PLD/NIN or PLD/WAR Situations

[Talis]

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).

You're right, on fast meleing mobs it doesn't do much, but in situations where you are able to do it, its hate that is very overlooked by a lot of PLDs. When you're duo tanking and don't have hate for example, theres no reason not to be spamming them when other timers are down, or even when kiting (provided you can judge max casting range fairly accurately). Obviously you woudn't cast an enfeeble if it were to interupt your shadow casting or put you in a situation where you may take damage. A rythm like Utsu:ichi -> enfeeble -> Utsu:Ni -> flash -> Utsu:ichi works quite well in a lot of situations, and usually doesn't put you in any more danger then you would otherwise be. Forgo the ichi ninjitsu if you have someone to cure, but when you don't, theres no reason not to.

[Osede]

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?

For the xar NM
it usually depends on how you organize the order of NM to be killed first. usually for us, besides mnk that tank by pld, usually we will killing the rdm/brd/blm those kind of mobs that do not(???) hit so hard (this might need to ask those who play pld since I'm nin). Which rest of nm like war, drk etc we use nin to tank them.

for normals mobs in dynamis
usually the pld in this situation for our ls just only keep the sleep mobs from going to attack rdm/blm/brd when they awake. so, /war will better for this situation when you can hold hate on at least 3-4 slept mobs.

and still, before that, the pld must capped the shield skill when gonna sub war. From the observation, we got a new pld that just 75, always die very easily compare to another pld who capped parry and shield.

[Garret]

I think Pld/War is solid in Dynamis primarily because as said above you get two direct target hate abilities, while you can argue a debuff from /Nin is direct target as well I don't know if that will pull hate off of sleep, maybe it will with stacked enmity, not sure.

Even though /Nin is probably workable in Xarc, and would obviously be good on NM's I typically find that if you have a good melee mix mobs will die pretty fast, and many of them are not particularly dangerous if they are hitting melees who have shadows, assuming your DD's pull hate on or around 50%, and for more dangerous mobs, i.e. Monks, you have Sentinel and there aren't many pulls with enough Monk's to truly strain the Sentinel recast of 2 Pld's. In Dynamis /War just seems to give you better control over larger pulls even though your tanks are taking more damage for subbing it.

[Yutuyu]

Eh, in all of my experiences where a PLD/WAR was pitted against a PLD/NIN for non-boss situations, PLD/WAR clearly outperformed the PLD/NIN for hate. The one thing PLD/NIN does very well is build hate, and keep it. Whereas PLD/WAR hits hate spikes.

Put all the words you want in my mouth but I never advocated using /war for HNMs, only minion-driven events like Dynamis and Limbus. I clearly showed that I know quite a bit by limbus by my break down of every zone short of the Metal Chip ones. But if you want to pretend like I'm an idiot in order to make yourself feel superior and add crudence to your hollow point, feel free.

[Obev]

"Crudence" isn't a word.

[Fallso]

What the fuck is crudence

[Arnwulf]

Isn't it that Beatles song "Dear Crudence"? Oh wait, that's "Dear Prudence", yeah I have no idea :D

Wiki says nothing found

[Yutuyu]

Credence, wow, attacking my typos, you must be completely out of ammunition.

[Fallso]

Credence, wow, attacking my typos, you must be completely out of ammunition.

Was just marveling at your ability to invent words, even though it was a typo.

[Asdra]

PLDs in my shell go pld/drk in Xarc, because it gives better hate options than /war since you can get stun down to a pretty low recast along with the other hate options, plus its 1 more stun mixxed in with all the other stuns to render the mob unable to even swing alot of the time.

Everyone has their own preferences though

[OctavoGilgamesh]

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.

If you happen to play bst/nin at all, you will clearly see the hate spikes from ni and ichi while sharing hate with your pet. It's how a bst/nin can actually solo vt's somewhat effectively with just an em pet by co-tanking with your pet.

[Cephius]

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.

If you happen to play bst/nin at all, you will clearly see the hate spikes from ni and ichi while sharing hate with your pet. It's how a bst/nin can actually solo vt's somewhat effectively with just an em pet by co-tanking with your pet.

I'm no beastmaster, but don't pets have much looser hate for whatever reason? I've seen BST pets that attack fairly hard, and they don't seem to retain the hate that a player would were he attacking for the same amount of damage. Not to say Ni or Ichi don't provide hate because quite obviously they do, but couldn't your observations be diminished a bit because of how naturally loose pet hate is?

[LLK]

I use /NIN for pretty much everything. It's just much more efficent for the way my LS' do things.

For Dynamis if I actually go PLD I will still sub NIN. We have just enough to make the fights fast, but even /WAR our heavy DD (MNK and WAR) tend to pull / hold hate easier. PLD in dynamis for me is to pretty much keep the /assist rolling and help back up heal as much as possible.

Salvage I just go NIN so blah.

Kirin I like /NIN for kiting and for straight up. We generally don't TP burn, but we do straight tanking Kirin as a standard. Just makes it easier self cure spam and block all the annoying TP moves. For kiting you can actually let the Quake/Stone V go threw so you get more SC+MB's off. Generating a hate spike off the bat isn't hard either with enough enimty gear and the changes to Sentinel.

Any other mobs you do straight up /NIN is just to sexy. Feeding the mob less TP + being practically self sustaining is just to great to give up. Plus you lose less hate over time.

