PLD/NIN or PLD/WAR Situations

[Livette]

Gonna agree with everyone else here that for efficiency sake ... even though it can be done other ways...

Long = /nin
Short or Kiting = /war

In terms of holding hate ... make use of +emnity macros for your JA and Flash. I never flash without them ... I actually have an entry about PLD/NIN gear in my LJ if you wanna read ... it needs to be update with new stuff though .. but the basics are there.

[Minions]

Well after an accident..... yeah... forgot to check my sub.... we had a fun LBC fight. Its definantly posisble to tank this as pld/war with aegis.... It's crits hurt though. About 1600 HP, 940Def and +57 vit (though I didnt unlock my base vit, so it was lower)

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/4056/img0457rj2.png

http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/6673/img0459dh6.jpg

[Arnwulf]

So I played around with both PLD/NIN and PLD/WAR last night, I took /NIN to the Windurst Mission 8-2 NM fight and /WAR to ToAU Mission 31 fight (lolLamias). I must say, holding hate is a LOT easier with /NIN, I may just use it 90% of the time and only use /WAR for minimal situations. I'm getting a Hauby for Assault so I can go full DD as /NIN, that should be fun if nothing else. I will probably still go /WAR for Einherjar though, since the extra voke is nice to have.

[Yutuyu]

Apparently everyone melee burns Limbus and Kirin now!



Just because there's a best way to do it doesn't mean every linkshell has the resources or familiarity with/interest in to do that strategy. One would even argue about the definition of best, but ultimately I digress.

And /nin simply does not hold hate better than /war except in situations with really squishy mobs you can get away with tanking /nin and using DD gear (but in most of those situations you can get away with tanking /war and using DD gear for more hate than you would with /nin). PLDs don't lose much hate by taking damage and provoke is very useful. That's not to say /nin can't hold hate, they can, provoke is very fast in terms of hate decay. But like most people said, it's very useful when you're switching targets constantly so that you don't have time to build hate.

/nin has just become so overrated.



But to answer the OP's question:

/war for farming in sky, Ix'Aerns, "most" Limbus areas, most Dynamis zones, and KB.

/nin for Kirin (melee burned or kited, tail smash bind sucks), Shijin, the rest of sea, Dynamis-Valkurm for Fairy Ring, other Kings (RoZ & ToAU), and Proto Omega/Ultima.



In general it probably helps the most to have a mix of pld/war and pld/nin with your linkshell though. PLD/NIN is very useful for boss fights, whereas PLD/WAR is more useful for minions. In places like Dynamis and Einherjar where you fight both, having just one or the other may be a kink in your strategy.

[Cephius]

And /nin simply does not hold hate better than /war

Wrong..

except in situations with really squishy mobs you can get away with tanking /nin and using DD gear (but in most of those situations you can get away with tanking /war and using DD gear for more hate than you would with /nin).

More Wrong... (Do you really think /NIN tanking is all about DD gear?)

PLDs don't lose much hate by taking damage and provoke is very useful. That's not to say /nin can't hold hate, they can, provoke is very fast in terms of hate decay. But like most people said, it's very useful when you're switching targets constantly so that you don't have time to build hate.

And congratulations, you have pretty much proved you either:
A)Never tanked as PLD/WAR
B)Never tanked as PLD/NIN
C)Suck at both
D)All of the above

/NIN is NOT overrated. You have TONS of hate loss from getting hit all the time, not to mention how much it builds the hate of your healers from curing so much damage. Also, you would go /WAR to Ixs? Good luck trying to kill DRK when he constantly Blood Weapons you and you can't do anything about it. Provoke is good spike hate, but that's all it is, and NIN sub dominates any fight that lasts more than a minute because you bleed hate much slower and therefore stay at or near the top of the hate list as long as you spam flash and cure people and use abilities when they're up. Not to say WAR tanking doesn't have it's place, as I mentioned it's still great for Dynamis and other areas that have short fights. But to say /NIN is overrated is wrong.

And finally, are you really arguing that meleeburning limbus isnt the best way to do it? You can safely meleeburn pretty much every zone except elemental temenos safely with 6 people. That's not the best/most efficient way to do it?

