PLD Vs NIN...Who Is The Best Tank?

Merit parties hardly merit having a tank. O.o did I make a funny?

Srsly, though, Merit parties only need someone that can take hate away from the puller and survive an attack round or two.

I do it on SAM all the time, either SAM/WAR or SAM/DNC. PLD can merit fine, but they need to be a DD-style PLD. They won't come near a DRK, SAM, WAR, etc for damage, but they can function without being a total leech. NIN can "tank" these also, but again, they typically only have hate for a brief moment until the first DD does something.

I rip hate off NIN tanks in merits with Soboro and /DNC, so imagine what a Tomoe-Toting SAM/WAR or an Algol DRK is gonna do..

Endgame tanking is a whole different animal, because with the exception of a very few things (KV, Kirin Burn, etc.) the fights last longer than 10 seconds. You need a tank who can build and maintain hate, while also having survivability.

On those mobs, a PLD has a greater ability to do that than a NIN from a DD perspective solely because of Atonement. I can open a fight with a 600-700 dmg Spirits Within, then have someone drop a TA Weaponskill on me a few times, and start spamming Atonement for 750 (or 724 seems to be what I get if I've just taken damage) every time I have 100 TP. I'd love to see a Ninja hit a 750 weaponskill of any kind on say... Genbu.

EDIT: Where you can actually get TP...

Head Butt/Temporal Shift/Diamond Hide/Saline Coat/Actinic Burst are all great for tanking.

BLU can do some pretty amazing things when it comes to tanking larger groups of mobs too. We use BLU(s) in Einherjar for crowd control and it works really well.

PLD Holds hate like a champ

NINs are good Kiters >.> they can also straight tank mobs with some TAs to maintain hate

actually both jobs are awesome tanks its all about how you want to fight the battle

Ninjas look the best doing it!!

Well headbutt dont really work on alot of nms and most HNMs... whoever AOE stun+AOE flash that land pretty well by themselves help alot. Not just the insane hate but in suriving. Cocoon and oh ***I dont have shadows gear swap would give near pld survivability. Even also having that super blink would be nice too. Also blu can somewhat easily achieve over 100% spell interrupt rate which should help on ichi casting too. Being able to erase yourself for nice hate too. Difusion for even more. It has potnetial and some mobs shadows just dont really work lol. THough diamondhide is just fail

I can see you have not tried out a full evasion set on those NMs. Try it out and see. Yes it is like a time warp back to 2004 but Ninjas can evade most HNMs (Tiamat, Jorm, Cerberus, Khimaira, etc.) easily with a high evasion build along with a Bard support.

To add to this debate or rather opinionated discussion, a bad to so-so Paladin is better than a good Ninja in most cases. However, a great Ninja is equal to a great Paladin for tanking purposes. A Ninja is HIGHLY gear dependent along with skill to use macros effectively. A good Ninja should be blinking non-stop.

Also for those that say Ninjas have less hate, this is simply a trivialization of how enmity works. In the beginning a Paladin will CAP (yes there is a cap!) enmity more quickly than a Ninja can. However, given a minute, a good Ninja can cap enmity and strip hate from the Paladin due to being able to spam spells (/DRK or /RDM) faster thus hitting the enmity ceiling over and over again before a Paladin can. The following takes a bit of practice.

If a Ninja casts something with high enmity values right after a Paladin does ANYTHING to a mob AND the mob has NOT ATTACKED yet, the Ninja will keep hate over the Paladin (assuming they are both at capped hate).

Of course a Paladin can try the same thing but if they are /NIN, they are limited to recasts for spamming spells quickly. Against a PLD/RDM though, this strategy is harder to implement due to their access to low recast, high enmity spells.

In the end since there is a hard cap on Enmity, either job can tank extremely well as long as the person behind the character knows what they are doing.

Sorry for the novel.

Aramina, you made excellent points until you said lolgenbu. Well, it's actually still a valid point, but come on... it's genbu.



Actually I totally didn't think of super tanking, and yes, blu can do crowd control pretty damn well. It's funny, when I do Einherjar I don't do crowd control at all as the brds and blms have it totally covered, I'm just a below average DD (the whole shell is damn pimp though... ***). But when I can't make it, my friend logs me in, sits me in the corner, and if he dies on his brd from crowd control he starts using my character instead. I'll log in after missing an einherjar run to find some of the strangest spells set lol

Anyway, as good as those spells you mentioned are for tanking, against single mobs they'll still never (imo) offer enough to replace a pld. Even if blu DOES manage to come out on top of a pld because of unique spells, the majority of these spells can be used to help support a pld instead of try and replace it. That's my preferred method of doing things, as it also allows you to use some of our other debuffs that aren't quite as easy to get off if you're the centre of attention.

