PLD vs WAR: testing

[Chardrizard]

You have to remember though without Cleric Stance on we're all but going 2:1 for Dmg/MP cost, which is horrifying. Not to mention with the AF head piece and general lack of ever stacking any Intel and most WHM's considering the -40 M.acc Tempest as standard issue WHM's are on the by and by very very bad nukers. Sure they can do it in a pinch if the MP if in excess and alittle bit of damage helps. However counting on WHM dmg consistently is going to be very difficult because most WHM will resist the notion. For good reason too. Why make life overly complicated for 3 PT members by splitting the roles and sharing numerous responsible in a fight when it is so much easier to do what each job is designed to do?

Most good WHMs these days are already fulltiming nuke gears and cleric stance because most of the times you don't take real enough damage and regens will top people off easy.

Of course it's case by case basis, but there is no reason to wear healing gear in running through dungeons and most bosses, except Chimera probably and Princess now that ramapge has been nerfed and they take very little nuking damage.

[Firon]

PLD needs to taking 50% less dmg than other classes like it did in XI so you can add in that extra DD. PLD is a paper in this game. I also would like for them to fix the stat checks in this game.

[DarthTaru]

I honestly don't find an issue with PLD survivability. I have an issue with its hate.
We tested PLD against LULIfrit the other day. My friend who is geared well beyond the average BLM gave me until my second voke/flash rotation to begin nuking. After that, despite his best efforts, he couldn't pull hate off of me on PLD.
I've heard it's also a strong hate hold against Garuda although I myself haven't tested it yet.

Unfortunately, that is apparently where it ends.
In Aurum Vale WAR proved to still, despite its nerf, be a superior tank. PLD's damage mitigation was better than WAR against Coin but the fight took us much longer than it normally does.
Fast forward to Miser MNK burn, PLD seemed weak and I have about 185 enmity on my equipment for that fight (Heavy DL body, legs, triple meld enmity belt, jewelry, etc).
Our MNKs had to hold back a lot. I haven't a ton of experience on PLD so it's entirely possible I wasn't doing everything right although I feel like I was. Party ramparts, vokes, flashes, curagas, constant WS's, etc. Despite all this using a PLD tank here clearly gimped our DPS. WAR is clearly a weaker tank now than it was a few days ago but still superior when compared to PLD which continues to struggle IMO.

PLD tank can speed run Aurum Vale but I think between Coin and Miser it would take our group four to five minutes longer to accomplish than we do with me on WAR.
This opinion is based on only two tries as PLD, though, so others may have more experience using it.

Also, I wouldn't even bother using it on Cutters, Princess and Chimera.

[Hoshikogi]

I've been testing PLD/WAR differences on Lv. 58/59 Grass raptors in Corenthas (these have a strong spammish 700 damage fire attack and hit for an average of 300 physical damage without any defensive buffs; they are basicly mini Ifrits).

With the proper skill utlizations and combinations, I hardly received any damage and managed to maintain my hp at ~80% on PLD. By the end of the fight I had roughly 70% of my MP (which I beleive to be excellent after a 3-5 minute fight). PLD's major mp gain is cover (an ability only useable with atleast one other person in the party), which means you lose out on mp gain while solo. PLD would lose out on DPS because they have better actions to perform which actually allows them to survive such as stoneskin, cure, etc. (which still generates enmity), not to mention timing your abilities and attacks for maximum hate/survival which may also dampen their damage over time.

Now on warrior, I did all I could to survive. I zerged my HP regain moves and tried to keep defensive buffs up. I managed to kill some of these monsters; I was generally left with 10% hp on most fights and I died/evacuated 1/4 of the time. Warrior would deal more damage in a solo situation because killing it faster is the only means to your survival and it's really all warrior has to utilize.

[Duelle]

Agreed, but they gave us more than one tank capable class and more than one heal capable class in XI. This game is far to young to start comparing it to games that have 15+ different classes/jobs. I don't want 5 jobs that all heal the same way and equally well, carbon copies just provide the illusion of choice.

No, they didn't. Final Fantasy XI had WHM and that was it. RDM was forced into healing (and haste/refresh spam) and SMN was shoehorned into healing. That's very different from having multiple healing classes.

That being said, I don't understand where this allergy to jobs being interchangeable comes from. Something has to give in order to avoid the crap from XI where you had the "ace" jobs that were used for events and everyone else was just fodder. Not to mention in order to kill off what we're currently seeing right now where people go for certain set ups and just lol at others. What some don't seem to realize is that asking for niche jobs will only recreate that once people figure out what's useful, what isn't and then we have FFXI all over again.

