Templar Discussion Thread

[Lebzile]

I meant, for those classes that kite, the kiting classes. Lol

[Maguspk]

I meant, for those classes that kite, the kiting classes. Lol

ah I see now. I thought you were about to shatter my world and motivate me want to get on and grind some more in the face of a lacking PvP system.

[Rehont]

Temp is 40 and loving it so far. For manastone .. the 43 temp in my legion runs a mix of HP/Crit/Shield Block and he beats other temps fairly easily. Its not a fast win but a survival win though

[Avivah]

Almost level 41 and finally got Unwavering Devotion. I feel invincible with Empyrean Armor, Unwavering Devotion and Iron Skin up.

[Hitoshura]

They are charging 5 million for it on our server.

[Elites]

Terrible howl get for like 150k on broker, i feel it's worth alot more but whatever to the dude who sold it.

[Arthars]

almost bought my devotion and atery slash today until i read about the notes

hoping they drop further, devotion is 2m and artery slash is 4m......

i got 6m to burn but im not going into that

and yea devotion is a hack.......all templars must buy! (altho i dont have lol... SOON!!!)

howl is very very good as i can forsee but with 5+3 slots all i can think for myself is:

inciter rage > the cure 2000 HPish Advance stigma

divine fury + break > the 700ish stun attack advance stigma

IJ

so thats a total of 4 + 2

my last 2 slots will prolly go devotion and terrible howl

i know we can swap etc etc but im lazy for now until i get to the 50 stage

[Hitoshura]

Devotion is up for 2.7 mil, I am so tempted to get it but I owe my buddy 1 million already, FFFFFF.

[Rehont]

honestly I wouldnt worry about Unwavering devotion til you hit 50 and go strickly PVP setup. Just my 2 cents but thats how I personally plan on doing it

IJ / Devotion and then set up for the 2k cure and Magic smash. Divine slash is nice for switching into GS for a quick skill then back to S/B

[RKenshin]

I'm actually making a thread in the advanced section for refining the accuracy of this sheet, but I wanted to post it here too to discuss a different topic.

One thing that has been kind of bugging me is the attitude people have on what you manastone as a templar. Personally I think (at least pre-50) you can do whatever you want and be fine to tank anything if you have reasonably good gear and know the job... And I've been finding more and more people that seem to not just think differently, but try to say any tank without mitigation manastones is making it incredibly hard on your healer.

But, a bunch of quick google searches and some research later... Damage taken in Aion isn't all that complicated. So I decided to put together an excel sheet to theorycraft exactly how much you gain/lose from different mitigation choices.

Result:
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/7355/ffxi605.jpg

It's pretty self-explantory. It's basically a comparison of four warriors, all with the same stats and varying levels of block (since in most scenarios block is the primary mitigation stat a warrior would shoot for). And as you can see the final results of the comparison show... the difference is incredibly small for [what is assumed to be] the approximate accuracy of a mob of the same level.

There are also many things that excel sheet doesn't include that make the difference smaller. IE, the proper use of steelwall defense benefits the non-block warrior far more than the block warrior. Our tanking CDs that reduce our damage taken also make the additional mitigation from a block less effective. Magic attacks cannot be blocked. Etc.

I'm sure the same can be said on the other side, but I think the former has more going for it.

Of course, none of this is to say that going for mitigation is a bad choice. For PvE tanking, it of course is the best choice. However, the point I'm making is that it will not break you as a tank if you don't go half/full or any. At least not before 50.

[Purrrfect]

Wouldn't the case where you block more and take less damage (right side) have the higher damage reduction %?

[Squallx23]

I think that is the % that you take, meaning the setup on th right only takes 63.75% Damage.

[RKenshin]

Fixed it so it's a little more clear. Previous poster got it right, but now I adjusted it so that it just shows the actual mitigation %.

[Anakron]

I think the difference of 125 Shield Block between Set1 and Set4 is a little low. Assuming 3 slots in each piece of gear, and using +18 Manastones, you can easily get 15 * 18 = 270, which is more than double the 125 you're working with. The difference still won't be that much, but should be more than what you're currently showing.

As you mentioned, the evasion and parry number may be a bit high, especially since plate has the lowest evasion. If that's the case, and assuming worst case scenario (dodge and parry less than mob accuracy), the only real mitigation check would be Shield Block, in which case the difference would be even greater.

[RKenshin]

I've changed a bit more to the sheet.

@Anakron, currently most of the tests/theories I've read of have shown that mob accuracy is typically a decent amount lower than your average player's accuracy of the same level. My current accuracy on warrior is at 1.1k. So, taking off a guestimated ~9%, leaves the mob's accuracy at 1000 (which results in the chances to parry/dodge/eva you see in the table).

But let's say my accuracy is lower than the average player's accuracy, and that the theories I read are wrong and in actuality the mob's accuracy is = average player's accuracy. So I'll boost the monster's accuracy up to 1200. Anything higher than that is over-exaggerated, considering it's rather commonly known it takes ~1800 block to be capped against a level 50 mob and I am only 42 [and not discussing lv.50 tanking]... meaning an average level 50 mob has about 1300 acc.

It looks like this:
http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/7889/ffxi608.jpg

Difference between the two extremes is still very small. The difference only gets smaller when you include other factors like magic damage, steelwall defense, chanter buffs, CD up-time, etc.

Again, I'm not at all saying there is no difference or that block is worthless; I'm just making the point that your decision to gem full block or not doesn't make or break your damage in-take as a tank. On a per-fight basis, it's just about impossible to eyeball whether one tank is taking 3-10% more damage than the other or not.

With decent gear and knowledge of the class you're perfectly capable of tanking anything in the game (pre-50, at least) in your level range regardless of your manastone choices.

[Anakron]

Yes, I agree that crit is probably the way to go all the way until 50. I wasn't advocating Shield Defense--was just pointing out a full Shield Defense build would mitigate more more than you originally had. Most of the times, I see that deaths occur due to AoEs or multiple mobs, in which case an extra 10 or even 20% damage mitigation on the Templar probably won't save you. Single-target healing seems relatively easy in Aion, so imo that's really even less of a reason to go Shield Defense (pre-50).

I haven't read much about the accuracy of mobs, so I was just assuming that elite mobs specifically would have enough accuracy to make a Templar's Dodge/Parry rates effectively drop to 0. That may not be the case at all though.

But either way, interesting numbers, thanks for doing them.

[RKenshin]

Well, all of that isn't to say we should go crit lol. Just that you can not go block and do fine, but yeah you seem to share the same view.

I definitely do prefer crit for my personal set though.

[Hitoshura]

This is why I want to work on different sets of gear. solo/pvp critlar, magic reduc set, and an HP/block set.

[RKenshin]

This is why I want to work on different sets of gear. solo/pvp critlar, magic reduc set, and an HP/block set.

This is also why this game badly, badly needs some sort of system for equipment swaps. But there's none that I've found or heard of so far.

It's really, really painful to switch between two sets of gear in this game. Much less having multiple sets.

[Hitoshura]

They could definitely do it in a similar way with weapons, would love that damn hotkey.