PLD VIT+Enmity = What?

This is pretty much it.

Its the same as DD-COR, if you can add a bit of damage then you should.

Personally I would argue that a PLD would only need a full turtle set when you are camping mobs to high for you, and if you are doing that then your exp is going to sub-par no matter what.

I am amazed no one has recommended Darksteel gear for turtling. Until you get decent end game gear Darksteel will mitigate more damage than AF coat/hands etc (obviously AF feet ftw).

ok, trollin it is

nice, had me goin there for a minute XD

ps i buy most/all the meds for my COP static

Dont even bother to DD as pld if u arent /nin.

Gallant Feet + Buckler Earring + maybe Shield Torque + DD gear = profit

No shield torque, parade gorget and pcc only! 10 acc is too insane <_<

Shield Torque is still good for ichi, and possibly something like byakko where you're pretty much not going to keep up shadows at all.

But yeah, PCC/Chiv parade etc in pretty much every other situation. DD PLD works very well /war too, but really only for exp/event farming.

='s pld

in exp, I lvled pld wayyyyyyyy back in the day lol.
but this is my base. based on the enmity spike thing, i macro inmisc enmity gear to keep from flashing gear cuz some mages don't have anyway to avoid the blink targeting deal.

when i was exping, I always made PT's with high dmg DDs, good war's rngs sams ect... then ur main goal is to keep hate on u and allow them to destroy what u fight. but yea this was a different era in FF.
I still say stack VIT+enmity dropping some VIT for some shield skill when it comes available. DD gear... is nice to have for fooling around with, but if ur in a serious PT it's best to reduce ur dmg and reduce hate loss, less hate loss = more opening for other DDs to keep piling on the damage, and less cure bombs from healers. lol
in the 72+ range ull want more enmity and maybe more acc added in for more hate control, and if u take low enough dmg use dorado sushi for the enmity/acc too. putting more control out there. as far as pld AF body, Its still the best body for pld up to IR hauberk, koenig, or w/e u got for endgame. it gives the key enmity/vit/HP boosts pld holds as vitals.

i love you nightfyre

^

It's the addition of Atonement that has really changed everything. It's really all about haste, tp, and acc now. Enmity is only used for hate generating moves.

I'm gonna try to lay it out for you guys as it was explained to me. I too used to believe that turtle PLD was the only kind of PLD. And anyone wearing anything else was a fool. I too have since come into the light on things.

As someone above stated the term "DD PLD" does not mean you are trying to be a DD. What it means is that you are using what is considered to be "DD gear" to increase both enmity/time, survivability, and exp/hr (in the term of exp parties.) There is a time and a place for full turtle builds and for "DD" builds. I will say that a REAL turtle PLD does not stack VIT but Shield skill and -PDT.

The "DD PLD" leveling up's main concern should be shield skill. He should have as much shield skill as possible while still wearing a size 3 shield. (Capped shield, Shield Torque, Buckler Earring, and Gallant Leggings) This will do several things.

A. Increase your TP feed allowing for more WS's due to Shield Mastery
B. Reduce the damage you take dramatically.
C. Ease the casting of spells due to Shield Mastery.

After stacking the shield skill the PLD's main concern is to build up his accuracy to a suitable level that he can hit the monster in question nearly as reliably as the WAR or SAM swinging along side him. The gear it takes to do this has very nearly the same defensive stats as the turtle gear you're used to. Example follows.

Gallant Surcoat-
Level: 60 - DEF:47 - HP+20 - VIT+4 - Divine + 5 - Enmity+2

Haubergeon
Level: 59 - DEF:45 - STR+5 - DEX+5 - AGI-5 - Acc+10 - Att+10 - Eva-20

These are often the two most cited pieces when it comes to the argument of "DD" vs Turtle and for good reason. At first glance they seem drastically different. One seems entirely geared for defense while the other is a pure power house. But we'll take a closer look. We'll skip over the DEF stat because as you can see a Haub is only 2 DEF less.

