Post your hate holding strategies here.

[xcalibur2k]

Hi Garrick,

Just like you, I am also a low level elvaan Paladin (lvl 24 atm). When I was PTing in Valkurm Dunes, I don't usually have trouble keeping hate. But they are mostly due to Cure(s).

Here is my strategy (works 90% of the time).
Provoke when the mob approaches, then Cure twice in between the mob attacks then provoke again. After that I would do Cure in between mob's 2 swings and provoke again. Repeat last step until mob is dead.
If the fight gets out of hand, use Shield Bash.

Usually I made a point to politely ask teh WHM to not heal me until I get into a certain HP threshold (determine what HP threshold works best for you).

Also I notice that you are using Banish. Maybe that is the source of your MP trouble. I never used Banish ever (well..maybe once when I was testing it out the first time when i got it).

Anyway, I hope these helped you in one way or another. Safe journey...

[Alistarn]

Ok, I'm just a lv 26 PLD (So I'm pretty much a noob)

Here's what I usually do to keep hate:

1.) Provoke
2.) Use cure 1 each time the enemy attacks.
3.) If the monster is attacked by a strong attack and I lose hate when provoke isn't ready, I slip a cure II to that party member.
4.) I do occasional Shield Bashes.
5.) When my TP actually hits the 100 mark, I use Red Lotus or try to chain.
6.) Cure II when HP is in the yellow.


That's what I do as a medium leveled PLD, but hearing from what Sidewinder Does kinda makes me wonder if I can really keep hate from that. ._.;;

[Somajan]

At level 30 it gets tougher with the fuidama and Soul Eater and Last Resort that Darks and Thieves get.

I even had a party with a thief and two dark knights, needless to say, it was quite difficult to hold the hate.

If anything, tell your dark knights to use their damage increasing abilities during the middle of battle instead of at the beginning. It helps because the monster would have alreayd formed a type of association against you, also it means that your hate has already been deeply rooted within the mind of a monster.

Another tip: Start with a cure II and update with a cure here and there, under 30 you'll have no problem with said strategy, and it'll save you a lot of mp. And don't forget to use provokes every 30 seconds, and start a battle with a shield bash/sentinel, unless you're fighting goblins, then save the shield bashes and make your way with sentinel.

[Arnda]

At around 33-35, I recommend forgoing Cure entirely in favor of using Cure II as a mainstay with Cure III for emergencies and major hate recovery (i.e. a Sneak/Trick Viper Bite early in a fight on someone who isn't you :mad: ). I'm not at the point yet where I can use Cure III extensively, so that should do you for a while thereafter. Seriously though, once you hit Yhoator Cure isn't gonna cut it anymore.

(p.s. despite what the sig says, I just got back from another. 2-0-0! I got Absorb-STR ))

[Somajan]

At level 31-32 the yhoator mandragoras were doing a little over a cure's worth of damage to me I had no problem in the party.

But now at level 34 I'm seen monsters that literally hit me for about 40 at a time, sometimes twice (Beastmen at that level hit HARD). Since my recent stint in Altepa, I changed my curing macro to a cure II and used a cure III since it's now only used for emergencies. (it does 165! at 34!) and the occaisional emergency hate thingy, but I found that just a simple Cure II after a strong nuke from the blm does the trick.

About Banish, I really don't use it, to me its only something that you have and nothing really all that special. Your divine is going to increase, dramatically, at level 37 when you get flash. Also Banish 2 at level 34 did about 105 damage my first time using it, but since the casting time is so long, you're gonna be interrupted mid-cast. Best to leave the mages to do all that stuff.

[Arnda]

I'm starting to toss in a Banish (I or II) or two, now that Divine is going up and Refresh is more readily available. I don't recommend this unless you're hume or taru and have Refresh and plenty of MP each fight. As imac has said, he never seems to run out as a Galka, so your extra MP's not going to do you any good if you don't USE it.

Banish may not do much, but with raised Divine I think it might be an okay hate source to use Banish/Holy in with Flash and Cures after 40. I'm still experimenting with it. The only advantage I can see to it is that, if you're competently keeping yourself healed and the healer isn't slacking with Regen and Cures, and Flash is still cycling, AND you have more MP than you're going to need, then the Banish/Holy line actually has a use since it's the only remaining way to convert MP into aggro, which is the whole point of PLDs having MP at all.

But again, is it enough to really be worth the bother? I'm not so sure yet. Banish is notoriously lousy, even with higher Divine skill.

[Claritin]

Aggro

I have found at lvl 39 that Using Flash then Provoke works great.... just those 2 alone will do almost all the work that needs done.

If for some reason you don't have aggro and flash and provoke are not reset... a Simple blast aof Cure III gets the aggro back almost all the time.

