[Guide] Paladin Tanking Compendium (Last update 11/13/13)

[pixelshader]

I wanted to thank you for the compendium post, it has be useful to me while learning the FFXIV mechanics.

Glad I could help.

[Jem]

Sath, what do you have melded into your HQ HDS legs? Accuracy/Deter and Crit (I assume there's still room for more crit)?

[Indomitable Will]

Quick question about the HQ militia vs. hoplite bodies, based on:
"Item Quality -> Item Level -> Defense (If armor)/DPS (If weapon) -> VIT -> STR -> Accuracy to 472 -> Resistance -> (Determination = Parry) -> Skill Speed -> Crit"
It seems that a good number of the PLD's here choose Militia over Hoplite, even though you get slightly more DEF/STR/VIT with hoplite, and it pushes you to (or past depending on other gear), the accuracy cap. If the difference in parry and crit/det(melded on) enough to make up for the def/vit/str loss? my main interest is mitigation there, is 3 VIT and 2 DEF lost worth the Parry gained changing from hoplite to militia (I'm actually interested in making a Militia body with elemental resist melded on for Titan pug's with bad healers, but not sure how much difference 30~ earth resist will make)

Not sure if anyone has the maths, but thanks in advance

[BerenTebogo]

Sath, what do you have melded into your HQ HDS legs? Accuracy/Deter and Crit (I assume there's still room for more crit)?

Crit 12 / Det 8 / ACC 6

I'm pretty far above the ACC cap even before food.

Quick question about the HQ militia vs. hoplite bodies, based on:
"Item Quality -> Item Level -> Defense (If armor)/DPS (If weapon) -> VIT -> STR -> Accuracy to 472 -> Resistance -> (Determination = Parry) -> Skill Speed -> Crit"
It seems that a good number of the PLD's here choose Militia over Hoplite, even though you get slightly more DEF/STR/VIT with hoplite, and it pushes you to (or past depending on other gear), the accuracy cap. If the difference in parry and crit/det(melded on) enough to make up for the def/vit/str loss? my main interest is mitigation there, is 3 VIT and 2 DEF lost worth the Parry gained changing from hoplite to militia (I'm actually interested in making a Militia body with elemental resist melded on for Titan pug's with bad healers, but not sure how much difference 30~ earth resist will make)

Not sure if anyone has the maths, but thanks in advance

I use HQ Militia for 99% of things without any parry melded. Until I get my Valor body in another week though I do switch into Hoplite for Turn 4 (I'm MT) for the tiny amount of extra DEF / VIT. Not sure if it helps at all but safe > sorry.

For everything else the lack of parry / DEF / VIT isn't even close to noticeable.

Roommate eyeballed full Earth resist on his vanya robe over a few runs and said it seemed to help a lot. Couldn't hurt, shit's cheap.

[Indomitable Will]

I use HQ Militia for 99% of things without any parry melded. Until I get my Valor body in another week though I do switch into Hoplite for Turn 4 (I'm MT) for the tiny amount of extra DEF / VIT. Not sure if it helps at all but safe > sorry.

For everything else the lack of parry / DEF / VIT isn't even close to noticeable.

Roommate eyeballed full Earth resist on his vanya robe over a few runs and said it seemed to help a lot. Couldn't hurt, shit's cheap.

Pretty much what I was thinking, I'm going to test a HQ militia with 5x earth resist3 on it and be back tomorrow with titan results on dmg differences (if noticeable enough, since I'm not going to bother parsing)

[Jem]

Crit 12 / Det 8 / ACC 6

I'm pretty far above the ACC cap even before food.

Any particular reason for using T3 Materia instead of T4? Purely to save gil as it isn't best in slot?

[BerenTebogo]

Any particular reason for using T3 Materia instead of T4? Purely to save gil as it isn't best in slot?

On non-legacy server so T IV materia cost as much as HQ 2* gear pretty much (200k-400k per piece). Definitely not putting that in something I plan to replace ASAP.

[Jem]

Fair enough. Cost probably works out the same on Legacy servers tbh. Cheaper T4 materia (100-150k) but HQ 2* pieces are nowhere near 200-400k. Crashed down to 800k-1m this week for the cheaper pieces but they were 1.5m last week.

