Food choices and Defender

[ItazuraNhomango]

I did a quick search, and didn't see anything conclusive, so here's my delimma:

Once I reach level 50, I'll have Defender fro /WAR. I see two ways of using Defender:

Emergency/MP conservation Defender:
By only popping Defender when MP is running low or when things are going badly (e.g. unslept link), I'm pretty sure I'll need to continue to use defense food like shallop tropicale. Sounds right?

Full-time Defender:
By keeping up Defender full time (or close to it), should I switch to attack food? Or, Accuracy food? Or, should I still stick with defense food?

I'm considering various sushi (Urchin, Bream, Dorado--even Squid for AGI and Sole for better damage output), and Rice Dumpling for accuracy/attack food. Maybe even some curries...

Obviously my bigger question is with using Defender full-time... I never used Defender full time when tanking on WAR, so I'm having a hard time gauging what I will need.

The big fear factor is hitting for 0; that will kill my TP gain, reduce my enmity production, further lowering my static's (already somewhat low) damage output, and end up losing control over monsters and/or proloning fights.

However, since I'm not planning on adding a ton of enmity gear, I can use the help from better accuracy (esp. from Dorado sushi) to increase keep the mobs in my face to offset the reduction in damage output, so I'm looking at sushi longingly...


I'm leaning toward full-time Defender, and bringing one attack, one accuracy, and one defense food to exp once I hit Lv.50+. (All 30 min food, of course.) Then, if a food is not working out, I can switch to another w/in 30 min. (Or sooner, if not working out involes being K.O.'ed...)

Then, the question would become which accuracy and attack food to bring... (So many choices... so confusing... ) Help...

* * *

My current plan calls for VIT/Def gears; I don't have a large budget so 1+ million stuff are petty much out of reach.

If I see myself doing full-time Defender mostly, I'll add more attack/accuracy gear to the mix, but currently only planning on using Life Belt and Orphic Egg as the only full time accuracy equipement.

[Maju]

Re: Food choices and Defender

At that level I don't think you'll need Defender much. Your level isn't quite high enough to benefit enough from sushi for a Defender+sushi setup and with defense food Defender is mostly overkill.

Eventually you'll want to move to Defender+sushi and then to just sushi with no Defender.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Food choices and Defender

Hmm... We're likely to switch to Bark Spiders in The Boyahda tree around Lv.50, since I whine whenever the word "Antica" is mentioned. >_>;

While they are squishy, those spiders do have a very nasty physical TP attack, if I remember correctly. Defender may help with that. (I partied with a PLD with pretty good gears on those--better than what I can afford--and, he had Defender up full time, I think.)

* * *

As for sushi, my rule of thumb is: If I'm not hitting for 0 w/out food, and the mob isn't low evasion, sushi will help with damage more than meat.

(Also, if there's any enmity+ gear on, hitting the monster more often should help with holding mob in place more than hitting harder. But, that would require I get hold of some enmity gear.)

[Davitron3000]

Re: Food choices and Defender

I rarely used Defender in experience parties. I would only use it if the mob was hitting me so hard that the healer and I couldn't keep up, (in which case I also hoped that the party was relocating ) or if I had to tank 2 mobs for a bit.

However, I always used defensive food and tried to add in more offensive stats through gear.

[Karinya]

Re: Food choices and Defender

Hmm... We're likely to switch to Bark Spiders in The Boyahda tree around Lv.50, since I whine whenever the word "Antica" is mentioned. >_>;
While they are squishy, those spiders do have a very nasty physical TP attack, if I remember correctly. Defender may help with that. (I partied with a PLD with pretty good gears on those--better than what I can afford--and, he had Defender up full time, I think.)

So will defense food. Most defense foods provide about the same amount of defense as Defender, while most attack foods don't quite provide as much attack as you lose from Defender...

I don't think any other food offers a benefit valuable enough to justify displacing a defense food and keeping up Defender all the time. Dorado sushi + defender will result in a bunch of hits for 0; attack food + defender will just leave you about where you were with defense food + no defender, or a little worse. Any other sushi + defender will also result in hits for 0, but without even giving you +1 enmity to offset it.

