[ShepardG]

B....to the A
Danka sir.

[Callisto]

Kind of late to the party on this, but as you know TM, I've done both frequently, but only recently have I gotten my PLD up to par with my RDM in terms of gear. In my experiences there's some fights where it really doesn't matter(Omega, Sky gods) both will perform relatively equally, some where RDM will blow PLD away if done properly(Ultima, JoL), and some where shadows get taken away way too quickly by mobs who hit hard as shit or have hate reset TP moves where the non-magical survivability of PLD plays a bigger role.

The Tier IV ZNM Tyger is a good example. He swings fast as hell, is immune to Slow/Elegy, has multiple shadow-clearing TP moves, and hits a buffed PLD/NIN for 400+ if no shield block. You spend so much time recasting shadows or having them altogether down that keeping Stoneskin up full time isn't really feasible, and you get absolutely trucked if you take a straight hit as RDM, even with a reasonable reduction set. There's a few other mobs out there like that, I've fought a couple of ANNMs that I really could not have done on RDM(some I know for sure because I wiped to them).

As far as personal taste, I've taken a liking to using PLD more simply because it's more user-friendly. In most situations a good PLD tank and a good RDM tank will be even, because once you both cap hate you stay even assuming you can maintain relatively equal rates of VE gain, I'd rather take the job that's easier to play just so that I can focus more on other stuff going on in the fight and direct things better than I could if I was casting spells literally every second of the fight.

There's no reason to unload your PLD gear, instead I would focus on improving it, so that when the situations do arise where it'd be preferable you're ready to go either way.

[ShadowHolyFlyingDragon]

Originally Posted by Icemage

^ I don't think anyone here is slagging off Paladin players (well, aside from the occasional lazy slobs who sit there and don't do anything except cast Flash, Cure, and Utsusemi, but you generally don't see those clowns at endgame).

The truth is, though, right now the only reason PLD is keeping its tanking role is that it's "OK" at tanking most things - the job does come with lots of HP, high DEF, and it does have decent hate tools. It's simply unfortunate that the RDM/NIN has access to two things which combined are simply better than what PLD has to work with - namely the near-invincibility of Utsusemi Ichi + Ni combined with the absurd power of loads of Fast Cast + Haste. RDM/NIN even has better equal or better enmity tools than PLD when properly geared and supported due to the way enmity works and the spells at their disposal.

In other words, the real problem isn't that PLD is bad. It's that RDM/NIN is too good.

I've been ranting about how broken Utsusemi is as a game mechanic for years and this is a shining example of why this is true.


Icemage

Could not agree more.

If they wanted to include Blink as a spell in the game, they coulda just made it that Copy Image gives you 1 and Copy Image 2 gives you 2. Then they coulda threw in Copy Image 3 and let you have 3. That would be 6 images if your a ninja and 3 if you sub it.... which..... ok well that gives you some ability to still tank if your NIN....

.... so they should have scrapped Copy Image all together and let it give you more evasion instead.....

Let's hope in XIV Copy Image is DED DED DED DED die kill murder

Historically, NIN is a super DD in Final Fantasy. In fact, its sick killer twisted in Tactics..... wth (and doesn't have Blink, but has an Invisible move that lets you get ignored by mobs unless you attack... but you really don't want your NIN to ever get attacked because he's a glass cannon if you will...... NIN is all about speed and 1 hit kills)

[Lmnop]

Yeah but game balance. Can't have Ninja be a super duper killer when that's the role of countless other jobs. Also, Ninjas had Blink in FF5. Also also, I like Utsusemi. Just not in its current (unbreakable) form.

[Icemage]

Originally Posted by Lmnop

Yeah but game balance. Can't have Ninja be a super duper killer when that's the role of countless other jobs. Also, Ninjas had Blink in FF5. Also also, I like Utsusemi. Just not in its current (unbreakable) form.

I like the concept of blinking away attacks, but 100% absorption is absurd. If there are 4 copies of you running about, and I choose one at random, I'm not going to miss you every single time. Blink and Utsusemi should do what they'd logically do - which is give your opponent a 1/(x+1) chance of hitting you, where x is the number of shadows you have up. Blink "sort of" works that way now. I have no idea why Utsusemi doesn't - at least that way they could make Utsusemi give more than 3 shadows - and also make Utsusemi : San viable.

The way things are now is beyond ridiculous, and I am perpetually surprised that no one has beaten Square-Enix over the head with how stupid their designers are for (a) coming up with such a broken gameplay mechanic and (b) not fixing it in all these years.


Icemage

[Callisto]

At the same time anyone who has ever used plain Blink can tell you in a clutch situation they'd wish it was anywhere near as broken. 150 HP, Stoneskin down, Blink up, vs. a mob who hits for 170 a pop? It's a given that Blink isn't going to proc.

Either way it's not like Utsusemi in itself is infallible, there's still several monsters with low delays and multi-hit/AoE TP moves that make things relatively even, and be it right or not the relative ease of kills in the game is more than made up for by the absolutely terrible drop rates. Yes they could unbreak a couple of spells and make a few mobs more challenging, but if everything else in the game remained the same it'd just take items that already take months to get even longer.