50 PLD - fill in cross-class abilities or go for 60?

[Sarcatica]

Regardless, it's not free DPS.

Yeah dude, totally not free deeps. I feel ya, give us 1k potency moves with 5sec cd and everyone will be great at dpsing!

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

DUNGEONS
mentioned POTENCIALLY 1k and above actually if you count dungeons.

Did you really list dungeons as a viable reason to have such a weak cross class? Alright, have fun. Just saying, Ice and thunder mages are also viable for dungeons, as well as dps that don't use cd's, which does nothing to support Mercy Stroke as a good cross class.

[Sarcatica]

What do you categorize as a weak cross class anyway? Take protect then? Lul. There is nothing else to pick, you are just complaining at this point. If you are still arguing just because you don't wanna lose face, it is highly appreciated if you dont misinform players and don't post anything dumb because it is misleading. Again if you want to complain about SE's poor choice of cross skills, this is not the place. This topic is merely mix-matching cross skills that are the most optimal.

[Rongway]

Bloodbath pairs well with Fight or Flight.

Foresight gives about 400 defense at iLv230. It's roughly like wearing a second chest piece.

Stoneskin for PLD is effectively a "cooldown by proxy". There are some absurdly hard hitting attacks later in certain fights, or attacks that leave targets at low HP and ready to die, that healers should be able to handle but you might not actually be playing with effective healers who can handle them. Ex: Prey in Heart of the Creator is a hard hitting triple AoE attack that will kill (at least one) someone if the healers aren't all there, and the damage you lose from taking the time to cast Stoneskin on the target before this attack is far less than the damage the party loses if the healers let someone die.

Protect is for rebuffing people who've been raised. Every Protect that the healer casts in combat is a lost tier II heal. You have infinite MP, so it's better for you to cast it than a healer.

Mercy Stroke does so little damage it's not even worth it -- it doesn't really shave off any appreciable time, since if you're in a position to use it, someone else most certainly has the killshot queued already. It's only there because there are no better options. Especially in the case of dungeons, where your attack just killed something that would have died to the next AoE anyway.


In short, most of the PLD cross class panoply isn't an impressive one and mostly serves to do other people's jobs for them. But these five are the least bad, so take them and learn to recognize when to use them.

[Jpec07]

While I can't say which are the best or the ones that you should take, I do have some opinions on each of the available options:

• Foresight: Increases defense by 20% for 20 sec.
  20% physical defense might not seem like that much, but this one gets better with more gear. When you're 60, it starts out only as a 7-8% mitigation, but as you get better and better gear, it climbs towards the 15% range. This is nothing to scoff at. The cooldown also matches up nicely with Convalescence, so you can double them up to provide a solid bit of mitigation.
• Skull Sunder - 60CP: Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
  Additional Effect: Increased enmity
Combo Action: Heavy Swing, Combo Potency: 200
  Skull Sunder for Paladins is a weaker version of Savage Blade that cannot be made stronger by combo. As such, it is worthless as a cross-class skill once you get Savage Blade at level 4 on GLD.
• Fracture 80CP: Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
  Additional Effect: Damage over time with potency of 20 for 18 sec.
  Fracture represents a DPS gain for PLD until you get Goring Blade at level 54 if it runs the full length and is not clipped. However, it's heightened CP cost and short duration will mean that it takes a lot of energy to keep up - and especially if multi-dotting, can cause you to floor your TP very quickly. Even at 50, Fracture is generally not recommended.
• Bloodbath: Converts 25% of physical dealt into HP.
  Almost every PLD takes Bloodbath. Bloodbath shares a cooldown timer with Fight or Flight, and so can and should be used in tandem with it for increased self heals. There are no downsides to it.
• Mercy Stroke: Delivers an attack with a potency of 200.
  Can only be executed when target's HP below 20%. If delivered as the killing blow, up to 20% of your maximum HP will be restored.
  Mercy Stroke is a lot more useful on WAR and DRK, whose attacks deal a lot more damage than PLD's. At 200 potency, it is very unlikely that you as a PLD are going to get to use it for the self-heal, so it instead just represents another button to press for a slight bit of free damage (since it doesn't cost CP).
• Cure MP: Restores target's HP. Cure Potency: 300.
  Cure is worth taking as a PLD if you are below level 30. At those levels, character stats don't factor as much into healing potency, and so until level 20 or so, your cross-class Cure will be very similar to a WHM/CNJ's Cure. However, once you get past that point, as Cure continues to rely on your Mind stat, it becomes increasingly useless. By the time you're level 30, you should drop Cure for a different skill, as you won't be helping yourself or your healer with it.
• Protect MP: Increases the physical and magical defense of all party members within range of target for 30 mins.
  Protect can be helpful in a raid setting. If a player dies and needs a res, you can save the healer the trouble of re-applying it by doing it for them. You can also maybe help cut down a tiny fraction on the prep time for an encounter by casting it for the healer. In most cases, though, the healers will have the party covered, and will cast protect before the fight starts. There is no difference between a PLD's Protect and a healer's protect.
• Raise MP: Resurrects target to a weakened state.
  Cannot be used when in combat.
  The last line assures that you will never see combat use out of this skill as a PLD. It can be useful out in the world or while questing (if you happen upon a poor gatherer who forgot to stealth past that S-Rank, for example), but you'll never use it in a dungeon.
• Stoneskin MP: Creates a barrier around target that prevents physical damage totaling 10% of target's maximum HP for 30mins.
  This is probably the most useful cross-class skill from CNJ that Paladin can take, because it gives you the ability to apply a 10% HP shield to yourself. If you know a big hit is coming up, taking ~1000 damage off of it at 50 or ~1800-~2800 damage off of it at 60 can really make a difference in how hard you're hit. It does take a bit of foresight, as the long cast bar makes it prone to interruption, but if you use it right, it can really help to mitigate incoming damage. For example, if you try to keep it up on yourself as often as possible on Thornmarch while tanking, you'll see yourself taking substantially less damage. The best part is that, because it's a shield, the only abilities it does not have parity with are Bloodbath, Clemency, and Convalescence. Many avoid it because it represents a DPS loss with frequent usage, but your healer may love you for it.

