Paladin subclassFollow

First, thanks for putting in some effort to look around and see what it is pld can do. You'll meet quite a few players in game that think they completely understand this job and what all it can and can't do but as I'm sure you've probably seen in some of the newer threads here, it's not always the case.


You can tank anything as pld/war but the work required by everyone else to make pld/war feasible for some things is quite huge and often times not worth the trouble. To lessen the burden on others, a pld uses /nin to blink away as much dmg as possible for some things. Examples here would be Fafnir, Nidhogg, Adamantoise, Aspidochelone, the sky guardians, and many sea trigger mobs, jailers, and other things. Blinking away dmg also plays part in low numbers situations, like certain NM fights, like those campaign op bc, some ksnms, MMM, limbus, etc. For meriting you can use /nin not only for the dmg mitigation of utsu but also for dual wielding swords, of which pld has access to two swords that can attack multiple times per round (quite fun to use).

/war comes into play when you'll want a quick punch of hate against ever changing mobs, like dynamis, some limbus floors, exp, merits (not so much to tank but for berserk, DA, and also voking mobs off puller), and trigger farming for some things (like in sky).

/rdm has some uses for a few situations where the monster either doesn't melee attack you constantly or doesn't get to attack much at all. Jailer of Love is a big example of this since you can tank it from a distance. Some manaburn strategies can also work this way, such as ouryu commeth, where the mob is slept when on the ground and nuked when it's in the sky. /rdm in these situations is superior to other choices because you gain constant hate tools in the form of spells that will keep your hate capped on the monster. It's use for exp and merits is limited at best, but for solo work it's incredible with the use of phalanx spell, enspells, and stoneskin.


In all, don't worry about endgame right now when you're just starting out. In fact, leave that for after you hit 75 and are comfortable with the time required for some of those events. Just play the game, make as many friends as you can, and leave good impressions all around. It will only help you later on since you're much more connected to your character's name in ffxi then in most other MMOs.

~Ori

Awesome. Thanks for the detail in the replies. I guess best thing for now would just to keep war as a subjob, and i'll pick up ninja as my time allows.

Thanks for the great info.

It seems from your original post you're looking for subjobs for endgame use. Outside of that, I usually recommend PLD/SAM for Great Sword and Staff use (it has job abilities that are geared towards two-handed weapons), and PLD/DNC for things like Campaign and Besieged.

For endgame tanking, I'm pretty partial to /DRK as well. /RDM is great because I don't need to bother with haste gear at all thanks to Dispel's stupid short timer, but I really like the extra stun from /DRK on small-man stuff.

Depends what you mean by endgame. To me, endgame means any event where you would best serve your group by coming as a level 75 character. That can be anything from 6-man KSNM 30s and Assault to tanking something nasty in a multiple alliance situation. If you use that broad definition, all of these subs can be useful.

Personally, I don't have /RDM leveled. I think it would be fun to use as solo, but I never tank anything where /NIN wouldn't be just as good. I use /NIN a lot but /WAR relatively often too. For example, my group just did a KSNM where the mobs get super strong when you use spells. So, I tanked as PLD with S&S only using provoke. Kinda unusual but there ya go. Also I've "tanked" /WAR in Einherjar and Dynamis where my job has mainly been crowd control - provoke + flash lets me grab more mobs than just flash, and as I said I don't have /RDM. /WAR is also very useful in certain arena and mission fights where you need to build lots of hate very quickly.

Anyway, consider what kind of endgame you want to do - particularly what size of group you like playing with, and how many hours you want to play per week. TBH you can actually do a lot at level 75 with just /WAR. There will be a lot you can't without /NIN though.