The Problem with Paladin

[Kaeko]

First off, glad to see both Seiken and my testing referenced here for stat debates. That's what they were done for so very happy to see that.

Regarding the HP vs. all other stats debate:

I'll try to be a little more eloquent and "nice" about it, but Treach is basically right. There are 2 situations right now that really matter if you consider the "full party" scenario. These are:

(1) Fighting big bosses (Ifrit, Coincounter, etc.)
(2) Fighting lots of "trash" mobs R55 and below.

In situation 1 where we are fighting big bosses, most stats will not even come close to the benefit of straight HP stacking as Treach mentioned. This has to do with increasing returns as you near certain caps and the fact that on such high end mobs, getting anywhere near this cap is inconceivable. DEF and VIT are the best examples are this - I calculated that it would take about 1900 DEF to hit the damage floor on Ifrit. To start seeing significant gains in DEF stacking, you'd probably need to get to at least about 1300 to see any real difference per point. Right now, anything above 1000 is already considered rare territory in 1.21.

In situation 2 where you fight lots of "trash" mobs, it doesn't really require any sort of tank at all. You'd be better off just simply spamming AoE from a hoard of BLMs or WARs (which could also double as tanks...). You can make the argument that, yes, DEF would have much greater returns on these lower level mobs because you can get near the damage floors on them; however, does it really matter when you can just AoE burn them all in about 15 seconds?

There may be situational merit to a high end DEF or damage mitigation build, but for the most pressing and difficult situations SE has presented to us thus far, HP will win by a very significant margin. So if you want to go out of your way to find a situation where an "all DEF" stack PLD build is optimal, I'm sure you could find one. However, to argue that because such an example exists does not change the fact that in the vast majority of situations (especially difficult situations), simple HP stacking blows everything else out of the water.

Poor PLD