Dear Paladins...

[Aceofspades]

I have nothing to gain by posting false information. Only reason I still post what I know about tanking , is because people were on here posting that "HP was the #1 tank stat" after I replied by basicly calling those players ignorant, I became public enemy number one. I honestly do not care lol. Fact is I have nothing to gain by posting what I know about tanking. If you wish for me to stop then you have two options:

1) Get SE to declair that DEF is broken and dose not work
2) Prove your claims are true , with raw data, not charts built off of players intuition

[Chardrizard]

I dont think anybody oppose or saying def is worthless, find a quote from anyone that says that, people just dont want new PLDs that really do want to immerse themself in accomplishing endgame to listen to you bc while yes that DEF/turtle build has its uses, it is not doing it job well and very non optimal when it comes to accomplishing speedruns which is pretty much what everyone is after.

Taking less damage has no use if it means DPS has to hold back because prolonging fight just makes the fight more dangerous.

I am also not here to say def is worthless, but i will here to say to Ace that you are burden to a party and probably the cause of terrible boss runs.

[Aceofspades]

I dont think anybody oppose or saying def is worthless, find a quote from anyone that says that, people just dont want new PLDs that really do want to immerse themself in accomplishing endgame to listen to you bc while yes that DEF/turtle build has its uses, it is not doing it job well and very non optimal when it comes to accomplishing speedruns which is pretty much what everyone is after.

Taking less damage has no use if it means DPS has to hold back because prolonging fight just makes the fight more dangerous.

I am also not here to say def is worthless, but i will here to say to Ace that you are burden to a party and probably the cause of terrible boss runs.

from grey

"While you're at it, check out worthless DEF becomes as mob levels are higher than yours:"

lol the fact that HP vs Def holds no effect to hate hold, determining that a def build hurts hate hold in any way is ignorant, as far as a burden on the mages, again, your wrong, dosent matter how much HP you have, if your gona get hit like a truck there is a good chance the healers are already cure bombing the tank anyways. soo other then being one shotted by a tp or magic move hp offers nothing more then a bit of a cushon for the whm's. on that note, there are very few boss abilties ,wether physical or magical, that reduce a tank's hp bar to that extent, and other then hell fire , wich is easly overcome, I have heard of no ability that can drain more then 3k hp from on single attack other then 100tonze in wich case def/vit build dose in fact add more survivability to that particular fight then HP.

[Chardrizard]

from grey

"While you're at it, check out worthless DEF becomes as mob levels are higher than yours:"

lol the fact that HP vs Def holds no effect to hate hold, determining that a def build hurts hate hold in any way is ignorant, as far as a burden on the mages, again, your wrong, dosent matter how much HP you have, if your gona get hit like a truck there is a good chance the healers are already cure bombing the tank anyways. soo other then being one shotted by a tp or magic move hp offers nothing more then a bit of a cushon for the whm's. on that note, there are very few boss abilties ,wether physical or magical, that reduce a tank's hp bar to that extent, and other then hell fire , wich is easly overcome, I have heard of no ability that can drain more then 3k hp from on single attack other then 100tonze in wich case def/vit build dose in fact add more survivability to that particular fight then HP.

I didnt know we.were ddiscussing def vs hp build lol.
As far as i know its your setup vs what we thought is optimal, which is enmity all the way and since we used alot of slot for enmity there are little slot left for defense which isnt doing much unless we have alot of it.

Survivabilty is never an issue.with good WHMs, but if you have top DPS there is no way you can keep hate in fight like.misser.

[SwordCoheir]

We've had discussions like this before Ace and most of us completely agree that defense and VIT are good and necessary, however the point of deminishing returns is too low, too easy to cap, or requires absurd DEF/VIT obtain due to the D-Level factor.

But you know what Ace this whole ongoing DEF/VIT argument that you've been crusade about shouldn't even really be going on PERIOD because (And I'm going to be vocal and frankly biased by this point)

"DEF/VIT MATERIA CAN ONLY BE PUT ON VERY FEW, SELECTIVE PIECES OF GEAR, HP CAN BE PUT ON DAMN NEAR ANYTHING. EVEN MIXING YOUR ONLY OUT 200-300ISH HP AT THE MOST, SO YOU CAN HAVE YOUR EFF'IN CAKE AND EAT IT TOO! SO DROP IT! FFFS!"

Secondly, your personal play style does not advocate good methodology on paper or in practice. Saying you can do this and that (such as purposely eating 100-Tonze Swing) is more of a look what I can do or this is easier for me, than hey what can make this go faster, is safer, and runs the best chance of success.