As for sushi, my rule of thumb is: If I'm not hitting for 0 w/out food, and the mob isn't low evasion, sushi will help with damage more than meat.
(Also, if there's any enmity+ gear on, hitting the monster more often should help with holding mob in place more than hitting harder. But, that would require I get hold of some enmity gear.)

Well, I know that's false for DDs, but I never really paid much attention to damage as a PLD. (I leveled it before auto-refresh and even before cookies, so downtime was much more of a concern than it is today, even though I staticed with a RDM, BRD, BLM backline until 57.)

Attack food will normally increase your damage more than sushi unless the mob is *high* evasion (without any dispellable buffs on, unless you're fighting evasion-buffing mobs without a dispeller which you should never do). 4 hits for 10-20 and a miss aren't as good as 3 hits for 30-50 and 2 misses - from a damage dealing perspective, but if your hate from attacks is proportional to total damage, then from a hate perspective too. Furthermore, in a static, you'll rarely or never be 2 levels below the highest in party and you have the freedom to not overhunt (and to find non-crowded camps where you can actually get the improved kill speed from not overhunting), so accuracy shouldn't be that much of a problem in the first place.

You'll have enmity gear pretty soon - most pieces of AF have some, plus hateful collar if you want it - but I still haven't seen any solid evidence on exactly how +enmity works. If it's percentage based, then several weak hits with +enmity *won't* generate more hate than fewer strong hits (that do more total damage) with the same amount of +enmity.

[Celeal]

Re: Food choices and Defender

IMHO, it really depends on the mob's level and type.

For example, for PLD tank Bark Spiders in The Boyahda tree around Lv.50, I would use Def+ food and Defender all time. Taking hit from Bark Spiders at level 50 is no joke. On the other hand, tanking Antica around level 50 may not need Defender.

However, if my PLD is at level 52+ tanking the same Bark Spiders, I may not use Defender full time.

Besides food choice and Defender, you have to consider your gear setup too. For example, if your tactic is Sushi + Defender, make sure your sword can deal some worthwhile damage. Sometimes VT and low IT mobs are good with Sushi + Defender, since mobs' defense maybe low enough that the impact -25% attack from Defender is managable.

Your shield skill could be a factor of food + Defender + gear usage as well. My current general setup is focus on AGI/Shield with Taco and Defender, and switch gear and food depends on situation.

[Khevn]

Re: Food choices and Defender

all depends on the Mob. I rarely ever use, Defender. The reduction to damage for the increase in defence is barely a worthwhile trade off. Now maybe if defender increased my shield blocking rate i might entertain it. From 40-60 damage an attack to 15-20 damage per for an almost negligable mitigation gain is pretty useless. You'll also hold aggro eassier without it. Though there are some fight's with mobs where using it is pretty much necessary because need all the mitigation you can get, regaurdless if it's nearly non-existant or not.

[Jei]

Re: Food choices and Defender

I'd go with full time defender. I only got my PLD to 54 but holding hate at this level isn't really that bad with flash, provoke and cure. I only rarely lose hate to mnk.

[Armando]

Re: Food choices and Defender

In my opinion, the best use for Defender in a non-overhunting scenario is to cancel out Berserk with it, so you can get two Berserked WS on the mobs instead of just one. That is... (Get 100 TP) -> Berserk + WS -> Defender -> (Get 100 TP) -> Cancel Defender -> WS -> Cancel Berserk.

Personally, I only find full-time Defender (as in, Defender + Defense food) useful when you're overhunting (like would be the case of Bark Spiders at 50.) When you're overhunting, you take such a heavy penalty to your PDIF and your hitting rate, that your damage output is pretty pitiful. As a result, your melee damage is taking up a much smaller percentage of your total enmity than usual. Another factor is that the mobs tend to hit you a lot harder than usual, and on top of that the fights drag on much longer. This makes downtime a much larger limitation than when fighting mobs of a more reasonable level, so any increase in damage mitigation is immediately useful and an improvement to your overall EXP/hour. Also, because your hitting rate is so low, the lowered damage per hit doesn't affect you as much, because it's being "applied" that much less. Basically, the benefits to using Defender in such a circumstance outweigh the costs.

