~First And Final Line Of Defense V2.0~

Anytime you are pulling a lot of mobs at once, like in Sheol C, SIRD is pretty essential. It's pretty easy to cap, but between not dropping HP between sets and most SIRD gear, you lose a lot of defensive stats (meva/def). It's fine for weaker fodder mobs.

You should be able to DT cap in SIRD, but for things doing a lot of magic damage like Odyssey bosses, I usually switch to a more defensive set that is around 60-70% SIRD and eat the interrupts to not die. I see this mistake made a lot and, to be fair, I had to learn this the hard way when fetters were out and the COR was taking less damage than I was b/c of my SIRD midcast. Some people just lock Sakpata in place, but if you have some of the Empy+3 pieces, their defensive stats are suitable and you can get some decent HP/FC/SIRD/enmity for those, so I have specific sets i use instead of just locking it in.

OP back. Gave up because I didn't expect any better responses. There are definitely circumstances explained by you two that are possible culprits. I haven't really played since before posting so I haven't tested to solve this but...

Sometimes I catch my FC set in equipviewer before it swaps to the SIRD set. This might be happening from macro mashing and then getting interrupted in the FC set?

I hadnt used showswaps because my battlemod is not right atm and my screen is spammed when I got 30 mobs around me. Ill have to fix that.

"2. OP got latency issues. either from slow cpu/gpu local performance or bad internet connection?"

Honestly very likely the culprit. Ryzen 3 igfx with 2 other clients running. I should start being sure to shutdown the other characters when I do segment runs or similar content where latency is already a normal issue to begin with.

Thanks guys

edit: grammar

If the issue persists after taking everything else into account, I will post the code and sets.

If you're on the windower discord (he probably going to chop my balls off for saying this and hate me forever), but ask Kenshi for some guidance and help.

I'm sorry Kenshi dont kill me

appreciate pointers and suggestions on what to improve please

TP/Melee (for anything but true end-game content)
ItemSet 391713
Savage Blade (Nyame R25B)
ItemSet 391714
Starting point Tanking. Need help on this the most I think
ItemSet 391715

Will be updating post to add other sets. I've got about 8-10 hours worth of GS .lua's to edit/make
(If I post GS LUA code here, is there a way to get the item sets to use that to update? its time consuming to add each set in manually)


**Important Newb news flash**
Don't put Aegist on your PLD.
I just got my *** handed to me practicing on AA MR.
Couldn't figure out wtf was going wrong.
Then an hour later after I gave up, noticed I had AegiST equiped not AegIS.
doh

Careful with the Empy body. 3x dyna in a row the pld has taken 4k+ damage from SU5 NMs wearing that. SE never fixed it.

Savage Blade is not fTP-replicating, so you don't want to use Fotia gorget/belt. Also, as an FYI: Because it is not fTP-replicating, you won't see an increase in damage from multi-attack procs (DA/TA, etc) in your Savage Blade set.

See: https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Category:FTP_Replicating_WS

Another reason I guess AA MR destroyed me.
Relic+2/3 Surcout or Sakpata's Breastplate then instead?

So just pile on STR/ATK on belt+neck (can't think of anything else)

If you have access to Sakpata then something more like this would be better for tanking.

ItemSet 383163

Personally I wouldn't use the Empy till +3, but it's fine at +2, not generally going to be a big deal.

/shrug
Personally Im tanking in sakpata body. It really is a shame SE doesnt seem to want to fix the empy body but

What augments do you have on the cape, while tanking? (I like the Enemy Crit hit rate minus, you got there. Are there any PLD magic sets that can't get capped SIRD, that would benefit from reduced enemy crit hit rate? ....I know it's extremely niche).

Hp/Eva/Meva/Enmity. Set is capped DT I believe (unless I suck at counting). I personally don't use the Enemy Crit- accessories in any midcast sets only cause a lot of the times I'm using those slots to make up for lost stats like DT, Cure Potency, or SIRD.

Is that melee and engaged/tp/dd tanking or unengaged just casting spells using JA's for hate?
I haven't done any end game tanking yet, so seriously asking.
Also the haste isn't capped, so I am assuming it isn't engaged?

This is a not engaged set. I change my Engage set up depending on what I'm fighting/what buffs I have. Like I have a standard engage set which is pretty much that same set with a sailfi belt, then burt AM3, a full meva/turtle set that now caps haste engaged thanks to Lehko ring, a GS TP and AM3 set for Calad, and various others. Really depends on what you're doing/want, but for the most part since your main focus is staying alive I don't focus too heavily on changin sets to optimize for TP gain while engaged and tanking (except my BURT AM3 set, which I only use when safe).

Yeah Lehko's is really nice. that 10% haste is opening up all kinds of sets for me.
thanks for the clarification on the engaged vs unengaged set.

So in building all sets I've been trying to maintain HP balance and not cause 10%+ HP drops but, I've encountered an issue that the community must be aware of and that is, swapping which slots provide bulk HP can still cause max HP loss before it is rerisen.

It seems to happen when swapping HP bulk from a lower index slot to a higher index slot. For instance, while naked other than 1 piece, swapping the HP bulk from body to hands (removing the body) will drop max HP before raising it back but swapping from hands to body will not cause this. I quick tested it with vanilla equip sets to be sure. I'm not positive if gearswap follows the same precedence a equip sets since it came before and does not use the equip sets packet.

