Pld Advice?

[Cream Soda]

If I'm looking to use pld for Difficult+ BCs, what gear sets should I be aiming for, merits; and general strats/playstyle?

My only experience with pld is mnk/pld in ballista back in the day, so I know how to use flash!

That said looking for some detailed stuff or to be pointed in the direction of a current guide. I know nothing about the job. Working on Ochain and Aegis, won't actually start playing until at least one of them is done

[dasva]

I'd focus on defensive sets mostly. You can pretty much just melee, ws, flash, reprisal, and phalanx in 95% of the situations and no one will notice or even care that you are full timing dt sets as long as you keep hate reasonable well and don't take to much dmg. Cure sets are nice for all the times you are just holding mobs while party focuses on other mobs and the healer focuses on them. I've actually been told a couple of times while tanking to not switch sets just because on higher stuff you aren't doing much dmg to begin with and getting caught out of pdt/dt can kill you or at the very least make the whm have to worry about you more than they should. Also if you are doing AAEV make sure to get some regular dt or some augmented dark rings. Usually since you cap mdt so easy and hardly anything uses breath you can get by with pdt ilvl gear but for that you definitely want some breath dmg stuff.

I'd finish aegis first anr get good at switching between it and your physical shield and understanding just how much more physical dmg you take with ochain. Like you could be doing AAHM and only be taking 200 from cdc and then you can switch to ochain in prep for mijin and he can then bust out a couple of cdcs for 1800 each. So put up sentinel or reprisal +Palisade + defender or something.

For merits I'd say fealty, sentinel recast and then more or less whatever you want except don't do cover or iron will.

[Cream Soda]

Do you mean swapping aegis w/ physical shield? You threw ochain in there a few times so I'm confused. Also, priority on af/relic? I have enough papers to do 5/5 on either set or a mix and match of the two, but anything beyond that is going to take more papers, so looking where to start on my first five pieces of 119 gear.

Best way to keep hate/enmity or other macro gear I need to know about?

and ty for the reply

[Damane]

id like to disagree a pld with a good dd set and a good ws set can contribute a decent chunk of dmg in fights. of course safety comes first. also pld is one of jobs with the most accuracy available to it via gear & buffs

[dasva]

Do you mean swapping aegis w/ physical shield? You threw ochain in there a few times so I'm confused. Also, priority on af/relic? I have enough papers to do 5/5 on either set or a mix and match of the two, but anything beyond that is going to take more papers, so looking where to start on my first five pieces of 119 gear.

Best way to keep hate/enmity or other macro gear I need to know about?

and ty for the reply

Like some mobs you have to switch back and forth between aegis and ochain. I said physical cause you don't really need ochain so you could just use some random ilvl one.

I haven't really looked into non reforged but right now I use head-af, body-relic, hands-af, legs-relic, feet- af

Against buffed dds (especially in pugs that refuse to ever buff plds) you aren't going to be able to keep hate regardless for very long usually. And other times as long as you aren't afk and completely braindead just meleeing and using hate spells is usually enough.

I should add I didn't mean to imply pld can't do any dmg... I mean I use it to tribox high level battlefields with it being my only source of dmg. And like while doing say SCKNMs I can usually kill one of the mobs I'm holding or at least do enough dmg they can't take hate off me before finish the others. It's just wont be much compared to real DDs and will pretty much never effect your chances of winning. So go ahead and make DD and good ws sets every bit helps but don't feel like you can't do what people bring plds to do before getting one... plus ilvl gear being what it is even your dt set will still do some

Oh and speaking of accuracy buffs... if you go pld/run and put up runes rune endmg will take priority over enlight... so your enlight wont decay away so you can basically use it to have a full time +~60 acc buff

[Subadai]

I'm by no means an expert but a few things on enmity: Atonement gives you enmity which varies with TP, so that's something you'll want. Damage is based on your current enmity, so if you hit the dmg cap of ~1190 then you know you're doing pretty good hate-wise.