By the way, while we're on the subject of Bark Spiders and Sickle Slash, I'd like to point out that while Defender may help you against their normal hits, there's very little you can do about Sickle Slash raping you. Sickle Slash is one of those moves that has a chance to critical based on TP. The thing is, mobs gain TP freakishly fast, and unless they're under 20% HP, they won't use it as soon as it reaches 100. This means that most of the Sickle Slashes that you eat will be thrown out with high TP and are almost guaranteed to crit. The thing about critical hits is that because they add a static +1.0 to your PDIF, the impact of the enemy's Defense is greatly lessened. To give you a more concrete example...

Let's pretend the mob has 200 DMG; when you're unbuffed, the mob's average PDIF is 1.0, and if you overkill your Defense you can bring it down to 0.25. Let's consider a TP move that has a x2.0 multiplier at the TP the mob uses it. Unbuffed, the normal damage would be 200 * 2 * 1 = 400, while buffed it'd be 200 * 2 * 0.25 = 100. Basically, you can cut the damage down to 25% of its original ammount. Now, let's consider a move that has a multiplier of x1.0, but crits. Normally, the move would do 200 * 1 * (1 + 1) = 400. Buffed, it'd do 200 * 1 * (0.25 + 1) = 250. The move is still doing 62.5% of its original damage, and this was a very extreme case (since we're pretending you can bring the mob's average PDIF to such a low ammount as 0.25.) This is the main reason why Screwdriver and Sickle Slash tend to hurt so damned much regardless of how much Defense you have, if the mob uses it at more than 20% HP. Basically, the best way to deal with Sickle Slash is not letting it hit you at all. The ideal backup in this case is to have a WHM that knows how to Flash and coordinate with him/her. With two people Flashing, you can keep the mob missing a bit under 2/3 of the time it's swinging at you, which helps a lot. Otherwise, a SMN with Aerial Armor helps cut down on that, as well. I think this is one of the reasons I did so well when I went PLD/RDM in Boyahda - Blink was a godsend.

Anyways, moving on to the other topic of discussion. On the surface, Defense Food/Defender + Sushi/Defender + Meat all seem pretty close; yet, while I have no experience experimenting with the latter two, I'm inclined to say that simply going with Defense food is the most solid option. Of course, this is all assuming you're not overhunting and don't need a ~60% increase to your Defense. The problem with Defender + Sushi is, like you and almost everyone else has pointed out, that your Attack goes even lower, and if the mobs aren't VT, you risk hitting for 0 or near-0. Sure, you gain plenty of Accuracy, but having a balance between hitting rate and damage is ideal, for more than one reason. From an enmity standpoint, it makes it harder to get hate back when you lose it, since you could get unlucky and hit for very low damage. From an efficiency standpoint, in the multiplication of two factors, the product is always higher when the factors are close to each other than when they're "far apart," even if their sums are equal. For example, having an average hit of 50 with a 50% hit rate results in more damage for any given number of hits than having an average hit of 25 and a hitting rate of 75%. In case 1, your average damage for any given number of swings would be 50 * 0.50 * n = 25n (where n = number of swings) whereas in case 2, it'd be 25 * 0.75 * n = 18.75n. Basically, balancing them out is always more efficient than increasing one and decreasing the other by equal ammounts, but creating a gap. By cutting your Attack sharply and increasing your Accuracy sharply, you're doing exactly that. Also, because we get hit so often, and we have Shield Mastery, we get a static bonus to your TP gaining rate, which lessens the importance of Accuracy for getting TP to a certain degree.

As for Defender + Meat food, while the net outcome is roughly the same as simply using Defense food (25% more Defense, Attack roughly the same) you can't exploit the "double berserked WS" trick so easily with it. You could throw up Berserk and WS once, but since Defender is your source of Defense, you'd have to click off Berserk right there. You could throw a second WS after Defender wears and before you reapply it, but if Defender wears first, you'll either have to wait to get TP while keeping Defender down, leaving you vulnerable, throw up Defender again and use your WS unbuffed, or wait for your Berserk timer to refresh completely, in which case you only got 1 WS off per "Berserk cycle."