HP+20. Often cited as the reason to use the piece as it "reduces enmity lost when taking a hit." Thanks to Kaeko's research we do know that the greater your max HP vs the damage taken the less total enmity you lose. But exactly how much does it help? Once I was in a "discussion" over the superiority of the Gallant Armor set vs the Adaman Cuirass set. My opponent used the higher HP on Gallant as his main reason behind Gallant's supposed superiority. Using Kaeko's enmity testing I was able to find that the difference that Max HP makes in terms of CE lost per hit is SO insignificant that stacking it to a greater effect of other gear you could put on is completely and totally impossible. Simply put you can't stack enough HP+ to out weigh the advantageous of other gear options. In terms of these two pieces you're looking at somewhere along the lines of a 0.5 CE loss difference.

http://forums.ffxiclopedia.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=23395&start=45&hilit=Gallant

Scroll down about 3 or 4 posts to see my post about the CE difference. I don't post all the exact math but if you want to do the math yourself you can find the exact formulas on Kaeko's blog. (Simply Google search Kanican)

Now we'll discuss attributes. VIT+4. Congratulations, you just reduced the enemies base damage by 1. Now what about the other 100 points of it? (Bit of an exaggeration but you get the point) They're still hitting you and quite hard at that despite all that VIT. You also added a whopping 2 defense. VIT has EXTREMELY decreasing returns due to how it's checked. It's checked versus your attackers STR. Mobs have MUCH better natural stats than we do. That makes it hard to even break even when checking against them.

Enmity+2 only adds 2% more enmity to your actions. But if you're not hitting anything while you're wearing it the enmity is going to waste. You can always swap it in for JA's and spells but beyond that there's no reason to be in it.

STR+5 on the Haubergeon just raised your base damage by 1. And added an extra 2.5 attack points for you. Along with that it also adds modifiers to every single one of your weapon skills. You just increased the amount of damage you will do to the mob MORE than you would have reduced it's damage done to you had you stacked VIT+4 from the Surcoat. DEX+5 on the Haubergeon adds 2.5 Accuracy on top of possibly raising your critical hit rate. (Depending on the foes AGI). You will now hit more often. This increases both the melee damage you dealt and allows for more WS's which further your damage. AGI-5 seems like a big no no considering AGI does effect shield blocks. But you'd be wrong. AGI has so little of an effect on your blocks you could throw on -20 AGI before you'd start to notice.

Att+10 on the Haubergeon now allows you to hit for higher than 0 or 1. Several times leveling up PLD I have seen my sword critical for 0. That's just depressing. With an adequate "DD" build you will start hitting for around 20-30 regularly. That's killing the mob faster! Acc+10 has the same effect as the DEX minus the Critical boost. You are now hitting 5% more often and using WS's that much more.

Eva-20 Seems like a big kick in the nuts but once again you'd be wrong. You have a C in Evasion. The saying "PLD's don't evade, the enemy misses" exists for a reason. With the haubergeon on your evasion rate is going to be floored at 5% on most mobs. With the haubergeon off it will still be floored at 5%.

-Summary-
Gallant Surcoat TP phase pros:
1. Reduces enemy base damage by 1
2. Minimally reduces CE loss via boosting HP.

Haubergeon TP Phase pros:
1. Raises your base damage by 1.
2. Allows you to hit more often and harder
3. Reduces CE loss more greatly by reducing how long the fight lasts.
4. Raises Enmity by generating damage.

Gallant Surcoat TP phase cons:
1. Nothing to help you generate any enmity in anyway.

Haubergeon TP Phase cons:
1. AGI-5 has a hairs breadth effect on your shield blocks.

-----------------------------------------------------------
History Lesson
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PLD was not always a tank nor was it the defensive turtle that many new it to be in past years. I was surprised to learn this myself but thanks to the stories from far more seasoned PLD's than myself I've learned what our job USED to be. When the game was young there were NO designated "tank" jobs. Certain jobs had some ability to stay alive or keep attention but party's were set up more around the idea of modern TP burns. A party where multiple DD's bounce hate around with skillchains while the mage(s) cure them. PLD was not a tank class. It was a DD who could somewhat support the party in a few ways by curing or casting basic buffs. That's what it's role was.

How did things change? SE *** with cure enmity. Thanks to an update cures started throwing out humongous amounts of hate and PLD's were FORCED to shift to defensive gear in order to both A. Keep the mages alive and B. Keep themselves alive. Eventually the cure enmity was reduced to the levels we know it at but PLD's role as a turtled tank stuck and so thus the turtle PLD was born. And now we've moved past the turtle PLD days and moved back to more of a hybrid build system for exp parties.

Edit*

While a little late to the party, this link is bad data.

