~First And Final Line Of Defense V2.0~

Burning Blade to Seraph blade can be repeated over and over until you get it

Pull 5-8 mobs in full Arke and you don't even need buffs, just come heals. You can self SC all day long.

Was curious on which different type of back cape augments i should get from ambuscade?

In order of priority

1) HP80,meva20,emn10 - general tanking
2) str30,acc20,wsdmg10 - savage, KoR
3) dex30,acc20,da10 - TP and CDC
4) str30,acc20,da10 - general WS
4) vit30 or hp80, whatever, FC10 - abilities and FC

I'd prioritize the FC cape second.

+1, PLD has a much harder time than RUN to get high FC and 10 on a single piece with decent HP is amazing

What spynx said. Annoying as hell to drop 1k worth of gear HP just to cap fast cast in other slots. Probably the biggest bang for your buck right there (FC10 on back).

I'm getting some ridiculously high numbers with KOR, even without an ambuscade cape tailored to it, so I would honestly prioritise that second and I would have finished mine earlier if I had known it was this ridiculously good.

That's interesting. There isn't much content I do in a turtle set so I did my dps/WS capes first.


Are you guys sitting in full HP sets for t4s? I'm sitting at 3750-4100hp (food vorseals) and feel like I'm over doing it.


ItemSet 351556

I think HP management is one of the most under-utilized functions of PLD. 4,000 HP is great, but if every time you engage/cast/ws you go down to 2,300 what good is that other than pissing off anyone healing you.

I generally try to keep myself from blinking yellow(3000+) on any function. Fastcast is the BIGGEST ***. I am leaving quite a bit of FC "on the table" so im not throwing away 1800hp to my flash goes a little faster.


PLD is one of the trickier jobs from this perspective alone, imo

3.8k Mark in Reisen/Omen.
Only spell that drops me down below 3k is Enlight II. (drops me down to 2.3k - alarms everyone around me when it happens but its only max twice a fight)

The HP management was an issue for me too. With the Arke+1/Arke set I am really enjoying being able to land hits and not getting pulverized as a side effect. If I stated it was underrated before due to its TP gain benefits, I'm stating it was unimaginably underrated now that I've tanked everything with it. Its not full on turtle mode sure, and I lose about 400hp using it. But the DPS is epic and I'm still surviving. Not even coming close to the red mark.
It also means I can use more fast cast without my HP slipping into yellow and freaking everyone out.

Are you using a custom ws set for this type of DD? Cause My ws sets drop me down to 2k'ish(iirc) HP. And if you WS that fast, your HP is gonna look like a damn yoyo.

That said, if you do account for HP while gearing for WS, it's inevitably going to hit you in the DPS, and the DPS was the entire point in the first place.

Whats in your enlight set jesus?

Im at 521 skill(Divine) and 3276 HP (no food, not in reisen). I believe 520 skill gives 115 accuracy

That is more or less what I use, Burt, Staunch+1, Creed belt, etiol earring

Close to what I use. Burtgang, Loricate +1, Etiolation/Thureous earrings, JSE cape, Defending ring instead of another moonbeam, Ninurta's.

Does anyone bother with Shadow mantle/Ring?

That's a great discussion point. Currently when I use an Arke build (T1-2s, Ambuscade, Omen) I just use my stand WS set which drops me to ~2000. (as you stated)

If you are using a Arke+hp hybrid the answer looks to be to WS in Arke gear and just lose the accessory slot HP. The NQ set is plus 738hp and has respectable STR/DEX.

The biggest gain from Arke is frequency so a smaller WS average is worth the rate at which you WS.

Right now, if I really feel the need for boosted max HP to survive then I usually just don't WS.

You ever do stuff to take more dmg for increased TP gain? XD

Cancel protect/phalanx(Berserk, if you ever /war), tell the whm to quit it with the cureskin, etc. Put that WHM to work!

yeah I was working on all this lustrio+1 ***for CDC so i could really start helping clear the trash on Omen, but it kept dropping me down to 2.3k, so now ive got a toggle to keep my HP up around 2800 on WS because it was annoying, especially if you got a healer that bot curing, youll smoke their MP quickly

the exact same as the OP BIS for it but with DM +4 only on legs.

for Kor?
I'm set up to have 4 different types of sets on melee and 4 different types of ws sets that I can switch independent of each other.
The HUGE omg KOR comes from this one:This is something I will use in Ambuscade intense, most omen except Kyou, all T3s and if there's a good WHM who understands how aggressive tanks play or someone with me on discord I'll use it on anything.
To answer your question about the yoyoing HP. I can control based on which Melee set I'm in. In the Sulv+1/+2 which is a low-tier hybrid set the hp doesn't yoyo that much. But to go from Turtle to this, yes - it will look like I just took s knee to the balls.
When In arke+1, the KORs aren't as impressive but still a good 10-15k more dmg than atonement and much higher accuracy and consistent dmg than savage blade. The big Kors being in the 20's from the set I posted above and sometimes even in the 30's.