However if you are smart and plan ahead of time... you will tell the WHM to never heal you to full. pick a number of HPs that is easy to see that is about 80-90% of your max HP... tell them not to heal unless you hit that.

Use Cure II to keep yourself topped off whenever you feel like aggro might slip.... if you think you have enough aggro just let it hit you 1 or 2 more times and the WHM will heal you.

Speaking as someone who has played a WHM I can tell you... a single BIG heal generates alot more aggro than a bunch of little ones. If you need aggro.. and need it fast.. pull out the big guns. If you don't beleive me.. ask any WHM why they prefer to use Regen and a lower cure than just using big cures... they will give 2 reasons 1.) mana conservation 2.) aggro....

Banish on the other hand... is useless for aggro... it does very low damage.. has a high mana cost.. and low aggro gain. This is the reason why the lvl 15 that posted is running out of mana. Skip Banish... stick to heals.

Also as a side note to the lvl 15 (BTW I am not picking on you... I am trying to help) is that casting heals manages the aggro on 2 different levels.... Banish and flash only work on 1. I know that sounds stupid... but let me continue.

You are constantly fighting for aggro... but depending on your lvl you are fighting for aggro against different jobs. Knowing the job you are fighting against is half the battle.

At most of the middle to lower levels the person you are fighting to keep aggro from is the WHM... they can out-aggro any other job with no problem.

Now this knowledge is useful.. because you need to do 2 things to hold aggro.
1.) INCREASE your aggro (the 1st lvl of aggro management)
2.) DECREASE the WHM's aggro (the 2nd lvl I was referring to)

Now... how do you decrease a WHM's aggro? Well... what is it that the WHM has to do that causes them to gain aggro? HEAL.

Alright so If we can reduce the amount of healing the WHM does... you reduce his/her aggro... AND you increase yours.... so you did TWO LEVELS of aggro management!

So the solution is simple... use all your mana to heal people if you see the WHM getting aggro. This will allow them to heal less and let some of thier aggro fade.

When you hit about lvl 40 you notice you are fighting for aggro against DRK and RNG... so Healing to reduce WHM aggro is not as important.... and this is OK because at lvl 37 you get flash... and this does 2 things also.
1.) INCREASES your aggro
2.) It lowers the monsters ACC which helps the DRK or RNG evade a few hits while you figure out what you want to do next (often shield bash or flat-blade (if you have the TP rdy) to stun the mob so that STILL very low dmg is being done by the enemy.)

I hope that helps you.

[intranet69]

i didnt read all the replies so sorry if someones already mentioned this....

if you find urself low on mp because of no rdm

drink some juice^^

[Somajan]

I'm crazy about macros so take a gander at how I work...

/ja "Provoke" <t>
/wait 1
/ma "Flash" <t>
/wait 15
/ja "Sentinel" <p0>

15 second delay between flash and sentinel since that's about the average amount of time that passes until flash will wear off. Could be sooner, I'll adjust accordingly when I get more info.

Random cure II, maybe one or two then after I can feel the time is right I start to hit this macro until it goes off:

/ja "Provoke" <t>
/wait 15
/echo Flash ready.
/wait 14
/ja "Provoke" <t>
/echo Rar.

When the flash ready sign pops up I hit the Flash key as much as possible, if I'm slowed then I'll keep hitting that key until it finally goes off, kind of an odd spell though.

The reason why I have two provoke macros in one, is because around the second flash, the monster already hates you a lot that it wouldn't care much about what anybody else did to you. I've been in parties with 2 dark knights, both using soul eater about 40 seconds apart from each other, and a thief using fuidama. At that point a decent provoke works well enough.

Also at the end of each battle I made a macro that eliminated any macros with a /wait command like this:
/echo safe

This way my double provoke wouldn't accidentally go off at the end of battle if I was randomly targetting a different monster (It killed me when I was fighting nest beetles one time I accidentally got a caveberry with it).

I also use this:
/ja "Shield Bash" <t>
/wait 1
/ja "Provoke" <t>
/wait 1
/ma "Flash" <t>

I switch off with the sentinel version and the shield bash macro, only if I'm fighting monsters that don't have a long charge attack ability. If we were fighting them, I'd save it until the monster started to charge up their uber ability.

Also makin an /ma "Cure II" <p0> helps speed things along as well, I've also made one for all 6 members of the party incase they ever need it.

About mp usage. I generally tend to use about half of my total mp per battle. If the need arises, I'll only go down to about 49 mp, but that doesn't happen a whole lot. Also it's really really cool to see all those things go off all at once.

[Arnda]

I'm personally of the opinion that elaborate macros are bad. I have tried longer or more complex macros and I am now convinced that less is more.

