PLD viable for speed runs?

[Judge_Xero]

However my standpoint about MND/STR actually factoring in the WS damage factor of Spirits is still prominent in my testing, I will fall back however and do some more tests with a greater range of HP when I can however.

Yes STR and MND do effect all the WS's on PLD. I've tested this under my thread of PLD STR/MND Stat Caps.

hmm, never thought about mind effecting damage either, it would apear that with mind effecting damage, there leave little incentive to stack str, before it was rummored that str effected block, (not block rate) , I belive that was later debunked. Pretty certain block rate is effected by dext, as well as accuracy, soo the only other place one could add str (pants) it would apear as tho you would want dext instead. making str seem like an alternative for PLDs seeking to do more DPS instead of tank role. I like the availability of diffrent options , however, pld as a dps role seems pointless. The amount of effort it would take to make pld do GOOD dps seems more trouble then its worth when better alternatives are out there. Just curious as to why SE would even give us that option. seems they would make vit a damage multiplier, but if they did that , I could see where PLD could quickly become OP.

@ Lvl 50, STR is the best stat to raise for PLD, as far as generating Enmity. I've tested this as well.
@ lvl 50 above ~240 MND there is no extra combo bonus increase. (Flat Blade 4.5x bonus and SW 1.5x Bonus is Max - Tested up to 320 MND)

PLD will never be a great DPSer, but say if your Flat Blade (in Combo) does 175 Damage. Then you stack say, 100 STR and now your Flat Blade does 260 (in Combo)

Then you went from Generating 962 Enmity every 10 seconds
to 1430 Enmity every 10 seconds, with just Flat Blade Combo

MND for damage increase on WS only gives 2/3 of what STR gives. Plus the atk bonus from STR will give a slight boost to auto-attack damage.

[Ashenspire]

MND also will increase your auto attack damage.

[Aceofspades]

Correct, auto attack and healing magic potiency with is also used for enmity build, soo i guess one could say stacking either str or mind would be equally effective depending on how your building you tank. If your building your tank to hold hate per DPS then str would be better, but if you are building a turtle tank, mind would be more usefull to you.

[Judge_Xero]

MND also will increase your auto attack damage.

Main stats only effect WS damage. STR due to it adding Atk every few points increases AA damage.

Correct, auto attack and healing magic potiency with is also used for enmity build, soo i guess one could say stacking either str or mind would be equally effective depending on how your building you tank. If your building your tank to hold hate per DPS then str would be better, but if you are building a turtle tank, mind would be more usefull to you.

SE seems to have hinted at those two different build designs with the Darklight Pieces.

Heavy Darklight (HP,Def,Dex, Vit, Mnd, ENM, Magic Evasion, -Evasion) for Turtle.
Darklight (Atk, Vit, Str, -Evasion) for straight DD Tank

These are the most effecient designs for those two types of builds.

[Aceofspades]

Main stats only effect WS damage. STR due to it adding Atk every few points increases AA damage.



SE seems to have hinted at those two different build designs with the Darklight Pieces.

Heavy Darklight (HP,Def,Dex, Vit, Mnd, ENM, Magic Evasion, -Evasion) for Turtle.
Darklight (Atk, Vit, Str, -Evasion) for straight DD Tank

These are the most effecient designs for those two types of builds.

good to see somone on here has done thier home work

[Judge_Xero]

good to see somone on here has done thier home work

I play with some heavily geared teammates.

Since I'd rather build enmity, do damage, and dodge attacks, I need to have as much excess enmity as I can, for any downtime I may have dodging.

Monk and Blackmages are pretty relentless, so the longer I can keep them in yellow, the better.

I know enmity is a team mechanic, but I'd rather noone hold back on boss fights.

(not trying to sound like an uber awesome tank or anything. But research and testing is better than trial and error IMO)

[GreyJorildyn]

I find I never need to use all three pcs of HDL on PLD even so. For Chim I drop the flanchard for felt trousers and sentinel sabatons with 3x hp melds, and not for te survival but for the spirits damage boost. For Ifrit extreme I only used HDL gauntlets and ran HP gear/surcoat (cover) for the same reason as above, plus melee damage is reduced on it so enmity is not as large an issue there (can get ahead of melee due to jumps, nail phases and other breaks in consistent damage).

[Tman]

I fiddled around with this a bit on Old Six-Arms and Gluttonous Gertrude before logging tonight. I took off my Cobalt Gauntlets and Celata (there's a reason I'm mentioning this) and my HP was about 3090 when equipping the Militia Gauntlets and Armet my HP topped around 3270 with a deviance of 180hp. Using Non crits as a basis my Spirits Within were hitting GG for around 1600 and OSA for roughly 1550 with the Militia Armet/Gauntlets equipped. W/o Spirits was hitting GG for around 1500 and OSA for 1450ish, so your maximum (current) HP amount DOES affect the damage dealt with Spirits, so having more HP = more potential damage.