What's your divine skill in that enlight set?

around the 535 mark. At work at the moment.

ItemSet 333814
560 divine skill on Master PLD. 140 starting dmg/acc. 2.2k HP while casting on PLD/BLU.

Haven't re-evaluated this set in awhile... I could swap out D ring for a nq stikini then swap feet to Souveran+1 and recover 220+ Hp. Less DT while casting, but I'd also get back ilvl defensive stats on feet.

How much accuracy + do you get from 560?
Other than the reverence coat+3, I should be able to tweek mine to look like yours. Still at work so not sure but I'm fairly certain I get +114 accuracy from mine.

The acc matches the damage dealt. As I stated in the post, it's 140 acc for the initial hit at 560 skill. Ahh, btw this is for Enlight II.

You can confirm the acc gain via check param.

535 skill should be around 135, unless you have no enlight JP or something. Then it would be about 115.

I'd like to note that the enlight II formula on BGwiki seems to be slightly off. It predicts 142 at 560 skill, but I'm getting 140.

at 521 skill im getting 135. at 550 skill im getting 137 accuracy

seems like the tiers go up in 2 or 3 acc so with whats being posted it seems like it goes

I did some lose testing.
135 - 521-537 skill
137 - 541-550 skill
140 - ???

the exact breaking point of the tiers I dont know but to maintain 3k hp is worth staying at 137 vs 140, vs dropping another 700-800hp. IMO


you could argue for things you want acc bad enough to hit/ws(Sweetwater) that even when you drop to 2.2-2.3 its not gonna be that dangerous, but even when tanking things like Ou I am still running enlight2 to get TP for SC or Chivalry, or even hate from Atonement, so I still feel its best to sac 3 acc for the 3k+ HP

Well, people were regularly killing T4s with tanks under 3K HP.

There are times to use HP anyway (because hey, you have it) like anything with Zombie (nullifies healing), Fake-Weakened, Yakshi's potent hp-curse I guess.

The other factor is how much of that you can sustain. If you're losing 500 hp with every action, is it really doing anything other than giving the healer more enmity? Not that healer enmity is an issue.

Certain things where I wasn't going to hit anyway, I had a set that was basically //gs disable all, swapped in some fc accessories but prioritized keeping HP high since I wasn't doing anything else.

But no, none of it needs 4k HP.

does wearing moonbeam cape with its huge boost to HP negate using ambuscade back capes that have HP 80 on them when using spells?

Regarding the Enlight II discussion earlier, I've done some thorough testing. I'll start with the conclusion then post the test data below.

The current formula on BG;

Endamage/Accuracy Boost = 2×floor( (Divine Magic Skill+85)÷13 ) + floor( (Divine Magic Skill+85)÷26 ) + Enlight Job Points

Does appear to work quite well, right up until you hit 500 skill. then it starts to deviate. After 500 skill tiers seem to revert to the enlight 1 system of increasing by 2 every 20 skill, and 3 every 40.

So there's tiers at 500,520,540, etc. Tested all the way up to 600 skill.

New above 500 skill formula would be,

=(2xFLOOR((Divine Magic skill+400)÷20)+FLOOR((Divine Magic skill+400)÷40))+Job Points

There might be a better way to write this, but this does work for all Enlight II tiers from 500~600 skill.

Here's an excel friendly version, just replace divine magic/jp with the cells for those values.
=(2*FLOOR((Divine Magic skill+400)/20,1)+FLOOR((Divine Magic skill+400)/40,1))+Job Points

Test data

Using an image for this table. It just takes too long to clean up text based table on these forums.

Formula 1 is using existing formula on BGwiki
Formula 2 is using the modified version I made for 500+ skill.


Raw text data.

I have around 3300hp outside Reisenjima, on PLD but with my GS everytime I cast a spell it always puts me to about 2700-2800ish Yellow HP. Should my HP even get that low when casting phalanx, Cures, and Flash? My Fast Cast set is about 90% identical to the first page fast cast set. Any pointers?