First off, Meat Mithkabob on a Turtle Paladin is garbage. Mercenary Earring should be replaced by Stoic or Insomnia by that point. That Mermaid Ring should be a Jelly Ring, Herc replaced by Bomb Queen Ring. Ditch Mermaid and keep Herc for macroing in for Enmity actions. Herc also exchangeable if below 50% HP. If not full timing Parade Gorget, change that Medieval Collar for a Shield Torque.

That whole post is nothing more than a biased post favoring the DD PLD. The author has no knowledge of how to gear a proper turtle PLD at all. While not arguing the usefulness of the DD PLD, if you're going to compare, put them both at their best. Reading that was like watching Fox News and expecting them to cover Democrats in a neutral light.

Atonement changed 75 Endgame gameplay but as for exp parties the shift was already well on it's way.

What really changed things were all the DD updates. That, and ToAU.

Before ToAU our exp parties were crabs and birds and ***in bibiki bay-- the mobs lasted longer than 42 seconds, and DDs weren't as buffed as they are these days.

Then 2-handed update came and spiked up the difference even more, making it more and more difficult for plds to keep hate in a purely defensive manner; then people started seeing that if they kill the mob fast enough anyone can tank, so why bother with a pld when /nin can take a few hits, and sam can virtually tank while doing 3x as much dmg as a pld or nin.

That started to force a lot of plds to try to add on DD gear so you can assimilate that atleast your doing SOME damage, and noticed that it helps keep as well <-- this was also helped by the increase in availability for DD gear (Hauby no longer costs 5 mil, you can get one for 500k or so when this movement started, and now down to less than 200k)

I find it really funny that ppl keep mentioning atonement as changing things... when I was in DD and hybrid gear for well over a year beforehand.

Anyways, once you start hitting late 50s, early 60s, its really time to start looking at some gear mixes

I found it best to have 3 sets: DD/ws gear, hybrid gear, full tank gear --- and macro between them

(I actually have ctrl lines for gear change, 3+4 into ws gear, 4+5 into DD gear, 5+6 into hybrid gear, and 6+7 into full defense... have it set so that 3 was all the ws pieces I dont wanna DD in, 5 was pieces I wanted to DD in either full DD or hybrid, 6 was shield gear; so that I could quickly switch and stuff and conserve macros (just use SE's macro book, so limited to 6 lines apiece))

then flash, provoke, cure, sentinel, rampart and (while leveling) warcry all had enmity gear macroed in beforehand; some of them I would have like... 2 macro in (warwolf and herc) the move, wait 2, and macro back out for "idling" <-- but seperate book for pure tanking that macros it all in, and have a reset macro allowing me to get back into idle gear



But however you do it, just because you may decide (and recommend it) a hybrid build, don't neglect your defensive build and keep it a macro away -- if you guys link, you can take voke/flash both keep it off mages and get into defensive gear; if you accidently pull something too tough you can take it; if a pt member dies, or half th eparty afk-- whatever the reason theres always cases where the situation changes and you might need to quickly get into turtle mode


But for the risk of sounding repeatative, in my experience... I haven't noticed any difference whatsoever between my DD and turtle sets in taking damage... I just like to have it there because the human eye cant discern it all, and if it comes down to a few points difference in life/death, feel way better about myself if I die in defensive gear, than if I was fooling around in dding gear and end up dead; but a good 90% the time I was in an exp party I was in offensive gear, and fared quite well

But basically...

#1 priority for anything is shield skill -- get yourself as much as you can, because almost all your damage mitigation is due to your shield

then you can make your builds for I would DD go with

accuracy <--- gonna need to hit for tp, and hit consistantly to make DD work
attack <-- wanna hit for more than 0 dmg, more dmg you do more enmity you get
haste <--- decrease flash timer, which helps you get hate faster, as well as hit faster for more damage over time, which is more enmity over time
strength
dex

for defensive

enmity <-- gonna need it (especially for flash/voke/cure macros)
vit
hp
def <-- somewhat effective, but best to choose pieces that have high def and other stats imo, wouldn't use it as a driving factor in choosing gear because 5 more def, but no enmity or vit isn't exactly a better piece


Then when you get to fast pts you can work on a method that works best with you, for the actual tanking part

its really effective to start rotating your abilities... 1 ja per mob unless emergency (and depending on how fast you get tp, use that ws as a "ja" or a big cure as well)

also zerk is handy, use it before your ws, then pop defender (this will bring you back to "normal"), get tp up, drop defender, ws, and drop zerk (or use it in conjunction with sentinel for extra damage as well)