Gearing PLD 2024

Currently being used by your DDs.

well we started to derail but it looks like you pulled back in the reigns a little lol, thanks for letting me know you keep it quite up-to-date, I will continue tracking down the gear and getting what I can upgraded. Just started unlocking all of the sortie zones last night so hopefully I can start farming today.

Not quite. It's a little more than "gearswap users can use a fast cast set." They can have infinite amounts of toggles and gearsets that automatically swap instantly when the time is right, uses in-combat and out-of-combat versions, per spell gearsets without having to use a macro etc.. A manual user is going to have a /wait 1 between their swaps and not have room for all of the different sets they need.

Outright, I have twice as many BASE sets because I have a "dynamis" and a non-dynamis version for everything that swaps Empy body in/out. It's basically the best tank body in the game for almost all sets, unless you are in Dynamis where you can't wear it at all because SE still won't fix the glitch that makes fomors one-shot you in there with it on. A non-lua user can also do this, but they are gonna have to use up valuable macro and gearset space, again, with an extra wait 1.

None of this is going to prevent you from doing the same content, but it will be subpar to someone else with the same gear and skill, assuming they know how to set up their lua properly.

Also, lua or no lua you are going to want more sets than that. A static tanking set isn't that great. You want one for Magic tanking with an Aegis, one for physical tanking with a Duban/Ochain and preferably another for Hybrid fights. A warder's charm and shadow ring won't do ***on an all-physical fight, but are phenomenal on magic/hybrid fights. You also want a non-SIRD set to cast in for fights where you aren't getting interrupted but are at risk of getting one-shot by mobs in a SIRD set, like Ody boss fights.


"Just fine" being the key words here. Lua or not, I'd suggest looking into some of these things and expanding your sets and gear, it will make you a good tank instead of a "just fine" one.

I think we need to make a distinction between having the piece of equipment, and making gear-sets out of them.

99% of the sets mentioned above are all you need. You don't really need niche tanking sets for segfarm, for example.

If you are going to fight Kalunga V25... just go to your lua and set shield to Aegis, neck to warder charm etc. You only really need to optimize for the common case. Having sets specific for dyna, for example, is really optional. Your goto segfarm set is beyond good enough for old content.

He's trying to make the same point I make on a routine basis about GS vs equipsets: having toggles is invaluable for different situations and highly impractical in a macro/equipset situation.

Say you want a weapon lock toggle, a SIRD toggle, a shield toggle, and a physical/magical toggle. Even if these each only have 1 configuration (on/off) then you're looking at a minimum of 16 macro sets to implement this in a macro/equipset scenario, where for GS your lua file just gets bigger and you have 1 set of macros for all of those scenarios.

I was actually just trying to minimize the entry-level requirement for PLD. I think you guys covered the most important sets already which are your tanking, phalanx, sird, sird-cure, max enmity sets. The magic, hybrid, dyna or whatever other set you need is really just a small variation of your segfarm set.

Fair point, I think the reason I say it's more complicated isn't because of the # of sets but rather because of the complexity of the stats in those sets. If you don't have a piece of Souveran+1 gear, for example, you could put on a different enmity piece but that one might be missing 7-12% DT and 200+ HP compared to the Souv piece, so making an entry-level set isn't just "fill this in with the next best" because that might uncap your DT, make your HP swing wildly, or cause other problems.

If you're on WHM and don't have capped -enmity in your cure set, you won't have the same kind of issues. Similarly, if your BLM has a bit less MAB, you won't have the same problem, ditto SAM, etc.

Someone can say "here are my sets, if you have every one of these pieces it will work" but if you go into substitutions you can blood aggro undead, cause people to be spamming cures on you, or be taking unnecessary damage/get hit by unnecessary debuffs, etc.

While discussing that though, a whole second conversation started about GS vs vanilla so I was kind of discussing both at once. Anywho...it's not too complicated and getting a basic PLD off the ground is fine, but it's not quite as template-y as other jobs, IMO.

