PLD merit advice please.

[Woozie]

I use Hades/Ethereal, and macro in Loq for utsu. If you're a full time PLD, hades is definetely worth the cost. If this is some alt job that you'll only use occasionally, then maybe not.

[Drunkenmonk]

loq shaves a second off ni/flash, hades+1 doesnt help me much sitting at +27-30 enmity. shit is situational?

[Devinry]

If this is some alt job that you'll only use occasionally, then maybe not.

It is. Appreciate the quick suggestions though, Eth/Loq is pretty much what I expected.

[Ryko]

loq shaves a second off ni/flash, hades+1 doesnt help me much sitting at +27-30 enmity. shit is situational?

"Shit is situational" is such a cop-out. It's a given, but how horribly off do you have to be on an HNM where a second off of ni is saving your life? We're talking tiamat with no slow, no elegy, no march, no haste, it just winged, your melee DD's (I know, lol) wont get off of it so it winged again and it has MS up sort of bad.

[BerenTebogo]

Loq / Ethereal is hands down the best, Enmity +2 from Hades' really won't be too noticeable, it's not terrible for stuff kited stuff though of course.

That being said, I'm lazy and Intruder / Ethereal

[Julian]

Wow lol guess I'm one of the few that still uses cover merits <.<

[Seraph]

In my infinite laziness, for tier one I was planning on going:

Sentinel 3/5
Rampart 3/5
Shield Bash 3/5
Cover 1/5


As far as other merits go:

Sword 8/8
Shield 4/4
Crit+ 4/4
MP 8/8
Chivelry 1+/3
Feality 1/3

I generally use my abilities for hate, not damage resistance, and being able to have the timers all up at the same time is nice. Sentinel --> Shield Bash --> Rampart. Instant super hate. Fun for countering zerg type damage boosts too.






I also am not on Team Gallant, so MP back from Cover is enough to warrent a single merit for Cover, at least for me.

[Sylvrdragon]

I use Eth full time, and then switch from Loq to Buckler to Cassie for the other ear depending on the situation. Buckler for /WAR on gods and stuff where I want max Shield skill (321 for me), Loq for /NIN, and Cassie for everything else.

[Therin]

Overall merits, I'd go with 8 Sword 4 Shield and the remaining can go in whatever you prefer. HP and MP are both useful - if you're Elvaan or Galka, I'd go 8 MP, but if you're Hume or Taru I'd go 8 HP.

As for attributes, just go with STR - everything else is crap.

Magic - seemingly useless, don't bother unless you do like PLD/RDM soloing, and then you can go with Enhancing magic.

Other category - obviously enmity merits are great. Some people like crit-% but I never saw them being that useful so I just merited crit+% for PLD and other jobs as well.

For job specific:

If you have Aegis, go with 5 merits in Shield Bash. The remainder can be put in Sentinel or Rampart, depending on your LS events and so on. If you find yourself fighting monsters that spam magic, I'd go with Rampart, but if you find yourself using PLD/WAR I'd go Sentinel. Cover is nice too, but it was better back before all of the updates when we actually could run out of MP - now it's better just to go for straight damage mitigation.

As for tier 2, Chivalry level 3 is obvious.

At least 1 of the remaining 3 should go to Fealty. It's great for a lot of odd situations where you want to avoid getting hit with an Enfeeble (Jailer of Faith, Ouryu when it lands, King Behemoth when you feel like you may get hit and want to avoid Add:Effect Stun, zerg fights where you don't want to get Slept (DL) or Petrified (KV, Bahamut)).

Iron Will and Guardian are both crap so don't bother with those.

Concerning your earring question:

Ethereal is constantly a given, regardless of sub.

For /WAR, use another Shield earring (Knight's if you chose it, otherwise Buckler)

For /NIN, use Loquacious. (MP+30 and 1% Haste, basically - it's a GREAT earring)

For kiting, use an enmity earring (Hades+1).

[Genjuro]

thanks for all the advices. According to all post above, it seem if pld with no aegis, usually they go for sentinel recast, rampart recast for cat 1. For cat 2, always chilvary max out, and whatever ppl feel like after that.

And for aegis pld, seem ppl are going for rampart recast max out and shield bash (Ryko said). I guess that was because aegis block out too much dmg that with sentinel or not it makes no diff, so merit rampart recast actually help on taking magic dmg better. Make sense.

I'm pld without aegis, and i have sentinel max out, chilvary and iron will max out. Some merits in shield bash. I might lower the shield bash and merit rampart recast then. It seem makes sense to me.

[Vekta]

iron will is the biggest waste of merits >.>

[Genjuro]

I was mistaken, it was guardian max out, not iron will. Lose less hate when sentinel is activated.

[Scar]

I will never understand capped Guardian. How much hate are you really gonna lose during the 30 seconds that Sentinel is up? If damage is the #1 way that tanks lose hate, and you're taking 50-100% less damage during that 30 seconds, then you're ALREADY losing next to no hate. 57% of 'next to nothing' is still 'next to nothing'. Isn't that the very definition of diminishing returns?

When they changed Sentinel, they added the damage reduction along with another feature- every action performed during Sentinel has additional hate added to it.

If you time things correctly (and have enough Haste% between gear/buffs), it's possible to cast 2 Flashes and 1-2 cures before Sentinel wears off. You can also squeeze a Rampart and/or Shield Bash into that routine for even more of a hate spike if you wouldn't be better off saving them for magic damage reduction/Stun. I macro in full +Enmity after my first Flash just to take advantage of the additonal hate boost on the second Flash.

When it comes down to it, what else are you going to merit in Category 2 anyways? Fealty or Iron Will? Those merit categories are the very definition of diminishing returns if you ask me. Besides for mobs that Charm (99% of those are in Dynamis and slept and time nuked anyways) or for solo play, you'll get virtually no real use out of Fealty if your WHMs and /WHMs are on top of things. As far as Iron Will goes, it's a complete waste regardless.

[Jeryhn]

As far as Iron Will goes, it's a complete waste regardless.

Well, does the spell interruption down effect from Iron Will carry over to your party members who fall under the effects of Rampart (Think WAR's Savagery Group 2 merit)? It would certainly give Rampart a little bit of protection against physical attacks in addition to it's Magic Shield effect besides the meager defense boost. Time your spells noob etc., of course, but with the changes they made to Sentinel after they added Guardian, I don't see how Guardian is anywhere near what it used to be worth.

If I were to ever finish my PLD, I'd probably put 3 in Chivalry, and 1 in the rest just for kicks (which is pretty much what they're for).

[LLK]

HP 8/8
Enemy Critical 4/4
Shield 4/4
Shield Bash 5/5
Sentinel 5/5
Guardian 5/5
Chivalry 5/5

HP 8/8 is kind of an obvious one although sometimes I wish I had a few MP merits. With the 2 missing pieces of homam(Hands/legs/sigh) I'll be at 400+ which should be plenty.

Shield Bash is nice cause I'm upgrading.. I did the Sentinel and I couldn't be happier. Faster recast for more hate spikes + it's nice to use during an ichi cast. Guardian was just to boost the hate from Sentinel as high as possible.

And Chivalry is an obvious one. Any PLD that maxes out job merits but doesn't have Chivalry 3/3 is just fail..