The VIT/STR debate for Paladin

[Kanriel]

Vit > str. Only use str where you can't put vit, until such a time where you're sitting well about 5k hp I'd guess.

Duno how people struggle keeping hate. The enmity from rage of halone combo is ridiculous. Also for fights where you're worried about dps stealing hate: I could only see this being an issue in the beginning where the pld is just starting to build hate in which case your 1337 dps need to back off and not steal hate(oh look, hate meter! Wow!). There's ALWAYS a phase during fights where your party is running around avoiding something while the pld sits there and spams rage of halone combos. By the time dps get back on the mob there's really no way that they're going to pull hate. This is like 99% of fights in the game right now(excluding coil as I haven't done that yet, but still from what I've seen it still applies, and demon wall because there's no real hate table).

This is still ignoring the argument for "more dps from the tank".

The essential functions of a successful raid group are:

1) Tank survival
2) Healers having enough heals per second AND the mana/regeneration to keep them up.
3) DPS having enough damage to defeat within rage timer / healer OOMing.
4) Avoiding raid mechanics that kill you.

If 1/2/4 are being met, then you focus on #3. As you can effectively cap on #1 and #2, and #4 is, well...random-ish. #3 is the only thing that can ALWAYS improve. The key is determining when #1 is essential to focus on and when #3 is. VIT if #1 is an issue and STR if it's not.

[Niiro]

No, I am simply saying that if no one here sees a value in any Strength or that Strength offers no visible or tangible benefit, then the DD's you play with are shit. That line gets very narrow when people frontload damage and you need to be able to tank through that because telling a DD class to slow down is just like saying "I can't tank, fuck me where is a dildo".

I think the point is more that as far as stat allocation is concerned (ie. something semi-permanent that can't be changed on the fly), 30 VIT is much more likely to save your life than 30 STR is to save your hate.

It's not to say that STR is useless compared to VIT univerally, but that one is more likely to make or break a fight than the other (especially with some of the crazy things I've heard about some of the Baha Coil stuff).

Also, as an aside, I think people may be overvaluing just how much of a damage increase 15 or 30 STR would give (I haven't fully digested the maths myself but the returns don't appear that huge).

[Carth]

Also, as an aside, I think people may be overvaluing just how much of a damage increase 15 or 30 STR would give (I haven't fully digested the maths myself but the returns don't appear that huge).

The damage increase isn't anything to write home about, but due to the threat modifiers and Tank stances, the advantage in enmity generation is noticeable.

[gaogaostegosaurus]

If we say "S-E knows what stat are needed for the jobs they designed," then I suppose we can't ignore the VIT traits, the VIT bonus effect for light/full parties, and the fact that VIT is the highest stat! (Actually not sure about the last one, but fairly certain given the first two.)

This is a similar argument as I've heard in WoW Paladin debates stemming from someone not actually listening to the other side. Enmity is not NECESSARILY the reason. But EXTRA DAMAGE can be. If 30 STR gives me 1 more DPS, do you know what that means? It means my DPS need 1 less DPS to meet any DPS checks (which I've heard is already in the game readily). Coupled with NUMEROUS reports here of Paladin having such impressive mitigation and survival that they're the vastly superior single target tank leading me to believe with acceptable gear survival is not an issue and therefore more DPS is always the best thing to achieve to do better in an endgame scenario.

I think the main difference between WoW and this though (only played during WotLK/Cataclysm, sorry) is that regemming/enchanting for DPS over effective health put made a marked difference on tank output and tended to increase mitigation by a considerable amount as well. Anyone who didn't do the former when tank DPS mattered a great deal more than EH, or when dying was in the realm of events like "lol healer's computer crashed when we pulled half the instance" was yes, likely either too poor or too stupid.

I don't think many of us are at that point for FFXIV yet (I figure even paladins wouldn't mind a few points of free VIT in Coil), and the damage gains to 30 STR aren't nearly as pronounced as compared to full strength gemming and whatnot in WoW (at least from when I played). 30 VIT, on the other hand *might* help you survive bad RNG from criticals, lag, and terrible party members, and does help make up for slightly subpar armor in a new instance, so I feel like the effects of that are far more pronounced than a few points of DPS. Both will probably become stupidly irrelevant as your character increases in iLevel and 30 STR becomes fractions of a % and 30VIT is like 3% HP and we can't even tell them apart from the paladins that went full INT. Why am I still writing.