And I never said anything about healing jobs that heal the same way. I'd point to WoW and even Rift (though Rift for a while was iffy because of how people loved healing on Chloromancer) to show how different healing classes can work. In FF's case all we need is decide whcih job should do what. I'd personally suggest Geomancer (Half burst, half smart heals), Green Mage (75% HoTs, 25% burst heals) and Mystic/Oracle (single-target heals with additional effects granted by keeping debuffs on the mob). Then you have real choice as far as healers, and it may even introduce FF players to the concept of "tank heals" and "raid heals" assignments, which I hope are kept in mind by the developers for future content.

[KumaAkuma]

I honestly don't find an issue with PLD survivability. I have an issue with its hate.
We tested PLD against LULIfrit the other day. My friend who is geared well beyond the average BLM gave me until my second voke/flash rotation to begin nuking. After that, despite his best efforts, he couldn't pull hate off of me on PLD.
I've heard it's also a strong hate hold against Garuda although I myself haven't tested it yet.

Unfortunately, that is apparently where it ends.
In Aurum Vale WAR proved to still, despite its nerf, be a superior tank. PLD's damage mitigation was better than WAR against Coin but the fight took us much longer than it normally does.
Fast forward to Miser MNK burn, PLD seemed weak and I have about 185 enmity on my equipment for that fight (Heavy DL body, legs, triple meld enmity belt, jewelry, etc).
Our MNKs had to hold back a lot. I haven't a ton of experience on PLD so it's entirely possible I wasn't doing everything right although I feel like I was. Party ramparts, vokes, flashes, curagas, constant WS's, etc. Despite all this using a PLD tank here clearly gimped our DPS. WAR is clearly a weaker tank now than it was a few days ago but still superior when compared to PLD which continues to struggle IMO.

PLD tank can speed run Aurum Vale but I think between Coin and Miser it would take our group four to five minutes longer to accomplish than we do with me on WAR.
This opinion is based on only two tries as PLD, though, so others may have more experience using it.

Also, I wouldn't even bother using it on Cutters, Princess and Chimera.

You can't just use a bunch of enmity gear and think you're okay as tank. Emnity means nothing if you can't properly hit & attack.

[DarthTaru]

You can't just use a bunch of enmity gear and think you're okay as tank. Emnity means nothing if you can't properly hit & attack.

Hey, thanks for that. I really needed to be told. Clearly the fact that I have a good enmity build also means I have no idea WTF i'm doing and it all just ended up in my inventory one day by sheer magic.

[KumaAkuma]

I can reach your emnity level so know what gear you would be using and yet I'm have to use an offensive build with only 70-80 ish emnity to have a better hate generation and not complain about monks that be pulling of hate @mistress.

You, obtaining your emnity set, means nothing towards the quality of tanking.

[DarthTaru]

I can reach your emnity level so know what gear you would be using and yet I'm have to use an offensive build with only 70-80 ish emnity to have a better hate generation and not complain about monks that be pulling of hate @mistress.

You, obtaining your emnity set, means nothing towards the quality of tanking.

I've had plenty of discussions about various Paladin gear builds over the course of the last month. What you're saying isn't some grand revelation that's big news. What I described were the results of one particular build that proved to be ineffective. Considering WAR DPS tank is not as effective as it was I highly doubt PLD would be although I have yet to try it in a situation that matters. Accuracy was not an issue with my enmity build. Dropping much of it for higher damage I suspect wouldn't produce the results that would be desirable for an MMO's main tank and my linkshell doesn't have gimpy pick-up-group MNKs and gimpy pick-up-group DPS.

I'm eager to see the results of different Paladin builds, along with the speed of the kill and the DPS of the DD's but until I see something that shows otherwise i'm going to remain under my initial impression that WAR remains a superior tank.

[Zaaku]

Most good WHMs these days are already fulltiming nuke gears and cleric stance because most of the times you don't take real enough damage and regens will top people off easy.

Of course it's case by case basis, but there is no reason to wear healing gear in running through dungeons and most bosses, except Chimera probably and Princess now that ramapge has been nerfed and they take very little nuking damage.

You will only see this happening in very well versed Speed Run statics where the WHM's have found the bounds of the PT's abilities and knows exactly how much healing they actually need and can spare potential Cures for more damage. Outside of close knit groups WHM DD is rarer then Roegadyn tails. Which they should add btw. That being said it is also the truth. With Cleric Stance up and a few gear swaps WHM can dump on some impressive damage and speed things along. However in these cases the group is always going for a SPEED run. Taking a PLD to one of these is the exact opposite effect of what they are seeking.

So yes, you may find a DD WHM out there that could theoretically make up for the damage PLD would be lacking. You just won't happen to find any PLD's in the same PT.