Lastly, in either an LS or PUG you should know that players expect things of you just as you would of them. If that means avoiding 100-Tonze Swing so close ranged DD's have a shot to wail on CC when he's on his ass, and WHM's don't have a heart attack every 5 second from back to back 100-Tonze Swings, then by all means you should be adjusting your strategy to help the group win more than to suit your personal playstyle.

There is a very fine line of being unable to pick up the slack of other players, and choosing to slow down the group even more just because you want to play a particular way, or even being a hinderance to your group because you want to strictly enforce your own playstyle.

Weather or not your advocating people to try your method, you know your methods are usually not well suited nor suggested for new players, so there is little to no point in even suggesting or going to the great lengths of defending your posts, especially when you come around saying "I don't care what players do or if they do what I do".

/rant off

[Aceofspades]

We've had discussions like this before Ace and most of us completely agree that defense and VIT are good and necessary, however the point of deminishing returns is too low, too easy to cap, or requires absurd DEF/VIT obtain due to the D-Level factor.

But you know what Ace this whole ongoing DEF/VIT argument that you've been crusade about shouldn't even really be going on PERIOD because (And I'm going to be vocal and frankly biased by this point)

"DEF/VIT MATERIA CAN ONLY BE PUT ON VERY FEW, SELECTIVE PIECES OF GEAR, HP CAN BE PUT ON DAMN NEAR ANYTHING. EVEN MIXING YOUR ONLY OUT 200-300ISH HP AT THE MOST, SO YOU CAN HAVE YOUR EFF'IN CAKE AND EAT IT TOO! SO DROP IT! FFFS!"

Secondly, your personal play style does not advocate good methodology on paper or in practice. Saying you can do this and that (such as purposely eating 100-Tonze Swing) is more of a look what I can do or this is easier for me, than hey what can make this go faster, is safer, and runs the best chance of success.

Lastly, in either an LS or PUG you should know that players expect things of you just as you would of them. If that means avoiding 100-Tonze Swing so close ranged DD's have a shot to wail on CC when he's on his ass, and WHM's don't have a heart attack every 5 second from back to back 100-Tonze Swings, then by all means you should be adjusting your strategy to help the group win more than to suit your personal playstyle.

There is a very fine line of being unable to pick up the slack of other players, and choosing to slow down the group even more just because you want to play a particular way, or even being a hinderance to your group because you want to strictly enforce your own playstyle.

Weather or not your advocating people to try your method, you know your methods are usually not well suited nor suggested for new players, so there is little to no point in even suggesting or going to the great lengths of defending your posts, especially when you come around saying "I don't care what players do or if they do what I do".

/rant off

would like to touch on your sixth paragraph, in wich I fully agree with. Just not sure if your fully understanding my argument. IF you can eat 100% of 100 tonze and keep near full health without healer support, this prevents you from having to run from the attack wich still has a chance to hit you with or without server lag, I will agree it dose take some skill to time running from the attack with a degree of success. But there inlies the problem. Your basicly have two choices when it comes down to a situation like 100 tonze

1: Use your gear and well timed abilities in order to negate the damage. This offers one distinct problem, the gear must be substantially suited for what ever fight you plan on strait tanking , in wich case, for 100 tonze, vit and def are an obvious stats to stack. Not an easy build , I fully agree , but we are not saying wich is easiest to build but wich stats are ultimatly better for the job.

2: you can attempt avoiding the attack alltogether. In this case , avoiding 100 tonze actually incaps the boss for a few seconds wich would be valuable time if mages needed to regen mp for heals , nukes , ect. However, there are two distinct disadvantages to this tatic.
1: running from a tp/mp moves requires free movement, and sense there is no 100% way to insure you will not be caught in animation lock, due to randomness of the procing of tp/mp moves (even with useing the action log) there is still an off chance to be caught off guard.
2: Server latiency has been an issue since the games release. This is said to be corrected with 2.0 , that being said, it is still an issue, to advise any player without knowing their hardware and/or how the server decides it wants to act that particular day, I think its rather ambitious to expect everyone NOT to have lateincy issues. I said all that to say this, IF you have latiency issues, you can be standing well out of range of 100 tonze seconds before it gose off and still get hit by it, this is the reason Ifrrit was such a pain in the beginning.

