~First And Final Line Of Defense V2.0~

Fyi, Enhancing skill does nothing for reprisal. You'd be better off using either moonbeam for the HP+ to raise the spikes damage cap or a Fast Cast cape for recast reduction.

Ooops wrong thread sorry Martel, thought you were responding to my pld lua issues I posted on gearswap forum.

for a newly starting pld in just skirmish +1 gear almace 119.
What augssshould i get one the skirmish shiel svarlin until i get ochains/aegis ?

I honestly wouldn't bother with Svalinn when Priwen is same size (i.e. same block rate/dmg deduction) and basically the best physical defense shield under reprisal - especially considering it's relatively cheap and has fixed augments.

If you still want Svalinn for whatever reason I'd do

• Snow: "Chance of Successful Block"

• Leaf: "Damage Taken" is you aren't reaching 50% with other gear and probably "Cure Potency Received" or "Refresh" depending on your other gear

• Dusk: "Shield Skill"

Also, Almace is an amazing DD weapon but for tanking on PLD you should aim at something like Nixxer (Escha Sky T2), Brilliance (SR) or Flyssa (Unity Khimaira) depending on what content your group does.

Priwen requires me to set aside ressources that i need for other stuff.

Svaling is "free" since i got a bunch of wings anyway.
This is just a shield to have around until i finish up ochain and aegis

The part that's not free is the augments. It can take a significant number of stones to get the augments you want with reasonable potency.

Base Priwen is maaybe 1.5mil or so. For a shield that is vastly superior to everything but Ochain for physical dmg. And while the augments on priwen are nice, they aren't the shield's selling point. So you could hold off on or skip doing the augment phase and still get a lot out of Priwen.

I mean, if you're actively working on Ochain and just don't wanna bother with Priwen for the short time it takes to finish Ochain, sure, wear Svalin for a bit. But don't augment the Svalin. It's a waste of those resources you have other things to do with. Selling any stones and working on Priwen would be better option.

Or even go grab a NQ Blurred shield off the AH. They're dirt cheap, and better than an unaugmented Svalinn defensively and offensively.

What shield is the PLD using in the dyna-D windy teaser pic?

That's Trion.

Correct and I don't think the shield model is available for players (someone worked on a dat a while back if you want to play with that)

Correct. Didn't notice the hairdo until you said it.

First of all, thank you everyone for the additional information provided and discussed here regarding "prioritizing gear changes" within Gearswap.
I'm fussing with it now that no one needs my PLD to drop into yellow after each action for easy Omen objective clears.

When determining the order of changes, is the rule of thumb to determine the HP on each armor piece and order them greatest to lowest amounts, first to last?

Or, is it better to compare the HP on each piece, before and after the change, and order them greatest HP/amount of change, first to last?

I think the first method is correct. I don't think the second method has merit. Thoughts?

The way I did mine was: :

• Check the variation for each slot

• If positive (i.e. you gain more base HP) they have higher priority without relevant order

• If negative (i.e. you base HP) they have lower priority in increasing order of HP lost so that piece losing most HP will be equipped last

The idea is that you want to raise your base HP as much as possible before dropping any of it. If you simply check the highest to lowest rather than the variation you most likely will still lose HP. For instance - number are random to show the point:

• Start from 3k base HP

• Swap in FC piece (e.g. body +250HP) over DT one (e.g. +300) - Total based HP is now 2.95k

• Swap in waist from +0 HP to +50 HP one -> base HP is back to 3k but your current one is lower (2.95k) and the opposite swap, suggested by higher HP only, would have been more beneficial

Yeah, that is where my mind was going until I realized, my first swap is Ambu Cape to Moonlight Cape, a gain of 195 hit points. I don't think any swap after could fully cut into that gain.
That said, looking at each piece individually to confirm maximum gain between changes is definitely worth another look.

I'm keeping most of my HP in my Enmity and Cure swaps. I lose the most in my BLU spell swaps (those spells are so slow, I maintain capped SIR in the midcast for them).

Thank you for your reply and example! It is helping wrap my mind around it a bit better.

Some guy made a tank DPS comparison video on YouTube:




Upper left: Lionheart RUN/SAM
Lower left: Godhand MNK/WAR
Upper right: Calad PLD/SAM
Lower right: Kikoku NIN/WAR

PLD gears for your ref: 1.35 avg hit per round, 31% WSD, 5 hit. Not sure if you can push MA and WSD higher for better results.

So Halphas hits like a truck and has an unfair Avoidance Down aura after 50%, making shield block irrelevant and impossible.

Okay, I can't block it.

How about absorbing or nullifying it instead?

Srivatsa isn't just a lockstyle piece or DD shield; it's useful for pulling (DT/absorb because you can't shield block from your ***!) and I use it in Dyna Basty [D]. It's worked reasonably well, possibly because I lock my gear into turtle mode, but battlemod shows a small but consistent proc rate of the shield.

That got me to thinking... if I can maintain a significant amount of DT, can I create an "absorb" set specifically for tanking mobs who disable my ability to block?

The Chevalier set offers a set bonus of "occ. absorbs damage". Accessories such as Warder's Charm, while irrelevant to Halphas, would be valuable against a magic-slinging mob. I'm away from laptop right now so I can't pull up my experimental sets (Absorb.Phys and Absorb.Mag).

