I had my first "Wheres your VIT gear?!" party todayFollow

KojiroSoma wrote:

I'm sorry, but both you (OP) and your party were being asses.

This has nothing to do with your smart-ass remarks about how you know how to play PLD because you have 9 completely unrelated level 75's, or how you heard DD PLD was the way to go.

All that is meaningless if you dont know WHY this is the case.

You see, once you can take the damage, you can slowly start to switch in DD pieces for existing Tank pieces (Enmity, HP, Def) on your way to 75. Not saying full out DD, i'm saying Hybrid-Tank for now. That is, if you can take the damage. At level 75, most you are fighting are T's and maybe a VT every now and then. Ofcourse damage taken is going to be low in those cases and switching to a (full) DD configuration is optimal for those spots. There's no arguement there. But that is certainly not the case at level 58.

Look at yourself and the party. You were barely staying alive. More so, you actually died. Draining the party's MP, time and exp. Being able to DD better means absolutely sh*t if you're causing downtime.

One could argue it's the camp, because seriously, at that level the exp there is horrible. But when you're up against IT++, when you know your sword is going to do exactly jack-sh*t against them, you're best off focusing on ENMITY, HP and lastly DEFENSE over stubornly sticking to your DD setup. Or better yet, changing camps, but that wasnt a possibility i suppose.

To take what the last person said and add into it, the only thing worse than people you cant get through to no matter how much you prove them wrong, is people you cant get through to no matter how much they think they're proving you wrong.

Paladin is about tanking. But more importantly, it's about gearing up for the situation at hand. When the situation asks for more enmity and defensive gear, you switch to it. And when the situation gives you the opportunity to do more damage without neglecting your main task or getting your ass kicked, then yes, you can gear up more offensively.

It's not important exactly how much (or little) pDif gets lowered from adding DEF, or how much more enmity you could have generated through damage done in DD gear (certainly not not something existing against IT++, at level 58). If you need to gear up defensively to shave even as little as 20 damage off a hit, or to get those extra points of enmity to keep hate, you do so. Especially so if your party is complaining you're doing a terrible job at what you're doing.

Your main income of hate against IT++ is going to come from A) Provoke, B) Flash and C) Cures. You're not going to be hitting anything, and if you are, those 10 damage hits arent going to give you anywhere near the hate you want to have. PLD can DD, yes, but not at 58 and certainly not against IT++. Level 75 T-VT, Yes. Level 58 IT++, No. On top of all of that you have exactly 0 Enmity gear listed, and i'm fully aware you dont switch anything in either. Even 1 point of enmity is going to boost hate gained from Provoke, Flash and Cures by atleast 1%. Let alone 10 enmity, or 30. That's more enmity generated than you could have gotten from sword hits at that level against those monsters. Were you even eating defensive foods?

If you know something isnt working against your target, dont stubornly keep it up. Especially not when you've been proven it kills you.

Evasion might do sh*t, heck, even extra defense does sh*t if you got enough of it, but enmity works with everything. And against an IT++, you got neither the defense nor the enmity to do your job.

I think I love you. o_O

I was a HP/VIT/EMN Paladin 20-75 when I hit 75, EMN/HASTE/HP I have at least
+34 EMN on my Paladin plus 4/4 Merits of Emnity.

I'll switch out certain peices of gear for a WS, yeah, haste gear when I throw up shadows yada-yada. I wore my Artifact 52-73, have bits of Relic, I use for emnity boosts when I voke or Flash.

PALADIN ACCURACY SUCKS @$$, what's the point of DD gear, if you can't hit a mob? And the fact you couldn't get a cure off was probably due to the lack of MP, if you'd had your Parade Gorget, Sanction, and RDM refresh, that's a 5mp/tick. That can actually save your tail end if all you need is enough MP to get a C3/C4 off. At 58 you should've stll been doing Lessers, getting chains 5~9, or you could've found a lower syncee. Puks aren't until high 59~63, then it's The Subterrean, then Caedarva at 66+.

Hm, ya know, even in my full turtle set I never seem to have a problem with ACC, and I only have 2 Sword merits. But I do eat Dorado Sushi all the time, so that might be it.

You're missing something. Flash shouldn't play a role specifically because it's PLD, not /WAR or /DNC, so it has no bearing in which sub is better.



