having trouble holding hate with thf in pt

[Chrisman182]

hey, i was having some trouble today holding hate against raptors in the valley of sorrows today ever since a thief joined the pt (perytons are easy cuz melees hit em for like.... 1) it would usualy go like this:

drk vokes
SATA> pld 200-350 damage
do regular hate routine
usualy right after my second voke the drk and thief would skillchain:
drk uses souleater: hits for 200
drk WS: 500 damage
thief SATA WS---> drk for 800 damage
scillchain damage: 200-400

so the drk gets like 2000 damage onto him in that SC and hate gets messed up, i can usualy get it back fairly quickly but thats if i burn all of my 250 mp healing the drk.
i dont know if its me or if 2000 damage on the drk rite after my 2nd voke is too much in general for any tank but since i do fine on rng 1k damage slug shots im gonna think its how the thf is SATAing.

i would think the best way to do it would be for me to ease up on the hate abilities before the SC. then the drk vokes+WS so he gets hate and the thf does the SATAd skillchain onto me. seems to make sense but ive partied with many many thiefs lately and they all do this the same way SATAing the whole SC onto the other melee. usualy its not a problem but the raptors in the valley are usualy VT now so they get hit pretty hard.

any advice would be greatly apreciated

[Tifa]

This is why DRK/WAR and THF/xxx aren't really compatible after level 60. DRK/WAR is ridiculously powerful and gets a lot of hate just swinging away. If a thief is also tricking a Dancing Edge onto him, you've got no chance to pull hate off him.

You're experiencing the real reason that DRK/THF becomes preferred to DRK/WAR. The only advice I can give your group is to have the DRK use Provoke and/or Last Resort right before he opens the skillchain. This will turn the mob, and your thief can SATA Dancing Edge right back onto you. (You already said this in your post, so you know what to do)

Good luck-

[neighbortaru]

those are some pretty silly thieves you've been partying with then. Unless I can guarantee that my SATA+WS will kill the mob, I will not do it on the secondary voker. It wastes too much mp.

[Jabeo]

Assuming that they have enough TP at the start you could request that they skillchain at the very beginning of the fight. That would staple a lot of hate on you and it would take much effort to pull the mob off you after that.

[Asherek]

There is also another very good thing you can do and many Paladins don't seem to realize this:

Have the THF use SATA at the start of the fight onto the Trick Partner instead. You might lose hate or struggle a little, but you can Cure yourself + Flash and gain hate back.

What's the advantage of doing this? Well when the DRK does his WS, he has significant hate already from the initial SATA and this WS will pretty much guarantee that the mob will turn to him/her. Have the thief SATA+WS back onto you. Simple.

Yes, it's a little tricky, but you'll find most level 65 when you start making Light Skillchains a lot, that you will rarely want to have a /THF (MNK/THF, DRK/THF or THF) skillchain onto your other DD simply because it does such an inordinate amount of damage that it would be close to impossible to hold hate through it.

Think of this scenerio: you have a RNG/NIN and a DRK/THF in your PT, and the renkei is Heavy Shot -> Spinning Slash. RNG/NIN is already doing a lot of damage per hit and is garnering hate. RNG/NIN does Heavy Shot for 500+. THEN, DRK/THF does Spinning Slash upwards of 800-1200 onto the RNG/NIN. I don't know about you, but that would be close to impossible to keep hate through unless you had several minutes to build up sufficient hate, in which case this is all a moot point since fights shouldn't be taking longer than a couple of minutes at most at these levels.

What was the point of all this rambling? Have the Thief renkei onto you instead of the DRK so that it's overall more efficient. If you're not comfortable with having the Thief do initial SATA as I mentioned earlier to give DRK enough hate to turn the mob, then have the Thief do this instead:

Sneak Attack alone behind Dark Knight. Assassin Trait + Trick Attack onto you. However, you should hold "loose" hate, such that the mob will turn when the DRK does his WS and the Thief can SATA+WS back onto you.

Hope this helps, give me a holler if you don't understand what I mean and I'll try to explain it better.

[Nivez]

sounds like what you need are compitent damage dealers.

party tactics for damage dealers are roughly the same from lvl 30 to lvl 60, 60+ it changes. the good DD recognize the change and knows how to deal with it.

specifically, you should have two damage dealers talking to each other, about what to do when (especially with a thief).
they should be discussing when to go,and wich version of sata to do (old school traditional SATA, where other damage dealer pulls hate and SATA onto pld, or just Assassin Job Trait, TA palidin) the really good parties with thieves are the ones that talk and take command over the damage dealing, the passive ones generally dont take command, instead relying on a traditional skillchain and thats where problems happen (too much damage!!!)

also, from lvl 60-65, you want to generate one of 3 different effects with skillchain. the tried and true Distortion, or the even better Fragmentation, or Impaction. (impaction is your last choice, but its still something useful) the reason here is that your blm should either be bursting Blizzaga 2 or Thundaga 2, those are his most powerful spells to use. plus as of lvl 62, Rdm gets Thunder 2, so they can do significant damage as well. if you cant do fragmentation or impaction, you can stick with the good ol distortion and do a burst of blizzaga 2 and blizzard 2. if you are in quicksand caves, you might want to do a fusing skillchain with a sam and mnk, but thats a very specific case, in general though, your best bet will be impaction, distortion or fragmentation (in order of importance)

[Anakron]

The last few parties I've been to had the THF TA + WS onto the tank, and then normal SA by himself afterwards instead.

Yes, he SC will be slightly weaker, but the SA afterwards should be around 250 by itself, which makes up somewhat for the damage lost in SC. I never really payed attention, but the THF was doing this (TA + WS) even when I turned the mob everytime, so I assume that the two different ways to do it are comparable.

[Asherek]

Yes, he SC will be slightly weaker, but the SA afterwards should be around 250 by itself, which makes up somewhat for the damage lost in SC. I never really payed attention, but the THF was doing this (TA + WS) even when I turned the mob everytime, so I assume that the two different ways to do it are comparable.

That's strange. If the mob turned, he should have been doing SA+TA+WS onto tank.....:sweat:

[Omena]

This is what you do:

SC only at the beginning of a fight. When the THF pulls a mob into camp, the PLD immediately vokes it. The DRK goes behind the mob and steals hate with provoke + WS and the THF finishes the SC with SATA on PLD.

That is the best way to do it. Finishing a mob with SC will mean your SA+TA won't be ready for the next fight, which is a problem pre 60 (no Assassin trait) and if you wait too long the PLD might have too much hate for the DRK to get the mob's attention.

Unfortunately, both of you must have 100% or more TP before or near the beginning of every fight or you will end up killing a lot of mobs without a SC, which is very slow.

Some PLDs also to spam their hate pulling abilities so much that the mob won't turn from the DD's voke + WS, which results in a weak SC. This is even more of a problem with rangers who do not have voke. That is why I usually prefer a NIN tank over PLD when there is a RNG in my party.

[Asherek]

Some PLDs also to spam their hate pulling abilities so much that the mob won't turn from the DD's voke + WS, which results in a weak SC. This is even more of a problem with rangers who do not have voke. That is why I usually prefer a NIN tank over PLD when there is a RNG in my party.

Or, you know, Paladins could learn a nice trick called holding loose hate. I static PT with a Ranger and Dark Knight and we've had very little difficulty in having Ranger pull aggro from me with WS and have DRK/THF renkei Spinning Slash back onto me.

The situations where static DRK were unavailable to come online, we've used THF in place of DRK/THF and it worked exactly the same with no problems.