KB/KS99's. /NIN still, but our BLM generally kite anyways. (Not that we actually claim KB but for the KS atleast). So again I just let them do there thing and the fights go a lot faster.

[Garret]

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

Eh, in all of my experiences where a PLD/WAR was pitted against a PLD/NIN for non-boss situations, PLD/WAR clearly outperformed the PLD/NIN for hate. The one thing PLD/NIN does very well is build hate, and keep it. Whereas PLD/WAR hits hate spikes.

Put all the words you want in my mouth but I never advocated using /war for HNMs, only minion-driven events like Dynamis and Limbus.

So you start off saying /Nin only wins on hate in squishy mobs, which would be minion like things, i.e. Limbus/Dynamis, which you can use DD setups on. But imply that /War is going to be better on non-squishy mobs, i.e. bosses. You then say that /War is better for non-boss situations, i.e. minions, but imply that /Nin is going to be better in longer fights, i.e. bosses. Care to stop contradicting yourself?

[Elesirdur]

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

Eh, in all of my experiences where a PLD/WAR was pitted against a PLD/NIN for non-boss situations, PLD/WAR clearly outperformed the PLD/NIN for hate. The one thing PLD/NIN does very well is build hate, and keep it. Whereas PLD/WAR hits hate spikes.

Put all the words you want in my mouth but I never advocated using /war for HNMs, only minion-driven events like Dynamis and Limbus.

So you start off saying /Nin only wins on hate in squishy mobs, which would be minion like things, i.e. Limbus/Dynamis, which you can use DD setups on. But imply that /War is going to be better on non-squishy mobs, i.e. bosses. You then say that /War is better for non-boss situations, i.e. minions, but imply that /Nin is going to be better in longer fights, i.e. bosses. Care to stop contradicting yourself?

I don't think he has the mental capacity to do that Garret.

I used to be a hardcore PLD/WAR for life kind of player, then I watched some other PLDs in my LS just do amazingly efficient things with /NIN. Leveling NIN from 17 to 37 was perhaps one of the most painful things I've done in FFXI, but has it ever paid off. The only thing I come /WAR for these days is Dynamis, the occasional Assault, Temenos C-1 (the elemental one, whatever that floor is), and anything I have to kite like Gration. Sometimes I get requests to come PLD/WAR for XP, which I don't mind so much if it's like Colibris.

[Therin]

Here's the way I do it:


Dynamis: /WAR.
Limbus: /WAR for all but the bosses, Proto-Omega and Ultima. /NIN for both of them.
Salvage: /WAR unless you're doing boss runs. /NIN for those.
Fafnir: /WAR.
Nidhogg: /WAR unless you're low on support, in which case /NIN.
King Behemoth: /WAR
Aspid: /WAR unless you're low on support, in which case /NIN.
KS99's: /WAR for all.
Guardians: /WAR for all.
Kirin: /WAR for kiting, /NIN for meleeburning.
Ouryu: If you're leaving him grounded an awake, /WAR. If you're leaving him flying and sleeping on the ground, /DRK or /RDM.
Jailer of Faith: /NIN for blinkable spells.
Jailer of Fortitude: /NIN and kite if you don't have that many, /WAR and straight-tank if you're just raping it's face with a lot of people.
Jailer of Temperance: /WAR unless you're under-manned, in which case PLD isn't really useful at all.
Jailer of Hope: /WAR unless you don't have that many people, and then /NIN. It typically dies in like 3-5 minutes so just Rampart Burst II with your co-tanks.
Jailer of Justice: /WAR or /NIN.
Jailer of Prudence: /WAR.
Jailer of Love: /DRK or /RDM.
Tiamat: /NIN.
Jormungand: /NIN.
Khimaira: /NIN.
Cerberus: /NIN.
Hyrda: WAR/NIN with a Ridill.

[Lexa]

Sometimes I get requests to come PLD/WAR for XP, which I don't mind so much if it's like Colibris.

I want your ls/server. ; ;

If anyone ever ask me to go /war for XP, I swear to God, I will shit bricks in the most unladylike manner. I know I'm probably alone in this, but I miss the 5k/hour Uleguerand Range pts. :/ I really love my DD /nin, but it's just not quite as fun.

[Therin]

Sometimes I get requests to come PLD/WAR for XP, which I don't mind so much if it's like Colibris.

I want your ls/server. ; ;

If anyone ever ask me to go /war for XP, I swear to God, I will shit bricks in the most unladylike manner. I know I'm probably alone in this, but I miss the 5k/hour Uleguerand Range pts. :/ I really love my DD /nin, but it's just not quite as fun.

No offense but that has to be the strangest thing I've ever heard anyone say. Have you ever considered that maybe you're a masochist?

[Lexa]

No offense but that has to be the strangest thing I've ever heard anyone say. Have you ever considered that maybe you're a masochist?

I think people considered it for a while, but once it was revealed that my home country also contains Madawc, it was concluded I'm just weird on a molecular level.

[Ferien]

I pretty much agree with Therin, but I actually have a quick question: In situations where you're going /DRK or /RDM, how do they compare with /WHM? I know with the former 2, you get more targetable enfeebles for hate, but the latter gives you more MDB (probably the most useful of the pros), more MP, DS, and Curagas, Erase, and every -na but Stona, which you can't cast on yourself anyway.

You lose Phalanx, Blind, Bind, Sleep, and Resist Petrify in the case of RDM, and Bind, Sleep, and Stun in the case of DRK.