PLD Bonus Stats

[TirionCrey]

@Eliseus: I get your points and they are all valid. But in all honesty. Without endgame experience, parsing etc. there is no way of knowing what stat is gonna be the most efficient for endgame. I agree that a bigger HP pool is overall beneficial. But let's say an endgame boss hits you for 1k of DMG a hit, passive damage mitigation will be overtaking 450HP over the long haul of a fight easily regardless of the skills that benefit from HP pool. But as I said, even that should be taken with a grain of salt...cause w/o actual endgame experience/parsing, there is no way of knowing for sure.

PS: All I can say from my PoV is though...STR is prolly gonna be least interesting stat for stat allocation (unless you are able to hit the next tier of block percentage putting in a few points)

[Sabyn]

I'm curious as to why no one's considered VIT = STR? Based on what I've read on these three pages, it seems to me that keeping VIT and STR equal would provide the balance of having a sufficient enough HP pool to survive burst damage from spells that can't be dodged/parried/blocked, while at the same time allowing for a GLD/PLD to generate enough threat from abilities, damage output, and HP pool.

I mean, I could be totally wrong in my understanding of the game mechanics, but, this is just my two cents. And let me make this clear, I'm not going to respond to troll posts and attacks for having an opinion. That kind of BS is for WoW and Blizz's Forums. Not SE and FFXIV.

[Myric]

I'm curious as to why no one's considered VIT = STR? Based on what I've read on these three pages, it seems to me that keeping VIT and STR equal would provide the balance of having a sufficient enough HP pool to survive burst damage from spells that can't be dodged/parried/blocked, while at the same time allowing for a GLD/PLD to generate enough threat from abilities, damage output, and HP pool.

I mean, I could be totally wrong in my understanding of the game mechanics, but, this is just my two cents. And let me make this clear, I'm not going to respond to troll posts and attacks for having an opinion. That kind of BS is for WoW and Blizz's Forums. Not SE and FFXIV.

On the previous page there are some charts linked. When you look at them, you'll see the huge amounts of str, like 40something, to reach one tier and then 70 something to reach the next. 15 points of str will be a waste with these amounts. Now if it wasn't tiers like 21% 22% etc and gave an increase per point like 21.1% 21.2% etc, then str might be more of an option. For now, Vitality is your biggest bang per point.

[VanWulfen]

Put all your points into vitality on GLA/PLD for stat allocation for now.

[ssppiikkeeyy]

to be honest i thin vit is third mainly because all ur gear u get for PLD gives VIT & STR so if you gear you're self right u can spend 15 points on dex 10 on str and 5 on vit, but as TirionCrey said, no endgame can't be tested. Plus the gear we have now is great but in a few months is going to look like level 1 armour with all this new stuff coming.

[Sapphidia]

Ahh, the old healthpool vs mitigation chestnut. I dislike specs based around huge health pools and nothing else, but in endgame scenarios that's sadly usually the best option. I sort of agree with Lunar regarding needing to see the actual figures of STR/DEX mitigation, but from what i've seen testers find (like 40+ strength needed to boost block mitigation 1%? And needing similar Dex to gain 1% parry/block) I'm inclined to believe that Str and Dex arent providing enough mitigation per point to be noticeable.

The question that DOES need to be asked though - compare a 30 STR paladin to a 30 VIT. Ignoring the block amount... will his damage be noticeably higher? How much of this damage increase will translate into threat too? One thing we don't know at endgame -yet- is DPS requirements for fights and how much threat well-geared DPSers pump out. I doubt 30 strength will make a difference, but if actually holding aggro becomes a bigger issue for tanks, Str might still have value.

[Tigerwong]

So few data we have here, and please don't apply the WoW model. The GCD is 2.5 seconds here, not 1.5. We don't even know if the parry/block/dodge will scale anything like WoW. The problem my healer says the most is not having enough time to do stuff rather than mana issues. I stack pure VIT now. I have a full colleague party on Skype to play with. The healer tells me, He never goes OOM, it's a faceroll to heal. Combined with the fact that bosses hit like a girl right now, I don't see any downside of stacking VIT. Maybe later into the game, when my healer starts saying, "xxxx dude why are you taking so much damage?", THAT'S when I feel it would be the right time to start getting mitigation. Coz the fact is, how strong the tank is, or how tanky the tanks is, is NOT judged by the tank. It is judged by the healer. He knows exactly when it's easier to heal.

[Themis]

I have currently put my 30 points into VIT. I'd say it is the safer option, especially for Paladin where +450HP (assuming 1 VIT = 15HP still - didn't pay it much attention, I will admit) - with a great deal of damage reduction that 450HP goes a lot further than it would appear (talking about effective HP). This is also true if it comes to taking high magic damage, because you can't block/parry/evade that and having more gives a bigger buffer to fall back.

On that, if Stoneskin does only affect physical damage, like Lunar seems to think (I cannot verify either side so I won't state any as fact), having an extra layer of (physical) damage mitigation actually seems to make Stoneskin more worthwhile against mobs with a lot of magic damage (Primals come to mind); take a 3k nasty magic attack from a 4500HP pool, you still have a 810HP Stoneskin to take some physical follow up hits.

It is possible that, upon knowing any boundaries for next tier block/parry rates, having a few points in STR or DEX might be beneficial in the long term, but under the current knowledge I still favour VIT over the other 2. I would probably go STR after VIT, just because it does boost damage along with mitigation (and I prefer to take less damage). I would put into DEX if, and only if, it boosts my rate up a tier and only so far as to take me up that tier.

I can see that the choice of stat allocation will change as the game develops, as new gear is obtained and as the calculations are tested and refined. For example, those 3 DEX you put in to take you up a tier may become useless when you have some gear which does that without those 3 points being there (basically, those 3 points are doing nothing). At that point, you would want to swap them for something else.

The general conclusion for me is that increasing STR and DEX, with regards to damage mitigated and proc rates only, depends entirely on whether it will have a long term benefit or not (i.e. over a % tier). VIT, on the other hand, will always have a benefit - each point is +15HP (or whatever value it is), and that is immediately transparent to you. Thus, the safer option until more testing comes and you can see what the effect of raising STR or DEX will have.

[ZenBear]

I side with Lunar here. VIT is an essential stat that cannot be ignored, but given how few abilities scale from max HP I don’t believe it to be the end-all-be-all many seem to think. STR is just as important to Paladins because it shores up our weakness of low damage = low threat, and boosts our mitigation which is the central theme of our form of tanking. While a good Paladin may be able to hold threat with easy regularity it doesn’t change the fact that more enmity is a good thing for when things go wrong, or even just a little bit sideways. A straight VIT PLD might lose threat when a BLM gets a string of crits or some adds spawn at an inopportune time, but a WAR or STR PLD would be able to manage these situations far better. Come End Game there will be times when your skill is tested and battles don’t go as planned, where your tidy rotations and strategies get thrown out the window and you need to go into damage control. Will a few hundred extra HP really help you there?

[ZenBear]

Over the course of a battle with any given enemy, who knows how much 26% parry chance and 44.44% block value will stack up to 20% pc and 40.44% bv** in overall mitigation, or how big a difference the requisite change to HP any variance in stat allocation would grant? Yes, it takes a large chunk of STR to reach a new tier, but each tier grants a % bonus, and I think 1% mitigation to every attack you block will add up to far more survivability than an extra 100 HP will.
**source: http://valk.dancing-mad.com/?page_id=227