So, yeah, for normal circumstances, I'd recommend simply eating Defense food; if you want to up your damage output, you can always slap on some Woodsman Rings, Spike Earrings, Life Belt, R.G. Collar, and Jaridah Pet or better yet Haubergeon (if you can afford it.) If you're chain killing VTs, you could probably get away with eating meat and not take too much damage.

[Radel-King_of_Pirates]

Re: Food choices and Defender

Armando everytime I read your posts I usally feel like I finished reading a book -_-;;;

that said I say that plds if they wanted boost att I wear spike earrings and my spike necklace, defender to me just use to 50% in Hp and Mp.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Food choices and Defender

Hmm. Our static group really doesn't have problem with down time; BRD, RDM, WHM, BLU, SAM, PLD. We encourage our WHM to MB with Banishga, really, to burn up the MP, and we don't have Ballad II, yet.

About the only way to incur serious down time is for someone in the party to die, and that's easily avoided if I'm alive and holding the monster in place.

Let's pretend the mob has 200 DMG; when you're unbuffed, the mob's average PDIF is 1.0, and if you overkill your Defense you can bring it down to 0.25. Let's consider a TP move that has a x2.0 multiplier at the TP the mob uses it. Unbuffed, the normal damage would be 200 * 2 * 1 = 400, while buffed it'd be 200 * 2 * 0.25 = 100. Basically, you can cut the damage down to 25% of its original ammount. Now, let's consider a move that has a multiplier of x1.0, but crits. Normally, the move would do 200 * 1 * (1 + 1) = 400. Buffed, it'd do 200 * 1 * (0.25 + 1) = 250. The move is still doing 62.5% of its original damage, and this was a very extreme case (since we're pretending you can bring the mob's average PDIF to such a low ammount as 0.25.)

There's a flaw with that example; the difference of 400 - 250 = 150. That can easily be the difference between living through Sickle Slash or not; it's much easier to maintain HP above 250 than 400, given that bad luck will happen on missing cure's, and spiders can spam Sickle Slashes fairly fast with three melee's (PLD, BLU, SAM in our party) hitting it.

It would be nice to use more realistic mob attack and PLD defense numbers to calculate the FDIF.


Regarding the effect of sushi on damage, Armando is right; effective accuracy multiplied by effective average damage determines the effective melee DoT. My comment on that was a response to the "Your level isn't quite high enough to benefit enough from sushi" comment, however. While no food is right for all situation, I did find out that sole sushi is superior to rice dumpling on my Great Axe wielding DD WAR for the Lv.30 capped Promvyvion-Holla run last weekend. (No, I don't have "proof"--I did have parser results which indicate I did very substantial damage, and had painfully experienced how the tanking WAR/NIN's had difficulty keeping the mobs away from me.)

Basically, I wanted to say that job level is not the determining factor on whether sushi will outperform meat, but it came out wrong.

Also, I think accuracy is very important for PLD's with enmity+ gear. The more often a PLD "proc" active things--spells, job abilities, landing melee hits--the more often you take advantage of enmity+ gear (or food).

The last way I see sushi contributing to the party is in the form of more frequent SC's. While we do not have a BLM, the SAM/WAR will get double attack soon, which should add to his TP gain speed substantially, and being able to better keep up with him will mean more WS's (since he holds his WS's for SC'ing with me and the BLU), and more nukes from the RDM. (Yes, we actually use skillchains--we're a group of old timers, and we like it traditional.)

Defender + Sushi probably will not increase my damage output--but it may increase the party's, working as a whole.

if you want to up your damage output, you can always slap on some Woodsman Rings, Spike Earrings, Life Belt, R.G. Collar, and Jaridah Pet or better yet Haubergeon (if you can afford it.) If you're chain killing VTs, you could probably get away with eating meat and not take too much damage.

While I wish I can afford a pair Woodsman's Rings plus a Haubergeon, I can't. -_- At least, not anytime soon. It's a static group, so I can't exactly avoid exp'ing until I can afford DD gears for my PLD. If I could, I would--I once stopped leveling THF (my main job back then) for two months for gear upgrades.

[Lmnop]

Re: Food choices and Defender

Armando everytime I read your posts I usally feel like I finished reading a book -_-;;;

Translation: Thank you, Armando for another well thought-out response. I wouldn't say "book" because it's not that long. More like Scientific Journal. Takes some brain power and that's a good thing after these last 8 levels of nothing but crappy burn party invites (hello, 2k/hour).

