~First And Final Line Of Defense V2.0~

Yes considering ochain

You might make that leap and get one. every +4 to shield skill = 1% block rate.

If you're lacking 10% you'd need +40 skill.. 30% = 120 skill and so on.

Ochain would eliminate the need for a significant amount of +shield skill gear.

I just realized I completely overlooked the other question in there.

Short answer. yes it's possible to hit 100% block rate depending on the mob even without reprisal. But removing reprisal(and I assume by extension palisade?) immediately excludes every shield but Ochain. Although, honestly most shield aren't going to be able to hit 100% even on trash mobs and even with reprisal. Just not enough shield skill to push the block caps that high.

But for anything of a decent level it's going to take some fairly extreme shield focused gearing to hit 100%, and as mob level rises it will eventually become impossible without reprisal or palisade.

Now if SE would ever give us ilvl upgrades for shields...

I was curious about that too. I figured that the JSE would be at least +160ish and a Ochain to i119 would be +260+

That would give 40% block rate to the JSE and 65% to Ochain, then account for enemy level, maybe, what an extra 10~15% for JSE and 20~30% for Ochain?

Edit: guesstimating at best, numbers not meant to be taken as gospel.

If by JSE, you mean Priwen, it's already an ilvl shield and already 119. Shield skill +112 iirc?

Or were you thinking 'ilvl upgrades' like further Oboro augments? Sorta like weps got using swart astral detritus for upgrades.

In anycase. Aegis and Ochain are not ilvl at all and have no shield skill bonuses. Aegis could desperately use that skill+. It still wouldn't be enough to give Aegis decent physical defenses on high end stuff, but it'd help at least. Maybe get off the damn block rate floor.

I really don't see them adding +260 skill to Ochain. That much skill would put Ochain at around 92.8% block rate on lvl 150 mobs. With no other block+ or shield skill gear. And without reprisal/palisade. And you'd auto cap on everything 145 and lower. So it'd almost be like Ochain back at its release, where it capped block rate on everything.

Not that I'd mind. But I think someone at SE regretted making Ochain as powerful as they did, so they indirectly nerfed it by changing the environment around it until it wasn't as good anymore. Kinda like what they did with mythics. Leaving shields out of ilvl upgrades was part of that.

Yeah I realized that shortly after posting, left it up because let's face it, 112 isn't much. The aeonic has +129 and doesn't block as well as Ochain90 or Priwen w/reprisal (from what I've read).


This, in a nut shell. Aegis and Ochain both need ilvl. Ochain uncaps at, what, i129-135 mobs w/reprisal? I may be off a little, but with how enmity works, Ochain actually gives PLD a decent shot at tanking. Devs may have kicked themselves, but it's not much different than a FFXIV PLD in current gear doing endgame.

Maybe not a crazy boost to Ochain with skill, something like +129 (similar to Aeonic), same for Aegis as a PLD honestly should have both.

If meta for tanking is still /blu this might look decent:

Ochain i119: DEF 50, VIT 35, Shield Skill +129 Converts 50% of damage taken to MP upon successful block
Keep the hidden effect the same, no real need to boost it.

Aegis i119: DEF 50, Augments "Shield Bash" X (dmg +290), Magic Damage Taken II -50%, Shield Skill +129

Tweek the numbers a little, mine may be a little high, but what would be the difference in SE doing something like this than what they've done for other REMA weapons?

Edit: after reading this, all the work for just some shield skill may not be worth it.

Personally, I would absolutely upgrade Ochain just for the additional shield skill. And I'd have to do HMP then dross before I could even get to the ilvl upgrade.

Aegis too. While the extra skill isn't going to put it on par with Priwen or Ochain block wise, having even slightly better physical defenses while maintaining its magic defense is something I'd consider worthwhile.

Fixed.

Slightly off topic but talk of shield bash got me thinking.. How good is the dispel effect on the relic hands? Anyone mess with it?

I'm almost done with Aegis and looking at starting either burtgang or excal.

Burt will be a definite going to get, but was curious as to if excal has an actual use endgame wise, or would it be better to skip and go for burt and get excal as a trophy of sorts?

Skip Excal, save money ;)

Aegis/Any sword can tank everything. Both swords are trophies.

Make Epeo and never play PLD again. PLD was one of mains during HNM days so I'm not say that just to say that.

Unfortunately, it appears I have somehow managed to misplace my up to date Pld Dps Spreadsheet somewhere, which sucks because I spent a decent bit of time updating the formulas to match the new ones and new WS Mods for sword, as well as import in the latest tiers of DREAM weapons...

Anyone by chance happen to have a copy they have moderately kept up to date? :D

Excal is useful for skillchaining as it has the only fusion sword WS but the situations where you would actually use it for damage are pretty slim on PLD. At R15 it has shield block rate +10 but this would never outweigh Burtgangs PDT II

Atonement is fusion as well.

It should be noted, as this gets brought up a lot, that Excal and Burtgang are worlds apart in terms of cost with regards to both gil and time.

Last I checked, burtgang costs about 2~2.5x as much as an Excal depending on the server, and where my excal literally only took me like 1~2 days of IRL effort to do start to finish, a burtgang is weeks and weeks of effort.

I would never compare the two swords, burtgang Id roughly estimate, especially for a non-hardcore player, is easily 5~6 times the total effort.

On the scale of Casual<=>Hardcore of DREAM weapons, Excal is definitely far closer to the casual end.

Yet, it has incredibly solid performance, the 30 tic regen is nothing to be scoffed at, it has as good DPS as all of the other weapons (that enlight damage is nothing to be underrated, it amounts to a tonne of your dps), and it is hands down the easiest to make.