[Yutuyu]

I guess we can go back and forth about how much hate is lost from taking damage, how much hate you get from curing yourself back and MP you get with ethereal, provoke, blah blah blah. But in my years of experience playing PLD, I've always find /war to be better hate than /NIN. The points you made are subjective and difficult to conclusively argue against, so I'm simply not going to bother.

Keeping distance from Ix'Drk when he uses Blood Weapon isn't difficult at all with Crimson Cuisses and intelligent pacing. You can also use sentinel during it.



As for the Limbus bit...

NW Apollyon cannot be easily melee burned because of KB's enormous defense and irritating abilities. Much easier to manaburn it or do it with a balanced alliance.

NE Apollyon cannot be meleeburned in the event that you get stuck with the magic immune gigas on the 2nd to last floor. You'd probably have trouble with the birds. It's doable, but based on luck, especially considering how often we get stuck having to kill Cronos.

SE Apollyon can be meleeburned easily, with some minor annoyance on the slash immune floor. Much easier to do with a balanced setup though.

SW Apollyon can easily be meleeburned, though it'd be annoying on the final floor & on the leafless tree with its horrid TP moves. Can't say the chest floor would be fun either.

Temenos East (the elementals temenos) is actually fairly easy to meleeburn aside from the avatars when you pick the wrong chest. The elementals have both magic and melee resistance, so mages don't really help too much. I remember tanking this one as SAM/WAR cause our PLD forgot soap, fun stuff.

Temenos West would be a pain to manaburn as opposed to a balance setup thanks to the slime floor.

Temenos North can be easily meleeburned without any real exceptions.

Advanced Temenos Enhanced Creatures can be manaburned but can be taken down just as easily with blms & 2 tanks, and SAM/THF tricking action.

Advaned Temenos Beastmen meleeburning is probably doable, though definitely not ideal. The Yagudo NM's AOE damage is pretty heavy, and I'd hate to see him spamming that. Plus the other two NMs are WHM & PLD with heavy def & lots of HP.

Advanced Elementals Temenos can be fairly easily meleeburned, only you'd need someone capable of tanking Carby while the melees take down the light elementals, so the typical setup won't work. I think you can carby pull the light elementals, but SMNs aren't really "meleeburn" material either.

Proto Ultima/Omega obviously can't be meleeburned because of painful TP moves.



I've beaten just about every Limbus aside from Proto O/U with a setup of 6 people non-melee burn, no bard, no difficulty. Limbus is fairly easy when you have a leader who knows what they're doing, moves quickly, gets the chests you need, and keeps the pulls (without links) coming. I prefer PLD/WAR to PLD/NIN in Limbus greatly because mobs don't hit very hard there to begin with and the fights don't last long so the spike hate is very useful.

I guess in general you really don't know what you're talking about (though you will undoubtably respond to me and tell me the same thing). Limbus is not easiest melee burned, there's plenty of Limbuses that can't be meleeburned at all or effectively, and if you honestly think PLD/WAR can't hold hate better than PLD/NIN, have someone with comparable gear to you go to a normal limbus zone and watch the competition.

/nin is about DD gear for hate holding on normal mobs, and for HNM/Boss types it's all about the haste & enmity equipment.

[Cephius]

I meleeburn NE Apollyon all the time, in the event we get stuck with Cronos, we dot it to hell with the rdm and brd, kite and nuke it. We usually have a monk or two along, and they can use formless strikes or just chi blast to help out. It's not impossible, and I've only gotten stuck with Cronos one time.

Temenos West is still easily meleeburned, you can just open the vortex and skip the floor entirely.

Temenos beastmen is meleeburned easy too. The Yagudo TP moves are annoying yes, but they're also absorbed by shadows and it's not difficult to keep them up for the entire fight. The PLD and WHM always go down fast, their defense is easily overcome by dispels and dia.

And I don't get it, I never said Limbus wasn't a good place for PLD/WAR in terms of keeping hate, of course it is because it fits the rule of short fights = war sub that I said in my original post. I just mentioned that if I go PLD (I have mnk and nin at 75 as well so I rarely do) I just go /NIN sub and DD because its more MP effective (hi not getting the crap beat out of me) and more efficient.

[OctavoGilgamesh]

Keeping distance from Ix'Drk when he uses Blood Weapon isn't difficult at all with Crimson Cuisses and intelligent pacing. You can also use sentinel during it.

