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

[Indomitable Will]

It's fairly useful in T2 boss since the OT doesn't have much to do. Spamming it on MT helps alleviate some of the burden on the healers.

seems like you could just kill the boss faster by doing more deeps. T2 is not hard, and should generally be considered a speed run lol.

[Kiarax]

Needs more Sword Oath stance dancing imo.

[Eurlin]

when you're not main tanking, you should honestly just be popping Fracture, and whatever Non GCD you haven't used, then just right back into your Halone Combo. IF you're other tank is smart you'll be able to keep your Halone combo going without skipping a beat behind the main tank. This could change if your gear is horribly higher than his of course, but I'm assuming most people are similarly geared by now. Pop a SS on yourself and keep going!

SS on yourself in T2 would benefit the healers more than on the other tank because you have the stacks up.

[Kaixin]

Needs more Sword Oath stance dancing imo.

I got curious about this and wasted too much time thinking this out. Comparing potencies of

Sword Oath -> Fast Blade -> Savage Blade -> Rage of Halone -> Shield Oath
vs.
(Stay in Shield Oath) Fast Blade -> Savage Blade -> Rage of Halone -> Fast Blade -> Savage Blade

Assuming you start in Shield Oath. Assuming auto-attacks occur after every GCD, at a rate equal to the GCD, and take on the oath property used before it. Assuming oath switching takes the place of a GCD. Ignoring non-GCDs as non-GCD interaction with oaths is obvious.

Sword Oath: 150 -> 300 -> 350 -> 410 -> 80 = 1290 potency
Shield Oath Only: 200 -> 240 -> 288 -> 200 -> 240 = 1168 potency

It's a 122 potency increase over 5 GCDs if you are able to get a 1-2-3 combo off (total 12.5 seconds pre-skill speed) before you have to switch back and the difference increases from there at a rate of N(.2P + 70) where N is the additional number of GCDs used before switching back and P is the average potency of those skills. Of course, keep in mind if you switch back after only 3 skills your Shield Oath ghost is now 1 GCD ahead of you in his 1-2-3 combo, so if the boss dies RIGHT THEN that's some potency lost due to activating Shield Oath (still net +34 potency in the worst case of RoH vs FB).

[Petitssk]

Good grief, narrowly escaped a crippling lack of ACC; bracelets from our first clear of turn 4 yesterday, today I finally had the points to get my AF+1 legs, allowing me to wear the Allagan feet I got two weeks ago. Still didn't have enough ACC, so I switched to HQ La Noscean Toast. Today, the Allagan ring dropped in turn 2 which I couldn't wear because I'd be way below the ACC-cap. Then, as if guided by my pleas for ACC, Allagan hands dropped in today's turn 4, which my co-tank let me have. Going to pass on the next two items I can use so my co-tank can have them, really happy to have avoided buying Rose Gold Ear Screws.

[Brimah]

Just putting it out there that I hate you. Over 2 months of coil and only gotten an earring for PLD. (Only have seen 3 tank drops)

[Limlight]

Just putting it out there that I hate you. Over 2 months of coil and only gotten an earring for PLD. (Only have seen 3 tank drops)

many of us feel your pain broski

[BerenTebogo]

many of us feel your pain broski

This.

Still zero visible tank drops for our group. Going to be full valor next week out of necessity, not choice -.-

[Kirbyprime]

Finished coil today and all we got were healer stuff... and more drg stuff. Tank stuff doesn't exist. Give up, buy valor and go cry.

[BerenTebogo]

So I actually have an opinion question.

There's still some RNG in our early twinny fights with me getting basically 1-shotted and stuff. Our first 2-3 weeks of twinny were done with 2x WHM (big mistake) and now we have a SCH who just doesn't have any experience on the job and has had shitty work hours so has missed practice.

I feel like the only way to make more progress is for the healers to get a bit better, but since I can't force that, I've been holding myself to ONLY myth-spending the most optimal DEF increases for PLD. Now I'm stuck where I can either +1 sword, get an ACC or 2, or wait til next week and get valor legs (over hoplite, since I use valor feet).

I have almost 6600 HP in party currently, and my current train of thought is to get the valor legs, but I really want a Bravura +1 or to do WAR legs or something like that. What do you guys think? I want to spend the myth for my fun job, as I'm pretty certain I'm well past the minimum requirements for the fight, but should I just keep stacking tankiness anyways to compensate for the other guys?

[Kiarax]

WAR legs are identical to allagan legs. I know you've had shitty RNG with drops but definitely hold out for those as long as you can, hands are identical too and body (allagan) has 10 more acc than AF2 over 10 parry. I'd hold out on those on WAR if able. As for Twin I'm of the opinion there's no such thing as too much HP in this one instance, but you should have enough to skirt through it as is. In an ideal world it's not necessary but it might be worth trying to communicate when DS is incoming. Popping Virus and preshielding with Adlo is practically a must to eliminate risk, especially if you happen to have no CD up. She'll DS every 30~ seconds so if you have to it might be worth calling it out in advance just to ensure virus is up and so the SCH knows to Adlo. It's much less viable but the BRD can pop Rain of Death for a further 10% DR too. It's a huge TP cost and should really be a last resort, but it's something you can throw in if your SCH or virus happens to go down.