My Provoke macro is just that, /ja "Provoke" <t>. No annoucement, no timer-to-refresh, nothing. I just tap it more and more frequently as the timer winds down, and I always provoke immediately as it becomes available (or sometimes slightly before, thanks to lag).

My Flash macro announces I'm Flashing, and that's it. It is separate from my Provoke. Same thing with Shield Bash, Sentinel, and all my spells. I use <stpc> for Cures, then while the arrow is sitting above my head wait for an enemy swing and hit enter to confirm cast. I rarely get interrupted from this, and I can also do a rapid fan of the f1-f6 keys if the party needs healing. Cover is <stpc> as well, and is the only macro I use <call> with. Versatility is the key for me. I have WS macros that announce what I'm doing as well as a TP report thing, of course.

I do not announce my Cures, Sentinels, and Provokes in /p. The spam is really not necessary. I do announce Shield Bash and Flash, though I may remove the /p component from Flash. Frankly, my job is to hold hate. The only time you'd ever need to know that something is wrong, odds are you will know, because the mob won't be hitting me. And the only time THAT happens is when a Ranger pulls off me with a huge Barrage or WS or when a DRK gets Sneak/Tricked off when they're using Soul Eater + Last Resort ( :sweat: ). And in those cases the proper response is to stand still while I Cover. Easy.

I would argue that other people don't need to know what I'm doing if it's standard procedure. They only need to know when something infrequent or unusual is happening. Otherwise, it's best to leave the chat uncluttered with pointless announcements that I Provoked 15 seconds ago and will do so again in 15 more.

[Somajan]

This has more to do with playstyle then with anything else. I got used to making elaborate macros due to boredom and experimentation and it works for me a lot. A lot of times announcements are really annoying, which is the reason why I eliminated my old signature "Rar." from the macro itself, and kept it within the confines of the /echo command.

for me though, if I kept the provoke macro going automatically with the 15 second timer that's also in echo. also I tend to play a lot differently than most people due because that's just me.

[Kagi]

I mentally divide what I need to do in between provokes. The provokes every 30 seconds are like borders that segment the battle into 30 second chunks in my head.

I like to separate a battle into 2 hazy sections: 1) building hate, and 2) maintaining hate. Then I combine this with the 'dividing-fight-into-provokes' thing and designate the first 2 'provoke chunks' to building hate (sometimes the first 3 if the damage output is high, like Kai mentioned), and the rest to maintaining.

So it goes something like this:
1st provoke chunk (between 1st provoke and 2nd provoke): Flash, *insert Job Ability here*, Cure2/3
2nd provoke chunk (between 2nd provoke and 3rd provoke): Cure2/3, Flash, at least 2 spells casted in this chunk
3rd provoke chunk onwards: drop to only one spell in the middle of chunks, and keep at it for the rest of the fight
NB: if the fight is extra long and dragged out for some reason I insert a 'building hate' chunk in between 'maintaining hate' chunks for good measure

What I like about this is that it's easy to adapt for different party situations. Everyone should know that parties are hardly ever the same. By segmenting the fight, I can add or take away a spell as and when needed (for example in an average damage output party I would take out a spell from a maintaining hate chunk once in a while, or add an extra one if the party has very high damage). I got this system down to the point where in a RNG/THF party the mob would turn (to the RNG, after sidewinder) every time, yet I only needed one more cure2 for it not to turn.

If that sounds like gibberish it's because I don't know how else to explain it

Also I make sure I have at least one Job Ability for every fight. After 62 it got easier because I now have Rampart to spare too, which is great for hate-gathering along with Sentinel and Shield Bash. I normally couple Sentinel and Shield Bash in one fight, and Rampart the next, and alternate. There have been occasions where my pt pulled so fast that the timers had no time to refresh, so in those cases I just used only 1 ability and added one more hate-building chunk per fight.

My MP usage is normally about 1/4 to 1/3 my total mp per fight.

Lastly back when I was still learning about hate, I used to create mental 'bar graphs' that displayed party members' hate. Every time I provoked or got hit my bar went up or down (in my head), likewise for the drk/rng/mnk/damage dealer. It helped quite a bit, but now I just go by feel and roughly can tell how much hate a spell gives for a particular situation.

