Beginner PLD Questions

[Cleverness]

I'm working on leveling PLD for endgame use, and before I got there I figured I'd get some things squared away first.

1) How many different sets of gear is required? By my count, 1 for Haste(/NIN), one for Enmity, one VIT/Physical Damage -%/Shield Skill if you're gonna get hit, and a Magic Damage -%/elemental resistance set? Not sure if I'm clear on all those or if some overlap.

2) How does the Koenig set fair? I'm doing sky and point wise I'm ahead, so I could have first picking of both pieces. The Helm I can see as an obvious asset for a beginner paladin for a shield skill set when shadows are down, but how about the hands?

3)Aside from Dynamis, where else would /WAR be useful over /NIN?

Sorry for the noobish sounding questions, just don't know a WHOLE lot on PLD so getting it clear before it hits 75.

[Belkin]

belkinator.livejournal.com

It's in there somewhere

Koenig Helmet is the best piece in the entire set, definitely get that first.

Dynamis is the only place where /WAR is good. Aside from occasional circumstances where shadows are useless, use your own judgment. Just realize /WAR doesn't offer as much as it seems. Provoke and Defender aren't that good in the scheme of things more often than not.

[Furionstormrage]

1. Depends greatly on what you'll be tanking, but I would personally consider the very least for an endgame PLD to have:

Haste/Shield Skill for Ni and Ichi
Haste/Enmity for Flash
Enmity for JAs and Cure
Shield Skill/Damage Down for getting hit
Magic Damage Down/Magic Defense Bonus

A lot of the gear from all these sets do overlap, and you really don't need to worry about resistance sets unless you are tanking Tiamat, BV2 the non-zerg way, KS99 Wyrm, or Ouryu. (Did I miss any, its 2:30am)

2. Get the head, it's very useful for the Shield Skill. Hands, they're really not good, if you can get them free lot you could macro them into a pure Damage Down build but the results on most things endgame will be marginal at best. Personally, if you don't have WLegs, I would use your points on them first. Kiting is a very effective strategy for some fights, and they are used in a Fire Resist build anyway. (WFeet are part of an Earth Resist also)

3. Not really anywhere, I mean I'm sure there are a few small situations where PLD/WAR works fine and actually is a good choice, but I can't think of any right now.

[[Cookies]]

1) How many different sets of gear is required?

Cure3&4 Swaps, Reprisal, Flash, Utsusemi, -%DT/Shield, -%MDT/MDB, Fire Resist, Earth Resist, Enmity, Rampart, Chivalry, Stoneskin, Enhancing.

2) How does the Koenig set fair?

Get the full set for Rampart. Head is obviously the most useful piece.

3) Aside from Dynamis, where else would /WAR be useful over /NIN?

/WAR is useless once you stop exping, don't even use it for Dynamis. RDM, DRK, BLM and NIN are the subs you should be using for endgame. RDM for handling a single mob that doesn't hit ridiculously hard, NIN for anything that hits too hard, BLM for crowd control, /DRK for kiting.

These are the basics, subjobs obviously change depending on the situation and personal preference.

If you need any more information feel free to ask, PMs are welcome.

[Hyriu]

Cure cheat set ^_^

[[Cookies]]

Cure cheat set ^_^

How the hell did I miss one of the most important ones?!

[Cleverness]

Thanks for all the answers, really helped, especially that site link :D

And I assume the Cure cheat set is the one I read about where you swap around HP gear so that you have a deficit you can cure for enmity.

[Belkin]

Correct

[ubermonkey]

Gonna hi-jack this thread for some questions of my own:

Levelling pld, how should I prioritise my gear before TPburn camps in AU?

Previously def/vit etc were stats I basically ignored on gear, should I be picking stuff like vit rings and such, or using melee rings like rajas for melee damage? I don't have a PCC, should I use a vit/def neckpiece or a DD one?

[Crizto]

Don't really need to get VIT Rings. I don't know how PLD is in EXP, but I'm sure you would be fine with Acc Rings and Bomb Queen/Hercules/Jelly. Can get a Parade Gorget for your neck piece.

[Neosutra]

Yep, grab some DD gear and have some fun. The only real question you should ask is:

"Is what we are fighting going to beat me senseless and use up all my healer's mp, causing us to us to rest every 4th fight". If so, eat tacos. If not, eat sushi.

AF feet full time.
Haub.
Amemit+1
acc rings (or jelly is decent on some mobs).
misc equipment elsewhere, just gear up like a normal DD.

There are times when you are overcamping that you may want to play a bit more defensively when leveling, but Im sure you're smart enough to know when that is.

[BadKarma]

also level your rdm sub

[Isawa]

We have a pld who goes /drk for dynamis, he does very well keeping hate off the mages. I've tried /rdm for dynamis as well, as long as you have some sort of refresh and some mp pieces (lolelvaanmp; ; ) it should be fine.

But it's completely up to you what you wanna do, so have fun.