So what do people do to leverage this issue? I've returned to playing PLD recently so I'm not up to speed. Should I just implement a "HP buffer" set to equip before each intended set is then after equipped lol? This issue has affected my gear sets.

I vaguely recall there being some sort of slot equipping priority to add in if you assign a slot with a table instead of just a string, but I'm not sure and haven't found any sources utilizing it. Maybe I'm mistaken.

you can force gear to swap in a certain order in gearswap

You can add a priority to items with a lot of HP using gearswap:


Put the higher HP pieces with a higher priority value.

I could be mistaken on how it works, but I don't think sets equip all at once, it seems to be some sort of sequential or ordered operation. If you aren't specifying a priority, then it may replace a high HP piece before the piece you are using to offset the HP loss is equipped, resulting in the HP drop.

You're not mistaken. Gearswap fills in slots from high priority number to low (I do 13-0 if that helps). There's some commentary on it if you google.

One trick someone said was if you have several just +HP pieces then you can assign them the same value. For example all priority 13.

Finally, not sure if someone said this, but MP > HP equips are last calculated so you have to juggle MP in there as well and not swap in too soon.

Priority values support a large range of values, including negative ones. So often the simplest way to assign priority is simple to set the priority to the HP value on the item. Priority=250 works just fine, and it'll equip the highest value piece first. And you can set priority -x on anything that has a negative value, and it will equip last. It's not perfect as it can't account for the set you are changing from, but in the vast majority of cases this will prevent any significant HP lost when changing between sets of similar HP values.

Can anyone please copy pasta an example from their lua?

Instead of looking at every set and deciding which pieces have higher priority and assigning them set hierarchy within each individual set, assign each piece instead with a number of how much that particular piece has. And since the higher the number, the higher priority it is for swapping first, let gearswap do the work. For example, assign Unmoving Collar +1 a priority tag of 200 instead of 16~. Hope I made since, and yes it works. For a piece like platinum moogle belt (+10% HP) just assign it an arbitrary number like 300.

Example

sets.precast.FC = {
main={ name="Sakpata's sword", priority=100}, --10
sub={ name="Nibiru Shield", priority=80}, --7
ammo={ name="Egoist's Tathlum", priority=45},
head={ name="Carmine Mask +1", augments={'Accuracy+20','Mag. Acc.+12','"Fast Cast"+4',}, priority=38}, --14
--head={ name="Sakpata's Helm", priority=91}, -- -4FC than carmine but +53HP
body={ name="Rev. Surcoat +3", priority=254}, --10
hands={ name="Leyline Gloves", priority=25}, --8
--legs={ name="Souv. Diechlings +1", augments={'HP+105','Enmity+9','Potency of "Cure" effect received +15%',}, priority=162},
legs={ name="Enif Cosciales", priority=40}, --8
feet={ name="Odyssean Greaves", augments={'"Fast Cast"+6','INT+6',}, priority=20}, --11
--feet={ name="Carmine Greaves +1", augments={'HP+80','MP+80','Phys. dmg. taken -4',}, priority=95}, -- -3FC for +75HP
neck={ name="Unmoving Collar +1", priority=200},
--waist={ name="Oneiros Belt", priority=55},
waist={ name="Plat. Mog. Belt", priority=300},
left_ear={ name="Etiolation Earring", priority=50}, --1
--left_ear={ name="Tuisto Earring", priority=150},
right_ear="Loquac. Earring", --2
--left_ear={ name="Zwazo Earring +1", priority=45},
left_ring={name="Moonlight Ring", bag="wardrobe2", priority=110},
right_ring={ name="Gelatinous Ring +1", priority=110},
--back={ name="Moonlight cape", priority=275},
back={ name="Rudianos's Mantle", augments={'HP+60','Eva.+20 /Mag. Eva.+20','HP+20','"Fast Cast"+10','Phys. dmg. taken-10%',}, priority=80}, --10
}

Hmmm. I suppose I'll need to do some edits to the guide soon. /cries a little inside.

Do you have an only fans? Lol

Thank you very much. Wish I knew about this back in the Tiamat tanking days. The HP cure bombing would have went a lot easier.

That was Spellcast back then, similar but different.

which spells for /BLU tanking?

I usually use

cocoon - Utility
pollen - HP+5
wild oats - HP+10
sheep song - AoE enmity/Auto-regen(1/2)/HP+5
healing breeze - Auto-regen(2/2)/HP+5
soporific - AoE Enmity
screwdriver - HP+10/VIT+1
blank gaze - Single Target spammable enmity
stinking gas - AoE enmity(Slower cast time)
geist wall - AoE Enmity(Use first, lowest recast)
jettatura - Conal enmity
ML 10+
magnetite cloud - MDB trait(1/2)
ice break - MDB trait(2/2)

with some MLs, frightful roar might be useful if it lands.

It can land. sometimes. But even in a massive macc set, it's not terribly reliable even for relatively low level stuff.

It's really too bad they set the CE to 1 rather than 320. If it had been 320/320 CE/VE, then it'd be the best AoE blue magic enmity spell due to the low recast, and you'd have the chance to land def- at the same time.. instead it's only got 320 VE... /sigh