That and getting the 10k seals to respec whenever you enter harder content would be really annoying, whereas I was fabulously wealthy in WoW and could regem my characters whenever I wanted. *parts bead curtain dramatically*

Edit:

The damage increase isn't anything to write home about, but due to the threat modifiers and Tank stances, the advantage in enmity generation is noticeable.

If it increases your damage by 1%, it increases your enmity generation by (about) 1%.

[Eanae]

Full STR all the way. Not a single fight in the game yet does enough damage to warrant needing the extra HP while any extra threat generation is extremely welcomed. I've never been one shot, never even really been close to being two shot yet even up to coil turn 4. Maybe turn 5 will be different but who knows.

[Churchill]

You've never died?

[Eanae]

I've died but never really much to burst damage where 2-300 extra HP would have made the difference from what I've noticed. 99% of our Coil wipes come from execution failures.

[Foxer]

What I don't understand are the tanks who swear by STR only, rocking Hoplite rings. Not really pointing anyone out, since it's clear now one has the best accessories so far, but yeah.

It also depends on what you're doing, but keeping aggro from a DD class isn't much of a problem, and my only geared tank is full VIT WAR.

That being said, as previously mentioned, there really isn't anything in the game, that will require you to have more than about 5K HP.

[Carth]

If it increases your damage by 1%, it increases your enmity generation by (about) 1%.

Granted I'm not a mathy person when it comes to ARR yet, but if it's 1% then that 1% is still noticeable. For example, Rage of Halone with it's Combo Potency and Shield Oath has an x10 multiplier on enmity. That means increasing your damage is an exponential increase to your threat generation. Of course, just getting a better weapon is more bang for your buck, but STR PLDs will still have a clear advantage in enmity generation over VIT PLDs. The real question is, is it necessary? Right now that seems to be no.

[Niiro]

The damage increase isn't anything to write home about, but due to the threat modifiers and Tank stances, the advantage in enmity generation is noticeable.

The enmity modifiers are already so absurdly high that a few extra points of damage is only going to increase your enmity gain by a very, very small % compared to the base amount, which in most cases is already more than enough to keep hate.

With Shield Oath/Defiance, Savage->Halone and Sunder->Butcher have 6x and 10x enmity modifiers respectively. The amount of damage being put out by your DDs would have to dwarf your own many times over for there to be an issue with hate management, nvm that every DD save MNK has access to either a hate shedding (elusive jump) or hate dampening (quelling) skill.

Then there's the fact that DDs are often sidetracked to take out adds, avoid area attacks, etc. while the tank continues to accumulate hate on the primary target.

[Kanriel]

The enmity modifiers are already so absurdly high that a few extra points of damage is only going to increase your enmity gain by a very, very small % compared to the base amount, which in most cases is already more than enough to keep hate.

With Shield Oath/Defiance, Savage->Halone and Sunder->Butcher have 6x and 10x enmity modifiers respectively. The amount of damage being put out by your DDs would have to dwarf your own many times over for there to be an issue with hate management, nvm that every DD save MNK has access to either a hate shedding (elusive jump) or hate dampening (quelling) skill.

Then there's the fact that DDs are often sidetracked to take out adds, avoid area attacks, etc. while the tank continues to accumulate hate on the primary target.

Which also means in those situations that the PLD is the only source of damage on the primary target, which makes an increase from 30 dps to 31 dps a permanent 1dps increase on the boss for the entire duration of the fight.

[Cantih]

Yeah, the most consistent trouble for me as a tank is the healer instead of the DDs.
The only time I've had trouble with DDs and hate is if they go nuts before I put out the first Halone.

That said, more mitigation means less healing, which means less enmity for the healer (unless they're overcuring).

Once everyone is sure of the numbers, my basic plan is
1. After max gear, IF a block strength tier is close enough (a handful or two, of points), STR to hit it. This may result in skipping STR here.
2. Enough DEX to raise the block rate to make the block strength more consistent. (We still need testing for varying amounts of DEX and block rates, so this is currently Schrodinger's Stat.)
3. VIT to current needs (lets say, if it'd put me above a 1k enough so it's safe to give Tonberry King another grudge stack)
4. Anything left in STR

For now, it's full VIT because I can't depend on 100% LS/FC parties that have the competency to manage the edge of a smaller HP pool. If you have a locked down static, or can always guarantee you'll be playing with non-randoms, you have room to do otherwise.

[Charismatic]

Which also means in those situations that the PLD is the only source of damage on the primary target, which makes an increase from 30 dps to 31 dps a permanent 1dps increase on the boss for the entire duration of the fight.

And at the end of the day, it changes nothing at all.
Awesome.

