Regarding PLD and VIT

[Sanjiyan]

So with the advent of reprisal, PLDs everywhere are wondering if it's a return of the good old blood tank. While I don't subscribe to fantasies of such a concept, as I believe blood tanking PLDs never went away (especially since you have to blood tank on the way to 75), it got me thinking about my setup while I was in the shower today. Afterall, I do my best thinking while in the shower.

So when I was a level 1 PLD n00b, I remember reading that VIT and DEF is broken and that for all purposes, anything above 100-110 VIT will approach diminishing returns. So it's adviced to focus on emnity when you achieved that level of VIT.

However, looking at my setup now, I never approach that number. I'm focused on emnity and haste (for /NIN), and shield skill for anything else (shadows down, /WAR, etc). So I keep wondering if I'm getting hit too hard. Especially with the excellent Iron Ram set, there's even less VIT in my gear.

Base VIT (Mithra) 69
+ 5 koenig shield
+ 1 happy egg
+ 4 Adaman Cuirass
+ 5 Warwolf belt
= 84 VIT

Once Iron Ram body comes out (trend says no VIT on that), and possible switch to wivre shield, it's like I'm a Galka PLD with no VIT gear whatsoever. I'd be rocking a lot of emnity though.



My question? Should I place more emphasis on VIT to achieve 100+, while sacrificing some emnity (hard to do since I was told to aim for 25-30+ emnity) and haste? Or is it just the way it is?

SE keeps releasing pretty good gear for PLDs, but none of them have any VIT on it. I almost feel like a melee that neglects STR for more haste. Oh wait...

[GSDragoon]

Reprisal makes you shield block more, sure. It still doesn't make VIT do anything worthwhile...

[Max™]

Supersituational.

I found the whole Vit/Def being broken a bit confusing til I got really hardcore into meleeing and understanding what goes on when I hit things.

Looking at it from a monsters perspective, you adding a certain amount of Vit is going to reduce their weapon damage by a little bit, reducing their maximum and minimum possible damages.

Adding a certain amount of Def is going to reduce their pDif rolls and reduce the spot where they usually land in that min/max range on average.


Here's the kick in the teeth to bloodtanking: many monsters, especially high level NM's, and HNM's have ridiculously high base weapon damage.



So, from the melee perspective, I have an 87 Dmg weapon, 425 Attack, and about 88 Str when I'm just standing around in my "hit things" gear.

If I'm fighting something that has Vit close too or higher than my Str, then I get little or no boost to my 87 Dmg.

I hit something that has more than my 425 Attack, my pDif multiplier is going to be towards the low end, so my 87 Dmg is going to be multiplied by a number closer to 1 than 2+.

I'll see a lot of hits that are for less than my weapon damage, up to not much higher.

60-100 is bleh as a melee, but not bad if you're the one taking the hits.

Now let's put me in the same situation, but with a 120 Dmg weapon, 100-150 against the same 88 Vit+ 425 Def+ target is a big jump.

Make me higher level, and cRatio turns in my favor, so I get a bit more damage added for every level I have on my target, turning that 100-150 into 115-170 or higher.


Last time I heard a number quoted for like, Fafnir's base damage... I could swear it was something silly like 130, and higher for Tia and some other mobs.

Toss in the Str boost 5-15 levels gives, the commensurate attack increase, and smack level correction into there...

You see why Pld/Nin and Shield blocking is so important now.

[Sanjiyan]

So... what you're saying is... forget the VIT. Just /NIN it up and stack shield skill + reprisal when shadow goes down.

I kinda knew that. But people have been experimenting PLD/RDM with good results. I'm not sure what kind of HNMs that combo is good for, but I imagine VIT+DEF is more important in those situations. My complaint is that it'ss impossible for a non-koenig PLD to get a sufficient level of VIT without big sacrifices elsewhere.

