Spoiled TanksFollow

No Refresh for a SCH = who cares. No refresh for a PLD = crybaby PLD.

No Haste for a melee = no epeen. No haste for a NIN = crybaby NIN.


@ least you didn't have the same experience as I had last night on DNC.... I get to a PT and the NIN expects me to tank....

...the NIN expects the DNC to tank...

so I ignore him and begin doin my curing thing... and even w/ the garbage THF giving him lol300 damage TA Dancing Edges *@ 62* I'm still pulling hate w/ minor curing to help out the RDM.

10 minutes into the PT... I decide to use a WS.... I time it so it's right after a TADE from the THF... his is 300... mine is 650..... I pull hate.... I tank the whole bird... irritating PT

Tanking on lolbri at 54 isn't easy. You'll whiff like crazy making holding hate quite tough. I can see where a PLD would demand refresh at that level and a ninja haste.

Plus, if he was going to "defiantly" die doesn't that mean he was simply going to die to spite the party?

Cuz if so, he wins the internet.

Sadly, that's assuming you're getting a PLD that can actually hit the mob and deal enough damage to get the Aspir effect. I was really excited by that prospect when I was leveling DNC, but I never ever partied with a PLD that was geared to DD-tank. :/

If I may throw in my pld opinion. As a galka, I have very little mp, enough for maybe 3 cure IIIs and a flash or reprisal(this is 68, 54 was even worse, and I have 2 mp merits) Yea, we're a bit spoiled as far as refresh compared to the plds of old(I leveled to 50 before the '05 price hike) I can manage without refresh, but I make it clear to my parties that there's no way I'll hold hate as well as I could with refresh, since the DDs these days are retarded(GO GO WS before the pld vokes!) and most healers don't give me the chance to cure for hate even when I do have refresh.

I'm not accusing you of anything, I'm just saying that you should consider both sides before you jump down a tank's throat. I love schs as main healers, phalanx is tits. Also, don't give me that darkstaff bullsh*t. I carry one around with me, but the only time I ever get a chance to use it is if someone goes afk or if there are too many parties at a camp, otherwise the pulls come in faster than I could switch to the staff, kneel for a tick or two, and get up. This also costs me my TP, and that costs me a Vorpal Blade(DD pld, not a turtle) which is annoying.

I will admit though, there are a lot of primadona plds and nins, but at 54 on birds? It's totally fair for them to expect haste/refresh, because that's over camping, and they're not gonna be able to stay alive/keep hate nearly as well w/o the buffs.

Yeah... I know... I was reliably dumping 1-1.2k SADEs or TADEs when I leveled THF through this part. When I didn't stack *more often than stacked* I would deal 700-800 DEs... so this was a failTHF.

Yeah, I'm aware that mobs need MP to make Aspir Samba useful. Sorry, didn't make myself clear in my last post - I was replying to the OP as they specifically mentioned crabs and colibri; both of which have MP that can be Aspired.

My point was that there are still a large number of turtle-tank PLDs out there (at least in my experience). Aspir Samba is only worthwhile if the ones using MP can hit the mob and deal enough damage to get a decent return. It's a Refresh option most certainly; the problem is that it requires the frontline to have decent accuracy at the very least. In that sense, it's not a direct MP-gaining device, like Refresh or Ballad, so it demands more from the PLD.

A PLD's MP pool is their hate tool. I can sympathise with a PLD demanding Refresh for this purpose (especially if the party is overcamping). And in this day-and-age, the quick-chain style of partying means that a PLD has little, if any, time to recover significant chunks of that MP back. This can make a party particularly messy if the set-up still calls for a legitimate tank. It's certainly not necessary; a SCH has the tools to keep up with the healing, but I can understand why having a direct source is preferable.

Edited, Mar 13th 2009 10:29am by Secretkeeper

Have you ever tried tanking colibri without the ability to have haste and have them elegied and slowed every fight? If you haven't, then you can't say sh*t about a NIN QQing about not having haste, because on those birds it's the difference between life and dead, especially when overhunting at 54.