I think both sides have their issues, I personally perferr to use my tatic and do not see how I would be bringing down the party by doing so. CC sitting on his butt takes as much damage as he dose standing up. Those additional seconds to recharge mp would be important IF the mages had to be mobile at any point in the fight, in this particular fight , they do not. And by me strait tanking CC I can insure with a greater certainty that I will survive then if I were to turn my back on CC in attempts to flee his hardest hitting move. and being that not only do PLD's take more damage from the rear but half the pre-emptive abilties I used to negate damage from 100 tonze would be worthless as they only work if I face the target hitting me. And all this dosent even take into account for animation lock, should I get stuck in the middle of a combo, I would have no time to run and just enough time to pop sentinal or ageious boon. Seeing how I know I am gona get hit anyways, just makes more sense to prepair for a devistating blow rather then attempt to run from it.

If one can take the damage and be as survivable as one who runs from the damage, sounds like there is even less to gain from fleeing an enemy ability. After all, if 100 tonze hit everyone for 500 damage would we still run from it? If it was convient to Avoid , I would say yes, but sense it is not , I would have to say no.

Certainly there are fights in wich Abilties must be avoided, but then again there are fights in wich abilities can not be avoided. To build a ends all tatic for every fight off of the ignorant assumptions for one fight , to distribute as "the way" to fight a boss for new comers is dangerous for any new comer to the game. You may not agree , But to try to discredit me because you personally disagree is just ignorant.

I have offered the terms in wich I will take back all my claims and tatics that I endorse on the forums. And that is, either someone comes forth with raw data ( not charts based on data collected in wich we have no evidance of even existing) via video or parse or both. Or the developers them selves tell release a statement in wich they say that DEF and or VIT are essenutally broken.

One more statement I will conqure with to some reguard before I go. Yes, I know and agree that the amount of DEF one must have inorder to be of any note in a boss fight must be great in comparison to single or no materiaed rare/ex gear. This being said, double stacking vit and def is not that hard , if one soo wished and was inclined to try. Expensive? ABSOULUTELY! But if getting epic gear was easy , why on earth would anyone care to have it much less play a game in wich building a "endgame set" was yet another aspect that was handed over to the casual player as an insentive to play. No offense to the casual gamer but , why would a hard core gamer play if everything they attained can be done on the weekend for a casual gamer? I know this is a little off subject , but, I for one like a mmo with some prestige in attaining hard to get things. To conclude this statement I will simply say, your gear is what you put into it, Yoshi P in his understanding of the mechanics of this game has briliantly designed it in such a way that no longer is epic gear simply droped , or easly crafted, its a culmination of farming/crafting/risk/ and stat stacking. One can make up his or her own mind how they wish to go about building their gear, I simply like to , and implore others to, stack def/vit as main priority for tanking, IF you disagree, you are entitled to do so, but you can not factually discredit my claims without the terms I listed above. Point and case.

sorry for any mis-spellings, not the best when it comes to writing.

[SwordCoheir]

Shortened for the sake of posters.

Firstly, I'd like to thank you for taking the effort to actually write out your response.

Reading over your response I think we can all agree things like server latency, lag, and other issues are ongoing problems, and there is always those "Oh, Shit!" moments, your caught off guard, or mis-time your abilities, we're not arguing that, it's a given.

(BTW These are my assumptions based on what you wrote and have written in the past, not a statement of your ability to play being I cannot fully validate your capabilities from personal experience.)

Now if your having issues with latency and lag as whole which prevents you from performing like normal players, it might be just due to your graphics card playing catch-up with the game itself. If you haven't already, I suggest lowering the General / Background Drawing Quality (5/1 are my current settings) and lowering / disabling some of the effects (especially shadows). I had all kinds of issues with Eruptions, Mistral Shrieks, and 100-Tonze Swings until I had lowered the settings some. Even if you find your current style more suitable still, it should help in situations like Chimera where avoiding his moves is necessary.

Putting Latency and Lag aside now, you mentioned that avoiding the move was an issue for you sometimes. I'm just curious if you ever noticed there were two types of 100-Tonze moves (Swing and Swipe), Swing being the potentially 1-Shot move and easily avoidable, while Swipe hits hard but is much faster and much more survivable than Swing. I'm not trying to insult your intelligence or anything, it's easy to miss and hard to judge the moves apart if your not carefully reading the chat log to anticipate attacks, but if that's the case then making attempts to try avoiding Swing should be much easier for you if you choose to do so.

As for my earlier statement about your method not good in methodology or practice, allow me to go over some of the finer points of what I'm getting at and why it looks very unattractive to the majority (and myself for that matter), it has much less to do with being decked out and being able to easily take the brunt of 100-Tonze Swing and relies more on principle of what avoiding the move really does for your party.