[Tan]

I've been considering PLD/RDM for NM tanking and I don't think that VIT/DEF is going to be anything more than idle gear in that situation. You want to primarily focus on Enhancing Magic+ and Haste+. The more enhancing magic you have the higher you can cap your Phalanx if you aren't getting Phalanx from a SCH or Phalanx II from a RDM. Thats where your first damage reduction is going to occur. Next its going to be from your Shield skill. The more Shield skill you have to a certain point, the higher your block rate is going to be and thats where another aspect of damage reduction. Third is going to come from Reprisal and also Flash. With max haste /nin I think you can get Reprisal down to a 1:30min recast, and w/ a 1:00min duration on Reprisal thats only 30s without it. Which in my opinion is pretty damn good. In addition your haste gear is going to help your Flash recast which usually gives you a couple misses from the mob before it wears off. I think if anything if you aren't spamming cures w/ Enmity + gear on yourself you will only use the VIT/DEF gear for when you aren't doing any casting. Thats although is just my opinion.

A question I've wondered about is does anyone have any shield block info for Tower Shields? I'm wondering if w/ reprisal a Tower Shield and an extremely high Shield Skill (I think I can hit 324 w/ Knightly Earring, Shield Torque, Kaiser Schaller, and Gallant Leggings+1 and merits) would yield a higher Shield Block % than a Kite Shield. I guess this is more of a question for those of us without Aegis, but something I was curious about. (I'm only currently on Stage 3 Relic Shield, myself so this is why I ask)

[Max™]

So... what you're saying is... forget the VIT. Just /NIN it up and stack shield skill + reprisal when shadow goes down.

I kinda knew that. But people have been experimenting PLD/RDM with good results. I'm not sure what kind of HNMs that combo is good for, but I imagine VIT+DEF is more important in those situations. My complaint is that it'ss impossible for a non-koenig PLD to get a sufficient level of VIT without big sacrifices elsewhere.

Vit and Def shine more the lower level whatever you're fighting is.

I utterly nullify the base damage on lvl 0 mobs with defender and gambu helmet/random turtle gear, to where they crit for 0 too.

There's just a point where you're trying to block a sledgehammer with a feather pillow, and it's just simpler to blink the hits away.

If SE adjusted monster damage to more reasonable levels, or gave some sort of tweak to defender or defense/vit over certain levels to give straight -% physical damage reductions, it could be feasible, til then even with Pld/Rdm you're still dealing with that ridiculous weapon damage that is just going to punch through whatever turtling you do.

[Therin]

There are some pieces that have VIT that are hard to pass up, like Kaiser Schaller (on /WAR), Koenig Shield, Warwolf Belt and Ares's Cuirass. Otherwise VIT in general is useless. Don't bother unless for some godforsaken reason you catch yourself facetanking a high level mob and you forgot to switch to /NIN.

[shaddix]

even if you could bloodtank you'd still bleed CE out the ass no matter how much curing you do on yourself. Though I did read this thing that said pld maybe loses less CE from damage taken than other jobs <_< But that sounds like bullshit.

[Tan]

even if you could bloodtank you'd still bleed CE out the ass no matter how much curing you do on yourself. Though I did read this thing that said pld maybe loses less CE from damage taken than other jobs <_< But that sounds like bullshit.

Maybe you are thinking of the merited ability Guardian? It reduces the enmity loss while using Sentinel w/ each Merit. And don't you mean VE not CE? I thought that it was VE that decays and CE that is accumulated. VE would probably be lost pretty quickly w/ hits but you could easily cap your CE as /rdm spamming Sleep, Dispel, etc. And I think the point of "reviving" blood tanking was to do it in a manner which you wouldn't be a giant mp sponge and could feasibly maintain the hate.

[shaddix]

you lose CE from taking damage, and its something like damage taken * 1.7something, I tested on DC/EP bunnies in cape terrigan. But you only get hp healed *.72~ for curing it back. So taking damage and curing yourself ends up with a net CE loss. Unless you can somehow equip enough enmity, like +80 or something >.>

[Yvonne]

I can vouch for Guardian. I currently have it capped and all I can say is... wow.

