Paladin HQ Cure Build

[Rajah]

This is completely ridiculous and must be considered so, because: Swords have 0 magic DMG rating.

That said, a MND build is in order, because: A self-curing Paladin can maintain hate for extended periods of time, or indefinitely (the use of riot blade is not encouraged and will remain highly situational).

Here is the build. Full set Lv49 HQ cobalt armor (padded woolen trousers, cobalt plate belt).

Total Equipment Defense Bonus: 661
Total Materia Slot Bonus: 11
Total STR Bonus: 51
Total VIT Bonus: 56
Total Skill Speed Bonus: 17

In comparison, a Full Heavy Dark Lite Set:

Total Equipment Defense Bonus: 725
Total Materia Slot Bonus: 0
Total STR Bonus: 87
Total VIT Bonus: 96
Total Parry Bonus: 93

64 more defense, 26 more STR, 30 more VIT, 11 less material slots.

Effectively 56 total STR and VIT outweighs 11x Tier 3 materia for total 44 point bonus.

I dislike Parry. It's higher rate of action causes less shield blocks.

It's time to get aggressive. The cobalt HQ set has enough defense, STR, and VIT to stay competitive, materia aside.

Let's look at jewelry. LV49 HQ rings, earring, neck, wrist have +6 attributes, and 1 materia slot.

It is possible to have +50 with Tier 3 materia with these five pieces of jewelry, in any given attribute.

Full HQ cobalt and Full HQ jewelry contain 16 meldable material slots. Tier 3 MND materia is +4 MND attribute.

16x4 = 64 MND, not a lot on its own.
HQ jewelry x5 (+6 MND) = +30 MND

Not very far, needing more. +30 Skill Points

Positives: +124 MND, (+11 Used Materia Slots)

Negatives:

-64 DEF, -26 STR, -30 VIT, -93 Parry (Heavy Dark Lite Equipment)

(-40 STR -40 VIT (skillpoints, HQ jewelry with materia, total 80))

That is 66 STR and 70 VIT underwater

I split STR and VIT evenly concerning skill and jewelry on purpose to make calculation easier.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So what does 124 MND mean? Very little. Over 300 base MND is plenty to get a WHM or SCH extremely powerful cures, but without the magic damage bonus of staves, books, and canes, it is rendered negligible.

HOWEVER, no other job has as much use for a cure, and in 10 seconds or 4 cures, a Paladin can restore himself to full health with convalescence. A single cure will offer 600+ potential criticals under convalescence with 300-400+ base cures, or roughly 10% of total health for 2 second cast time.

I BELIEVE STR is pointless over 300 points and I BELIEVE HP is pointless over 4k HP, but cue mean if you think I am wrong.

Thoughts and Opinions of insanity?

[Churchill]

Every stoneskin I cast heals me for 550HP and I don't need to gimp my other stats to use it.

[Rajah]

Stoneskin uses more MP than Cure, by weight.

Specifically, when using said MND build.

With ~5k HP you can have 1k Stoneskin

Roughly 3 cures for 1500 HP with MND build (depending critical chance, convalescence, averaged)

[Spider-Dan]

Not sure how to implement it, but PLD should have a trait that uses WDMG as MDMG. Since DoW are specifically prohibited from equipping nukes, I don't see what the problem would be.

[Niiro]

You'd be dealing less damage, taking more damage, be missing a huge chunk of HP, have to worry about interrupts from being hit and dodging attacks, overlap cures with your healer(s)....

I'm not seeing it, also correct me if I'm wrong but isn't hate from cures something like .6 enmity per HP healed?

[phafi]

So in the 100 seconds where convalescence isn't active, are you going back to stoneskin anyway while your cures have been cut by 90-120 each?

As much as I agree that PLD should be able to have a useful healing ability, I don't think cure is viable at this point. I guess it's possible that Holy Succor could return if we complained enough or in a level cap increase, but for now i'm with Churchill on stoneskin being the way to go.

[Tokitoki]

I'm not seeing it, also correct me if I'm wrong but isn't hate from cures something like .6 enmity per HP healed?

Something like that, yes.

[Kaeko]

I would love for this build to work just because there are so few variations in proper character building thus far; however, I really doubt this works. Couple of things:

(1) There are no cap to stats. This was tested, in fact, with STR so there is definitely no cap to STR until 450 STR. There may be soft or hard caps above this though.

(2) STR is the 2nd most important stat when it comes to damage. Damage is your most important source of hate when fighting a single mob over long periods of time. This is because PLD has so many moves that have hate multipliers. Some of them are quite ridiculous like Rage of Halone (x5 multiplier). Hate generated by Flash is also tied to STR as well.

(3) The most important stat when it comes to essentially everything in this game is the base damage / M.dmg on the weapon. You stated yourself the M.DMG on swords is 0. I don't know if this is true or not as I never personally tested this and have not seen any thorough testing on this. However, I do know it's low. Even Curtana. This means every point in MND scales quite inefficiently. So the 124 MND you give yourself here is going to mean very little in comparison to +124 on a WHM or SCH.

(4) Things can x2 or x3 shot you later on. I'm no tank but I wouldn't want to be rooted down while casting even for a short time. You mention 1500 HP in 3 cures. You can be routinely hit for 1500 every few seconds to the point where you couldn't keep yourself alive even if you had infinite MP, full time +30% HP healed, and no interrupts.

(5) Hate modifier on cures varies between 0.5 and 0.6 depending on the spell based on the most recent testing (JPs)

[Rajah]

1) This will need to be verified. I have already looked at STR's relation to shield mitigation, and that relation is meaningless to ~<1%

2) Actually potency is the 2nd most important. The most important that you already knew was, is the base DMG rating, but potency is often overlooked. The third most important is the enemy's defense.

3) You said it yourself. But more important to me is how hard the enemy hits, mind you.

4) Whatever helps in such a scenario. When you begin counting WHMs from number one - from a low man session to an alliance, every bit begins to help, to every bit making no difference in the scope of things.

5) DMG will drop significantly to the point where you will be using shield oath 100%

The beauty is, at the end of the day, you're only short 30 points where ever you are. You can play to your strengths (damage mitigation), or you can emphasize your weakness (damage dealt). Hate is not exactly the problem here, unless you are teamed with a Warrior.

[CasualPlayer]

No

[Carraway]

Potency is not a character stat, it's a function of individual abilities.

I don't know how much of the game you've actually played, but this isn't feasible under current mechanics and content structure.

[Spider-Dan]

This is completely ridiculous and must be considered so

</thread>

[Rajah]

I am not ridiculous, because I am not a damage dealer.

I am ridiculous, because I booted you, the healer.

[Elcura]

I am ridiculous

And that's game. I don't know if you think this works or is a good idea, but it's pretty obvious it isn't.

[Edelweiss]

I'm surprised we were graced with one of these threads so soon.

[Tokitoki]

I am not ridiculous, because I am not a damage dealer.

I am ridiculous, because I booted you, the healer.

What? You booted nobody but yourself with this one.

[Rajah]

When you begin low manning everything to the point where you no longer invite anyone unless absolutely necessary, you don't ask people to stay. Nothing's going to change.

I was always on call. I keep myself under low visibility on purpose.

Maybe I should tidy that post. "the healer" - possibly a self-centered bastard, possibly a great person we'll miss

No one is just another healer. We're all people. But keeping more than I need is just keeping the others in the world from having the help they need.

[Spider-Dan]

the hell is this nonsense