-100-Tonze Swing does have the capability to one shot PLD (HP/DEF/VIT or otherwise) without mitigation abilities, stoneskin, w/e up. (Shit happens, everything's on cool-down, etc.)
-Surviving 100-Tonze Swing can be painful, and WHM can only heal about half of a PLD's HP in a single Cura, which could leave a PLD in a predicament if the WHM's cannot heal fast enough and CC follows through with another 100 Tonze move or Glower.
-At 50% CC will start spamming Weaponskills back-to-back leaving little to no breathing room for your healers, who may need to assist the melee's or regain mp. For example, if CC decides to spam 100-Tonze Swings, and your WHM/s get's silenced from slugs it can ruin a PLD's day.
-Additionally, (as you mentioned some of these) CC on his ass means WHM's have additional time to heal, regenerate mp, nuke, recover from silence, etc., but it also means the WHM's don't have to heal as often overall meaning more mp conservation and time to nuke and assist. PLD themselves, will also have enough of a breather to throw out a combo or two without worrying about mitigation abilities, or toss a Holy Succor on themselves, and let the WHM's focus on other things.
-Decreases the chances and opportunities of annoying moves like Animal Instinct and Eye of the Beholder from disturbing the flow of battle.

Taking those points into consideration, taking 100-Tonze Swing head on means your taking more damage overall, diverting the WHM's attention to you more than necessary to heal that extra damage taken (even if you can help yourself every 10-15 seconds), and giving up a solid opportunity for DD's to attack without hesitation (it can be hard for DD's to combo when he's spamming back to back moves). Overall, I can't see any distinct or real advantage to taking it head on aside from necessity, which is more of the effect of bad game design and hardware or bad luck than player skill or schematics.

As far as the DEF/VIT thing goes, I've already said I've been in favor for the DEF/VIT setup in the past and even speced myself for it, however I can also look at the other side of the coin and see what disadvantages it could bring.

I'm afraid I'm also find it difficult to discern weather or not your just having trouble communicating your thoughts and interpreting what other's try to convey to you, or if your just being stubborn and biased in your postings which seems apparent in some of your replies to players (outside of flamebait posts).

[Aceofspades]

Firstly, I'd like to thank you for taking the effort to actually write out your response.

Reading over your response I think we can all agree things like server latency, lag, and other issues are ongoing problems, and there is always those "Oh, Shit!" moments, your caught off guard, or mis-time your abilities, we're not arguing that, it's a given.

(BTW These are my assumptions based on what you wrote and have written in the past, not a statement of your ability to play being I cannot fully validate your capabilities from personal experience.)

Now if your having issues with latency and lag as whole which prevents you from performing like normal players, it might be just due to your graphics card playing catch-up with the game itself. If you haven't already, I suggest lowering the General / Background Drawing Quality (5/1 are my current settings) and lowering / disabling some of the effects (especially shadows). I had all kinds of issues with Eruptions, Mistral Shrieks, and 100-Tonze Swings until I had lowered the settings some. Even if you find your current style more suitable still, it should help in situations like Chimera where avoiding his moves is necessary.

Putting Latency and Lag aside now, you mentioned that avoiding the move was an issue for you sometimes. I'm just curious if you ever noticed there were two types of 100-Tonze moves (Swing and Swipe), Swing being the potentially 1-Shot move and easily avoidable, while Swipe hits hard but is much faster and much more survivable than Swing. I'm not trying to insult your intelligence or anything, it's easy to miss and hard to judge the moves apart if your not carefully reading the chat log to anticipate attacks, but if that's the case then making attempts to try avoiding Swing should be much easier for you if you choose to do so.

As for my earlier statement about your method not good in methodology or practice, allow me to go over some of the finer points of what I'm getting at and why it looks very unattractive to the majority (and myself for that matter), it has much less to do with being decked out and being able to easily take the brunt of 100-Tonze Swing and relies more on principle of what avoiding the move really does for your party.

-100-Tonze Swing does have the capability to one shot PLD (HP/DEF/VIT or otherwise) without mitigation abilities, stoneskin, w/e up. (Shit happens, everything's on cool-down, etc.)
-Surviving 100-Tonze Swing can be painful, and WHM can only heal about half of a PLD's HP in a single Cura, which could leave a PLD in a predicament if the WHM's cannot heal fast enough and CC follows through with another 100 Tonze move or Glower.
-At 50% CC will start spamming Weaponskills back-to-back leaving little to no breathing room for your healers, who may need to assist the melee's or regain mp. For example, if CC decides to spam 100-Tonze Swings, and your WHM/s get's silenced from slugs it can ruin a PLD's day.
-Additionally, (as you mentioned some of these) CC on his ass means WHM's have additional time to heal, regenerate mp, nuke, recover from silence, etc., but it also means the WHM's don't have to heal as often overall meaning more mp conservation and time to nuke and assist. PLD themselves, will also have enough of a breather to throw out a combo or two without worrying about mitigation abilities, or toss a Holy Succor on themselves, and let the WHM's focus on other things.
-Decreases the chances and opportunities of annoying moves like Animal Instinct and Eye of the Beholder from disturbing the flow of battle.