You're missing a lot. Nate didn't spell it out, but here's what's going on.

Animated Flourish is 1500 VE. 1500/1800=5/6, when reduced. This ONLY functions if you have 2 or more flourishes. If you only have one, I believe you only generate 750 enmity, which is essentially 5/12 of a voke. If you're only getting enough finishing moves to get 1 finishing move for animated flourish, it will be FAR weaker than Provoke, hands down. Since the steps are on a 15 second timer and Flourishes are on a 30 second timer, you CAN juggle it to get the two necessary steps between Flourishes. However, you'd better be landing all your steps, or the 5/6's no longer applies. This accounts for the first part of his statement (and, to be fair, since we're gearing for accuracy as /DNC, anyway, we will most often land two steps between each flourish, providing the full effect).

Here's the point: If this is ALL you're using from /DNC, you're NOT getting a full provoke. (You're also not getting a full Flash, either, since we're ignoring the fact that CE does not equal VE and is often greater than VE.) What needs to be added is the Jigs.

Spectral Jig adds 300 VE for every use, or 1/6 of a Provoke.

Spectral Jig every 30 seconds and guess what you get: 5/6 (from full Animated Flourish) + 1/6 (from Spectral Jig), and you're getting the 1800 VE that Provoke gives. The problem: You won't always land every step and so not always have the VE output that you get from Provoke. It also requires more macros and more macro presses. Whether this is a factor or not is up to the individual PLD, but, given ideal circumstances, the VE generation from /DNC is equal to that of /WAR.



This is what it boils down to to me. I think you're far too general in your assesment. 10 ACC will beat 10 DA if your ACC is low enough (possible to do on ANY job, really), but in general I agree. I greatly preferred /WAR to /DNC, but I won't discount what /DNC adds. (I still claim you NEED to be DD PLD to pull /DNC off, where you DON'T have to be DD PLD to benefit from /WAR, and that stance won't change. I just won't say /WAR is always superior to /DNC.)

I should also comment that you're basically trading WS's for additional Curing CE and VE. The exact trade off is hard to calculate, is party dependent, but I wouldn't be surprised if it worked out VERY similar. I'd probably even parse it if I was still playing just to show how close I really think the two work out to be. /DNC trades offense for enfeebles on the mob and increased curing/staying power.



Not strictly true, but it's a small difference. All steps add 1 CE. Since we're talking about DD PLD here, that 1 CE isn't ignored. It's just not statistically important and, thus, similar to gaining 0 enmity.



I'd suggest you find someone as good as Nate on /DNC. You might find yourself surprised. On paper, both jobs add about the same amount of hate capability. /DNC truly shines, however, when you don't have a DNC or /DNC in the party. At that point, a lot of the luster of the job fades off.

Again, I personally think /DNC and /WAR is a wash. VE generation is virtually identical between the two. The argument of Provoke vs. Animated Flourish comes down to the number of buttons pressed and how quickly you can fire off 4 separate commands (3 of which might need to be back to back but can most likely be split a little bit).

If you don't like /DNC, that's fine. Just don't dismiss it out of hand.

I'm not advocating turtle PLD's, DD PLD (for VT-low IT mobs) imo is the way to go, the rest is situational.



So are you saying a DD PLD /DNC would be better than a DD PLD/WAR? I'm Saying that, because I had to hold back with DD PLD's /WAR, your saying their both fairly equal, so why would a PLD/DNC suprise me?

The PLD/DNC's only possible worth (imho) win exp would be pink camp pty's. If you work out on paper per minute, how much hate can be generated from the 2 jobs, /DNC fails from steps (lets face it) causing no hate (~4secs/min), you needing to spend 2 JA's per min (another 4secs) to do what voke does in 1sec, obviously ACC permitting (2secs/min). I know timing would be slightly over 60secs, but you essentially have to use 8secs/min to get the same hate than voke can in 2secs/min.

You then get less hate from having less Vorpals (again doesn't matter as much in pink pty's unless your DD's are all pimp + pulling hate)

You shouldn't need to use tp on waltz's due to at least 4-5/tick refresh.