Who the fuck wants to kite or use pathing tricks on Ix'Drk when you could just blink tank it? Comon, just stop your argument now, you can't win. PLD/NIN >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>PLD/WAR in 99.9% of HNM situations.

Oh wait AA rotations ftw!

[BRP]

PLD/NIN is better than PLD/WAR in most situations, I'm no tank, but this is what I've seen. Also, you have to consider, if you are good enough, you don't have to give a fuck. Come PLD/WAR if it won't make your LS wipe or make your WHMs hate you.

[Garret]

/War loses *A LOT* more hate than /Nin. The amount of hate you lose when getting batted around is very substantial and is much larger than the hate you gain with provoke.

As the above poster mentioned you can't have a very solid idea of how either sub works if you don't see that easily. It's incredibly obvious.

[Loren]

Another point is that the mob gains TP from hitting you, so Utsusemi on the tank will slow its TP accumulation.

Also, casting Utsusemi in Enmity gear is non-trivial hate. Ichi and Ni together can provide a small hate boost every ~15 seconds that helps compensate for the loss of Provoke.

[Carnusty]

Along with the people that say /WAR for dynamis and stuff...I have a question for Xarcabard, in particular.

Would /NIN be best for this zone? Hate is usually fickle on the lower mobs because we've been able to bring bards for our melee parties, and some of our PLDs tend to die somewhat easily on the heavier NMs (Gomory and Raum we seem to have trouble with holding, in particular).

Any suggestions there?

[Judai]

Yutuyu is just full of shit and seriosuly sounds like they have never done half the shit they claim to have.

Provoke is over rated and pretty much shit due to the amount of damage you take with /war on big mobs.

Omega is incredibly meleeburnable. I actually prefer to kite Kirin /nin to avoid Deadly Holds and Binds and shit. Though /war can be better for kiting but then again /drk can be great for kiting too if the mob doesn't resist stun. Who really cares about what's melee burnable and not anyways. /nin is great no matter how you kill shit. Small mobs, /war is fine but NIN main is usually just better in those cases. Big mobs, where it actually matters, /nin crushes /war.

For Dynamis I pretty much stopped using PLDs all together tbh. I have 1 there for MNK mobs, otherwise I use NINs and WARs and just TPburn it. For Xarc I kept 2 PLDs but again, imo it was easier to just have NINs and WARs bounce hate about and just have the PLDs Sentinel tank the MNKs. I really prefered being main assist and tanking mobs on my WAR over PLD in cities.

[Deimos]

Along with the people that say /WAR for dynamis and stuff...I have a question for Xarcabard, in particular.

Would /NIN be best for this zone? Hate is usually fickle on the lower mobs because we've been able to bring bards for our melee parties, and some of our PLDs tend to die somewhat easily on the heavier NMs (Gomory and Raum we seem to have trouble with holding, in particular).

Any suggestions there?

I'd say the main reason I like being PLD/WAR in Dynamis is that having Provoke + Flash gives you two "targeted" hate abilities on a short timer. Generally when I'm PLD in Dynamis my job is to try and get hate on as much of the pull as possible, so that mobs don't go after the sleepers if a sleep fails or they wake up. WAR sub lets you get hate on two mobs every 30 seconds or so, whereas NIN only gives you the one targeted ability over a similar time period. PLD/NIN might be more useful for the Xarcabard NMs, but I think the fights are still short enough that a PLD/WAR should be able to be kept alive pretty easily, and I'd rather have WAR sub for all the other pulls.

I had a similar sort of problem when I was trying to decide my sub for Einherjar the other day. I wanted /WAR for the initial mob pull, but /NIN is definitely better for the boss.

[Cephius]

Along with the people that say /WAR for dynamis and stuff...I have a question for Xarcabard, in particular.

Would /NIN be best for this zone? Hate is usually fickle on the lower mobs because we've been able to bring bards for our melee parties, and some of our PLDs tend to die somewhat easily on the heavier NMs (Gomory and Raum we seem to have trouble with holding, in particular).

Any suggestions there?

I still think /war wins out in Xarcabard. Nin sub may be better for holding NMs as the alliance kills the others, but for the rest of the farming run I generally want to have a PLD/WAR or two around for add control. Most of the pulls bring like 6-10 demons even if pulled correctly, and your RDMs or BLMs are going to die fast if no one is there to voke slept stuff. Flash alone doesn't cut it in that case, in my expierence. PLD's role in Xarcabard (or any dynamis really) is no longer tanking mobs, it's holding slept mobs while people tpburn/manaburn the others one at a time.