There's a flaw with that example; the difference of 400 - 250 = 150. That can easily be the difference between living through Sickle Slash or not; it's much easier to maintain HP above 250 than 400, given that bad luck will happen on missing cure's, and spiders can spam Sickle Slashes fairly fast with three melee's (PLD, BLU, SAM in our party) hitting it.

He just made up numbers to explain that a gulf exists. He wasn't trying to give you accurate numbers. Simply demonstrating the principle of how Crits will always hit you harder than they rationally should (everyone's seen the Too Weak mob that hits for 8 damage, and crits for 40. Same sort of idea -- they ignore your defense to an extent).

+enmity really does seem to be %-based. AKA, hitting hard makes more use of your +enmity. However, it does seem that just swinging generates some amount of enmity and that mayhaps just hitting gives some small boost, regardless of (non-0, which would be considered a miss) damage. If this theory holds true, I think +enmity gear gets very slight benefits to a faster-attacking, more-reliably-hitting Paladin. However, I really don't think Hate will be a problem in your layout except for if the BLU self-SCs (Mobs hate CA activation). At any rate, my belief is that any amount of extra enmity generated from more frequently landed hits is counterbalanced by dealing even slightly more damage/hit.

While I wish I can afford a pair Woodsman's Rings plus a Haubergeon, I can't. -_- At least, not anytime soon.

Don't need those 2. I'd get Life belt first and foremost and some +attack earrings. Then maybe an RG collar or something -- a little here and there really helps out for a PLD.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Food choices and Defender

He just made up numbers to explain that a gulf exists. He wasn't trying to give you accurate numbers.

I understand that, which is why I wrote "It would be nice to use more realistic mob attack and PLD defense numbers to calculate the FDIF."

The point I'm making is that the actual amount of damage reduction may be important, even if it isn't as large as we may like.

+enmity really does seem to be %-based.

I'd love to see some evidence of this.

The reason I've always thought enmity+ should be an addition, because... well, it says "+". And, given the calculation takes place on the server instead on PS2 or PC, the programmers had strong incentive to make it go as fast as possible, it seems logical to use integer addition instead of float point multiplication.

(Integer addition on computer is much, much faster than float point multiplication.)

If you have evidence it's a percentage based effect, I really would appreciate it if you can share it; it would mean a big change on importance of enmity gear/food for me.

Don't need those 2. I'd get Life belt first and foremost and some +attack earrings. Then maybe an RG collar or something -- a little here and there really helps out for a PLD.

I don't have a RG collar, but I do have macros which switch the in accuracy and attack gear I do have when I feel a mob isn't hitting me hard enough. (I use Life Belt nearly full time now, and only switch in Warrior's Belt +1 when I'm getting damaged more than I expect.)

[Rostum]

Re: Food choices and Defender

I went full defender to 75. Never had any hate issues. The end.

[Lmnop]

Re: Food choices and Defender

Omecle, you were Taru, of course you didn't have hate problems. Also, Ninjas are overcoming Paladin. In this day and age, if you want to be of any worth to your exp party, you must contribute damage.

I'd love to see some evidence of this.

I guess I'm nothing but anecdotal, and I won't claim to be the master of all that is Enmity gear (indeed, I barely notice the difference between +15 and +5). I should have declared this in my above post but I'll go ahead and add it here: I don't have evidence, I guess this is just what seems right to me. I've done a fair amount of small tests but nothing to write a wiki article about. I turned a mob off of the tank using a Toolbag the other night, and i've turned mobs with misses. I think +enmity affects spellcasting more than anything, because I am now 100% certain that spells have 2 hate spikes, not one. I also think /ra behaves the same way, but I haven't proven the last one.

Store TP +5 is actually +5%. Double Attack +2??? how do you add +2 to a number that is figured in %? I still haven't figured out that one. Subtle Blow is another trait that, even though gear offers it in static, un-labeled amounts (Subtle Blow +5), it actually gives a % decrease in TP to the opponent. Things like that - and really, common sense of what would serve best to "balance" a game - tells me that it has to be at least partially % based.