[Jaxon]

I do a little bit of both mentally and visually, rule of thumb for me is to voke every 30 seconds, everything else is a mix bag to build hate left and right between the 30 second provoke. I first voke, then as the hate slowly wears in 20 seconds I cast flash, right before the next voke is ready, after that maybe toss in cure3 or two to keep the hate depends on my hp. I usually let the mob hit me 200 or more before I toss in cure 3, I notice cure 3 builds more hate by how many hp we can heal not how many time we use it and healing 80 hp with cure 3 is not that great to build more hate. I always keep sentinel and Bash in seperate battles since I don't have rampart yet :sweat: almost 60 can't wait lol. One battle I use voke/flash/cure lines and sentinel, the next one same routine but replace by shield bash instead of sentinel pretty basic for me. Ah but of course there are times when hate gets out of hand by others and I have to use all those abilities in one battle to grab hate back. Luckly it doesn't happen to me since I party with my LS 90% of the time, I know and they know whats the load down as we level together.

I pull mob two different way
first one is provoke then *between 30 seconds anything to build hate, flash is my favorite* then voke is ready again, I use it to enforce my hate generating and cure lines after between flash cycling. Second way is I use Flash *between flash I voke to add extra lenght of hate* then flash is ready and rest is a mix bags of building hate myself with cures and other neat abilities. This is all playing style but I think the most important part obviously, is after you grab the hate you have to work hard to keep building hate at a steady pace that way even a drk or thf who pops in a 3 digit dmg the hate is still on you cause you earn it with all those hate building if you build the hate too fast with mob only at half health you might run into hate trouble when melee folks go bersek in between with you running of stuff to throw at the mob already :sweat:

[Claritin]

reply to jaxon

Yeah I agree with you you should not burn all your hate building as soon as fight starts.... you need to save something incase your provoke is not reset yet.

In my case I am a Hume.. I have a slightly better MP pool than you (if you are an elvann like your pic)

So what I do is try and leave the mana for a Cure III in there... my Heal skill is high (because I am also a 38 WHM) so my Cure III is right about cap... on lightsday it is over the cap. (hell it might be at cap now without lightsday I haven't been paying attention the last 2 lvls)

So if someone gets aggro I just blow off a Cure 3 on the person with aggro... this will move the aggro back to me almost every time... if it doesn't my provoke timer is probably near complete and that 180 HP heal I just blasted off on the person with the aggro will probably buy me enough time for provoke to reset.

However I think from Hume to Elvann the MP difference is barely enough mana every 3 fights to spare 1 extra Cure3... this is my "emergency mana" not an every fight thing.

I also try to use +ACC weaps over higher dmg ones or ones with +ATTK.. this gives me a higher hit ratio which I think helps with my hate.

Someone else has told me that when a creature fails to hit you it can not drop the hate you have built up... so I also use +evade equip whenever it has near the same DEF as the other gear at that lvl. (I currently have 1 Dodge earring (+3 evade) and 1 mithril earring (+2 evade -2 attk) soon to be 2 dodge when i get some cash)

[imac2much]

Not trying to single anyone out in particular, but I hope everyone realizes that Job Ability "spiked" hate is different than damage/magic "lasting" hate. This is a very simple concept that I thought most paladins knew by now.

At low levels, even up to 55, keeping hate is no big deal. It doesn't take too much effort, to tell the truth. Once you're playing with sidewinders, guilllotines, fuidama dancing edges on someone else, DRG/SAM penta spam, yukikaze spam, etc... well, let's just say controlling aggro gets more complicated, and you really need to know how aggro works in order to keep hate.

Using macros that automatically combine 2 or more job abilities is, well, a bad idea for lack of nicer words. Sure this may work at low-mid levels, but this is a very inefficient means of using your aggro building abilities, and makes you about as good as a NIN at keeping hate. Come on, the PLD's main advantage over other tanks is their ability to hold aggro better, so let's shine in that area!

Job abilities such as Provoke, Shield Bash, Sentinel, Rampart, all cause a "spike" of aggro onto yourself. This "spiked" aggro goes diminishes over time. On the other hand, magic (especially healing) and damage aggro supposedly does not diminish at all. The only way that aggro diminishes is as you keep getting hit.

What you want to do is Provoke and Flash *whenever you can*... this is essential, and I think every Paladin knows this by now. However, as for the other JA's... don't use them at the beginning of a battle or right after a Provoke! That's a mad waste of JA hate. Wait until 15 seconds between provoke or something, or right before/after a very damaging WS, and use the JA then let off a cure to keep the aggro. Honestly, if you're using SB/Sent/Ramp right after a Provoke at the beginning of a battle, you're just wasting the aggro since it will go away over time. Save the spike for when you truly need it.

And also it's sometimes a good idea to tell the WHM not to cure so often. Most PLD my level never let the WHM get aggro, so just tell them to throw a Regen II and lay low til you're 50% HP or something then Cure if need be... that way you can cast all the Cure III/IV's you need to get some nice "lasting" aggro.

Also, dodge earrings are worthless. They won't let you dodge any more hits than someone without dodge earrings. Well, maybe 1 extra dodge every 100 battles :sweat: