Midgame

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Midgame

Itazura stopped playing? Whaaaaa

Er... I tried? Guess I'm too much of an addict. /sigh

We know that these days, DDs don't do a very good job of holding back. They will WS right off the bat. In this situation, a turtle doesn't do you any good. The only ways to get hate:
-spam JAs
-wait for them to take sufficient damage for you to cure them for hate (you PLDs DO have cure <stpc> macros, RIGHT?!?? If you cannot cure others while engaged, learn how or GTFoff of PLD).

... I just had a big post explaining that I was tanking reasonably well on a mostly turtle build, with DD's who WS right off the bat. It's almost the same old routine of:

1. Start of the battle: Flash + Provoke + (one of: Sentinel, Rampart, Shield Bash, 300% TP Spirits Within.)
2. Continue battle with Provoke; use Flash if there's enough life left to the monster.
3. Drop in cures when needed.

It's PLD65/WAR32, so no Warcry, yet--and no Spirits Within last time, since it was Colibri.

Sentinel is used with Berserk, and Defender used after Sentinel wears off, in case I get enough TP for a Swift Blade before Berserk wears off. WS has accuracy and STR gear macroed in.

Turtle does just fine, thank you.

* * *

Would this work if it's a DRK/WAR with Berserk and Souleater on initial WS? Probably not. Then again, how would a DD PLD do much better against that kind of WS just 3 seconds into the battle?

[Armando]

Re: Midgame

In all fairness the DD PLD could also open up the fight with a 300 damage WS, which closes the gap a lot. And even if he didn't, the DD PLD will still get hate faster than the turtle by virtue of doing more damage. Granted you can't be DD PLD in the truest sense of the term against Colibri since they eat food, so you got me on that one.

Derail starts here.

Also, purely out of my own curiosity (this is the first time I do such a thorough side-by-side analysis of different gear sets) I'm going to be factoring WS's into each setup's damage to see how the difference in their damages changes. I figured I'd post it here for the curious; those who don't care anymore can just skip this part if they so wish.

Assuming Vorpal Blade has normal crit rate at 100% (Rampage does, so I assume so does Vorpal) then the average Vorpal Blades would be...
PLD A: 81.72 damage
PLD B: 116.13 damage
PLD C: 167.63 damage

In order for PLD A to do the 14 hits needed to reach 100 TP after landing a WS, he'd need approximately 29.95 attack rounds at a hit rate of 42.5% and having 10% Double Attack. He'd do 431.2 damage in those 14 hits, and Vorpal Blade for 81.72, for a total of 512.92 damage every 109.02 secs.

PLD B would need approximately 24.01 attack rounds. He'd do 494.9 damage and WS for 116.13 damage for a total of 611.03 damage every 87.40 secs.

PLD C would need approximately 16.64 attack rounds. He'd do 494.9 damage and WS for 167.63 damage for a total of 662.53 damage every 60.57 secs.

Now, factoring in normal swings as well as WS, the damages are:
PLD A: 282.29 damage/minute
PLD B: 419.47 damage/minute
PLD C: 656.30 damage/minute

Now B is a 49% improvement in overall damage compared to A (as opposed to the previous 41%) and C is a 132% improvement (as opposed to 103%.) In all fairness, though, A and B should've been using Spirits Within, which even at 90% HP would've done 147 and 154 damage per use respectively. (C should still use Vorpal because it has the potential to get lucky.) If we take that into account, then the damages are...

PLD A: 322.07 damage/minute
PLD B: 440.66 damage/minute
PLD C: 656.30 damage/minute

There. That's a fairer comparison. Now B is a 37% improvement compared to A, and C is a 204% improvement over A. Technically A can equip the same gear as B during WS so I should do a third comparison, but I'm too lazy. For all practical purposes both A and B should use Spirits Within. Well, really, they should use Swift Blade but that one's harder to calculate since I don't know by how much Swift Blade boosts Accuracy.

Well, that was interesting. It seems the fact that the higher your hit rate, you not only WS more often but do stronger WS as well makes it so increasing your hit rate actually increases your total damage by more than what your DoT increased by. (e.g. in the original example C had 103% more DoT than A, but his total damage was actually 132% higher.)

/derail

[Empedocles]

Re: Midgame

I wanna see if I can summarise this convo with a single sentence.

"There is nothing wrong with turtle Paladin, but Pseudo-Damage Paladin is more effective."

Sound okay?

Oh and I turtle'd it up to 75 with no complaints and a lot of complements, so I know where you are coming from IfritnoItazura.

btw,

[csBahamut]

Re: Midgame

I wanna see if I can summarise this convo with a single sentence.
"There is nothing wrong with turtle Paladin, but Pseudo-Damage Paladin is more effective."
Sound okay?