[Krandor]

Jesus, 400k or under for 2 stars is nuts. I saw some of the HQ Darksteel go as low as 600k over the weekend on Excal, but any HQ 2 star is pretty standard at 1 mil min.

[gaogaostegosaurus]

Pretty much what I was thinking, I'm going to test a HQ militia with 5x earth resist3 on it and be back tomorrow with titan results on dmg differences (if noticeable enough, since I'm not going to bother parsing)

I'm kinda interested in how this turns out too.

[Indomitable Will]

I'm kinda interested in how this turns out too.

I ran through last not, barely noticeable, max earth resist on militia HQ body is 7, I am currently using a kite shield and threw some on that as well, which capped at 3, I was at 275 earth resist with that gear, so really it only added roughly 3.5% more earth resistance, which I'm not sure whether or not breaks out to 3.5% less earth dmg taken or not, but even if it did, the Parry on the HQ body vs. hoplite was probably more effective....all in all, the numbers looked about the same through a few Titan runs as he tableflip face raped me, as is his favorite past time.

[Enitzu]

Nice write up on the basics of Paladin!

With that being said I have some things just just didn't sit well with me and wanted to ask why you went the way you did. Mainly refering to stat priorities. You listed:

Item Quality -> Item Level -> Defense (If armor)/DPS (If weapon) -> VIT -> STR -> Accuracy to 472 -> Resistance -> (Determination = Parry) -> Skill Speed -> Crit

Last I have seen is that Determination and Skill Speed require so much to even begin to make a difference that for us they are virtually useless without either a) Running full HQ Darksteel and materia stacking or B) sacrificing tanking stats for them.

While I agree with most of it I do not feel in any way that Determination or Skill Speed are worth the investment. I actually rank Crit even above them simply due to the extreme lack of them. Even in our BiS gear we only have ~15 of deter/skill speed on it. Granted that there are gear sets that can be put together to focus them more which is why I am asking.

Was there some theorycrafting you found that shows the amount needed for any type of effectiveness on these stats?

[Indomitable Will]

Nice write up on the basics of Paladin!

With that being said I have some things just just didn't sit well with me and wanted to ask why you went the way you did. Mainly refering to stat priorities. You listed:

Item Quality -> Item Level -> Defense (If armor)/DPS (If weapon) -> VIT -> STR -> Accuracy to 472 -> Resistance -> (Determination = Parry) -> Skill Speed -> Crit

Last I have seen is that Determination and Skill Speed require so much to even begin to make a difference that for us they are virtually useless without either a) Running full HQ Darksteel and materia stacking or B) sacrificing tanking stats for them.

While I agree with most of it I do not feel in any way that Determination or Skill Speed are worth the investment. I actually rank Crit even above them simply due to the extreme lack of them. Even in our BiS gear we only have ~15 of deter/skill speed on it. Granted that there are gear sets that can be put together to focus them more which is why I am asking.

Was there some theorycrafting you found that shows the amount needed for any type of effectiveness on these stats?

I would say that with those 4 stats you get diminishing returns the higher you get anyway, particularly because you're generally adding a fraction of a percent of your total stat to your stat pool with any given gear upgrade, and my feeling on the importance of those 4 stats:

DET= more damage output on all damage (crit and non-crit) and more hp cured=more threat and stay alive longer (and since DET is the lowest of these 4 stats on PLD usually, you get a larger percentage boost in it per point)
Parry=less damage taken=stay alive longer
Skill Speed= effects offensive and defensive cooldowns=more threat, stay alive longer
crit rate= more damage output, but only on crit rate, with lower overall damage per crit if you chose this over DET)= more threat

granted we don't have super clear data on whether or not there is a direct scaling of stats as you get more and more of a stat (i.e. if i have 400 parry, and I add 4 more parry I gained 1% of the parry rate that I already had, so If I was at 23%, I'm now at 23.23%) or if it's tiered....Although the data so far leans towards tiers for most stats.

Seems correct for PLD until you are looking at mostly BiS pieces and can start to swap out excessive live longer stats with more dps stats?

[Raldo]

DET= [...] more hp cured=more threat

Please stop saying this... unless you're trying to say that you're doing the curing, which is just... what?