[Belkin]

PLD/BLM Sleepga BAZONG

[Callisto]

Yep, grab some DD gear and have some fun. The only real question you should ask is:

"Is what we are fighting going to beat me senseless and use up all my healer's mp, causing us to us to rest every 4th fight". If so, eat tacos. If not, eat sushi.

AF feet full time.
Haub.
Amemit+1
acc rings (or jelly is decent on some mobs).
misc equipment elsewhere, just gear up like a normal DD.

There are times when you are overcamping that you may want to play a bit more defensively when leveling, but Im sure you're smart enough to know when that is.

I totally agree here, in XP typically you're going to be better off contributing to DD and killing the mobs faster than taking a tad less damage. I would almost always gear for DD, and make your food choice and use of Defender the difference between playing it conservative and not. At the start of the party go 2-3 fights before popping food, if the mobs are handing your ass to you more than you can hanlde pop a taco, if not pop a sushi.

[Absolutely Virtue]

I totally agree here, in XP typically you're going to be better off contributing to DD and killing the mobs faster than taking a tad less damage. I would almost always gear for DD, and make your food choice and use of Defender the difference between playing it conservative and not. At the start of the party go 2-3 fights before popping food, if the mobs are handing your ass to you more than you can hanlde pop a taco, if not pop a sushi.

Is this true even pre-ToAU? Going to take PLD up from 37 soon, and was wondering about gear. You see good PLDs in ToAU camps in Hauby's, etc. But what about in the 30s/40s/early 50s? Is it safe to just use things like PCC, Snipers, Luisant etc and just wail on shit? I've got all that lying around from leveling melee jobs, and I'd sure love to save the hassle of buying DEF and VIT gear for levels I'm just going to fly through anyway.

[Callisto]

Actually I meant to make that point...pre-ToAU, or rather pre-Vorpal Blade, I did still use Acc gear and food, however I fulltimed Defender, as your strongest WS' will be Seraph/Lotus Blade, being Magical WS they are not affected by your Attack. VIT is relatively useless, not that it doesn't do anything, but the difference in the amount of damage you take by stacking it is nowhere close to the amount of damage output/killspeed you gain by gearing for DD/Hybrid, and the extra damage output also creates much more hate than turtling will.

Large amounts of Defense will have a noticeable effect(food/Defender), however in terms of gear, if you look closely you'll see that most PLD DD gear actually has high DEF ratings, not much less than turtle gear at all. I think in the 40s/50s the difference between my DD set and my turtle set was about 12 DEF(gogo 40ish Iron Ram set).

[noblemountain]

putting this in here 'cause i don't want another thread just for this. i've seen a few people mention PLD/DRK for dyna now and i'm curious how that's working out for people in general. i can see why it's got some good points and what the drawbacks are...i'm really looking for something different to do in dyna besides /NIN where i feel a little bit useless. i know /RDM has more dmg mitigation properties, but do the two extra hate grabbing JA's make up for that?

[Callisto]

putting this in here 'cause i don't want another thread just for this. i've seen a few people mention PLD/DRK for dyna now and i'm curious how that's working out for people in general. i can see why it's got some good points and what the drawbacks are...i'm really looking for something different to do in dyna besides /NIN where i feel a little bit useless. i know /RDM has more dmg mitigation properties, but do the two extra hate grabbing JA's make up for that?

It was mentioned in another thread...but typically aside from low-manned Xarc runs /WAR is generally the standard for Dynamis. PLD/DRK can be nice as you can use Stun not only for a hate spike but also as a defensive tool against nukes and some TP moves, and SE/LR both are decent chunks of hate as well. /RDM and /WAR are a bit better defensively...I would personally prefer /WAR for Dynamis just because it's streamlined and and easy to use, and it gets the job done well.

Defender is nice to use, Provoke is MPless and always has the same recast regardless of gear, and Warcry is a reasonable hate spike JA as well. /DRK works fine for Dynamis, but it's not really OMFGSHITBALLS ahead of /WAR or /RDM in any way that you'd need to go out of your way to use it, it's still the same bloodtanking just using spells and JAs with different names.

[noblemountain]

It was mentioned in another thread...but typically aside from low-manned Xarc runs /WAR is generally the standard for Dynamis. PLD/DRK can be nice as you can use Stun not only for a hate spike but also as a defensive tool against nukes and some TP moves, and SE/LR both are decent chunks of hate as well. /RDM and /WAR are a bit better defensively...I would personally prefer /WAR for Dynamis just because it's streamlined and and easy to use, and it gets the job done well.

Defender is nice to use, Provoke is MPless and always has the same recast regardless of gear, and Warcry is a reasonable hate spike JA as well. /DRK works fine for Dynamis, but it's not really OMFGSHITBALLS ahead of /WAR or /RDM in any way that you'd need to go out of your way to use it, it's still the same bloodtanking just using spells and JAs with different names.

kinda what my mind was telling me...but i'm always curious to look at new stuff. XD i've always came /WAR to cities and /NIN for xarc, sometimes you just wanna buck the system and try something fun. lol