Taking those points into consideration, taking 100-Tonze Swing head on means your taking more damage overall, diverting the WHM's attention to you more than necessary to heal that extra damage taken (even if you can help yourself every 10-15 seconds), and giving up a solid opportunity for DD's to attack without hesitation (it can be hard for DD's to combo when he's spamming back to back moves). Overall, I can't see any distinct or real advantage to taking it head on aside from necessity, which is more of the effect of bad game design and hardware or bad luck than player skill or schematics.

As far as the DEF/VIT thing goes, I've already said I've been in favor for the DEF/VIT setup in the past and even speced myself for it, however I can also look at the other side of the coin and see what disadvantages it could bring.

I'm afraid I'm also find it difficult to discern weather or not your just having trouble communicating your thoughts and interpreting what other's try to convey to you, or if your just being stubborn and biased in your postings which seems apparent in some of your replies to players (outside of flamebait posts).

Just rushed to respond is all, I play at work and this not only effects the hardware in wich I play with but everything else I do on this game/forums :/ , but it beats not being able to play at all

Now to the meat of the debate.

The advantage to strait tanking ANYTHING on pld is the ability to tank with PLD the way it was intended to. I do agree that the mechanic of CC falling on his ass was obviously intended by the developers but I am not soo sure as to the full degree of its intent. I suppose if you are an offensive tank, like a war, and you can not deflect damage like pld then avoiding 100 tonze would be a good tatic and its possable the devs saw this comming and incorperated a mechanic that allows enough time for the War to replace himself in a good tanking postion before the battle recommenced.

Anytime a PLD has to run/kite or avoid anything, they are at their deffensive weakest. Weather or not you actually succeed in avoiding the unwanted move is , in my opinion, always pure luck, as you said, "shit happens". Again this is my opinion , but , I see the beauty of pld as not needing to avoid half as many attacks as the offensive tanks. If you can do soo, I certainly see nothing wrong with it, but I personaly like to know exactly what the consequences of my actions will be. By turtle tanking on PLD I have full controll of the pace of battle. I do understand that there is an element of inconsistancy in any boss fight, that being said, if you understand the job well enough and gear your PLD to suite, it is very possable to hold on to some of your abilities with the intention to use them at the opertune moment. I belive that PLD is the only tank atm that can do this successfully, I at least know that pld certainly can do this because I have done it. Choosing to no simply spam abilities instead use them in a calculated order with methodology that as a PLD you can in fact controll the pace of the fight with more certainty of success by strait tanking vs atempting to avoid major tp/mp moves.

This being said, I fully understand and agree that there are situations where avoidance is not only a perfered method of tanking but somtimes the only method of tanking. I do not belive that CC is one of those fights however. BUT if you choose to avoid the only real threat in the CC fight you may as well go with an offensive tank , as you deprive PLD of its defensive advanatages.

As far as adding stress to the WHM, I can agree that several 100 tonze in a row, and yes i know the differance between the light and heavy swing, can be a bit of a "oh shit" moment for the WHM/s that being said, every fight has its moments in wich every aspect of the party (dd/healer/tank) need to be at peak performance. With my build and strait tanking 100 tonze I can at least pin point the "stressfull" zones of the fight for the whms soo they know when they need to be at peak vs an hp build that would add an increased lvl of stress through out the entire fight in comparison to a higher defensive build.

Not trying to boast, but I will remind you that, with my current build I can take 2-3 direct 100tonze in a row with little to no risk of death, IF my abilities are ready to go or at least close to ready, considering the fact that I have already survived the attack 3 times in a row, I think its safe to say getting hit a fourth time would be realy shity luck lol but would still leave breathing room for the WHMs to keep me alive.

again sorry for any mis-spellings.

[MoarLegion]

When will the community learn that Ace is a troll, and arguing with a troll merely empowers them.
A troll doesn't rely on facts or even logic, only the illusion of those things. Sometimes, not even an illusion, but a complete lack thereof.

I quote Mark Twain: "Do not argue with an idiot, they will bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.:

[MoarLegion]

If you wrote like this more often Ace, perhaps people would take you a bit more seriously.