While I share your opinion on some of what you mentioned. My point was more directed at the fact that gearswap isn't as necessary as people make it out to be. It's a quality of life thing and will make your life easier playing the job with toggles, settings, modes etc but not required... provided as you said, the player actually understands the job and can actually play it well. Most content the players know what to expect and can easily adapt/change sets accordingly. Very rarely do you truly need to change on the fly in this game. It's just not that fast paced with multiple encounters requiring vastly different set ups lol.

Don't get me wrong, I use gearswap, as does 90% of the community I imagine. But for years I didn't and I never found myself struggling in content up to and including Odyssey. I am quite invested in PLD, so I am confident in my sets and play time with the job.

Also, outside of a SIRD/Enmity piece... I would never opt for empy body full time, It's a good piece, but there are better options for the slot imo. It is a shame that its bugged though, mine has just been collecting dust since.

This 100% ^^ lol

I mean you say it's just a swap or two but...swapping warder charm on your neck could uncap your DT or put your idle set HP down 200 (if you use Unmoving Collar), swapping the ring could lose you 150 HP or also uncap your DT...

For your phalanx set, does that include Sakpata's sword and Priwen? What if you want to cast Phalanx while tanking 20 mobs, do you have a SIRD phalanx set?

Depends how well you want to play PLD.

Yeah exactly, I have two phalanx sets. SIRD and Max. Max will swap sword and shield unless I disable the slot and there is no emphasis on SIRD. Which sometimes I do, because I know I can get away with a stronger phalanx and just time casting appropriately. But I had before, just two separate macros.

More importantly I believe this thread was about gearing PLD. Sooo there are distinct "core" sets that should be worked on as a primary goal. IMO those are the sets I listed previously. That does not include JA swaps as those aren't "sets" nor was I attempting to include any niche sets.

its high DT(with capped hate), high sird, high enmity, high HP, high meva/acc/atk/def. As an all in one its pretty good though id say its best as a sird piece, outside of the already mentioned interaction with dyna fomors(or fomors that can use player WS in general?)

Completely unnecessary. Between shield block rate on Ochain/Duban, Reprisal, and Sentinel, as long as you recast Phalanx before it wears, you can reapply a max potency phalanx reliably (1-2 casts) even holding 64+ mobs.

I used to have a SIRD Phalanx set. Paying close attention and good timing works better than a weak Phalanx.

Everyone has their preferences, but PLD has a lot of options to build effective sets these days. The community guide has great suggestions to work towards, and it does a good job of breaking down the choices you have to make to have swaps that don't yo-yo your HP all over the place. Doing it with gearsets instead of lua is definitely hard mode, though.

Enmity, Fast Cast, Cure, and separate Physical/Magical Tanking sets is a solid foundation. Depending on where you're starting from and how much you get interrupted, you may want SIRD in some sets; The value SIRD provides to, say, an unmastered Priwen PLD is very different compared to a ML45+ PLD with Duban and access to Aquaveil from /run.

My entire point was simply countering his assertion that "outside of FC," the only thing luas really offer over in-game macros and equipsets is FC for PLD. I thought it was ridiculous because luas offer a LOT for all jobs, especially PLD, that vanilla does not. Way beyond simple QoL changes.

While I am sure my wording came off antagonistic, especially with my last line, which was intentional, I'm not trying to insinuate people need to use luas or that you are bad if you don't, I was simply explaining some of the ways luas vastly improve your ability to PLD for fights, all in terms of preparation, in-battle usage and automated functions that just don't work without it. You either don't have room for 200 macros or you spend 15 seconds digging through macro pages to find the one you need in the middle of a crucial moment of a boss fight, when a lua can simply equip the proper sets when you cast a spell from the menu or from shortcuts in chat.

Luas are not necessary to do any content in the game if you are good enough and geared, sure, but the benefits and increased effectiveness are undeniable.