Spoiled tanks, spoiled Bards, spoiled Red Mages...

Unfortunately the number of "spoiled" players goes across the board. Unless you have a very specific party setup it's hard to find players who actually want to team. Sadly, all the days of TP burns has rotted the common sense node of the 'elite' player's brain. Nowadays if you don't have Refresh/Haste/1500+ damage/ZOMG megabuffs, then they're not interested.

I had one guy practically beg me to join his party, then get pissed off because Scholar doesn't have Haste (for some reason he thought we did) and ditched. No one died, we had decent kills, Phalanx/Stoneskin meant hardly any damage taken, but for some reason he just couldn't bear to live without Haste. Pfft, amateurs...

In my day we never had all this fancy crap. WHM was conisidered THE healer, and we used to take mobs which would scare the living crap out of players these days. Remember Rams in Lufaise Meadows? Great Bleat used to take your tanks health to a mere slither by reducing his max HP to something crazily puny. Back then it was about skill. Being able to erase/cure before your paladin takes another hit is something I was immensely proud of.

Or how about weapons in Sky? Healing in a magic aggro zone filled with unfriendies? How about bones parties in KRT? If someone needed a Raise they'd aggro half the cavern on their way back to conciousness! Yeah, I played during the good old days when people actually needed to be good at their jobs. So these spoiled newcomers can kiss my Argute Pants...

/em shakes a stick and moans about those damned kids...

Edited, Mar 15th 2009 4:14am by Crystan

It's not 2004 anymore. The "BACK IN MY DAY" argument doesn't fly, sorry. The simple fact is, a PLD performs far better with refresh, and a NIN performs far far better with haste. How well the tank performs is a good barometer of how well the party is doing in many cases - if he can't hold hate, the DDs pull hate and sponge MP. If he's out of MP, the party has to stop to let him rest it back.

Yes, a PLD can tank without refresh, and a NIN can tank without haste - just like a SCH can mainheal without Sublimation or using any strategems. But why? It's horribly inefficient compared to the alternative. I'm sure he's experienced plenty of parties with no refresh, and they most likely all sucked, so he doesn't want to experience that frustration anymore.

"Crap XP is better than no XP" may be true to a small extent, but a lot of us have better things to do with our time and attention than waste them on a fail party. Your party sounds like it was set up to fail (no haste, no refresh, overcamping on birds where most people don't even use food to make up for the overcamping), so he probably recognized that and went back to whatever he was doing while seeking party, hoping for a better setup.

Edit: And lol @ nostalgia goggles, players sucked harder back in the day than they do now. Skillchaining never required talent - you auto-attacked to 100 TP, then waited for your partner to get 100 TP, then you hit your WS macro and went back to auto-attacking. If anything, pure TP burning requires more attention because you WS right at 100 TP, and DD are expected to help tank when they pull hate. More often than not you got a healer who was lazy and just waited til the Torama died to Paralyna/Silena you, or you got an idiot who couldn't time his WS properly and messed up the SC. There's a reason SC+MB is dead in XP parties and it's not just XP/hour or laziness.

It's a much different game now. The last 50% of the mob's life doesn't disappear from a light SC + AM or aga3 MB anymore. The tank is expected to hold hate from 100-0 off of DDs that are spamming WSes, and it just doesn't happen with 60 mp/minute (trait+parade+sanction), not on mobs like birds. Exacerbate that by the fact that birds stop tanks from using food, and the fact that you were trying to fight them at IT+++ levels that way, and I can sympathize a lot with that guy for wanting to get out. I can already tell you how your party would have gone:

-Tank can't hold hate - nin can't keep shadows up because IT++ mob never misses and colibri have low delay, or PLD loses hate easily from getting hit so hard on an overcamp mob and no mp to cure himself with

-DDs pull hate early in fight and tank it from 100-0...with only utsu:ichi, and a 30 second recast due to lack of haste. Can't put shadows back up once they are down because of interrupts, blood tanking til another DD pulls hate and starts blood tanking

-You run out of mp @chain 2 or chain 3 and have to rest

-Eventually someone force DCs, someone else makes an excuse to leave and puts their flag back up

-Either you find some replacements and start back at part 1, or you can't find replacements and party breaks

Edited, Mar 15th 2009 10:38pm by Drexis

I bet that at level 54 your Ninja would have died in the first 5 fights, with or without haste. Level 57-58, with SH, is when a Ninja shines on these.