I'd change it to:
There's nothing wrong with turtling up, nor with a DD-Hybrid. Just know when to use which to be most effective.

[Zempten]

Re: Midgame

Agreed. Everytime I join a PT now people go "Where's your Gallant Surcoat" (b/c I'm wearing a hauby full-time now) and I just ask them to give me 2 or 3 mobs so I can decide if I can tank while playing a mini-DD. If I can I pop in my Dorando Sushi and get to work otherwise I'll pop in a tank food. If those 30 mins things go sour I always have my full tank gear with me so it's not a problem. People are usually willing to accept those terms.

As long as. . . .
1) Exp Chains keep going
2) There is zero downtime
3) Your holding majority of hate, 95%
then I don't see a problem with tanking while adding a dose of damage.

So anyways, I thought I'd share my parses with you guys. I'm not by any means close to Armando's parses but I just wanted to show it to you guys to show that DDing in Aydeewa Subterrance on those crawler's/puks is possible. Oh, and I took the liberty in erasing their names and just placing their jobs/subjobs for privacy purposes.



59 WAR
58 BLM
59 SAM
60 PLD
60 BRD
59 RDM


60 WAR
59 BLM
60 SAM
61 PLD
61 BRD
60 RDM




My gear was...
Sword: Gluttony Sword
Shield: Royal Knight Army shield
Ammo: Bibiki Shell
Head: Gallant Coronet
Neck: Chivalrous Chain
Ear1: Buckler Earring
Ear2: Mercenary's Earring
Body: Haubergon
Hands: Gallant Gauntlets
Ring1: Mermaid Ring
Ring2: Unyielding Ring
Back: Knightly Mantle
Waist: Lifebelt
Legs: Gallant Breeches
Feet: Gallant Leggings

I know people don't like the Gluttony Sword, but I'm not exactly the richest of my server so I'll get by till Joyeuse. As far as WS go I swap in Anment Mantle +1, Sniper Rings, and Spike Earrings (although the Assault Earring looks nice I might buy one). So basically I'm the cheapest DDing PLD out there >.>. However it still works to an extent and I never expected to parse in the 20% to 30% range. Parsing where I am and seeing my vorpals go from 200-400 makes me happy.

Also to note, holding hate was indeed alot easiar as I rarely had to throw up Sentinel (still used Sentinel after a few tests b/c DMG down and more enmity. .what's not to love about that?) or Shield Bash to grab hate during times people spam their WS in the beginning. I guess I'm stupid but when I see people have 100% TP at the beginning of the fight I purposely use Berserk to lower my HP by some, cancel it and throw up a Cure 4 or multiple Cure 3s (usually 2) and that's enough for me to grab back hate after they WS. I also like to cure others when they took the hate for too long cause I feel its sorta like compensation for not holding hate well.

Oh and how's it going Renarudo? LOL, no I didn't fall of the face of the planet I've just had really bad year in college and I had to concentrate the next year to get my grades back up . .. I'll have to do it for this year too T.T Hope to see you around some more around Gilgamesh though ^ ^

P.S: Sorry if you have to strain your eyes to see the parse results even after you click the above thingy to make it a bit bigger T.T

[WishMaster3K]

Re: Midgame

So I tried a more "melee" approach in this PT last night. Had a PL, so I guess the setup worked. Only wished that DVS Parse worked, because I don't understand how the hell to use the one Armando linked to. Anyway:

PLD DRK DRG SAMN RNG WHM (and a PLD).

No Refresh, which I HATE, but I decided that meant that I only had to spot Cure 3 instead of spamming it, and sticking with my normal rotation.

Oh, and interestingly enough, the Beetles in the bottom of Garlaige weren't even hitting me that hard, and I found it possible to tank with Berserk up.

EXP/hour rate sucked, as I had ExpWatch running. But at the very least in about 1.5 hours I got 5k exp, so I'm halfway into 51, and I'll be able to wear my AF feet with a subpar party tonight (need to katch up with the group I was staticing with.. They're all about to ding 54!!! *_*)

But in any case, I noticed I wasn't getting hit that hard even with Fishkabobs, so I went with Squid Sushi. After I finish the food I have on me (possibly by level 53/54 I'll be done), I'll go with Dorado Sushi most of the time.

Never had a problem holding hate, and I decided to equip my Acc rings and Belt, giving me a total of 17+ Acc.

While the setup was "ok" I would have been better with a BLM or a SMN, because at any given fight, there were 2 Distortion SCs from any combination of the melee.

