~First And Final Line Of Defense V2.0~

While I'll certainly get the set at some point, and enjoy it for cleaving, supertanking, etc...

They crippled Arke for serious content by not giving it meva/mdb. The set has great HP/DT, and even status resist. But they're practically nullifying the status resist by having no meva. The unprecedentedly high DT(with high HP on the side) could have made it's way into a lot of tanking/hybrid sets, but again, meva/mdb. That ***is important. Resisting status and reducing magic dmg are critical to many strats.

Still neat for hybrid sets, right up until you need to resist something, and can't because you've got ***meva. Grats, everyone else is fine, but you're amnesia'd and all that extra TP is doing ***. But if the targets are purely physical, or you had no chance of a meva based resist in the first place, then sure.

So while the set is neat, it could have been so much more if they'd just given it the same basic ilvl stats any gear gets. Much less the pumped up meva many other jobs got on their SU3 gear. I have this very faint hope SE will update saying, "Oops we forgot the mevea/mdb. Here ya go." Not happening, I know, but I can dream.

I agree with cherrywine.
Personally I let the e-penia parse to the DDs. I don't consider making damage isn't my job. So I stay as turtle to reduce the healing coat for my when and I build the max aggro to hold monster on me.
Dding as pld isn't something I enjoy (that why I have asked help for old guide in dad's part)

lol resist something. like what para doom poison?

If you are talking about resisting Nuke damage then good luck with that.
Arke set is very solid set for anything that isnt over the 135 level range. Once you get there you just may not have the staying power.


Would some math guru please math what magic evasion tiers and benefits it gives for the point of this?

From armchair mathing outside of geo benefit and whm bar spells (or rdm if u are rdm since they rock) I see resist 1/25 that is right around the 4% mark. Some things some other things and def always nothings. Have a nice day but Arke > Almost any other set outside +1 Abj set for tanking and Perfect mix/match for Melee and ws sets
One should never tank in Ambu gear due to the low *** HP and almost no haste even with +2

Honestly, what in the hell are you talking about?

I think he's high as *** but I think I will agree with him once he's deciphered.

Edit: Let me light up rq, and I'll let you know for sure.

Assuming it's like previous iterations of convert dmg it's straight up converting a percentage of the dmg you took to tp and others were actual dmg taken and rounded down

Any math on MEva available?

I thought it worked like a resist stat but for all types of magic?

Like we used to stack Fire resist for Tiamat tanking, now it's simplified to Meva. Is that right?

Are we really evading Omen boss magic attacks at all? Does it even matter with Aegis 87.5% reductikn?

Most of the meva testing is kind of old. Wasn't a lot of meva back then so it was kind of assumed there was a 1 for 1 with element resist stat though I'd say it's probably that meva is worth more. Barstat and resist traits seem to work differently but testing is also sparce.

Regardless even if that was all known we'd still need to test out specific targets to determine there approximate maccs and well data even on much easier to determine stats is sparse. At least on the NA side don't think I've seen any real attempts to present data on mob macc since toau era. I've seen some bits of related testing on some jp blogs but it's quite the undertaking to try to wade thru it all so I've been putting it off lol

tl;dr right now effectiveness is largely eyeballing. Sometimes it's really obvious like pre nerf geo but smaller amounts or when you already at the cap/floor it's hard to tell

I strongly suspect that meva and elemental resistance are 1 for 1.

The main reason we used to think meva was better, was because vex/attunement made such a huge difference, even though the stated potency for the geomancy spells was only +/-100 vs WHM barspells being 200+.

Then we found out that the geomancy spells that affect Macc/meva were glitched and were giving % based changes, making them vastly more potent that stated... This would tend to explain the apparent difference in potency. Also explains why Langour always seemed to do more than focus.

Also, some useful references.
https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Magic_Evasion
https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Resist

Thanks for the resist link. I read the Meva one but missed the resist page.

So on a high lvl mob does Meva really even matter? Can we stack enough to impact a lvl135+ mobs Macc?

If its a casting mob you'll have Aegis equip either way, we also have dedicated -mdt sets for the big nukes and Oshit sets.

Arke is looking better and better to me....

I'll agree that Aegis largely diminishes any threat from most magic attacks.

However, on the other side, and the part I care about more, is the ability to resist ailments. Now, magic evasion from gear by itself won't resist most things unless it's a set like Inyanga +1 or one of the new sets that have large amounts of M.Eva, but Barspells, Vex, Attunement and/or Carols are often used in addition to the magic evasion your gear provides as a way to defend against the more annoying ailments such as Amnesia, Paralyze, Stun, etc.. If you're in gear without magic evasion, you'd be stuck at that 25% ailment resist rate, whereas if you were using gear with magic evasion, you wouldn't be getting hit with ailments very much at all.

Of course, if you're fighting something that doesn't do particularly hindering ailments, then the above point is moot, but it's worth considering if you're set on going the Arke path.

Well I think what he's getting at with that line is what might be best for trying to resist status ailments tweaking the meva/macc side of things or adding what is presumably straight resist.

Full timed Arke set vs Kyou today.
No issues at all. RDM main healer too.
Accuracy rating of 91%
No food, no cor/brd buffs. I think Torpor was up at some point because my friend wanted to see how much DMG Arke PLD could pump out with minimal support.

Eyeballing it, felt like I saw many more hits land on me from Kyou without En-enfeebles going off/landing on me. Probably just placebo. I'm not going to manually parse that ***one day in full souveran+1 and another day in full Arke to report.

I'm convinced of this set's usefulness. Will wait a few more hundred pages and months before the rest of you catch up.

Love your post on my rant earlier lol but this is a good start.
How viable the set is really will depend on what you have and what you fight so thanks!

It's actually possible that the status resist+ is net gain vs kyuo. It would depend on what his magic acc is for those effects. If your magic evade ratio was floored even in souv+1, then dropping that Macc wouldn't have any detectable effect. In which case, you wouldn't be raising the add effect land rate any, as it'd already be capped, so you'd be looking purely at the resist all status gains.

That being said, I haven't the slightest clue how much macc kyou's add effects have, so It's hard to honestly comment on that situation.

What I can say, is that for any strat that was able to attain reliable resist rates to counter negative statuses in normal ilvl gear(as in many modern zerg strats, often using Vex/Attunement+Carols) using Arke is going to kick you in the teeth.

Full Arke +1 has +30 resist all status. We assume this means 30% nullification. Souveran+1 has 342 meva. you could go from 95% land rate to 5% twice over with that. If you're getting anywhere near the mobs macc level, Then Souv+1 would prevent status more often and more reliably. But as I stated, I don't know Kyou's macc, and I suspect it takes GEO buffs to get in that range.

The DPS value of the set is another matter. But it would be pretty funny to get amnesia'd wearing Arke the sit there on all the extra TP. Caturae do all have an amnesia ws, though I forget the name.

To give a general statement of my position, I like the set, and see some application for it. But it would have been a hell of a lot better, and usable in more situations if they'd put normal ilvl stats on it. Basically "Damnit SE!"

Regarding testing/data collection. It's not as if you have to manually count hits and add effect procs. Just run logger, then use the find/count function in notepadd++ to count total hits taken/procs from the log files. Should you ever reach significant sample sizes with consistent conditions, I'd be quite interested to see the results.

I read this and thought to myself, "I can't wait until a low-man-PLD-as-main-DD-strategy video appears so all the SMN haters can start demanding a nerf to PLD instead." Thanks Arke set.

Seriously, though. I get what you are saying.
However, it isn't letting you tackle any content you couldn't otherwise. We aren't being given new things to beat. We're being given new things to beat the old stuff with.
Maybe in a few more hundred pages and months content will exist that validates this armor set. But, for me, ilvl 135 content does not validate this set.

I had a friend make me a set to try out.

TP return seems to ~40% of damage taken as predicted earlier.