Reasons why this is fail

1. Most HNM have capped Acc reagarless of your action (outside of flash)

2. If your in that much evasion gear your not in, haste,ENM,or HP+ gear

3. If your brd is giving mamboo they are NOT giving ballad/march

4. What is the point of evading when you can worry about more important stats and thus be a much much better tank

I already responded to most of this, so I'll be brief.

Zephyr Mantle fails for the most part due to massively long cast time. PLD's shield skill is a massive advantage over any amount of DEF you can get on BLU. Your points about hate are valid, but BLU has soooo many hate spells (again, check Kaeko's testing) that holding hate is just not the issue if you can survive (although diffusion exuviation does indeed rock, and is an instant hate cap if used after sentinel and hits the whole party). And yes, diamondhide caps at 200 damage absorption, so for 99mp it's much better for support than for self.

So the only question I have, is how do you go about getting near 100% spell interruption? Just from gear usage? Does it even make a difference with ichi anyway?

Reasons why your points are incorrect.

1. Those NMs DO NOT have capped Accuracy. Try it first and see.

2. I blink constantly depending on my action I need to do. Check out my macro sets to see what I mean.

3. This is a funny point, but if a Ninja goes full evasion and loses shadows 25% of the time, you only need to spam low recast, low mp cost spells (ie poison, blind) repeatedly (assuming you are at the hate cap of course). You won't be strained for MP and definitely do not require March.

4. This setup works well for extremely low person fights or holding HNMs while the help comes.

You should stop criticizing a full evasion build until you have tried it yourself.

I also have different tanking sets if you are curious to see my playing style. I macro a set for every action that I do as a Ninja.

HAHA LMAO!!!

Genbu can actually kill people, I've seen it!

But what I'm saying is that while my Justice Sword (don't have Joy yet >.>) may not do a lot of dmg per hit, I can still drop Atonement for 750 at 100% TP, even if Genbu has Harden Shell up.

A (normal) Ninja can't even dream of WS on Genbu for that kind of number. Most HNM/Gods/Jailers have very high Def related to player's attack/STR ratings, so unless you have JA to boost your damage, it suffers. Things like Spirits Within and Atonement work around this in the great majority of cases.

I do know a NIN that carries around a cheapy sword and HP stuff with him to get a solid 300% TP Spirits to start big fights, then swaps to his main tanking gear. That's just being savvy on his part.

Have tanked Genbu PLD/NIN start to finish while the THFs and /THFs were dropped WS on the NIN on the back side over and over again. BLMs never got hate. NIN maybe only had it for a second or two ever. Being able to do things like stack Sentinel/Flash/C4/750 Atonement makes for a massive hate gain in a short time.

Well I was thinking of timing zephyr mantle... ive done it before and it works but yeah you really gotta get timing down. Um well dual weird hermit wands is 50% right there and theres that mage feet that gives 15% solitare cape is 8% af feet is 10% magnetic earring is another 8% and druids rope is another 10% which without merits is 101% right there... then theres willpower torque or nashira head and af feet+1 are more but sticking with pretty easy to get gear... honestly I have no idea I've never heard of anyone testing -100% interupt. Logic would say you cant be interrupted but who knows with SE. As far as cocoon and def build goes thats more of just an oh ***im without shadows stun or flash if it happens

Yeah, I'm totally aware of all this, I just wanted to say lolgenbu :D

And hey, guess which boss has killed me more than any other in nyzul isle? That's right! lolaspid. Him and his *** breath spamga that fanatics drink doesn't block.

Also, speaking of HP builds, spirits within and sky gods (namely Byakko), I have a HP build which is approaching the best you can get for a hume blu. Let me tell you from experience that spirits within does NOT stack with trick attack. (I tested it as a dare even though I was reasonably certain it wouldn't work) Pretty sure that was my fastest death on any mob ever, even when I tried to solo (death warp) Jormy I lasted longer than that... didn't do as much damage though.

More reasons why I just can't be assed testing blu as a tank for anything serious. Dual hermits makes me instantly lose interest; you'll be hitting for 0's with those, and less acc isn't what you want if you happen to be fighting something that head butt works on. Plus the other gear puts you down by 7% haste which is going be worse for your utsu than a chance at maybe not getting interrupted (unless 100% does actually work). Maybe if I can ever be bothered gearing up my level 37 nin and actually capping ninjutsu I'll think about it, don't think it's that far off cap though anyway.

Who is the best tank?!? and the only options are Pld > Nin? I didn't read every post but there certainly more jobs to ad to the mix before we determine "Best Tank!"

Now if we are talking about keeping hate in a xp situation and ease of doing so I think it would be pld..but past 37 with a good nin tank that can keep shadows up and actually use ele wheel to keep hate then its a mix they both do fine. I think that Nin does need an update and Pld has way more tools to keep hate as well as get that hate back should it be lost to some over eager DD.

Now "End Game" or HNM is completely different. Nin/drk can be great and so can Drk/nin in certain situations(Like Faf, or other HNM, gogogo Dreadspikes.)

