Hello Fellow PLD

[Malacite]

Re: Hello Fellow PLD

Curing is an important, even integral, part of the Paladin job - only a nutcase would deny that. What too many people don't realize, however, is the Paladin's own base damage output is at least as important. Even if nothing else, it at least gives all your other many hate-generating Abilities something consistent and significant to build upon.

Exactly. While I prefer to Cure as little as possible, that doesn't mean I don't do it - I just prefer to dump as much of my MP into Flash & Reprisal while using DD gear because I can consistently keep a high threshold of enmity that way. Generally, unless I'm dieing or someone just took hate and none of my relative abilities are up (Cover, Voke, flash, etc) then I will cure for a spike. But Curing tends to bleed MP a lot faster than Flash & Reprisal do, and offers far less damage mitigation particularly against Colibri where you're bound to land a flash now and then just before a Pecking Flurry, sometimes causing it to miss completely.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Hello Fellow PLD

Here's my criticism - you appear to have gotten to the point where you're doing little more for your arguments than hiding behind copy-pasta'd walls of anecdotal numbers which I (and I'm sure most other forum-goers) don't want to even bother trying to crunch. We're not all Armando over here, you know.

Anyway, the major fallacy of using anecdotes for argument is the tendency to pick one incident and say "This is the norm." To avoid cherry picking,

1. I used parser, so each set of data contained multiple fights--i.e. multiple events over a substantial period of time. Together, they represent hours and hours of partying.
2. I didn't look at the results of the parse before picking them. Basically, I went backwards in my collection of parses, and the first five parses of exp parties with PLDs were what I used. I also excluded my own PLD from the first five to avoid bias. (Not that I've done exp parties on PLD recently.)

I also avoided making strong claims based on those data; essentially all I've said was "The PLDs in my party was did better HP/min curing than Armando's max limit."

Armando gave us a model to derive the maximum amount of per minute curing possible for a PLD with Refresh. If the model is useful--if his per minute figure is to be trusted--then it must predict with some accuracy what happens in real parties.

The data I presented seems to indicated that Armando's prediction was off--so, it calls into question the way he modeled the problem. Now, my data doesn't tell us how to get to the right number for max HP cured per minute--it just says it's off for the kind of parties I've had.

I think I've been reasonably careful, and avoided cherry picking and overstating my case.

Well, since this discussion is obviously about tanking, I would hope it would be safe to assume that the DD's aren't going to go absolutely "balls to the wall" without knowing for certain that it would seal the mob's fate within an amount of time too short for it to cause any harm. In other words, you have it backwards: in a party with a tank, it is the DD's obligation to stay under the tank's hate line at all times (lest they learn that a dead DD does no damage), not the tank's obligation to stay above the DD's. The tank's goal is simply to keep that line up as consistently high as possible, and I can guarantee you that they will have a heck of an easier time accomplishing that if they are not gimping their damage output.

So, you think the tank's goal is to keep "the line up as consistently high" as possible, but you reject my idea of "generate enmity fast and early"? They do not seem mutually exclusive to me.

Keep in mind I do also want PLDs to put on some DD gear when the recovery resource can support it.

In terms of actual play, the biggest difference between what I advocate and what Armando advocates is not waiting for enough HP for Cure IV, and instead go for Cure III's to get the enmity sooner (and thus sacrifice a bit of swing time).

Heck, even in the worst case scenario of the Souleater-crazy Dark Knight, you could always just save your Cover ability for when they decide to pop it (Cover's recast is 5 minutes, versus Souleater's 6 minutes).

Cover's recast is 3 minutes. The duration is quite short, though; ~15 seconds or so. Souleater lasts 1 minute, in comparison.

Odds are the mob is going to die within the next 15 seconds, anyway, simply from the extra DPS that suddenly isn't very problematic anymore.

Now, that's a very convenient assumption/made-up scenario for your argument--"Most critter will die while Cover is up!"

And here I am, thinking hard how to avoid the pitfall of using real data from real parties. lol.

They'll really only be problematic if they want to be uncooperative, in which case they literally have a death wish. Not to mention, hey, free HP to cure for spike hate, amirite?

First of all, with Souleater, a DRK at high HP with good hit rate can do damage fast, and gain enmity fast. So, the better a PLD (and healer) can keep a DRK's HP high, the faster the DRK can generate enmity. Second, if you want to use the PLD's damage output to match--you can't. Just not possible unless the DRK is whiffing most (if not all) of his hits.

Basically, tanking wise, you're darned if you're curing, and you're darned if you're swinging. (Your best hope is Cover + Sentinel, for ~45 seconds worth of tanking, really.)

Looking at it another way,Souleater is a JA for converting converting the healer's (and the PLD's) resource into damage, and in practice any strong DRK with Souleater up will become 'tank' due to the SE's enmity spike and its effect on damage output.