So there you have it. The only one that most people will agree is essential is Bloodbath. A bunch are usually avoided because they're non-viable: Cure, Skull Sunder, and Raise. Everything else is a matter of personal preference. I personally have Foresight, Bloodbath, Stoneskin, Mercy Stroke, and Protect on my bars.

[LilLemay]

While Foresight by itself is nowhere near being good, it becomes quite powerful when you pair it up with Sheltron for physical tankbusters. The fact that Sheltron is only on a 30 second timer means these two "meh" CDs can become a good CD when used together instead of forcing you to use Rampart. So I would say Foresight IS mandatory on PLD.

That's a fair point, though I don't think relying on just ShO/sheltron/and foresight to take any sort of tankbuster in savage content is a good idea unless you want to stress your healer, dungeons or regular a9-12 go for it, but if you're using your cd's right you should always at least have rampart or sentinel ready. If I recall scrapline in a9s does roughly 14k to me if I use ShO/sheltron/rampart (no sch shield), just relying on ShO/sheltron/foresight there isn't gonna do you much better than simply taking it to the face in ShO. In most cases you're better off simply using foresight to mitigate a bit of incoming damage over time, as opposed to weaving it together with bigger cooldowns for a buster

[DarthVella]

Raise can find a lot of use in Palace of the Dead. Still mostly garbage outside it, of course.

[Fernosaur]

Snip.

You're not really stressing your healer because we usually prepare for tank busters too, so unless you take one without any CD or in SwO without a big CD, there's really no extra stress there. If it's one of those cases in which the TB happens as a lot of raid damage is going off (eg. Flatten+Earth Shakers+Tornado in T13 or the Heavenly Heel inbetween Ancient Quagas in ThorEX) you usually save the bigger CDs for that anyways.

With ShO+Foresight+Sheltron you'd take around 16k damage, 17.5k TOPS from Scrapline, tbh. Tanks are currently sitting at 30k HP, so I don't see how being left with 40-45% of your HP is bad at all. I'd say being left with that amount means your mitigation worked, as you're probably gonna be tossed a Cure/Benefic II or Tetra/ED/Lustrate after it and quite possibly recover 11k+ just from one spell. If you're too worried about it, combine it with Convalescence. Or better yet, if you're doing Savage you're probably voice-communicating with your healers, so let them know when you're going to use a slightly weaker CD beforehand so they can Virus or shield you. Even then, 40% of your HP is hardly a dangerous situation, specially when the only thing coming immediately after are auto-attacks.

Not to make pointless comparisons, but remember back when Str tanks were the meta? You only brought what you needed for the fights. Heavenly Heel used to deal around 14-15k damage on tanks with 17k HP, and that was perfectly fine. The first Heel could be taken with Foresight and Sheltron with no problems.