As far as which tank I prefer, in most end game situations where the fight is longer than 5 min, then I would choose rdm/nin. Alot of ppl just don't give rdm/nin a chance and you do have to do the fight a little differently and it's actually better to have 2 Rdm/nin bouncing hate.

Almost any job has the potential to tank it just depends on the person behind the job and how good they are. Hell i've even tanked Faf on whm(granted it was only Faf, but still..)

Lol oh god no I mean only to use that for ichi and maybe zephyr mantle. Lol at using it even close to full time. And um meleeing HNMs espcially as a blu... I'd rather minimize tp gain and stick with Spike DDs.

Yeah, if you HAD read the thread you'd realise this has all been covered and beaten. Just two issues with what you say though.

1: Nin sucks at tanking until 40 (not 37) because they can't hold hate for ***until ni elemental wheel. Generally speaking, PLD is the easier job to play, so nine times out of ten if you're looking for a tank for your exp party, the pld will do it better.

2: loldrktank

Well if you're not meleeing and don't mind a tp loss, then maybe. But it still means you're losing out on haste, which wouldn't be so bad if there's no cap to spell interruption rate, but that's pretty unlikely (seriously need to test this). For the love of god don't attempt to actually do damage with clubs equipped though as your acc will be atrocious.

But again, I'd rather just stick to DD/support/debuff, blu has a great combination of spells for this sort of role if used well.

I wouldnt mind the haste loss on just ichi anyways its recast timer is low enough and it would still be lower then ni... for that matter if your getting haste and marchs you probably already capped -recast. But whatever it looks like it might be alot of fun too try and who knows might be good. Always nice to be versatile

Rukenshin's Nin/drk guide

If you play your nin like this... you can tank as well if not better then pld/nin on most HNMs. Now... this is coming from a career pld, my first job, my first love in the game.

But like it has been said before, any tank is situational depending on the mob and the support you have. I have tanked Charby as pld/war at lv 73 but I had one hell of a rdm and whm as support till everyone else showed up.

Also in exp, a shitty pld is better then an average nin just based on the fact that they have more access to hate spells/abilities.

Yeah maybe to the first part. To the second part, I checked this out ages ago in the haste vs dual wield thread, can't remember it all now but:

Only a couple jobs have ja haste so it's not worth mentioning.
Only a few jobs can cap physical haste (whm being one of the easiest), most require speed belt and blu isn't one of them.
haste (not refueling) and double march won't cap magical haste, but soul voice double march will cap magical haste with or without haste spell (or maybe come just short)

But then again, does recast have a 50% cap? (going off the top of my head). 15% gear, 15% haste 20% double march would get you there. So with legs and waist taken for spell interruption, you have walmart, homam/dusk gloves, homam legs for 11% haste, +3% fast cast and another 1% fast cast from loquacious earring, I guess you're right, you technically can cap recast with full spell interruption build (if recast caps at 50%)

And if you read the thread you would already see, that I said eva nin is good for that. Eva nin is NOT good for trying to tank an HNM while its being fought. ESPEC if said HNM (all) has a move that will strip shadows.

Yeah recast caps at 50% if im not melee i could give 2 craps about actual haste. I almsot cap recast on my rdm solo... if i acutally had more haste gear then swift belt and gol body I probably could do it easy

I haven't read through the whole thread, but I'll throw my 2 cent's in based on the Title...

I prefer a PLD tank, even as a main healer. NIN tanks, through shadow usage can mitigate a lot of the damage coming their way, this much is obviously true, but I've found in the bulk of my parties with a NIN tank, the MP that I'm not spending on the NIN is being spent on other DD's in the party when the NIN loses hate...

I'm sure there are really good NIN's out there that can hold hate really well, but I just find PLD's to be more MP efficient overall. They hold hate hella better, can cure themselves, shield bash the really nasty ***, etc. So I prefer a PLD...

Endgame, not xp

@ Blazza

I'm pretty sure that Donavan has you beat for fastest Byakko death when he popped it on PLD/NIN and... forgot to have shadows up. He ate back to back triple attacks and was dead before I could even target him.

Never seen a pld/nin even come close to keeping up with a nin/drk as far as hate goes well except that one time the nin kept taking such rediculous dmg that he lost it lol.

That wasn't in the thread title...my bad.

Prolly shoulda been if that's the criteria.

EDIT: OP doesn't say endgame...so is this now just ABOUT endgame?

Of course it's about endgame now, how long can you hold a conversation about low level exp parties?

Never saw anyone take/hold hate like Varus did on RDM/NIN against Prudence, but he spammed about 800-1000 MP of hate on it during a ridiculously long Shadowbind, and after that, Prudence had no eyes for anyone but him.

There are good and bad PLD/NIN out there, just as there are good and bad NIN/DRK. As for RDM/NIN, it can do well in many of the same situations with the right player, right gear, and willingness to try it out.