Pally would live with proper support, but EXP would be too slow. The shield starts some blocking at level 57.

Aht Urghan is MINIMUM level 55. And even then it's pushing it.

And no, it is not better than the alternative (crabs) if you can dispel their defense buff.

As a 75 pld and 48 nin (both levelled to those levels in 2006, neither have been levelled since I've returned from a 2 year break, though I've used them both a lot), I can say that I probably would have stuck around on pld, but on nin, would have pressed a different camp, and had that not worked, left.

Justification:
Pld: As others have said, sanction + auto + parade (as long as you're above 85%) does equal 3/tick, and if you're ddpld'ing it, you don't have to cure as much, so... doable. Not the greatest, nor the most fun, but I can see it.

Nin: Admittedly, I'm not the world's greatest blink tank. I'm not bad, but I'm not "omgwtfpwn that nin didnt get hit once in 6 hours" good at it either (2006 was the last time I played, I know, it doesnt work like that anymore) However, birds can be really mean, and, well, going backwards in xp and paying a fair amount of gil to do it is just silly.

Caveat: I would've at least stuck around long enough to try to make something work. "What no <blah>?" and dropping pt is just asinine.


^This. If your rdm is good, scissor guard is essentially a free paralyze proc.

Last of all, I agree with the "these damned kids" statements. Toramas, Cato's, Gobs in Bibiki Bay, etc, were some of my favorite things to xp on. I know the /thf days are over b/c it's less efficient, but managing hate right on the line so the light sc could go off perfectly made the grind of xp bearable. ToAU xp to me is practically the same as beating on walls in campaign.

Anyway, my (longwinded as always) 2c.

~Cwellan

If your overhunting birds at 54, I suggest you do the birds (Marsh Murre) in Caedarva Mire. The camps are West and East zones from Nashmau. 15min boat ride from Whitegate or 5 minutes run from Azouph Isle Staging Point.

The birds here do not steal food, unlike colibri. Birds here have frontal aoe move which does wind dmg. A single hard hit tp move but nowhere near as deadly as pecking fury. So if the DD stand away from the tank, aoe shouldn't be a problem at all. However I dont suggest going with less than 2 mages because at 54, mobs will hit hard regardless.

A few successful PT's I've had at 54 here included a SCH or two..

PLD, THF/nin, MNK/nin, RNG/nin, SCH, WHM (was awkward setup but managed to pull off good sata's and skillchains)

NIN, DRG/nin, WAR/nin(gaxe), THF/nin, DNC, SCH

NIN, MNK/nin, THF/nin, WAR/nin(gaxe), SCH, SCH (accession enspell 1-15dmg pretty good for dual wielders and h2h)

Chain 4 on avg. Occasional 5's. I got about 6-8k/hr with these pt i've had. It's not tp burn exp but still much better than crabs and is a good alternative to colibri at 54. You will need a competent party to do well here. As I have also had nightmare pt's in this camp at 54.





Edited, Mar 16th 2009 12:50pm by RandomLurker

What this guy said. At that level to keep hate you *must* be DDing at your best (which is hard in eva gear), or spamming elemental Ninjutsu (but at that level, it's about the same either way). Point is, without Haste you can expect us to either wear eva gear in an effort to preserve some shadows, which let's the mob go everywhere, or we can DD and do our best to hold hate then die when a stray pecking flurry comes in when shadows are down. Haste is even more critical when you're fighting the later colibri versions, as they reflect enfeebles, ruling out NIN slow/blind/para.