I see what you're saying as well. I'm saying this set does allow you to land hits, build tp faster and survive. Souveran+1 or even the Ambuscade hybrid sets aren't necessary for everything for when PLD or RUN is required. Sure there is ***out there that will drop me in a second if I'm caught mid-cast, stuff where you would probably use a 2nd Lua for safer casting/JA sets. But short of those scenarios, Arke/+1 is perfectly fine. Is it a DPS increase over Souveran, while still maintaining enough defensive traits to be effective? Yes - I most certainly believe it is.
In my turtle mode I'm flouting at 4k HP on my PLD in Reisenjima/Omen using Miso. In my new Arke/hybrid/dd setup I'm @ 3.2k using Sublime Sushi.. Still well above a NQ souveran PLD.
Its a great set guys. I'm not exagerating when I say I was ws'ing faster than my Liberator DRK in a 3hit setup with perfect SAM and Tacticians rolls, but with much less support - be it on trash pulls. And while ws vs ws Blu's and RNGs might do more dmg, for omen in particular this set turns PLD into an objective thrashing machine when you have ele ws's/physical ws's/ws's objectives. I can get through 30 ele ws's pulling 5-8 mobs in about a minute. Not exagerating (as long as the other members don't *** around and start sleeping/killing my train)

I don't personally have a full set yet, but would be interested to try out something like this:

ItemSet 351469

Caps haste, -DT, and 35% resist all status debuffs. The waist I have here is a little hard to come by, but anything with at least 4 haste would cap. You could really plug anything you want in neck and earring slots depending on what you want, such as Odnawa for extra HP. You might want extra acc though since you are really foregoing most of the normal DPS stats and relying on the Damage/TP conversion with 5/5 Arke, might as well make sure you can hit.

Anyway, seems like there are lots of potential combos here since the haste doesn't suck and the -DT is so high. With 5/5 NQ all you need is 4 haste and 10 -DT to cap those categories.

If using for elemental weapon skills or Atonement for Omen objectives, you don't even need to worry about your accuracy. Those weapon skills always hit. You wouldn't even need to change sets because you'd want your weapon skills to do as low damage as possible so you don't run out of targets before the objectives are met.

If using for any other weapon skill, you will want to make sure your weapon skill set has enough accuracy. It may or may not need more than your hybrid set--it depends on whether you are getting all of your TP from the Arke bonus or you are actually connecting with your melee swings.

Also, you could potentially solo the 6 weapon skill chains objective more easily this way. Just engage a Transcended (for the higher HP) and keep a cloud of Sweetwater trash around to beat on you.

I believe Aeolian edge spam can work. I know using a spear will do it (but then no Ochain). Anyway, food for thought.

emphasis was on tp gain, not ws dmg or accuracy.

Its pretty nuts. Getting hit for 1600 and getting ~600tp in return.

I haven't tried anything crazy yet in it, but its 100% a worthwhile set to have in your toolkit.

Had a guy recently criticize my gear simply because he "tanks just fine" in his sets, so I guess by default, I was wrong? I'm not particularly offended by most people's opinions, nor do I really tend to care. But the interaction made it sound like I was basically a dumbass for the path choices I made, which was a bit annoying considering how much time and effort I'd put into putting them together.

When I suggested that this was (or at least it used to be) a horizontal progression game, and there is no "one set to rule them all," his response was: "maybe"...

So now I'm second guessing. Intelligent feedback requested plz.

ItemSet 351471

This is my engaged set "in question." It's always a work in progress, with a few upgrades I'm working on.
Hands are path D, Feet are path B
Mantle has Dex+20, Acc+30, Atk+20, Haste +10%
Burt is afterglowed

With the Augment system being such a big part of the game I would argue its even more horizontal progression wise than ever before. Abjuration/HQ Abjuration gear are the A and A+ standards but the Special STAR gear is more often than not perfectly Augmented gear or Omen drops or Reforged. The new crafted HQ gear is pretty sick but for the most part they are circumstantial for niche situations.