How feasible do you (the collective FFXI Paladin community) think my idea is?

----------
Second question, or set of questions: When utilizing the buffactive settings for negative status, how would I go about including a command to use a status removal item?

How do I force my sets to swap upon receiving an.effect (Cure received, Refresh duration, etc)?

I was going to ask about the massive HP swings when swapping out of DT, but that was explained already. My white mages thank you.

SIRD can be placed as a casting mode and cycled to?

Why in the HELL did I have to create a separate line for each /BLU spell, instructing it individually as to my midcast set(s)?

Since I handily cap DT thanks to Souveran +1, should I break down and farm a Creed Collar... or is my Moonlight Necklace sufficient (yay magic evasion)?

Sorry about the question flood, insomnia +chronic pain sucks.

Thanks in advance.

As far as I remember most absorb damage items do not stack (e.g. Engulfer Cape and Warder's Charm) except Srivatsa - I'd expect - as the property is "Annuls damage taken" with a precise percentage. It could still be nice to have a GS rule to equip Srivatsa if the defense mode is physical and the status is avoidance down.

You really can't get this to work except when you are casting on yourself unless you use some 3rd party addon to monitor the log and swap when someone is casting on you.

Refer to my post on how to do this

I personally use Creed Collar as "Reduces Enmity decrease when taking damage" is a really unique stat and the refresh is an added bonus. Moonlight Necklace meva is negligible unless you have a high meva set overall (souveran+1 isn't amazing in this regard)

Re: damage absorption not stacking:

Well, that f'n sucks!

I *think* I can format a rule to equip Srivatsa while Avoidance Down'd.

As for the third party add-on that would read my chatlog... I'm going to guess that it's somewhat more complicated than clicking a Windower add-on icon. Since I'm fairly sure that sharing such on the forum isn't allowed, I'll leave it at that.

Thank you very much for the direct link to SIRD set-up in GS.

And crap, Creed Collar drops off Chukwa, if I recall. Ugh. At least it's a timed spawn...

Do you think it's worthwhile to use, say, Asklepian Belt when you're otherwise capped on DT?

Thank you again for your quick response to my stupid questions. Since I'm a main PLD for my LS, I'm trying to be the best I can be.

I personally use Creed Baudrier that gives a bunch of HP and some mdb. Asklepian isn't bad but I'm not a huge fan of meva on PLD as aegis makes all magic attacks a joke so most people just go with MDB or HP+ (Oneiros Belt is also popular) once you cap DT. Flume belt 4% dmg to mp is also incredibly nice when paired with ethereal and af+3 feet for situation when mp are an issue and you don't get much refresh from vorseal (e.g. omen boss that like to aspir or dyna-D)

Are people using their SIR for more than /blu and cures on a regular basis?

I saw spynx's and the related posts above but am just confirming you would want enm for flash since it's a fast casting spell, enhancing gear + phalanx for enhancing spells and phalanx and no point filling the rest with SIR unless it gets you 102% and enough phal+ or enh+ (which seems unlikely). Is this correct logic?

Yep, the idea is that if spells are fast enough you can usually time them to go off between mob attacks. BLU enmity spells have a long casting time and it's often hard to get mobs in cone in front of you to allow shield blocks(assuming high block rate so usually fodder or ochain/priwen+reprisal) so they will be interrupted all the time.

Hmmm, I'm a bit late in noticing this, since I haven't really been playing, but...

The Volte heavy armor set from the last update is best in slot meva for PLD in every slot. And it has Decent amounts of PDT and MDT. While also having high acc and some DA+. High meva hybrid set?

In any case, interesting set. Though I imagine farming the whole set would be quite a pain in the ***.

By nothing you mean as far as potency? I would imagine that additional Enhancing Skill has a very small chance of aiding in cast interruption prevention...
However, you are correct about HP+ or "Fast Cast" being better for a Reprisal cape.

I removed the Merciful Cape from the earlier post.
Thank you, Martel. :)

Nice swords, some srs pld talk right there.

Yes skill should always have some effect on interrupt rate though I don't think it's been tested to greatly and definitely not confirming via every spell

It's a given that skill+ in any type of magic has an effect on interruption rate for spells of that type. It should be obvious when stating the name of an individual spell and saying enhancing does nothing that I was referring to the fact that it doesn't improve the spell's potency or duration.

And in any case, reprisal has a very short cast and should be easy to cast anyway. Considering how many hundreds of skill we have in enhancing the contribution of +5 skill to spell interruption should be nearly non existent

Does Sentinel still give Enmity +100 when /pld?

I've never seen anything to indicate that /PLD sentinel differs from PLD main sentinel. That said, It's also not something I've ever directly tested. Should be pretty simple to test.

Okay, it looks like Sentinel's enmity+ is severely nerfed when /pld.

Rough tests:

Mob was unclaimed to start; I'd use Sentinel, then PLD and I would both flash a mob.

Test 1:
Player 1: RUN/PLD, Gear/Merit Enmity -5
Player 2: PLD/WAR, Gear/Merit Enmity +56
Mob stayed on Player 2.

Test 2:
Player 1: RUN/PLD, Gear/Merit Enmity -5
Player 2: PLD/WAR, Gear/Merit Enmity +23
Mob stayed on Player 2.