This is why I as a 75 NIN and 50 SCH, let everyone know as soon as they attempt to invite me that I have no haste or refresh. Maybe you should notify your party leaders of what you can't do before you get invited, so they can take measures to compensate for that before getting a tank? SCH still isn't a well known job in terms of what it can do, do your job to educate people as they try to invite you.

No refresh pld means trouble holding hate, possibly excess damage from DDs pulling hate. Good thing sch has all those tools to cover the extra damage taken! A pld without refresh endangers the other party members significantly more than himself, therefore it is more important that the party knows this than the pld.

A hasteless nin on the other hand is significantly more of an issue. As a taru nin I wouldn't want to camp on the low end without haste because I would die, often. Peckling flurry could completely stomp my hp and at 54 I'ld barely be evading as it is. I can understand the nin declining certain setups because he could realistically die very quickly. That being said, if there was a competent war/nin or sam/war it could easily work out well.

Where did I say it took skill? I said it took more attention, because you're WSing more often (and gasp, often doing more damage). Back then, a DD who geared themselves well could do their SC, then go back to watching TV until ~200TP cause they had to wait for their gimp SC partner to catch up.

Back then, every party needed a distortion=>darkness skillchain, and a blm to MB it. The "must-have" jobs have changed, but the requirements for "the best" party will always be there, depending on the camp. MNK burns are "the best" in KRT, DRG/RNG/THF burns are "the best" at birds, 2-handed DD setups are "the best" at mamools. Also, most BLMs made a macro for their MB, that told the melee when to WS so that the SC would go off in time for the MB. Where is the skill in doing what an automated macro tells you to do, every mob, for a couple hours? Or counting to 3 in your head before hitting your WS macro, in not-ancient-magic situations? Preschool r hard.


I'm sorry that you don't seem to party with anyone decent, but comparing good players from "back then" with dumb players of today isn't making a fair argument. There are plenty of competent players today, and there were plenty of terrible people who couldn't do anything right back then.

"Gear to tank"? Are you kidding? Please point me to this tanking gear that DDs can wear, especially in the 50s and 60s, because even paladins don't gear to tank anymore except on HNM/endgame fights. SE botched up their damage formulas with regards to VIT and DEF, to the point where if you don't have shadows or shield mastery, you can't properly mitigate damage no matter how good your gear is. Have you ever seen a 75 WAR/MNK in full koenig armor and vit rings tank? You know how much damage they take compared to a WAR/NIN in haste gear? A hell of a lot more.


It's more essential than ever, because now each DD is doing more damage, and therefore pulling more hate. As I said, in the SC+MB parties, DDs were holding back their individual damage for the sake of one SC+MB that would finish the mob off. They stacked all their enmity on at the very end of the fight, when it didn't matter because the mob was about to die anyway. Now, they build their hate constantly, WSing as soon as they have TP for the sake of faster chains (and yes, faster XP). If you expect a PLD to tank for more than 10 seconds a fight in XP parties, you HAVE to give them refresh, or they just became an occasional backup healer that does some damage, too.

There other ways to get refresh without a RDM, too. BRDs can do it. CORs can do it. DNCs can kind of do it, if you aren't drastically overcamping. SE even had a flash of brilliance and made Aspir Samba subbable, so a /DNC can refresh a party's tank and melee (like BLU or DRK) if you really can't find one.

If this party had gone to crabs it would have been a great setup, since Aspir Samba would work, it had Dispel, and the melee could actually hit the mob. Whose fault is it that the party failed, if the party failed because the leader chose the wrong camp for the given setup?

Chivalry is a meritable ability btw, this level 54 PLD didn't have it. And auto-refresh is only 1/tic, 20 mp/minute isn't even an extra flash. It helps, but it's nowhere near enough on its own. With parade gorget, sanction, and auto-refresh it's still something, but the hate demands have gone up in XP (hence my "it's not 2004 anymore"), so if you want a designated tank, you need to supply that demand for them to function in their role.


