT up almost 100% of the time, with a reduced potency would be better way to control PLD damage, rather than homogenising skills.

[Lyth]

I'm not talking about tankbusters at all. Mitigating tankbusters is a fundamental pass-fail check on a tank. I'm assuming a basic level of tanking experience where you've mapped out not only every tankbuster, but also every cleave and AoE, and are starting to look at ways of spending as much of the fight safely out of stance as possible. In situations like these, you use your cooldown rotation to soften damage spikes from tanking out of stance.

While proc-based defensive abilities like parry and block are "unreliable" for tankbusters, they really start to shine when you look at them across a large number of hits (i.e. autos). Remember how I said that about 40-70% of the damage in a given fight is auto-attacks? Often this represents upwards of 600k damage over the course of a ten-minute fight. Having a shield may not be of benefit on a given tankbuster, but plays a significant role in controlling the overall rate of incoming damage, allowing you to tank out of stance.

RoH is a dps loss. But it's a bigger dps loss to use RA in ShO than it is to use RoH in SwO. It's better to make a small concession than a big one. If RoH keeps you out of tank stance, use it.

DM is not reserved for tankbusters. You can mitigate any tankbuster set comfortably using level 50 PLD cooldowns or their equivalent. You have a lot of bonus cooldowns at your disposal. A cooldown should never go unused for longer than its recast time. If it does, you should burn it to allow yourself to drop stance. DADM is a bit like IB on WAR. It's convenient if you somehow mess up your cooldown rotation, but it's also a dps loss if you end up having to use it. Regular DM is extremely versatile and has some use even in predominantly physical fights, where you can always burn it on an AoE heavy segment.

The key difference between HG and the other cooldowns is that it prevents damage. This isn't just a clutch save issue. If damage is a requirement for a stack or debuff mechanic to activate, you break the mechanic. It's one of the most powerful abilities in the game. You generally will use it twice per fight, as most progression fights are longer than seven minutes in length, and you don't hold a cooldown for longer than its recast timer.

Tank swaps result in dps losses. You can minimise this with good execution, but it's still a loss. This may be more a consequence of the fact that DRK/WAR tends to be less hung up on the "I'm MT" mindset, but my personal preference is to swap at natural points in the fight rather than swapping back simply to artificially preserve MT/OT designations. Cover is a niche skill which gives your raid an alternate way of working around this issue. You don't have to use it if you don't want to, but the option is there.

[Sarcatica]

While proc-based defensive abilities like parry and block are "unreliable" for tankbusters, they really start to shine when you look at them across a large number of hits (i.e. autos). Remember how I said that about 40-70% of the damage in a given fight is auto-attacks? Often this represents upwards of 600k damage over the course of a ten-minute fight. Having a shield may not be of benefit on a given tankbuster, but plays a significant role in controlling the overall rate of incoming damage, allowing you to tank out of stance.

The damage you take is still fluff damage, it will take the same amount of heal to get the relative HP back up. -20%~ damage from hits is barely noticeable if you couple to the fact that no auto hits for more than 5k each (you probably just do 2-4 parry/block every min or so), the comparison tickles even more when you have 28k+ in i240. The only difference in this game vs many other games is the existence of timed and occasional tank busters. This greatly diminishes the point of blocking/parrying attacks as it's not reliable enough to stack.

PLD's main strength is in its ability to simplify fights, both for yourself and your raid group. HG is the most powerful tank cooldown in the game. In several cases, you can outright cheese mechanics with it. You can bypass tank swaps in fights like A7S by denying stacks. You can redirect stacks to yourself as OT using Cover. You can chain stun adds with the only on-demand tank stun move. You are the only tank with access to silence (wasn't DRK supposed to be the magic tank?) DV protects the raid from big AoE hits, such as every second Akh Morn in Nidhogg. It's an absolute joy to play in these fights.

You forgot to mention the PLD/MNK for str/int debuff. Also PLD for A8S, releasing healers from healing you to full (unlike DRK) for the Onslaughter's tank buster and the last Final Punch combo.

RoH is a dps loss. But it's a bigger dps loss to use RA in ShO than it is to use RoH in SwO. It's better to make a small concession than a big one. If RoH keeps you out of tank stance, use it.

No Ninja is DPS loss. RoH is only a DPS loss when your OT (WAR) keeps using BB over and over, no other classes do a shit tonnes of aggro that you need to keep RoH-ing for nuts.

Tank swaps result in dps losses. You can minimise this with good execution, but it's still a loss. This may be more a consequence of the fact that DRK/WAR tends to be less hung up on the "I'm MT" mindset, but my personal preference is to swap at natural points in the fight rather than swapping back simply to artificially preserve MT/OT designations. Cover is a niche skill which gives your raid an alternate way of working around this issue. You don't have to use it if you don't want to, but the option is there.

This is still closely related to your co-tank and your NIN. NIN giving Shades after swap is too good to miss. It's only a loss if you keep swapping for no reason, PLD being the only job that gets shafted so badly for that department.

