PLD highest DPS tank single target

[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.

[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.

[Sarcatica]

For Flash, idk what to feel tbh. It just doesn't make sense to add damage to Flash. Like what, a light comes out and you do damage? Add burn effect? PLD thematically is translated to Knight in JP, so PLD shouldn't have access to holy element. It just doesn't make that much sense like what Overpower and Unleashed because those are offensive skill.

Perhaps even giving more flat enmity total per Flash is acceptable so PLD can rotate GB/RA more.

[Nicobo]

....PLD thematically is translated to Knight in JP, so PLD shouldn't have access to holy element. It just doesn't make that much sense like what Overpower and Unleashed because those are offensive skill.....

PLD used to have HOLY actually...

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/db/spelll...ml?job=paladin

[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.

[Destous]

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.

Dial it back, buddy. The details matter.

Yes, making it literally Overpower or literally Unleash with a more PLD themed animation would appease the complaints about Flash. However, this game is about more than strictly mechanics. Your logic followed to a logical extreme is 3 tanks who are all mechanically identical, but with thematic animations behind those mechanics. That's not a step in the right direction; and yes, it does matter. We're talking about a game, not a machine.

The goal for Flash should be AoE damage + enmity multiplier. From that proposed goal, there are a decent amount of options. Picking something easily differentiated from Overpower and Unleash, but just as useful and powerful, is possible and important. The classes should perform equally, but also feel very different when played.

[Lambdafish]

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.

I'll reiterate Destous's comment and say that your comment is unhelpful. We all know flash is a problem, nobody is arguing that, but your solution is ERMERGERD ADD MER DAMAGE! rather than actually thinking about what it means for job variety and diversity. Flash is paladins primary AOE enmity move, and making it exactly the same as the other two doesn't add a lot to what makes PLD a PLD (which right now is a bad skill, but could be changed). As was said, there are so many interesting avenue's to go down, and you are shooting down the people who are on your side of the argument, good job

[Ryahask]

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.

PLD already has a great deal which makes it unique - namely the support abilities.

Clemency, Divine Veil, Hallowed Ground, and Cover are all exceptionally unique. Neither WAR or DRK have an ability which is close to as unique.

I wouldn't expect many improvements to PLD AoE in future, despite the common complaint, due to the fact that content is balanced around 8 mans. PLDs do not require better AoE damage in an 8 man.

I believe the tanks are quite effectively balanced, although in a semi-awkward manner.

WAR - Highest DPS, Least Mitigation, Unreliable Mitigation, Medium Support
DRK - Middle DPS, Equal Mitigation (Magical), Reliable Mitigation, Limited Support
PLD - Lowest DPS, Equal Mitigation (Physical), Most reliable Mitigation, Extreme Support

[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.

[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.