[Seravi Edalborez]

My tanks would kill me for saying this but I am awful at keeping track of Death Sentence (in putting Virus on or making sure pre-Adlo is up) and we very rarely get blindsided by killer 1-2 DS combos anymore (have made it to a tiny bit into Twister phase now). I instead just try to keep Adlo up most of the time anyways. Our PLD also has ~6.6k HP and it feels like more than enough. If he ever dies it's a healer fuckup most of the time.

I'm not there and can't look over your SCH's shoulder but I can tell you that prior to Coil I almost never used Lustrate for anything. Now I use it quite often since Energy Drain misses most of the time and sometimes you just don't have the time for a GCD heal. Other than that, mostly use (but not spam; MP concerns) Adlo, spam manual Embrace. If you go too nuts you're likely to run OOM relative to the WHM (or at least that happens to me sometimes).

As Kiarax said having callouts is also helpful if that's a better way for people to learn.

[Kaixin]

I tank with 6.2k HP (would definitely have more if I could) and consider deaths by Death Sentence to be a trivial part of the encounter. Outside of freak once-per-night RNG+delay perfect storms, being one-shot by Death Sentence is entirely up to execution by you, your Virus team, and your healers. If you're getting one-shot, the bad news is that most likely someone messed up--Virus, Adlo, Sentinel came in too late, or too early and dropped off. The good news is that player mistakes are within your control. The easiest thing to do is take the responsibility yourself to remind the raid of an impending death sentence every ~30 seconds. Even then, sometimes it comes in earlier or later than expected. That's when your gear and gut instinct make up the difference.

[BerenTebogo]

The only time I'm getting hit unprepared (and even then I usually have a CD up) by DS seems to be during the conflags. I use Focus Target but I find it hard to see the DS charge up on my FT bar. So when I'm meleeing conflags to help get them down I'll often be hit by (what appears to be) a completely undebuffed DS + AA before any heals can go off.

That's probably a practice issue but yeah, it's annoying as balls.

[Eanae]

So I actually have an opinion question.

There's still some RNG in our early twinny fights with me getting basically 1-shotted and stuff. Our first 2-3 weeks of twinny were done with 2x WHM (big mistake) and now we have a SCH who just doesn't have any experience on the job and has had shitty work hours so has missed practice.

I feel like the only way to make more progress is for the healers to get a bit better, but since I can't force that, I've been holding myself to ONLY myth-spending the most optimal DEF increases for PLD. Now I'm stuck where I can either +1 sword, get an ACC or 2, or wait til next week and get valor legs (over hoplite, since I use valor feet).

I have almost 6600 HP in party currently, and my current train of thought is to get the valor legs, but I really want a Bravura +1 or to do WAR legs or something like that. What do you guys think? I want to spend the myth for my fun job, as I'm pretty certain I'm well past the minimum requirements for the fight, but should I just keep stacking tankiness anyways to compensate for the other guys?

6600 HP is enough to outdo the RNG of Death Sentence but your mages HAVE to be on their A-Game. We utilize a full time virus and eye for eye rotation and my random death to death sentence rate is now 0%. I don't die period. I'd use your myth for what you want really as ideally 6600 is more than enough HP. I have 6800 but I rarely ever dip below 200 anyways. I have something I'll shoot you in PM which will greatly help your not dying.

I have quite a few gear choices now as I have almost all visible Allagan and myth gear but still lacking on the accessories. I want to work on other jobs though so not going to spend the myth on them.

[Tyche]

When sath said the SCH has no on the job experience, what he meant was "Tyche leveled SCH a week ago by fate grinding SMN and has no idea what he's doing". Still, my undergeared SCH had, literally, about 5 minutes of experience playing helped more than my WHM did there. I use a lot of lustrate and adlo, but I have no idea what I'm doing with the fairy. This is pretty much the only time I plan on using SCH.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Fairy shit I do, unsure if practical but whatever.

Eos, start her on Steady
On engage, Place her somewhere on the OT/DPS side of the room. WHM and I are typically dancing around the middle to be in range of "MT" (PLD, gets most of the heals) and "OT" (WAR, gets occasional Lustrate/Adlo/WHM Regen, will MT after snakes ideally but we're still working on surviving transition). A little after engage I pop Rouse+Feyshit+Whispering Dawn. If DPS get hit by stray shit fairy takes care of that usually.

After that I put her back on Steady until Conflag phase starts. Then I do above buffs and let her automate the rest of the fight more or less since I'm also spamming manual Embrace now. Have her on Place right on top of you usually.

For divebombs, I place her a little away from the pit. This lets her both not get hit by divebombs (because she does die from hitting the wall, ffs SE) and serve as a benchmark for "don't have to run past THIS point".

So biggest things you probably want to do fairy-wise are have a keybind for Place, probably Heel, Embrace and Steady if you don't wanna just click it. I put those on my hotbar instead of setting the keybind to petbar because I want to use the bind for other classes.

[Dazd]

Saw three tank drops today that I, of course, don't need anymore. It's getting to the point where I have as much, or more, Allagan gear on my alts than on my Pld.

[Waraji]

Past two months, we've only had 4 PLD drops total. 2 Body's, 1 Bracelet, 1 Gauntlet. Gauntlet dropped this Monday, and its the first piece I've gotten. This RNG is reaching Salvage levels.

[Eurlin]

I'm in the same boat since the beginning of October I've seen 3 PLD drops, all of which went to my other PLDs in the FC because we've swapped groups around ; ; I'm going to be full Valor in 2 weeks I think, and still nothing to show I've been in a coil run.