However, my DD stats had a large deviance of 37 less STR and 23 less MND without my normal Cobalt Celata/Gauntlet gear. The reason this is important to note is when using spirits on OSA I noticed my numbers were far less consistent actually having some Spirits hit for 1300 and others for 1600, while numbers on GG were pretty consistent probably due to lower defense than OSA.

When I'm in my usual full DD setup (roughly 3150 HP) Spirits hit GG for roughly 2100, and OSA for 1700 with solid consistency.

So it appears while even just having a slightly larger amount of Max HP give great returns on Spirits Within, your STR/MND still appears to still have a major impact on the weaponskill calculations as well as maintaining consistent Spirits numbers on mobs with higher defense.

Did a small sample of testing on GG while waiting on hamlets and it appears to me that SW's either doesn't gain as much from max hp as I had assumed, or it caps out early.

Weapon: Giantsgall Sword +enmityx2
Shield: Thormoen's Purpose
setup 1
HP: 3839
str: 207
mnd: 235
atk: 476
Low: 1850
High: 2159
Avg 1976.58

setup 2
Hp: 3028
str: 207
mnd: 235
atk: 476
Low: 1653
High: 1813
Avg: 1712.09

I only did Phalanx>SW, 0 AA's as well as no other ws's or buffs/debuffs or outside party members. No food or potions as well
I used a stat reset to keep my numbers the same, however they are pretty low. I also had to use a dated choker for the 4atk that the cobalt cuirass gives, so unless SW is increased by magical atk potency, this was the best I could do. Again the sample size imo is a bit small, I only did 100 SW's in each stat setup on GG, have yet to do OSA. The second setup (which was me simply naked with identical stats outside of max hp) avg was creeping up, had I went to 200 I'd say the avg would have jumped up to around 1780 based on the numbers I was getting at the end. This leads me to believe 1 of 3 things, A something is going on behind scenes I don't know about, such as my low stats hindering my dps (highly possible). B max hp doesn't increase potential dmg as much as I had thought (highly doubtful). Or C max hp bonus to SW's dmg caps out early (this I believe), which would thus mean that pld's were never ment to have a huge hp pool, only adequate hp to tank.

I don't run a parser so these are all eyeballed, writen down, then avg'd out.

A quick side note, after grinding golden bazaar I have noticed an increase in SW's dmg on the cactuar after switching from hp gauntlets/boots to militia gauntlets/boots. Roughly 170 increase even though I lost a total of 131 hp and only gained a mere 10 mnd.

edit:I did notice that going from gla to pld lowered my str by 10, seems odd but I'll look around see if I missed it in the job notes/updates.

edit2: put in a few more on GG in setup 2.
new low: 1604
new high: 1908
new avg: 1749.9

didn't raise as much as I thought it would, will be doing OSA next.

[SwordCoheir]

This leads me to believe 1 of 3 things, A something is going on behind scenes I don't know about, such as my low stats hindering my dps (highly possible). B max hp doesn't increase potential dmg as much as I had thought (highly doubtful). Or C max hp bonus to SW's dmg caps out early (this I believe), which would thus mean that pld's were never ment to have a huge hp pool, only adequate hp to tank.

I don't run a parser so these are all eyeballed, writen down, then avg'd out.

A quick side note, after grinding golden bazaar I have noticed an increase in SW's dmg on the cactuar after switching from hp gauntlets/boots to militia gauntlets/boots. Roughly 170 increase even though I lost a total of 131 hp and only gained a mere 10 mnd

Well it's entirely possible the maximum bonus you gain from HP could also scale with STR and/or MND as well. I gained +14 MND along with the 180hp and got about a 200 damage increase with the Militia Gauntlets/Armet. My STR and MND are alot higher than yours even without the 14 MND, but I showed greater returns with less HP unless the +14 MND adjusted my WS damage that greatly, but either way it would warrant further testing.

[Tman]

Weapon: Giantsgall Sword +enmityx2
Shield: Thormoen's Purpose
setup 1
HP: 3839
str: 207
mnd: 235
atk: 476

setup 2
Hp: 3028
str: 207
mnd: 235
atk: 476

Had some more down time so took a crack at OSA. Same stats/gear as my first test.

setup 1
Low: 1203
High: 1368
Avg: 1294.27

setup 2
Low: 1081
High: 1236
Avg: 1162.91

Setup 1 was unusually consistent in dmg, didn't get a big variation in hits. Setup 2 showed more inconsistency. Same deal as before, 100 SW's, no food/potions/buffs/debuffs/outside party members. I'll keep at it as I think I either got super lucky on consistency or just didn't go long enough. Could just be I hit my dmg floor on OSA >.< lol