[Enitzu]

I would say that with those 4 stats you get diminishing returns the higher you get anyway, particularly because you're generally adding a fraction of a percent of your total stat to your stat pool with any given gear upgrade, and my feeling on the importance of those 4 stats:

DET= more damage output on all damage (crit and non-crit) and more hp cured=more threat and stay alive longer (and since DET is the lowest of these 4 stats on PLD usually, you get a larger percentage boost in it per point)
Parry=less damage taken=stay alive longer
Skill Speed= effects offensive and defensive cooldowns=more threat, stay alive longer
crit rate= more damage output, but only on crit rate, with lower overall damage per crit if you chose this over DET)= more threat

granted we don't have super clear data on whether or not there is a direct scaling of stats as you get more and more of a stat (i.e. if i have 400 parry, and I add 4 more parry I gained 1% of the parry rate that I already had, so If I was at 23%, I'm now at 23.23%) or if it's tiered....Although the data so far leans towards tiers for most stats.

Seems correct for PLD until you are looking at mostly BiS pieces and can start to swap out excessive live longer stats with more dps stats?

Yes I know what the stats do and the benefit we gain from them. My question was more to the point of whether or not it's even worth bothering going for things like determination and skill speed considering the amount needed to make any type of difference is so high.

Last I saw (phase 3 data and haven't found any new live stuff) was that in order to get 1% dmg out of determination you needed something like 82 points. That just flat out isn't reasonable for a tank. Not to mention 1% of our damage is crap. So while you are correct that it boosts threat, the gain you get from it is so low that imo it's not worth bothering with. At least with crit's you can get lucky and get get those crit RoH's giving you a huge enmity boost.

[Indomitable Will]

Please stop saying this... unless you're trying to say that you're doing the curing, which is just... what?

"more damage output on all damage (crit and non-crit) and more hp cured=more threat and stay alive longer "

you truncated what I said there, it was relative to the previous items, where 1a=2a and 1b=2b, where damage=threat, and cures =live longer (I read somewhere the your det stat effects how much you are cured for, regardless of who is doing the curing)

[Raldo]

The DTR stat description is worded badly and could be interpreted to mean that it increases the amount healed by you, or the amount healed to you (or if you're the super-optimistic type, both).

I'm pretty sure it only increases the amount healed BY you, not TO you, until I see evidence to the contrary.

[Indomitable Will]

Last I saw (phase 3 data and haven't found any new live stuff) was that in order to get 1% dmg out of determination you needed something like 82 points. That just flat out isn't reasonable for a tank. Not to mention 1% of our damage is crap. So while you are correct that it boosts threat, the gain you get from it is so low that imo it's not worth bothering with. At least with crit's you can get lucky and get get those crit RoH's giving you a huge enmity boost.

Might be accurate, like you said, no new live data, but what are the returns on crit rate as well? if +100DET is +1% dmg, and, and +100 crit is +1 crit rate, then yes crit rate would be better hands down. but if it's scaled up rather than tiered, then +100 det (over say 200 with current gear), would likely come to be close to even with +100crit (over 350 or so with current gear), since it would be a noticebly larger increase percentage wise, and you get more benefit out of it as a tank than just dmg output...again, need more hard data on what numbers are needed per 1% of crit and/or dmg before this part of the conversation can go too much farther

[Indomitable Will]

The DTR stat description is worded badly and could be interpreted to mean that it increases the amount healed by you, or the amount healed to you (or if you're the super-optimistic type, both).

I'm pretty sure it only increases the amount healed BY you, not TO you, until I see evidence to the contrary.

Does WAR have a higher base DET stat? might explain why they get cured for more (which cures always appear to be fairly scaled with their HP to me, so it doesnt cost a ridiculous amount of mp to cure them when compared to a pld), might be part of the proving/disproving argument there.

[Indomitable Will]

The DTR stat description is worded badly and could be interpreted to mean that it increases the amount healed by you, or the amount healed to you (or if you're the super-optimistic type, both).

I'm pretty sure it only increases the amount healed BY you, not TO you, until I see evidence to the contrary.

Actually, if anyone is logged on right now and has a mage that can cure them to test that out real fast...I'm definitely going to test it with the wife later. grab 2 chest pieces and meld det to one and not the other and have her cure me for a few minutes to find out.