RDM Fire resist

[Demosthenes11]

Your whole post sounds like you think RDM can't tank this and can only hold till the PLDs come rescue you; personally I have solo tanked this (manaburn) with 0 draw ins and 0 deaths and without sleeping on ground.

well considering the plds that will be coming to tia, I am nothing in comparison

[Killkenny]

Thats being a little dramatic, whilst you may have aegis excal plds it doesn't change anything in your potential to tank. From what I gather you must be extremely well geared to become a member of excellence so we can take that out of the equation (as others have already said an effective fire resist build can be picked up very cheaply off the AH with 1-2 easily obtained r/e pieces). So all that remains is your ability to tank, and for the first 90% tia hits pretty slow and his DA rate isn't very high.

Once you get used to spamming hate spells and keeping shadows/buffs up your plds will be fighting for hate just as much as you are if not more so even with completely NQ tanking gear just because rdms have so many more hate spells availible. Even if your plds are stan or some other similarly geared pld it won't change this.

[Tsuko_Asura]

I'll defend Red Mage's ability to out-tank other classes to the grave, but there's really no reason to do so when your Paladins have Excalibur, so there is a bit of validity to his tone.

[Unstable]

Excailbur does not help hold hate, its add effect is enmity free. Joy toy makes more enmity then it as you spam Atom more. Its Aegis that helps a bit with PLD. Then still its only for the extra shield bash dmg. Plus loseing less enmity when hit with a nuke.

If a RDM is tanking the PLD excalibur can come pld/drg 26% haste build and get march X 2 and Haste with D sushi... its sexy

[Killkenny]

I was refering to tanking in the conventional sense, keeping hate and not taking tons of damage. Which as you just said a rdm can do better than any other job on any mob from byakko to JoL.

Aside from anything whilst I can see full time meleeing with excal on ground will do some nice damage it would require 2 tanks due to the fact you'll be making it use tp 1-2 times every single landing. Whereas without meleeing it you can solo tank it allowing for an additional blm and an arguably smoother fight and certainly under 25% but how an ls fights tia is another topic and I don't want to shit up this thread.

[Flic]

It sounds like he is just building a set for holding? If thats the case unless you have brd and whm there holding with you, a magic dmg - set will be far more benificial. If you cant hit 300 resist total on Tiamat I have found it not worthwhile.
And yeah, rdm tanks are very nice on this, especially if you use manaburn strat.

[Tsuko_Asura]

Excailbur does not help hold hate, its add effect is enmity free. Joy toy makes more enmity then it as you spam Atom more. Its Aegis that helps a bit with PLD. Then still its only for the extra shield bash dmg. Plus loseing less enmity when hit with a nuke.

If a RDM is tanking the PLD excalibur can come pld/drg 26% haste build and get march X 2 and Haste with D sushi... its sexy

I'm perfectly aware of the additional effect's properties, thank you. You can do all of that(sans the /DRG part) while tanking, so why waste an slot on another tank?

EDIT: Bit of an afterthought, but you'll also end up hurting your damage significantly if you're not tanking. Atonement would be pretty laughable if the only enmity you're building is from the 'melee' damage of Excalibur.

[Killkenny]

I may have missed it somewhere but are the estimated CE and VE values to cap atonement damage?

[Tsuko_Asura]

I'm not sure if the real values were ever established. There was a formula documented, but Kaeko dismissed it.

[Unstable]

320 total with carol and barfire and your set, enmity is not a big deal at all in resist set, add it if you find yourself with spare slots but it wont make or break you. If you get roared switch to enmity set that you would use on any other mob, you wont be getting hit till you re-cap hate(except from AoE) anyway.

Swap those eris for triumph or ruby, and at least bring along a resist headpiece to swap in for chapeau if you feel you need it.

Don't bother with a half-assed set, you can get away with 290 or 300 on tiamat, any less and you would be better off with MDB and -magic dmg%. If your tanking KS99 wyrm on RDM your already doing something wrong, but i found the resist rate to be pretty much the same. Ouryu you can get away with quite a bit less total resist. Jorm is pretty lame, the para seems to land a lot regardless of total resist, recommend sticking with conventional -magic set for that.

320? Thats frekin hard to get with a RDM...

I guess with WHM with af2 legs it can be but most times i sit at +300 with self Barefire and Fire coral