[Spartin]

Supersituational.
Here's the kick in the teeth to bloodtanking: many monsters, especially high level NM's, and HNM's have ridiculously high base weapon damage.



So, from the melee perspective, I have an 87 Dmg weapon, 425 Attack, and about 88 Str when I'm just standing around in my "hit things" gear.

If I'm fighting something that has Vit close too or higher than my Str, then I get little or no boost to my 87 Dmg.

I hit something that has more than my 425 Attack, my pDif multiplier is going to be towards the low end, so my 87 Dmg is going to be multiplied by a number closer to 1 than 2+.

I'll see a lot of hits that are for less than my weapon damage, up to not much higher.

60-100 is bleh as a melee, but not bad if you're the one taking the hits.

Now let's put me in the same situation, but with a 120 Dmg weapon, 100-150 against the same 88 Vit+ 425 Def+ target is a big jump.

Make me higher level, and cRatio turns in my favor, so I get a bit more damage added for every level I have on my target, turning that 100-150 into 115-170 or higher.


Last time I heard a number quoted for like, Fafnir's base damage... I could swear it was something silly like 130, and higher for Tia and some other mobs.

Toss in the Str boost 5-15 levels gives, the commensurate attack increase, and smack level correction into there...

Here is the thing I think you are missing though. When a HNM with a 120 Dmg weapon does a WS to you it isn't actually 1:1 damage you or I would get in that situation. If I had a 120 DMG weapon, I would be rocking much higher numbers than they do. I know they put limitations on the WS a HNM can do. If I were to drop a Gekko on Kirin for example, if I didn`t break 400, it was a really bad ws. Hagun on a level corrected mob at lvl 90ish. Whereas I take 800 damage Deadly hold. In all fairness, if Kirin was a player, I would be pissed with my WS damage. A lvl 75 doing more than 50% damage than I would do when I was lvl 90 with the lvl correction formulas out there would be less than fair. I have seen SE made monster WS cap much lower than PC potential by a large margin. We have the ability to multiply, they have the ability to add a bit more due to weather effects or criticals. Bad roll, well you just took 2.2k dmg on something that maxed out at 2.4k, sorry 5% resist kicked your ass. We give a good roll well there is 1200 dmg and a mob really isn`t able to do that kind of increase to us like we do to them. We are able to solo a VT mob with some difficulty. Duo, no problems. Their Str attk base dmg is much higher than ours, but the ws we drop on them are equal or better. If mobs hit to their potential like we do, well PCs would have 2-4k hp and Mages would have Cure VII. It is all balanced out. If the Vit Def formulas were not messed like they are, well there would be no wtfbbq hits we see now on WS. Wtfbbq sauce is what makes this game something people want to play.

[Tan]

I can vouch for Guardian. I currently have it capped and all I can say is... wow.

You like Guardian? Cuz that just made my Group 2 Choices harder, was planning to go 5/5 Chivalry and 5/5 Fealty w/ these new updates. I'm currently 1 Guardian, 1 Fealty, 3 Chivalry, 1 Iron Will (hardly notice this).

[Dioma]

I can vouch for Guardian. I currently have it capped and all I can say is... wow.

You like Guardian? Cuz that just made my Group 2 Choices harder, was planning to go 5/5 Chivalry and 5/5 Fealty w/ these new updates. I'm currently 1 Guardian, 1 Fealty, 3 Chivalry, 1 Iron Will (hardly notice this).

I've recapped guardian too and it's definately impressive. My tanking partners already couldn't keep up with me when I was capped pre update. Now, it's even worse for them, although its not a problem when I'm solo tanking which I'll be doing alot more of when I finish my shield. I plan on going 5 Guardian then 3/2 in Fealty or Chivalry; dunno which is the 3 and which is the 2.

[Max™]

I've had Kirin wtfpwn me for 2400 Dmg with a Deadly Hold.

The problem is that they don't have super high Str and Att, but do have the silly high Wdmg, so no matter what you do to nerf their Str/Att, you can't undo the Wdmg, which gives the diminishing returns effect on high Vit/Def.