Skill is setting up a party strategically. Grabbing a PLD tank with no refresh, no THF to at least help plant hate on them, 3 random DDs, and a couple healers isn't strategic, it's desperate for a couple hours XP before work. It also isn't especially fun for the tank, it's irritating trying to hold hate without the proper support to back you up.

Believe it or not, fun is important too, and I can safely say from many fail parties that the tank is always the first to get blamed when the XP is bad (see: this post). If your party isn't going too smoothly, instead of just lashing out at the tank (or the healer, as is sometimes the case), why not just go to a better camp that fits your setup better?

The setup was poor, the camp choice was poor, the communication was poor, and the result was poor. There was no skill involved in forming, leading, or maintaining the party in the OP. The OP then came to the forum and immediately blamed the tank, as many party leads do. Maybe this is the reason tanks want a good setup before they will even consider XPing in the first place. Did it occur to you that maybe the tank wants to have fun too? It's hard to have fun when the leader sets up a party that doesn't even support you properly, and he's probably had that hassle laid on him enough times before to see the writing on the wall and get out early.

If you want a PLD to tank with no refresh or a NIN to tank with no haste, you need a THF (or 60+, at least a /THF) to put hate on them. This is even worse when you are overcamping, like going to colibri at 54, because the NIN is never going to evade a mob that much higher level than them, and a PLD is going to be getting hit for a lot more damage than they would be at say, 57 or so.


Cute. I still play, and it still means something. Maybe you should find a linkshell with some skilled players in it and play with them. That's what I did, and they exist on every server. In fact, I found a few LSes like that, and only one of them is in endgame. The rest are just friends that know what they're doing and like to XP.

Think of all the buffs DDs have received in the past few years. The two-handed update, hasso from /SAM, new foods like marinara pizza and crab sushi (letting people eat sushi at birds for cheap), buffs to penta-thrust/sam WSes/raging rush, are just some of the more recent ones. Colibri aint robber crabs, and puks/imps aint steelshells when it comes to defense, either. Tanks have to compensate for every buff that DDs get, and auto-refresh and shield mastery are great, but they don't measure up to 10% haste and +10% acc on every melee, or WSes suddenly doing 200ish more damage. No one in a party should have to do their job alone, that's the whole point of having 5 other people in the party.


Edited, Mar 17th 2009 2:29pm by Drexis

Edited, Mar 17th 2009 2:55pm by Drexis

I just got out of a 54-55 pink chicken party at the leypoint.

PLD
WAR
DNC
SMN
WHM
BLM

Not what many would call a "prime" party make up.

I was the PLD. I have -4 enmity merits and was not using a high breath mantle. We were doing chain 4 - chain 5 doing Crescent Fang > Rampage for Distortion then a MB Freeze in the 1000-1100 range for the kill.

It was lead by the BLM starting and calling the Skillchain with a timed Freeze cast. Is textbook old skule and it worked very nicely. No one died or even came close for that matter.

A huge plus was that the puller was working the chain timer which gave me plenty of mp between mobs to keep the hate firmly planted on me and still get to the nice chain 5 xp goodness. And on the few occasions where I lost hate, I covered. Aspir Samba was not effective at this level. I would rest with Ginger cookies and Pluto's. I held hate more so with cures and my /ja's than with damage dealt.

No solo stars, just 6 people working as a team for the greater good. I personally think that not just tanks need to be in parties that are less than the "ideal" party so that we all can better learn how to deal with things when conditions are not "perfect". I think it makes for better players come endgame.

Bottom-line...if you work at it as a team, it will work out fine.

You've really only strengthened my point. Lack of defense gear means you're not doing anything to help mitigate damage. All you're doing is becoming an MP sponge for your overworked mages. It's like saying "Hey, I can get punched in the face and it's okay, because I call it 'Tanking'". Trying to excuse the absolute non-existant hate control by splitting the damage amongst all of your party members is just not in the least bit skillful, sorry.