That opens up an interesting question: if your goal is for the party to kill as fast as possible, do you swing sword, or spend the time to cure the DRK with Souleater up?

Curing is an important, even integral, part of the Paladin job - only a nutcase would deny that.

Yeah,Malacite, see that? Even YM is dissing you.

What too many people don't realize, however, is the Paladin's own base damage output is at least as important.

I hate you. Making grandiose proclamations like that makes me scurry back to the parser data looking for evidence for and against.

I'll take your words to mean "PLD generates more enmity from damage output than from curing." Here are the original five parties, augment with PLD's output data: (Keep in mind I didn't think of comparing the damage output numbers directly to the curing amount until you mentioned it, so it's definitely not a case of picking only cases where the data look favorable for me.)

2010.02.20 (SCH58)
PLD d.In% 69.23%
PLD d.Out% 9.66%
PLD d.Out 55703
PLD Cure 36775
Fight Time: 3:52
# Fights 167
HP/min 158.51
HP/fight 220.21
PLD Tyiara
DNC Pipsqeek (Aspir Samba)

2010.01.03 (SCH60-61)
PLD d.In% 90.87%
PLD d.Out% 9.20%
PLD d.Out 15892
PLD Cure 24532
Fight Time: 1:54
# Fights 43
HP/min 215.19
HP/fight 570.51
PLD Semper
RDM Anthenia

2009.11.27 (SCH68-69) *
PLD d.In% 68.30%
PLD d.Out% 4.77%
PLD d.Out 17762
PLD Cure 25715
Fight Time 1:56
# Fights 91
HP/min 221.68
HP/fight 282.58
PLD Way
BRD Guland

2009-11-21_001 (SCH69-70)
PLD d.In% 81.82%
PLD d.Out% 5.76%
PLD d.Out 12255
PLD Cure 21119
Fight Time 2:01
# Fights 87
HP/min 174.54
HP/fight 242.75
PLD Slyth
(no MP recovery support)

2009-08-16_001 (SAM61)
PLD d.In% 92.54%
PLD d.Out% 3.56%
PLD d.Out 7319
PLD Cure 39815
Fight Time 1:33
# Fights 50
HP/min 428.12
HP/fight 796.30
PLD Ayumiko
RDM Ninjintsu

The "PLD d.In%" is how much of the total damage received by the party were on the PLD during the course of the parse. (Subtract that from 100%, and you'll have the amount of damage taken by the other party members as a percentage.) This can be considered a very rough measure of a PLD/WAR's tanking performance, IMO.

There's not enough data to draw a strong conclusion, but the best DD'ing PLD (who happen to have the lowest curing to damage output ratio) perform the second worst in terms of "PLD d.In%". You also have to ask if it's really a coincident that the strong performing PLDs all had high HP cured to damage done ratios. (* Only exception is the "2009.11.27 (SCH68-69)" parse, where the PLD had good curing performance, but not so great tanking performance.)

Combined, they should give you pause before you assert "Paladin's own base damage output is at least as important [as curing]" next time. ( i.e. In the typical exp parties, which has stronger influence on tanking performance? Curing, or doing damage?)

If you're open minded, that is. If so, you should be asking those questions honestly.


* 2009.11.27 (SCH68-69) had some interesting characteristics I found as I look at the parse more closely:
1. BRD/WHM puller. Taking damage on pull (while in range of me) diluted the PLD's performance numbers.
2. Imps have AoE -ga, which when not stunned, further diluted the "PLD d.In%" figure.

As I said, shouldn't draw strong conclusions from those data--it's more of a sanity check than anything. Real world data is just messy like that.



* * *

And, one of my own PLD's parse:

2009-07-20_001 (PLD57)
PLD d.In% 88.21%
PLD d.Out% 6.55%
PLD d.Out 6238
PLD Cure 9389
Fight Time 0:32
# Fights 26
HP/min 293.41
HP/fight 361.12
PLD Itazura
RDM Eclipes
Note: I found out I copied the wrong number for "PLD Cure" earlier and plugged that into the spreadsheet; the numbers revised are in italic.

[Malacite]

Re: Hello Fellow PLD

Yeah,Malacite, see that? Even YM is dissing you.

No he's not. (for once)

[Nuriko]

Re: Hello Fellow PLD

In terms of actual play, the biggest difference between what I advocate and what Armando advocates is not waiting for enough HP for Cure IV, and instead go for Cure III's to get the enmity sooner (and thus sacrifice a bit of swing time).

Add to that the urge the mage gets to toss you a cure when they see you taking damage and not doing anything about it. You know they're out there ... the ones that consider yellow HP a critical emergency.

[ShepardG]

Re: Hello Fellow PLD

Got by Bahamuts mask last night FY!

[Mageta]

Re: Hello Fellow PLD

I know this is OT, but does anyone know of a good LS to be in on sylph? I am in one that isn't very busy, nor social, nor.... well..... active.