Perle Armor and PaladinsFollow

The Perle Hauberk Set

Any thoughts on this particular set of armor for Paladins? Will level into 3 pieces myself (originally purchased them as BST approached level 80) and considering buying the rest for PLD as the prices continue to decrease and the prospects for Homam Cosciales remain muddled.

Edited, Jul 6th 2010 10:12am by AriesMCMLXXIII

Homam might disagree, but it is *much* harder to get.

Anyway, Perle is a pretty good set. It is almost equivalent to the "traditional" haste set for most melee (Walmart/Hauby/haidate), but it is possibile to be used by a couple of jobs whose only haste option was Homam.

In short: It is a very good DD set for PLD if you dont have acess to homam. If you do, then it depends on wich pieces you have avaliable.

I'm going to agree with Fisban when comparing full Homam to full Perle with one small typo correction: +214 Dex? I think you got a little trigger happy :). Full perle is really necessary to look at, since the set bonus is big. Enough so that it makes up for Turban by itself. So, let's consider a few other pieces.

Walahra/Haubergeon/Homam x3
Defense +116
HP +126
MP +107
Accuracy +23
Haste +14%
Enmity +3
STR +5
DEX +5
Attack +10

Perle
Defense +179
STR +22
DEX +14
VIT +10
Attack +25
Accuracy +18
Enmity +4
Haste +8%+9%
"Critical hit rate" +2%
Set: Haste +5%

So, the big question here is +15 Attack, +17 STR, +9 DEX, +2 Crit, +1 Enmity worth giving up 126 HP, 107 MP, .5 Accuracy, and 1 Haste?

Enmity is a wash. 1 enmity won't make any difference (rounding issues) and does nothing for damage dealt, so we'll ignore it completely. You should be macroing in OTHER pieces for enmity when necessary, anyway.

+17 STR is roughly an fstr increase of 4 with a 25% chance of going up to 5. This may or may not be worth while, depending on the rank of the weapon. Consider Joyeuse. Damage 35 is a rank 3 weapon. It's lower cap is -3 and it's max cap is 11. With enough other strength gear, it's possible to force a max fSTR on our weapons. We shouldn't, as no knowledgeable DD gears with JUST STR, but it's something to consider.

Accuracy between the two sets is just about even. The +9 dex is +4.5 accuracy, giving a slight lead to the Homam/Walahra/Hauby set.

+15 attack plays the same a similar role as STR, but with smaller dividends. It'll help us improve our damage, but not hugely. You won't be hitting for a lot more damage over time.

+2 Crit will be barely noticeable. Most people don't notice the merits - this doesn't even provide that big of a boost.

The haste bonus is actually in the Hauby/Walahra/Homam mix. It's a 1% difference, but we know how effective haste is.The haste bonus is the same, meaning that the set with the better additional stats will win.

Honestly, the Perle set will DD a little ahead of the Mix/match set. But, it gives up 1% haste to truly do so. It also gives up on 126 hp and 107 mp. The MP is less of an issue - max mp only matters when you can start a fight or rest to full - but the HP is a bigger issue due to the CE blood loss. One way of looking at CE blood loss is 1800*(damage/max hp). Another way is (1800/max hp)*damage. It's easier to see this second way that dropping hp by 126 can be significant and will increase that CE drain a lot. Since CE is lost off max hp, the gear is helping you regardless of if you are at max hp or not.

My gut impression is to get both. I'll be using the Perle set on DRG, anyway, as it gets closer to 80, so I'll have the pieces. However, the match is really close. The Perle set sure looks like a VERY good WS set for Vorpals. Too bad Atonement doesn't benefit from the stats on it.

Edited, Jul 12th 2010 9:17am by Dracoth

Homam as a whole set is strictly worse than Perle. It's the mix/match that pulls ahead. I think that's what you're trying to say, but I want to make sure it's said.

I should point out that Hauby +1 shortens the gap a little, as well, but a PLD in full Perle isn't doing it wrong. Funny that they finally give a set worth wearing the full set of full timing...

Edited, Jul 6th 2010 3:08pm by Dracoth

Yeah, I don't know why I said it that way. I was referring to using all of the set...

And, yes, I figured that's what you meant - it just didn't read that way, so I wanted to make sure people could figure out what was being said.

Only to make mine worse...

I've already given a setup that has more haste than Perle. I agree that Perle is only really useful as a full set. However, it's easy to attain. You shouldn't be wearing it as your haste set and it's definitely NOT an enmity set, but you SHOULD be wearing it to TP in, if it's the route you choose to go.

Edit: With the change in head haste%, the first sentence is wrong.

Edited, Jul 12th 2010 9:19am by Dracoth

I'm working on the full set because it makes me look like a panda taru.

That skews things even more in Perle's favor then. Thanks for the tip.

Basically, it's a difference in +HP/+MP and .5 Accuracy vs. the STR, DEX, Crit, Attack, and Enmity... +HP/+MP are beneficial, but are secondary. Increasing fSTR, crit rate, and ensuring we don't hit for 0's REALLY puts Perle ahead of my initial mix/match set.

That actually puts Perle in a much greater category than the Mix/Match set I provided. Hauby +1 evens things out (and can be viewed in a similar light to my earlier analysis), and there's other good pieces that can up the mix/match set, but with the ease that Perle can be acquired, we've basically found the new default DD set (unless you have a lot of the other mix/match pieces already).

With how hard cruor is to gain, Perle should drop down to ~10k a piece in a couple months.

It'll be sooner than that really.

The set is great overall for DDing considering the incredibly spread of stats. With the haste being actually 14% overall, it definitely beats a vanilla Homam x3/Walahra/Haubergeon. a Haub +1 helps a bit more but I still think the Perle has it beat.

Been using it for my misc junk on PLD recently and with a WHM sub (hurray for Haste), it feels like I'm on turbo heh.

Well, taking the stats you posted and adjusting for the Haub +1 (only relevant DD stats)

Walahra/Haubergeon +1/Homam x3
Accuracy +25 (+3 from DEX)
Haste +14%
STR +6
DEX +6
Attack +12 (+3 from STR)

Perle
STR +22
DEX +14
Attack +25 (+11 from ATK)
Accuracy +18 (+7 from DEX)
Haste +9% (assuming Salade information is correct)
"Critical hit rate" +2%
Set: Haste +5%

Difference would be:

Walahra/Haubergeon +1/Homam x3

Accu +3

Perle

STR +16
DEX +8
ATK +19
Critical Rate +2%

That's kind of lopsided looking purely at the stats to me. Plus, PLDs that would be DDing wouldn't have a problem with accu as much as they would attack (because we have fewer pieces with ATK on it) IMO.

The mp is only really significant in short burst tanking situations, or situations where your primary mp recovery comes from chivalry. Any long fights and your ability to recover mp is substantially more important.

Also keep in mind that if mp is your big concern, then nothing is stopping you from using homam until you have used up that 100 then swapping to perle.

Something positive about Perle that I've noticed is that it makes it easier to make a cure cheat macro if you're TPing in some (or all) of the pieces.

For pure DD setup it's an upgrade though I'm not convinced it is a "kicks the mixed Homam set to the curb" upgrade. For tanking setup the HP/MP loss I don't think is worth it. In the end you will still need to carry W Turban, Homam hands, legs and maybe feet also for your haste sets to max out timers anyway. To me it almost comes down to more of an inventory issue vs how much of an improvement carrying the set will grant.

I've parsed myself several times in different situations and my accuracy rating dropped in comparison to my mix of Homam and other gear. So, for TP purposes, I mix and match pieces of Perle and Homam.