That extra 1 DPS saves you exactly 0 seconds on the kill time!

[Andrev]

Fair to note: I'm not yet decided on where I fall on this argument.

Also fair to note: I'm slightly drunk and may bork some math.

But point to be made for the STR=enmity argument:

With a base STR of 205, a 102 base damage weapon is going to do an average of 126 weaponskill damage.

Rage of Halone with Shield Oath does 10 x Damage enmity - or 1260 gained per swing.

With a base STR of 236, a 102 base damage weapon is going to do an average of 139 weaponskill damage.

Rage of Halone with Shield Oath giving 10 x Damage enmity - or 1390 per swing.

Even at this very low end example, an extra 130 enmity per swing doesn't seem like it should be ignored.

[Jahaudant]

Good lord people still defending STR spec on PLD?

Incoming real fucking numbers to hopefully stem the ignorance and "my opinion is fact" attitude.

Edit: Enlightenment has arrived.

STR Tiers and Block/Parry Damage Mitigation


Each STR tier for parry provides an additional 1% damage reduction on attacks parried, and each STR tier for block provides an additional 1% damage reduction on blocked attacks.

Parry tiers are 243, 283, 324, 363 and 405, while block tiers are 270, 337, 404 and 445 meaning that at any given time, depending on your gear, you may need up to 32 STR to hit your next parry tier, and up to 67 STR to hit your next block tier. Unfortunately both of these numbers are higher than the maximum amount of STR you can apply via optional stats, and block tier gaps particularly are very wide. Luckily though, with full Darklight your base STR should fall somewhere around 305-320 which is a good spot to hit the next tier for both parry and block with a respec in to STR. Great! 1% more damage reduction on blocks and parries is the shit! Not really...

Block and Parry Rates
http://i885.photobucket.com/albums/a...BlockRates.png

The best shield in the game has a block rate of roughly 16%, and with full end game gear with parry on every piece you are looking at a parry rate of roughly 20% giving you a 36% chance to trigger mitigation 1% higher than you would have without your STR spec bumping you in to the next tier. This effectively means that over any given extended fight you have roughly 0.37% extra average damage mitigation per physical attack you receive.

Edit: The source doesn't specify which shields were used in this testing and it was on the assumption that he was using the level 48 Kite Shield that I based my estimated block rate of Holy Shield +1/Allagan Round Shield. Actual block rate may be higher, but the conclusion is the same regardless.

Even if we assume you have the "Super Shield of Win" with a block rate of 100%, giving you a permanent 1% additional damage reduction, Can you tell me how much of an EHP increase that extra 1% reduction on blocks would give a PLD with 5000 HP (roughly what you should have with a full STR build and full darklight). Hint: It's not 435 (or roughly 448 in a party) thus not better than 30 VIT - and the "Super Shield of Win" does not even exist.

With the mitigation argument blown away we can look for a brief moment at the argument made for STR helping to maintain hate on a monster. There aren't figures anywhere that can give us a detailed breakdown of how much we can increase our enmity generation potential via increasing our STR however, we don't need these numbers to decide if additional STR over VIT is worth it as answering this simple question is enough:

"Is holding hate a problem?"

The answer is no, therefore shut up already.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

snip

Thanks for the numbers. For the str on pld to help 'dps down bosses faster' thing floating around... yea right dude. You're already getting a -20% damage using shield oath. an extra 30-60 damage per halone combo is not going to make any difference in a fight unless you're fighting something for like two hours where the dps are killing adds for one hour of that fight time.

Go vit and save your healer some stress/prevent lag hiccups from letting you die.

[Therin]

Guys I did AGI merits on FFXI for shield block.

Spoiler: show

That's basically what the STR argument is.

[Meresgi]

So what you're all saying is DEX is the way to go for block and parry, got it.

[biglarsen]

You just get too little damage out of the strength. It has been parsed to ~1% DPS, and paladins already do pitiful damage in the first place. Compared to a ~10% HP increase, this is nothing and it would be retarded to make that trade. Anyone who thinks HP is irrelevant is hilariously mistaken, as is anyone who thinks such an insignificant damage increase will make an appreciable difference.

Would you currently trade 10% of your HP for 1% more damage output? I wouldn't even do that if I was playing a DPS class.

PS: 30 vit is not 2-300 HP for tanks, it's 450 (and +25% for warriors).

[Raen Ryong]

I got a parse of ~10% DPS for 30STR O_o how controlled was the other parse? It wasn't something dumb like a dungeon was it?