The key difference between HG and the other cooldowns is that it prevents damage. This isn't just a clutch save issue. If damage is a requirement for a stack or debuff mechanic to activate, you break the mechanic. It's one of the most powerful abilities in the game. You generally will use it twice per fight, as most progression fights are longer than seven minutes in length, and you don't hold a cooldown for longer than its recast timer.

HG simplifies most of the mechanics on the healers when you compare to DRK since you have DRK/PLD being the current meta MT. The moment you use it, healers can focus on other matters more. Other than that, any tank can do whatever PLD can do and DRK is still favourable for the veteran raiders due to the overall higher DPS it can contribute.

DM is not reserved for tankbusters. You can mitigate any tankbuster set comfortably using level 50 PLD cooldowns or their equivalent. You have a lot of bonus cooldowns at your disposal. A cooldown should never go unused for longer than its recast time. If it does, you should burn it to allow yourself to drop stance. DADM is a bit like IB on WAR. It's convenient if you somehow mess up your cooldown rotation, but it's also a dps loss if you end up having to use it. Regular DM is extremely versatile and has some use even in predominantly physical fights, where you can always burn it on an AoE heavy segment.

This one is dependent on the fights you are in and how comfortable you are. A5S doesn't have magical tank buster. A6S technically has some, but they are quite easy to do without so you are better off using it to mitigate other damages like the green balls. A7S is the same as A5S. A8S also use it for green balls (if you are doing the running) and tanking flamethrowers (does it even reduce that damage? because I just pop it whenever I can) and also soaking mines.

[Lyth]

@Sarcatica: Autos and cleaves are a non-issue if you're tanking in stance, or if you're doing content outside of the current raid tier. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the rate of incoming damage is below that of the passive healing that you get from regen + fairy. If the rate of incoming damage is higher, however, you either have to heal more actively or mitigate more actively. In particular, eating an unmitigated cleave out of stance can potentially be dangerous, and it's generally the follow-up auto that kills you. You could theoretically offload all this onto the healers and only pop cooldowns on tankbusters if you're overgeared enough, but it costs us less resources to be competent then it costs them to compensate for us. Every little bit helps, and blocks and parry procs fit into this category, even though we don't gear to maximize this.

Not every group has a NIN. If you're on PLD, chances are that one of your melee slots is already locked down for MNK. There are situations where you will need to be able to adapt to not having a NIN in the party.

The preferred tank class for veteran raiders tends to be whichever class they spend the most time practising. With the most recent set of changes, the potential damage output for each job is close enough that if you're skilled enough on PLD, it's probably a bigger loss to the raid for you to swap. Swapping to DRK will not magically improve your dps if you're struggling with this to begin with. DRK has a tendency to amplify people's mistakes and make them a whole lot more visible. It's much better to be a good PLD than to be a bad DRK, and if anything, players tend to vastly overestimate their competence on related jobs to their main that they play less frequently.

Regular DM works for most of the cases that you listed (its main use in A5S is for the shock therapy sets that follow chimera/pigs and its main use in A7S is for the sizzlespark sets from the end of second jails onwards). DADM is more for those situations where, based on your HP threshold, you know that you have to choose between turning on stance or activating DA to survive the next hit. The Magicked Mark that follows the double Bio-Arithmaticks when tanking Swindler out of stance is an example of this. You can trivialise the damage by turning on stance, but it costs you MP and dps. Eating it out of stance will often kill you, especially if the heal timing happens to be slightly off. DADM is a worthwhile investment here, even though it costs you MP to do so.

[Sarcatica]

@Sarcatica: Autos and cleaves are a non-issue if you're tanking in stance, or if you're doing content outside of the current raid tier. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the rate of incoming damage is below that of the passive healing that you get from regen + fairy. If the rate of incoming damage is higher, however, you either have to heal more actively or mitigate more actively. In particular, eating an unmitigated cleave out of stance can potentially be dangerous, and it's generally the follow-up auto that kills you. You could theoretically offload all this onto the healers and only pop cooldowns on tankbusters if you're overgeared enough, but it costs us less resources to be competent then it costs them to compensate for us. Every little bit helps, and blocks and parry procs fit into this category, even though we don't gear to maximize this.

Not every group has a NIN. If you're on PLD, chances are that one of your melee slots is already locked down for MNK. There are situations where you will need to be able to adapt to not having a NIN in the party.

The preferred tank class for veteran raiders tends to be whichever class they spend the most time practising. With the most recent set of changes, the potential damage output for each job is close enough that if you're skilled enough on PLD, it's probably a bigger loss to the raid for you to swap. Swapping to DRK will not magically improve your dps if you're struggling with this to begin with. DRK has a tendency to amplify people's mistakes and make them a whole lot more visible. It's much better to be a good PLD than to be a bad DRK, and if anything, players tend to vastly overestimate their competence on related jobs to their main that they play less frequently.

Regular DM works for most of the cases that you listed (its main use in A5S is for the shock therapy sets that follow chimera/pigs and its main use in A7S is for the sizzlespark sets from the end of second jails onwards). DADM is more for those situations where, based on your HP threshold, you know that you have to choose between turning on stance or activating DA to survive the next hit. The Magicked Mark that follows the double Bio-Arithmaticks when tanking Swindler out of stance is an example of this. You can trivialise the damage by turning on stance, but it costs you MP and dps. Eating it out of stance will often kill you, especially if the heal timing happens to be slightly off. DADM is a worthwhile investment here, even though it costs you MP to do so.

TBH tanks are already doing DPS from the pull to end. That just depends on how good/familiar your group is. Parry is trash, there are a lot of datas supporting that.

NIN is not essential but you are foolish to not get one.

There are situations where swaps are part of the strats you do or it makes it easier for healers to heal through.

[Launched]

PLD shouldn't get aoe damage. DRK should lose its aoe damage and get something else that makes it good for trash. Actually, DRK should get a full rework so it's not mostly a PLD clone with a few badly copied WAR effects. All 3 jobs should have their own unique tank stances, debuffs, aoe usefulness etc. instead of just adding more and more damage to them.

[Lyth]

I have to say, even scrutinising the fastest clears on Midas Savage at our present gear levels, there's still a surprisingly high tank stance uptime divided between the two tanks in A6S and A8S, so there's actually a lot of potential room for improvement. It's not simply a matter of turning off tank stance and pressing a six button rotation. Active mitigation is still important to keep you out of stance. Either way, I suspect that the PLDs who are pushing the envelope on the job's dps probably aren't the ones complaining about its damage output in single target.

I also note that a number of the fastest clears don't necessarily have a NIN present. It's certainly nice to have a NIN, and you should certainly take advantage of their skills when present. But by no means should you ever be reliant on another class in order to perform one of the minimum competency checks of your role.

Gearing for Parry is only bad because it requires you to give up more useful stats with better scaling. Block and Parry are not intrinsically bad. There is a very obvious difference in the total damage taken in a fight with physical autos when you compare PLD with any other tank. This becomes more pronounced the longer you spend actively tanking, and is no small part due to having a shield. It may be difficult to appreciate this in the short term due to stochastic effects, but when averaged over a large number of attacks, these "random" procs become much more reliable. There was a really good update to our understanding of block and parry on reddit earlier this week. It's probably worth checking out if you can dig it up.

[Sarcatica]

I have to say, even scrutinising the fastest clears on Midas Savage at our present gear levels, there's still a surprisingly high tank stance uptime divided between the two tanks in A6S and A8S, so there's actually a lot of potential room for improvement. It's not simply a matter of turning off tank stance and pressing a six button rotation. Active mitigation is still important to keep you out of stance. Either way, I suspect that the PLDs who are pushing the envelope on the job's dps probably aren't the ones complaining about its damage output in single target.

I also note that a number of the fastest clears don't necessarily have a NIN present. It's certainly nice to have a NIN, and you should certainly take advantage of their skills when present. But by no means should you ever be reliant on another class in order to perform one of the minimum competency checks of your role.

Gearing for Parry is only bad because it requires you to give up more useful stats with better scaling. Block and Parry are not intrinsically bad. There is a very obvious difference in the total damage taken in a fight with physical autos when you compare PLD with any other tank. This becomes more pronounced the longer you spend actively tanking, and is no small part due to having a shield. It may be difficult to appreciate this in the short term due to stochastic effects, but when averaged over a large number of attacks, these "random" procs become much more reliable. There was a really good update to our understanding of block and parry on reddit earlier this week. It's probably worth checking out if you can dig it up.

In A6S, the only phase that is "useless" to DPS is when Brawler (2nd boss) enters phase 2 and mostly it's a running session to either DPS balls or fetch green balls in tank stances. Tank stances are used everywhere else for maintaining aggro start. Swindler also has all the adds killed without LB, also a huge padding and lastly using LB on Vortexer which you will only see less than 1 1/2 cycle of Vortexer's mechanics.

A8S has a lot of situations where it's still kinda iffy to tank in DPS stance (MT in 4 robots phase when you tank both Vortexer and Swindler and OT fetching green balls, after 1st and before 2nd intermission where you take more damage from the Brute Justice), and also that there are a shit tonnes of "downtimes" where you don't have anything to DPS so you are better off in tank stance (1st, 2nd intermission).

Everywhere else? Get early aggro and tank in DPS stance to DPS.

There are only a few exceptions to NIN not being present in the speed runs of Midas. In the majority of the parses, you see NIN in that kind of run, clearly there has to be something going on?

I mentioned somewhere that Parry is not THAT bad, but you have to relate it to the other stats in the game and by far Parry is the most underwhelming secondary. I saw the update on the Parry calculation on Reddit. It was interesting but nothing new, the fact that Parry still sucks and it sucks even more with PLD. Parry Princesses anyone? Parry needs rework to be on par with other stats and until then, Parry remains to be the only secondary that is actively shunned by people and that's the harsh truth.