Guide to fixing PLD

[Firon]

SE needs to add magic def back to gear or lower the magic dmg mobs do cause its outrageous PLD block rate needs to be fixed badly shield is just a paper weight in fights outside of skills, back to magic def they need to add magic def to armor again like: PLD body should have +10 to all ele's but a whm's body should have +30 to all ele's... stuff like that would go a long way for pld, Also Dlvl is another reason some magic attacks hit so fkin hard, like the chimera's breath attacks...

[Aceofspades]

Other then Mijin , I agree with most that has been posted here, except for the WAR generates more hate faster. This is situational. against mobs that have high def, the better tank is most definatly PLD. I think people are trying to compair apples and oranges when it comes to hate controll between the two. Again, anytime damage delt flux's soo will WAR's hate controll, the less damage WAR deals the less hate it generates. Also, PLD is the only job that gets a TP boost for getting hit. wich makes it even more suitable for high def bosses. When war relies on tp moves like "steel cyclone" to generate hate. then damage delt > tp is vital to its hate generation. Soo obviously any time you gimp damage delt , again, you gimp WAR's DPS and overall hate gen. The biggest downfall to lossing TP gain per DPS for WAR is speed in wich it can pull off the TP moves, WAR will have to spend more time doing normal attacks and relying on buffs to generate tp and less time actually doing TP moves.

I said all that to say this, reguardless of lvl, def, hp, ect ect, of the boss/mob your fighting , PLD's hate generation is consistant across the board. when it comes to hate controll PLD is self reliant for the most part and dose not need outside influence , like increased dps to generate tp faster, to maintain its lvl of hate. I challange any level minded pair of tanks, 1 war, 1pld, to attempt to steal hate from eachother on a "mini boss" like Deepvoid Slave, Princess, or even coin counter. I think most will be suprised to see the results, I however wont be, because I have tested hate controll on both, and it was exactly as I suspected. LVL 60ish or less mobs, WAR had the advantage, but once you got into the "mini boss" range PLD held hate FAR more superiorly then WAR simply because, enless you gimp war's def to add to its DPS, it can not keep up with the dps to sustain the same amount of hate generated.

I have heard arguments that " well if you triple meld materia to armor you can sustain the stats needed to make war a viable endgame tank" to wich i answer "at what cost" not just in gil, but in stats you should be stacking to survive... at what point did we lose track of the true purpose of the tank? I agree this is partially SE's fault for giving incentives for "speed runs" but mainly the communities fault for being soo damn lazzy they went with what they saw as the obvious answer and have become soo blinded to the limits of the WAR tank. Soo much soo they are willing to sacrafice survivability to maintain DPS on a tank. This sacrafice is felt all around. Less REAL DPS to take the boss down faster, more healers simply to make it LOOK easy. And for what? other then ego I can not understand why people are soo head strong on WAR tank for content it realy is not designed for.

Soo yeah, make fun of my spelling, IDC, try to counter with " nuh uhh, your a doo doo head" IDC, come at me with real solid numbers of damage taken and prove that you can keep WAR's dps up to par as well, and I will acknowledge your claim till then, its all bs. Dont make somthing outa nothing. and if it aint broke dont fix it.

[SwordCoheir]

I have heard arguments that " well if you triple meld materia to armor you can sustain the stats needed to make war a viable endgame tank" to wich i answer "at what cost" not just in gil, but in stats you should be stacking to survive... at what point did we lose track of the true purpose of the tank? I agree this is partially SE's fault for giving incentives for "speed runs" but mainly the communities fault for being soo damn lazzy they went with what they saw as the obvious answer and have become soo blinded to the limits of the WAR tank. Soo much soo they are willing to sacrafice survivability to maintain DPS on a tank. This sacrafice is felt all around. Less REAL DPS to take the boss down faster, more healers simply to make it LOOK easy. And for what? other then ego I can not understand why people are soo head strong on WAR tank for content it realy is not designed for.

Why take the best at one thing, when this other job can do your job and more even if he's a slightly weaker tank. People don't necessarily want the best when they can have a job that's highly functional at multiple things. RDM was a prime example of this back in the ToAU days in FFXI, we knew it's capabilities far paled in comparison to other core jobs, but it never stopped it from becoming the wanted/required job for most content due to it's versatility and mp regeneration/efficiency, unless it became absolutely necessary to bring a WHM for higher cures.

Unfortunately there isn't a NEED for PLD on anything due to the small gap between PLD and WAR's defense, survivability, and current content, however WAR has such a high advantage over PLD DPS wise he gets the benefit of both worlds and can fall back into a focused DPS position if another tank is present. The name of the game is versatility, and WAR has it in more places than PLD does.

As far as threat/hate control argument goes it's irrelevant either way as long as whomever is tanking can hold hate over others in your group. It would be a problem if neither job could hold hate reliably, but so far we've yet to see an instance where that has happened.

[Evaddaragon]

Unfortunately there isn't a NEED for PLD on anything due to the small gap between PLD and WAR's defense, survivability, and current content, however WAR has such a high advantage over PLD DPS wise he gets the benefit of both worlds and can fall back into a focused DPS position if another tank is present. The name of the game is versatility, and WAR has it in more places than PLD does.

My thoughts exactly. As I've already stated before, PLD, for all intents and purposes, works exactly as what it's supposed to do. It's a fine tank that holds hate well with skills that work for that intent.