With regards to your gear choices - there's more than one way to skin a cat. It will always depend on what you're trying to achieve. If you're happy with just being a tank that holds hate and takes the least amount of possible DMG then full time in Souveran+1. If you want to take even less damage keep the -DT% capped and increase other beneficial tanking stats like block chance+1, mdb, magic eva, convert dmg taken, occ ignores x type of dmg etc.

What I'm trying to say is it really depends on what YOU want to do with PLD. If your team doesnt mind tossing in the occasional cure bomb and you trust them, get more experimental and start to try out new things.
I have my PUG sets and luas, and I have my static sets and luas. I would NEVER use my riskier/more experimental sets in a PUG situation. They want to see my full white box PLD standing there, holding hate, taking minimal damage, hitting air so their dual-boxed healer can focus on reading manga or chatting in LS chat.

Do what you want but just be aware of the mechanics and fundementals. *** the haters and conformists. They watch you do ***once and think what you did in that moment applies to all situations and become zealots, and even have the audacity to question trailblazers about what they're trying to do and can't wait to jump on you and say "see i told you."

TBH, you're too DD oriented for my taste.
But like Blazed said: you do you, boo.

(My personal taste emphasizes the hard tanking. Flume, ethereal, RF1+3 shoes for MP returns. Souveran head is a must, IMO... I've seen what it does with and without it as a WHM, and boy howdy does it show. And I like Staunch tathlum, cause it'll cap your DT and boost your resistances. But again, that's just me and my tastes.
Your set should be able to live and hold hate just fine... and it is probably better suited for you, as you have a Burtgang and I do not... so the DD splerge is more to your personal advantage than it ever would be to me.)

The only thing I'd really "tell" you to change is maybe the cape augment from acc&atk to eva&Meva....
But, again, that's just my taste and the Acc probably is more useful to your AM3 shenanigans. (It's the Meva why I'd say that.)

EDIT: I forgot the obligatory: damn you having the satanic faerie body!

I would def agree that my set is a bit more focused on DD considering I do my best to keep am3 up in most fights and contribute to being more than just a meat shield. I've been playing Pld at endgame since 2004, and in my opinion, tank dps is highly underrated (aside from the obvious situations where you just stand there holding hate w/o being engaged).

With that said, this set is still a high survivability set, having capped DT (the 2 souv+1 pieces adds +4% pdt, which a lot of ppl seem to forget), along with purposefully stacking shield skill and block+ rate. One of the main upgrades I'm after at the moment is Combatant's Torque, which will not only boost acc/atk, but add more shield skill, which is extremely hard to come by, and absolutely invaluable considering shields don't currently scale to 119. I attempted to boost it even further in the last dark matter campaign, but just had some bad luck, and am waiting for the next one to try again.

As far as the souv head, I could certainly see the appeal, but honestly, even without a Whm, there's so much cure potency% to be had on most jobs these days that I've never hit the ground thinking "if only that cure bomb was bigger." And on the few fights where it might be necessary, you'd be silly not to have a Whm anyway. In most pugs or lower level content, with my current gear, especially including the Burt, we can get away with not even bringing a healer, and I can cure myself when occasionally necessary with a sturdy 1k cure4.


Having 1200-1300 Acc. with EnlightII up w/o food is just too OP, and getting that much dex and acc from a cape is just insane. But like you said, priorities shift a bit with AG burt, which was really one of the biggest reasons I wanted to get it. But even if I swapped in Excal, the dps gain from having capped Acc with procs would still be worth. I wouldn't change this.


You're going to hate me when I tell you that I got it off the NPC campaign last year after doing vagary 1 time...

Souv head is for the mobs TP gain more than anything else.

What is a good 6-step using swords for the 6 skillchain objective, to be honest other than the mega-boss im utilizing a hybrid setup for tp/gain ws spam, so its worth it to build the proper set

We used to do I think: Burning > Fast > Burning > Fast > Burning > Flat > Savage and it worked well, just need to watch your buffs cause the savage double light is dangerous.