I usually start out a fight by making sure I engage first if at all possible (enmity bonus), then pop Sentinel (+100 enmity bonus), Divine Emblem (50% enmity bonus, stacks with Sentinel) + Flash. Kanican's livejournal (Testing | Enmity Table) has a lot of good enmity information.

[caalibeandip]

so last night, i tanked galka norm*, he still hit me pretty hard with me using ochain, 119 gears, no problem there, but my real concern was that i lost hate for a really only a few seconds 2 times. i have the buramenk'ah, is there another weapon i can get (as my relic sword not complete yet) that would help me a bit? also, i missed quite a few times. even using sole sushi +1. any tips or advice would be helpful. thank you =)

[Draylo]

Were you getting any songs? Use enlight too

[Martel]

Well, for acc, you could go /RUN. Interesting thing. With runes up, enlight dmg doesn't proc, thus doesn't decay. But you still get the acc+. So, you get+72 acc(this will vary based on your divine skill/set) full time from enlight and only have to recast every 3 mins. There's also Swordplay for some additional acc. /RUN also has a few High enmity JA you could toss off at need.

I haven't really kept up on alternative weapons. So nothing to say there.

There is better acc food than sushi now, but the cost of riverfin soup is rather... steep. <,<;

Oh, and you may already be doing this, but make sure to keep crusade up. That +30 enmity not only increases your enmity gains, but reduces your CE loss from taking dmg.

[caalibeandip]

naw draylo, the brd was, well i dont want to be a ass, but yeah.... and ok, ima check the /run thing, i have not played a lot last few years except the last month, so im playing catch up

[dasva]

Also reducing the dmg you take will help you keep hate. You can get normal galka dmg low enough where you can handle most of your own healing.

[Draylo]

Well, for acc, you could go /RUN. Interesting thing. With runes up, enlight dmg doesn't proc, thus doesn't decay. But you still get the acc+. So, you get+72 acc(this will vary based on your divine skill/set) full time from enlight and only have to recast every 3 mins. There's also Swordplay for some additional acc. /RUN also has a few High enmity JA you could toss off at need.

I haven't really kept up on alternative weapons. So nothing to say there.

There is better acc food than sushi now, but the cost of riverfin soup is rather... steep. <,<;

Oh, and you may already be doing this, but make sure to keep crusade up. That +30 enmity not only increases your enmity gains, but reduces your CE loss from taking dmg.

Oh really? That is interesting.

[Dotsudoku]

This guy's never noticed that I always /RUN to events for Enlight.. '~'

[dasva]

Same works for endark iirc.

[caalibeandip]

ive not dove into Run much at all, what are the main abilities you use as pld/run?

[Ophannus]

If you're doing AA Galka, it's a pretty good idea to Flash after his first weapon skill during Meikyo Shisui. It's pretty commonplace that after the Flash, he'll miss his next weapon skill which nullifes his chance of skillchaining you. I also prefer saving Reprisal/Palisade for under 25% when he tries to 4 step you.For the first Meikyo I'll flash his second WS, if he does Meikyo again within a short time, I'll Reprisal, then the next Meikyo, Palisade, then the next Sentinel. For higher difficulties, you always want to have some kind of JA or Reprisal activated to mitigate his insane WS damage because I've been oneshotted before on an unblocked Fudo that dealt 1880 and I wasn't topped off; it's unlikely with Ochain but shit happens still. Best advice though is use Flash tactically to force his WS to miss so he can't skillchain when he uses Meikyo, hate should never be an issue if you're going with Rangers, so you don't need to freely cast it whenever it's up, since you're hate will likely be capped after a few min into the fight, if you're nailing those lightskillchains with Atonements.

As PLD/RUN I have a MAB set for Lunges, since Lunge/Swipe can do ~1400-2500 with a decent set, more if you MB it off the Rangers' skillchains. Generally use Valiance and Pfug too when needed although even on VD Shiva as PLD/RUN, I take 0-50 damage from Astral Flow due to having a Aegis MDT set that stresses heavy MDB. Pfug works decently well too when Fealty is down, although some mobs use debuffs unrelated to their element, such as Ramuh using Paralyze. You'll of course want to keep Swordplay up as well. You lose out on Provoke but honestly Provoke isn't that useful anymore except for the first minute or so of a fight, Fencer is decent for Atonement with low hate, Berserk is suicide unless you time it really well for a CDC and then click it off, other than that, shouldn't have to be using Defender ever. PLD/RUN is great for Delve/Avatars otherwise.

