Mercy Stroke

[Bonkleberry]

I am feeling confident with my healer, so now I am working on establishing my Tank. I decided on aiming for Paladin. All of the guides I am reading, however, suggest Mercy Stroke as a cross coass skill. Reading about the skill, it seems VERY situational and I would rather not level Marauder to the high 20's. Is there an important use for Mercy Stroke for a Paladin or may I skip in for something else?

[Genaxx]

Pld doesnt rely on cross class skills as much as other jobs so as long as you have Foresight and bloodbath the rest is up to you. Mercy stroke is situational but I find it pretty handy. I also have stoneskin and protect.

Fracture - can be a dps loss so not much point in that.
Skull sunder - I dont know what they were thinking..
Cure - not worth it when you have clemency
Raise - cant use it during battle

You should atleast try war, you might like it.

[Canadane]

It's not situational at all.
Mob gets low on HP, you get free extra damage to deal.

The HP recovery is rarely, if ever, relied upon. Nice when it happens, but not something to count on. It's just an extra attack, more or less.

[Lambdafish]

Mercy Stroke isn't important, but its nice to have. As Canadane said, it's free damage. Theres not much better in PLDs cross class pool to trade with it, thats why people suggest it.

Stoneskin and foresight are the two important skills, with mercy stoke being a third choice, after that I chose Bloodbath and protect, because everything else is terrible.

[Bonkleberry]

Thank you for your replies. I am going to skip it. I am not going main tank, so min-maxing is not too important. I can see how Mercy Stroke may be “free damage”, but, with a ninety second cooldown, that is only 2.2 potency per second; and, it may only be used when the target is low HP so the potency is not even that high. I thought that maybe there was some sort of unseen end content that the heal may be used for, but most have you have said it yourselves that the heal is pointless.

[Teiren]

It really is the definition of better than nothing. Mercy Stroke would almost be nice and useful for serious stuff if it didn't need to be literally the killing blow in a game where everything happens only when it visually happens and it did enough damage to even BE a killing blow. In addition, it's usually impossible to get the heal because you're auto attacking at the same time, and due to the animation delay of Mercy Stroke, the auto attack ends up counting as the killing blow even though Mercy Stroke hits too. You essentially have to have a feel for how much HP something has, look at your auto attacks, and use Mercy Stroke right after one to have a chance at getting the heal.

They said that they're reviewing mostly useless skills like Featherfoot and Feint for Stormblood, the next expansion, so I really hope this is included in their review.

[Frowny]

Mercy stroke is really only vital on DRG/MNK. Those 2 classes love free damage. For PLD? Ehhh...

[LineageRazor]

I am not going main tank, so min-maxing is not too important.

Every tank will main tank at one point or another, at least if you're doing endgame content. The fights require tank swapping (the tanks trade main tank and off tank roles), generally because the boss is building up stacks of a deadly debuff on the main tank that need time as off tank in order to dissipate.

Also, if you're going to talk about min-maxing, technically the off-tank cares much more about damage abilities than the main tank does. Aside from a handful of abilities intended to be used by the off-tank to support the main tank, the off-tank pretty much behaves like a DPS does, doing their best to maximize damage. Since they're not in the boss's face, they don't have to worry nearly as much about damage mitigation, and can focus on dishing out punishment.

I'd say that Mercy Stroke is more important to the off tank than to the main tank - though I also agree, that it's really not THAT important an ability. It's mostly slot filler; better than the other options, but not that great.

You should also know that, as the tank with the worst damage potential of the three tanks, Paladin is generally expected to main tank. If you have friends you run with that are fine with letting you off-tank, that's fine, but if you're going into content with strangers, the Dark Knights and Warriors you party with will usually expect you to be main.

The cross class skills I use are Foresight, Bloodbath, Mercy Stroke, Stoneskin, and Protect. Protect doesn't seem like it'd be that useful, either, since you'll pretty much always be in a group with a healer that can use it - but I've found it useful in situations when folks have died, and the healers are too busy to cast Protect right away after reviving them. Much like Summoners and their Resurrection, the Paladin casting Protect takes some of the heat off of healers during situations when they need it most. I often cast Stoneskin on recently-raised folks, as well, to offset the lower HP cap inflicted by death weakness.

[bounddreamer]

I love using Mercy Stroke. I have it on every job I was able to cross-class it to. When you use it often enough you get the timing down to the point that you land your Mercy Stroke as the final blow quite frequently. It's extremely gratifying as a WAR to see that 8700 Mercy Stroke value get absorbed.

On my PLD I have Foresight, Bloodbath, Mercy Stroke, Stoneskin, and Fracture. I'd be better off replacing the Fracture with Protect - my co-tank, who mains PLD, often handles recasting Protect when one of our dps has died in a raid or primal farm.

Was running PLD in a party last week on A10S and it was fun to see the MNK and WAR using Mercy Stroke at the same time as me, all three of us firing them off at once.

If you take marauder to 26, it gives you an okayish idea of the job and how it runs. It's much more fun than PLD with more to play with in my opinion.

[Lambdafish]

On my PLD I have Foresight, Bloodbath, Mercy Stroke, Stoneskin, and Fracture. I'd be better off replacing the Fracture with Protect - my co-tank, who mains PLD, often handles recasting Protect when one of our dps has died in a raid or primal farm..

Fracture is ALWAYS a DPS loss on PLD, even if your co-tank handles protect, it is still more useful on your bar than fracture is.