In regards to Nate, from what i understand, he doesn't play on PC (think I remember him writing about wanting to parse but not being able to becasue of playing on 360 etc etc), so with limited scriptless macro's, No visible Ja count-down (which DNC or /DNC benefits from amazingly), your not able to macro in all the enmity to make him 'suprise me' or w/e his PLD/DNC can do. I'm not denying Nate isn't a good player, because he obviously is, and he thinks about the game from many angles, but i've had debates with him before and his posts are far to long, he rates down ppl with opposing views (remember the last Ethereal VS Hollow debate on MNK forum?) and i've never seen him admit when he is wrong.

Personally i didnt had good experiences with DD plds either, always was a disaster, and more when they dont even know to heal their self :/
But as someone said, every gear in this game is situational, if you go DD all time its wrong, on that party for example, at that level you could have been stacking shield skill, some vit, def and taco and you could have done it well, puks at 58 aren't so bad as long as you have good DDs to kill them fast.
I personally leveled my pld long ago in turtle mode and never had problem holding hate with voke/flash/cures, unless its at the end of colibri xp range where they die like in meripos :o
You can't say never that a set up is better always, its always situaltional, if your party kills fast enough you can DD up w/o any problem usually, but if the party goes slow, you better have some way to mitigate dmg or you will be just a sponge and will cause delay, if the DDs arent good enough, you arent going to save the day for being a pld DD, so just save the mages some MP.
At 75, yes, its really a lot different, just because atonement owns <3
you usually go /nin so you can mittigate dmg, and can go full DD while shadows are up and get tp for Atonement spam, that beats any turtle pld that tries to hold hate with just flash/cures.
But anyway, at any level, have your different sets of gear, and use it properly depending on th situation, dont always go with the same set up, everything in this game is situational.

A PLD that doesn't use cures for hate IS doing it wrong, no matter turtle or DD.



True in emphasis, false in specifics. It's the same thing as the "UBERAWESOMEBBQMERITPARTIES" situations but has a more practical application - there is a way to get the most XP/hour possible at ANY level range, and (for the PLD) it involves DD PLD. What isn't correct about it is WHEN to use DD PLD in relation to the mobs. Ideally, you should be targeting VT mobs (the same mobs Merit Parties are after) - less level difference hurting EVERYONE in the party (acc, defense, damage taken, etc). DD PLD works better than turtle PLD, but only in the situations that work for it. Hint: Every level has situations that work for it.



Emphasis here for my earlier point - these parties are possible at almost all levels. Maybe not endless chains, but "squishiness," "time per kill," and "damage intake" for the party will be similar. Nothing is wrong with what you did - it just could have been done faster.



Agree here - it's been my point all along. However, you'd be better off (as a DD PLD) moving camps to one that supports DD PLD. You WILL make more XP/hour by doing this.



It's actually not the DD's that are the problem - if the mages can support the damage intake, then you can DD. See above. [I'm not saying that the DD's don't matter here, specifically, but if your mages CAN handle it, you CAN make up for "close to par" DD's with a DD setup.]



I'll kind of agree with this. Better solution: find the camps that work for the setup you have and go from there. I didn't get ANY turtle gear until I was 75 and needed that setup for the big guys (not every one of them can be /NIN'd).

Also, I feel like I've said this recently... Responding to similar responses in the same thread will do that.

Although you address this again a little later (and you're right), you're also in your right to refuse a camp you know won't work with your setup. A good way of doing this is "My style of tanking would prefer we go to this other camp for a few levels first," not, "You're all idiots for trying to go here!" Even if you're not the leader, you have some influence on where you camp.




See my sig for the party that I first parsed (with half-assed DD gear, to boot). In my specific case (won't say it's all cases), it resulted in one extra Cure III per fight.



If you're taking 2 minutes to kill the mob and your party is struggling to survive, you need to move to a different camp.



Eh. I don't regret not having any defensive gears for 1-75. I got what I needed quickly enough at 75 that it wasn't an issue any longer. However, your point is valid and people should at least try both types at different times - my experience (and reasoning) just suggests that a correctly placed DD PLD will yield far greater XP/hour than a turtle PLD. For me, it was also more fun.

Ah the classic excuse for being a @#%^ing retard gimp. You're a bad tank if you prioritize that sh*t now that we know how things work. It was excusable back in the day. It's not anymore and stop acting like it is.

Also, necro? What the hell?