The real problem is that there is no content that justifies using it over a WAR. If PLD was indeed much better at damage mitigation, up to the point where you wouldn't need a second whm to make sure your tanks stays, removing that second white mage in favor of a dedicated DD (Hell, it could even be a WAR for all I care), THEN people would prefer using a PLD. That simply isn't the case right now. PLD DOES have better survivability over WAR on high level mobs right now, true, but the difference is far outweighed by the WAR's superior DPS and higher HP, not only leaving a better margin of error for slightly less capable healers, but also giving a slightly better overall DPS to the party.

Now, don't get me wrong. A skilled PLD tank can, with a skilled party, achieve anything a party with a WAR tank will. It simply will be tougher.

Now, I'll also agree that Holy Succor doesn't need to be more potent. Increasing the casting time is a far better idea. MP is NOT an issue, especially now that we know about the AF body's enhancement and the fact we can combine Outmaneuver and Divine Veil, although honestly, I think outmaneuver's MP regen trait could be boosted. Since most, if not all, parties will also have a bard, I'd dare say you simply suck at PLD if you can't manage your MP.

What is the most important thing to do, according to me, is to further increase block rate and block mitigation, AND most importantly, make magical attacks blockable. If you bring that to a level where people will say "If we have a PLD tank, we definitely don't need 2 WHMs in our party", then I'll believe we can achieve a balance.

[Duelle]

Heh, and here I was leveling GLA so that I could eventually become a PLD while I wait for SE to implement Fencer and RDM...

Why take the best at one thing, when this other job can do your job and more even if he's a slightly weaker tank. People don't necessarily want the best when they can have a job that's highly functional at multiple things. RDM was a prime example of this back in the ToAU days in FFXI, we knew it's capabilities far paled in comparison to other core jobs, but it never stopped it from becoming the wanted/required job for most content due to it's versatility and mp regeneration/efficiency, unless it became absolutely necessary to bring a WHM for higher cures.

While your statement is true, RDM is not a good example. RDM was mostly used for CC, heals and refresh. That's not what I would exactly call versatile. Still, WAR seems to be in that spot where it is in the middle of the road, and benefits from it. Would probably be better if both WAR and PLD could perform equally and let WAR have the DPS as a bonus, I think.

Unfortunately there isn't a NEED for PLD on anything due to the small gap between PLD and WAR's defense, survivability, and current content, however WAR has such a high advantage over PLD DPS wise he gets the benefit of both worlds and can fall back into a focused DPS position if another tank is present. The name of the game is versatility, and WAR has it in more places than PLD does.

We have to be REALLY careful when bringing this up, because SE might make the stupid decision of nerfing WAR instead of buffing PLD.

[Evaddaragon]

We have to be REALLY careful when bringing this up, because SE might make the stupid decision of nerfing WAR instead of buffing PLD.

It's probably too late to warn people about that, because there are nearly a dozen of similar threads about this, and I'm not even counting the ones in other forums.

[SwordCoheir]

We have to be REALLY careful when bringing this up, because SE might make the stupid decision of nerfing WAR instead of buffing PLD.

I can see WAR getting some adjustments like to Rampages healing effect where it won't stack with AoEs to make it a little less self reliant, but I doubt we'll see anything major happening to it because WAR is pretty much designed as the HP/DPS meatshield tank it was meant to be.

But part of PLD's design was it was supposed to get increased defense and defensive capabilities at the expense of lower HP, and at update we lost the HP and gained Hallowed Ground and no defensive difference. The adjustment to Divine Veil was nice and welcomed, but if you just stack abilities and stats there still isn't much really separating PLD and WAR defensively to make up that heafty chunk of DPS WAR has.

[Mijin]

On the positive side, PLD has great looking AF! At least SE did that right... unlike lolmnk

[Duelle]

I can see WAR getting some adjustments like to Rampages healing effect where it won't stack with AoEs to make it a little less self reliant, but I doubt we'll see anything major happening to it because WAR is pretty much designed as the HP/DPS meatshield tank it was meant to be.

But part of PLD's design was it was supposed to get increased defense and defensive capabilities at the expense of lower HP, and at update we lost the HP and gained Hallowed Ground and no defensive difference. The adjustment to Divine Veil was nice and welcomed, but if you just stack abilities and stats there still isn't much really separating PLD and WAR defensively to make up that heafty chunk of DPS WAR has.

I think the bigger question to ask is, which is the standard and which doesn't fit?

If PLD is the standard as far as what defense a tank should have and what utility it has built-in, then I would suggest something I brought up in the Fix MRD thread several months ago, and that was give MRD and WAR stances that scaled with different stats. An offensive/DPS stance that scales with STR and a defensive stance that scales with VIT so that you don't have both things on the same job while keeping them performing as well as they currently are.

If WAR is the standard, then yes there is no question that PLD needs fixes and buffs to catch up.

[Dzian]

I challange any level minded pair of tanks, 1 war, 1pld, to attempt to steal hate from eachother on a "mini boss" like Deepvoid Slave, Princess, or even coin counter. I think most will be suprised to see the results,.

As much as i love paladin i will take any one up on that challenge on my warrior. if we go with the deepvoid slave as an example. sentinal antagonize flash voke vengance rampart. think in 10 seconds of the fight i'll already have more hate which pretty much locks out your spirits within and wardrum because without hate you wont be blocking and a few seconds later i'll have my skull sunder emnity combo cake with its steel cyclone icing on top. and if by some stroke of luck you do pull it back i can just collusion your spirits within.

I can't see how any paladin could compete with that. but i would genuinely love to be proved wrong as i am a much bigger fan of paladin than warrior. which is why i'm so gutted that it's so broken.

I've been called a legendary paladin and a legendary warrior, i just find being a legendary warrior is 10% of the effort and 50% more effective. even if imo i suck at warrior cos i never use half its abilities but i don't need to....