The reason no one tanks is because EVERYONE gears for damage dealing, and EVERYONE is out to hit for the biggest e-peen figures they can. It's impossible to tank properly against melee's going balls-to-the-walls on their attacks which means after virtually every weaponskill a new player has the mobs attention. It's not functionally bad, because mobs don't live very long, but skillful? P--lease.

Welcome to 2009. Paladin's don't really tank anymore at endgame. Even taking Refresh into consideration, I rarely see Paladins dip below 50% MP these days, and that's only when they've been the unfortunate target of a multiple pull. Like I said, there's a LOT of other ways for Paladin's to regain MP. There never used to be, which meant Refresh was far more lucrative pre-ToAU. Of course, trying to find a Paladin willing to sacrifice his precious (weak) weaponskill for a large MP bonus through Chivalry might prove difficult.


This I agree with, though our definition of "strategy" seems to differ quite wildly.


A little tidbit for you. I've played with some good players and I've played with some great players. In one such party, we had a far less than ideal party setup. No Refresh, just myself as the only mage which meant no Bard. A Thief puller, Paladin tank and a smattering of melee DDs like Samurai and DRG. Our Paladin was good. No, our Paladin was exceptional. He barely needed to dent his MP because the Stoneskin/Phalanx combination made damage laughable. My cures consisted largely of the occasional Regen II to top him up rather than needing big Cure IV's or even worrying about Rapture! I had so much MP I didn't know what to do with it all, so I spent it largely on buffs.

But what made that Paladin even more noteable was that he never once complained about the lack of Refresh. We we chaining Colibri at a rate of knots, thanks to our strong DD presence and while hate-keeping went right out the window by the time a mob was at 50%, the bird was barely alive long enough for it to matter.

Refresh is, always has been, always will be a luxury. The simple fact is there are so many refresh methods out there which don't involve spellcasting that it's no longer the great "must have" that it used to be. ToAU gives Refresh. Paladin's get Auto-Refresh (that's already 2mp/tick), Parade Gorget gives Refresh, Chivalry gives (a lot of) MP. These are all FREE ways to recover your MP. Even WHM's have Sublimation (or should have if they're worth their salt) as well as Auto-Refresh armours.

You can argue this every which way, but it's too easy to recover MP these days. Save your Refresh arguments for the ones who need it more, like Blue Mages or Summoners.

Edited, Mar 22nd 2009 4:38am by Crystan

Really now? I think you mean.......



Edited, Mar 22nd 2009 5:35pm by SparthosofLakshmi

I'd just like to chime in and say:

DNC/WAR tank needs neither Refresh nor Haste.

=D

There is a reason people don't EXP on crabs anymore - they aren't optimal anymore. People want to be efficient with their time. Why walk when you can ride a bike? Sure, you'll eventually get there regardless, but it's much faster to ride a bike. Don't blame players for being smart with the options available.



You can't do that on crabs from 52-55.

Why do people keeping bringing up stuff like Chivalry in a thread about PLDs leveling? Chivalry is completely irrelevant in half the situations being discussed here because it requires the PLD to be 75...

As per the whole spoiled tanks argument, I totally have to agree with NINs wanting haste. I don't care if its from a WHM, RDM, SMN or even march from a BRD. I had stacked gear when i leveled NIN (both DD and evasion gear) and even full evasion merits, the best i could ever hope for in a Ni > Ichi cycle was 2 misses from a mob. And even squishy ToAU mobs like colibri have moves like pecking flurry that will hurt like hell when your shadows are down.

Maybe you like cure bombing your tanks and dd? As a healer I never did. As a tank I would feel embarrassed. And as a DD i really like not dying. Refresh/haste aren't necessary, but they go a long way to helping smooth things out from all points of view.

The "back in my day argument" flies whenever a significant amount of time has passed. You don't have to have been playing since the game's launch in 2002. As it's now 2009, it's perfectly fine to use the argument in reference to the year 2004, especially since the game has changed quite a bit since then.

Oops you are right, my mistake... Well make that five jobs that can "Haste". But either way I say give Sch a spell that will lower casting and recast timers but not affect attack speed.