Sadly, had we had a BLM, MBing SMA, or an EFFING RDM (*HINT EFFING HINT*) it could have easily been a 5k-6k/hr pt.

But the fact that I was able to either keep up (TP-wise) with the melee (to a certain extent) and be able to at least MB with SOMEONE sells me on the idea of Hybrid/PLD.

Possibly because I was on the higher end of the camp (mobs didn't hit that hard, and PT was 48-50 while I was 51 the whole time *_*), but I suppose it'll be a situational thing from now on.

[Armando]

Re: Midgame

I know how it feels to be in a party with no Refresh and no way to take advantage of your awesomeness. It sucks, but oh well. And yeah, being able to keep up (sometimes exceed - go go Shield Mastery!) DD TP gain speed is a heck of a lot of fun though. I being able to extend skillchains or even make new ones for the party.

Keep on raping in the name of all that's good and shiny, Rena.

[WishMaster3K]

Re: Midgame

Yes, my Ass has been very shiny lately. I almost feel bad for all my Melee: they're still wearing Brigidane. >:-]

And I'm gonna get the newest DVS Parse. I neeed to start seeing where I need to trim my gear.

[Zempten]

Re: Midgame

What's wrong with your DVS? I didn't have much problems. Just press goto File -> Start New Parse -> Press Enter when window opens up and it'll start parsing when your PT starts fighting. If you want to save just goto File -> Export Parse. To look at your parse another time just goto your Exports folder and click it open.

I'll agree that being able to DD has kept me awake while playing PLD. I don't know how else I'd be able to keep awake.

I find it interesting that your able to tank with Berserk up. How?

[WishMaster3K]

Re: Midgame

I had 1.5.0, and apparently it wasn't working. Just got 1.7.Something, so hopefully I'll find out tonight. Didn't work when I tried opening it and testing it for a bit while at work tho, but we'll see in tonights (hopeful) exp.

How?

IDK, to be honest. I was higher than the rest of the party, but not "higher" than the camp warranted. Well. I've never been the highest in the pt, so idk how everyone else's Exp is affected. But in anycase, the exp was decent for me, but I knew the kills were taking a long time because not ONCE did I try to activate Sentinel of SB and discover that both still had some cool-down.

If I don't have at least 1 minute cool down, the pt isn't killing fast enough.

But maybe it was because I was getting Cure Bombed by the WHM like it was going out of style, so I stopped paying attention to the niggling nuances of tanking, but the mobs generally weren't even hitting me hard.

Oh: And I've been a RDM since I started the game (NA Release) and I've been 75 almost 1 and a half years and have been soloing my arse off ever since I was able to put on my AF Hat.

Why am I saying all this?

Because I'm PISSED that at 51PLD, I finally am NOT capped out on Parry.

This some ol BS. -_-

And at the rate I'm going, using PLD to cap out Parrying isn't really looking like it'll work.. Because I'm sure I'll level before I gain another skill raise.

[Celeal]

Re: Midgame

Just a note: For DVS Parser, it seems to stop parsing when switch between mules (log off/on).

I haven't exp PLD for a while; I was trying to get the Parade Gorget.... 1/7, no drops for me (I let my lvl 50 PLD friend to have it first)... me back to farm more Newts and leveling lolPUP (seriously, PUP is very fun for solo or duo/trio party)

Getting back on topic~ beside DD-mix PLD, an alternative is setting up Cover and Cure Bomb the DD who get hates. This tactic works well with big spike hater like BLM, DRK, RNG, etc. In my last party exp. on Imp + Fly, I had a RNG/SAM who use meat and fire staff. For every Sharpshot, he would Sidewinder -> Mediate -> Sidewinder -> Barrage -> Sidewinder ~(*.*)~ In between Cover + Cure Bomb and Seigan + Third Eye, it went very smoothly.

[WishMaster3K]

Re: Midgame

Subbing SAM?

Yeah, he was trying to Die..

[Celeal]

Re: Midgame

Well, gear alone can only do so much. For stuff like Bomb Toss spam, Curse Sphere spam, Firaga III... not much can be done with the traditional DEF+/VIT+ approach (besides Rampart, Barsleep, Earthward, Silence, etc), or like those one shot moves from spiders, Eruca (keep current HP up to certain threshold to counter it).

If those crazy hate spike move (combine with the rest of the party) is able to defeat the mob around the duration of Cover, then the party can get away without MP-sink. Because within the time window from Cover to mob's death, there is not much damage the mob can do within such a limited amount of time.

[Lmnop]

Re: Midgame

Keep on raping in the name of all that's good and shiny, Rena.

Am I playing Captain Obvious by pointing out how ironic this sentence is?

[WishMaster3K]

Re: Midgame

I don't get it