[Talis]

Also, casting Utsusemi in Enmity gear is non-trivial hate. Ichi and Ni together can provide a small hate boost every ~15 seconds that helps compensate for the loss of Provoke.

Remember you also have slow/para/blind + poison and ichi nukes (if you're not sleeping mobs). They all add non-trivial hate, require no MP, and have a fairly short cast time.

Along with the people that say /WAR for dynamis and stuff...I have a question for Xarcabard, in particular.

Would /NIN be best for this zone? Hate is usually fickle on the lower mobs because we've been able to bring bards for our melee parties, and some of our PLDs tend to die somewhat easily on the heavier NMs (Gomory and Raum we seem to have trouble with holding, in particular).

Any suggestions there?

I'd say the main reason I like being PLD/WAR in Dynamis is that having Provoke + Flash gives you two "targeted" hate abilities on a short timer. Generally when I'm PLD in Dynamis my job is to try and get hate on as much of the pull as possible, so that mobs don't go after the sleepers if a sleep fails or they wake up. WAR sub lets you get hate on two mobs every 30 seconds or so, whereas NIN only gives you the one targeted ability over a similar time period. PLD/NIN might be more useful for the Xarcabard NMs, but I think the fights are still short enough that a PLD/WAR should be able to be kept alive pretty easily, and I'd rather have WAR sub for all the other pulls.

I had a similar sort of problem when I was trying to decide my sub for Einherjar the other day. I wanted /WAR for the initial mob pull, but /NIN is definitely better for the boss.

I've tried /nin in dynamis like activities (einhenjar etc). For normal cities + beaud I can't see it working too well, but for Xarc where the pulls are smaller and somewhat spread out you can flash one mob, blind another, para / slow another then sentinel and rampart to lock hate on those mobs. You can then continue to cycle flash and enfeebles to maintain hate. Since the pulls are spaced out a fair bit, that should give your JAs time to cool down before the next pull. I haven't actually tried this, but I'm considering it as we tend to run xarc with smaller numbers, and /nin would be very handy for NM pulls.

[Zilong]

Remember you also have slow/para/blind + poison and ichi nukes (if you're not sleeping mobs). They all add non-trivial hate, require no MP, and have a fairly short cast time.

DOES NOT COMPUTE

All ichi spells are on 4 sec casting time.

[Talint]

I tried to pull off full time PLD/NIN; but from what I've found I simply cannot generate enough hate in certain situations - usually where I'm moving around a lot. Keeping hate is much better and easier with /NIN, but in the times where you need to generate a lot of hate fast, having two taunting tools is better than one.

I'd be willing to try /NIN for DynaXarc though.

I believe the saying goes, "shit is situational".

[Kayos]

Also, casting Utsusemi in Enmity gear is non-trivial hate. Ichi and Ni together can provide a small hate boost every ~15 seconds that helps compensate for the loss of Provoke.

I would say that is the most underrated part of /nin that people dont realize or often overlook. Shadow spamming (not spamming per se, just when you need shadows) when /nin leads to a very reliable source of constant hate. Edit: if you have a really good tanking buddy and you know how to share almost identical hate then its not uncommon to pull hate off that person solely by casting Ni. I know I have seen this plenty, and if flash isnt up it can help pull hate off a partner about to get hit.

As far as casting the 4 second Ichi spells, I dont agree with this. Maybe on mobs like JoL or a slept Faf/Nid or Tia in the air (maybe?). But on mobs like Cerb/Khim/Ultima. 4 seconds wasted will fuck up your whole rhythm and possibly get you in serious trouble for very minimal hate (of which you might lose anyway by being hit because you are casting a 4 second spell).

[Woozie]

I typically go /war in Dynamis as well, for extra hate tool, since I'm typically doing crowd controll, and the actual fights are about a minute long. Trying /nin in Xarcabard sounds like something I'd like to test out someday.

I've witness hated bouncing back and fourth from utsu casts as well when we're sharing hate pretty well and the hate line is even. We sometimes inadvertently save each other from taking damage sometimes this way.

And Yutuyu... just... stop it....