As others said, having Rune Enchantment and Enlight up simultaneously will allow you to have a non-depreciating Enlight thus you keep the initial accuracy bonus without losing it gradually per hit.

As an aside, I see too many PLDs tanking shit with Excalibur and I don't recommend Excalibur unless you're DDing or solo. It really offers nothing for tanking. The extra 400-500 damage effect from the special HP additional effect doesn't incur enmity, and the +40 attack is pointless since you're going to be using Atonement exclusively(also does nothing for PLD's subpar hit rate). The new Arendsi Fleuret from Incursion is a great tanking sword for PLD if you don't have Burtgang. Has 27 accuracy, 15 evasion and m.dmg(helps with Lunges or D.Emblem Holy II's). I suppose Anahera Sword is decent too though the acc from the Flueret will help more in terms of keeping hate through Atonement and 2%MDT and 15 shield skill won't noticeably help but the extra acc will for sure.

[dasva]

If you are in a decent pt that hastes you shouldn't have to "save" reprisal unless the mob dispels a lot in which case it's kinda moot. But capped magic/gear haste with nothing else to help recast lets you full time it. Throw in some fast cast just in case some haste goes down and your golden

Also should add some of that above advice depends on difficultly level. Like on most AAs at D you can keep berserk up when you have ochain/priwen on though really even from a DD perspective all the acc from the run trick is more valuable than berserk unless you are doing managing to cap acc which you wont on anything that matters much without serious buffing. And you can get good enough acc where other weaponskills can come out better in terms of dmg and hate depending on buffs/debuffs and of course which one.

I wouldn't scoff at the shield skill on Anahera though... assuming you are uncapped block rate that's another 3.225% to base block rate which with reprisal up would be another 4.8375 with most shields or 9.675 with priwen.

Has anyone tried Mafic Cudgel? Looks like it would be decent for non burtgangers especially with the realmrazer un-nerf.

One thing I like to do if I'm using Aegis on pld/run is to use runes and barspells strong against the element of the debuffs if they are significant and different than the dmg since magic dmg is still going to be nothing.. Wont be as good as RUN main but can help some

[caalibeandip]

wow! thanks so much for all the info, i will be giving this another go tonight, as for the sword you mention, is it a uncommon drop? as ive only seen one on lakshmi.

[Byrthnoth]

It's not uncommon. I've dropped several now.

[Martel]

As PLD/RUN I have a MAB set for Lunges, since Lunge/Swipe can do ~1400-2500 with a decent set, more if you MB it off the Rangers' skillchains. Generally use Valiance and Pfug too when needed although even on VD Shiva as PLD/RUN, I take 0-50 damage from Astral Flow due to having a Aegis MDT set that stresses heavy MDB. Pfug works decently well too when Fealty is down, although some mobs use debuffs unrelated to their element, such as Ramuh using Paralyze. You'll of course want to keep Swordplay up as well. You lose out on Provoke but honestly Provoke isn't that useful anymore except for the first minute or so of a fight, Fencer is decent for Atonement with low hate, Berserk is suicide unless you time it really well for a CDC and then click it off, other than that, shouldn't have to be using Defender ever. PLD/RUN is great for Delve/Avatars otherwise.

Atonement dmg no longer varies by TP. The DMG is purely enmity based now so more TP/TP bonus/fTP gear won't make you cap at a lower enmity value.

What it Will do is increase Atonement's new enmity modifier. giving you more enmity for the DMG dealt. For example, a 3,000 TP atonement gets a x2 modifier to enmity. Which stacks multiplicatively with enmity+ gear.

So while Fencer is no particular boon to low enmity Atonement dmg, It Is going to raise your enmity per Atonement in general.