All combined, I would recommend any career paladin to not feel bad about making an excalibur. You can use the insane DPS boost of Excal to easily fund your burtgang and, more important, farm up your burtgang a little bit easier.

(An Excal+Aegis pld will have a MUCH easier time getting into PUG farming groups than just an Aegis pld who has an half finished burtgang collecting dust in MH)

And since Ambuscade basically prints money, you can VERY quickly recoup the costs of that excal within a month or so simply because of how many more parties you get.

In fact, I would argue if you take all the money difference between an Excal and Burtgang, and spend that money on perfecting your gear (Moonlight+1 etc) you will get better value.

Tl;dr:

Unless you have literally perfect gear (+1 moonlight tier) and a 99 Aegis, you will get better value out of the cheaper Excalibur vs Burtgang, then spending that extra gil on perfecting your gear first.

Then... then you can think about burtgang.

Id have disagree, Pld's job is to maintain hate, not deal dps (yes dps builds hate but on pld not so much due to lack of acc from DT sets). Excal does nothing for enmity, Id take a Brilliance + Aegis pld over a exal + aegis pld any day.

DPS is enmity and ACC is matter or gearing.. The problem is people play PLD full turtle 99% of the time when its rarely needed.

Slapped this together:

ItemSet 351749
1254 acc with enlight2

Most ambuscade months, you can put on the hybrid gear and do pretty solid damage as PLD. You'll certainly clear a lot faster than in full turtle spamming blank gaze. Same with any Geas Fete NM you aren't mana/pet burning.

Is RUN better at it? Yeah. But if you're going PLD because don't have RUN yet or you're more comfortable on PLD for a specific thing or w/e you might as well hybrid. It's not like you'll die with 2.5-2.7k HP and capped or near capped DT unless your WHM decides to AFK.

I think the only stuff I'd full turtle on are Dynamis, Omen(minus Craver and Kyou), and stuff that's mana/pet burned because SCH SCs or it's dead too fast. Maybe some other things but that should be most of it.

As a Pld that can solo spam light sc with excal for the sch to MB off of, I find the whole 'tanks arent supposed to dps' addage to be just the perpetuation of lazy tanks.

This is my hybrid set I use that caps DT, gear haste, and also has a tonne of acc, att, and some da+ta

ItemSet 359870

(I believe mantle I take 10% DT, att, acc, dex, DA? Something like that)

Though, now I wonder if knightly+2 neck is a good choice (and then swap sulevia head to perhaps Caba+3, which nets me more haste, meva, and mdef)

Then I could downgrade my belt to a much better one... could work. Hmm.

Excalibur or Sequence?

What is the best physical WS for pld?

Magical?

Sequence is better for Savage Blade. I'm not sure on
Path D hands and A legs I'm assuming


Sequence should be king for Magical and Savage Blade thanks to STP and 500TP Bonus. For CDC, I believe R0 Excal beats R0 Sequence though but not 100% sure since PLDs aren't known for their DPS sheets.

R15 Excalibur spamming KoR at 1k is 8.4 effective http://ftp. Similar to savage at 1000+750.

Excal has the att/SC and defensive edge. Along with relic and HP procs.

There is also Almace with the huge acc advantage.

I put this on bg but nobody replied:

Assuming I can make an aegis and already have ochain and some gear for PLD but no decent weapons, would I be better off trying to tank things with aettir run or pld?
I guess the first sword I'd focus on is brilliance? I recently started playing again for the first time since delve so the group I'm back with hasnt done any escha. We'd be starting at the bottom tier nms

Almace has the perk of being a top tier BLU sword too.

I would do Aettir RUN. It's easier to gear up and has more enmity tools. There are few situations where paladin has an advantage in today's XI. Pulling trash in Omen and on Gorger. A rare few Ambuscade months. It sucks because I think paladin is a fun job but we've simply been outshone by rune fencer.

Look at Nixxer or Flyssa+1 or Deacon Sword. I farmed a max Brilliance before I started paladin and it took forever, would have been better off simply farming or even merc'ing one of the other options.

Nixxer or deacon look nice and I could probably beg someone to sell me one- I have no idea how I'd ever kill the khim though

tfw you need gear to kill stuff but you have to kill stuff to get gear

Brilliance and ochain are a fine starter, and they arent that hard to farm up. Just be fine with settling for a mediocre brilliance.

Next up you want to go get as much Enmity gear as you can possibly muster. Spend a fair bit of time on this, get Enmity+ on every single slot, you will want to swap this gear in for every single JA

Once you have that done, you can start tanking in low tier ambuscades. Get yourself a solid Enmitty+DT back piece ambuscade cape first.

Then, funnel 100% of your ambuscade profits purely into funding a Souv+1 piece at a time. Also try and pick up a pair of NQ Moonlight rings and neck if you can.

Once you have capped DT in your idle set, next up is a solid SIRD set. You want to hit the required SIRD cap for spells like Phalanx and Curing, this is incredibly important.

Finally, work on your phalanx set. Get as much as you can.

Once you are good, spam Sinister Reign to get a decent Malevolence, and maybe get some good Matt + Matb gear.

You're goal is to go do Aeolian Edge cleaving to farm up Job Points at a decent pace.

Once you get up there in terms of JP, you can probably start tanking H Ambuscades, funnel THAT money into making Aegis.

Once you have Aegis, VH ambuscades should be a piece of cake to tank, you will find it then just becomes a matter of holding hate.

Funnel THAT money, now that its flowing freely into your wallet, into making a DREAM weapon (Excalibur if you wanna cheap out, Burtgang if you wanna go in for the long haul), and finishing up your gear.

Thats the path I recommend.