~First And Final Line Of Defense V2.0~

Is this a full-time/idle set, or only while casting Reprisal?

What would a good idle set look like, if different?

It's just for when you cast Reprisal.

For idle sets, it really depends on your playstyle. Some people prefer to super tank without engaging, while others prefer to TP in hybrid sets. PLD never really has had a concrete perfect idle set. In a perfectly optimized world, you should be lugging around several idle sets for ailments/Magic Evasion, Damage Taken -50%, Hybrid TP tanking and some refresh. I'd post mine, but it's honestly sort of outdated in a slot or two.

In instances where Burtgang AM3 is maintained and adding in some "DPS" is the idea, would the go to WS still be CDC or Savage Blade nowadays?

CDC I guess since PLD will always be attack starved, but I think realistically any time you're hybrid tanking in a group you're still just spamming Atonement because you'll never hold hate without it.

Hmm, it's been awhile since I looked at PLD CDC vs Savage in any detail, but last I checked CDC was only worth using over Savage if you were skillchaining with it. Maybe I can find some time to do some spreadsheet updates and compare again. Maybe. <,<;

All that new Crit gear should help CDC for PLD.

ItemSet 376194

Hmm, valid point. I picked up most of the new crit gear for DRG Drakesbane already too. Lots of spreadsheet work to do.

I probably won't investigate using Almace on PLD all that deeply, but I think I'll look into the other changes.

Edit: I checked my PLD lua, and that is slot for slot my CDC set except for the legs, which I haven't made(DRG empy are better for Drakes. that sweet crit dmg) and the sword/shield. Oh, and the Mache earring+1. Should pick one of those up. lol. I was already using most of this, and still didn't think to see how if affected CDC's dps standing.

Is the cape crit or DA?

Hmm. I'll give the standard caveat for, I'm not an expert on spreadsheets or dmg formulas, and it's possible I haven't updated something correctly over the years, take with with a grain of salt etc, but...

Even after updating the CDC set, I'm still getting basically the same situation. Savage blade is better unless you are reliably skillchaining with CDC.

With Burtgang R15, AM3 up, I have 1kTP CDC spam 17% dps behind 1750 TP Savage with atk capped. Only about a 5% difference(still in favor of savage) when atk is pitifully low.

A note on the CDC set, I'm actually getting Lustratio +1 legs as better than Zoar+1[R15] when atk is moderate to capped. B path seems best when atk is very high or capped, 'A' path gains ground and eventually pulls ahead as atk drops. And at super low atk, Zoar pulls ahead.

I have the Dex/Crit cape about 200~ ws dmg ahead of dex/DA with the gap widening as atk gets lower.

afaik you'll want crit hit damage, preferably coupled with crit hit chance, but crit hit damage is the most important stat for CDC. crit chance should lift your average but crit damage will also lift the ceiling.
imho in current meta SE wants CDC (or all lvl3 WS?) to be inferior cause they'll still have value as a final closer due to the SC dmg. if you use it for that purpose warders charm +1 R15 might become interesting.

I kinda understand where are you coming from, but then you have WSs like Vsmite, Torcleaver, Rudra, :Fudo

PLDs ***attack makes those crits more important that full DD jobs. That’s why I’d push crit rate gear over crit dmg augments on Odysean/Val.

Also, getting dex, crit dmg, and decent acc/atk augs is a nightmare. please spare me.

mnk is broken, rudra is only good at 2k+ tp and/or stacked with SA/TA, tachi: whiff misses a lot and i think torcleaver does too(?). but yeah, its where i believe SE wants the meta to be, i'm not saying they 100% reached that goal.

Torc/fudo both just require the dd in question to gear for acc depending on content and not just pile on stat/wsd/atk/whatever acc came with those 3

no they don't. accuracy caps, you can stack 1000 extra acc and you're still going to miss because 2H cap at 95% hit rate. first hits also get extra accuracy as well. this isn't exclusive to torcleaver and fudo, people are stacking accuracy for no reason.

Fudo and Torc missing is a nature of every GKT and Gsword WSs. All 2h weapons has accuracy cap of 95%. You just see it more on Torc and Fudo, because they are 1hit, so you actually see those misses. On something like Resolution, you wont see 5% of hits missing, but those misses are still there and they reduce avg damage as much as for Fudo or Torc in the long run.


Its very rare to actually gear for accuracy for those WSs. First hit of WS has +100 accuracy bonus and for Torc and Fudo, first hit is all you care about. Ofc you cant simply equip no accuracy in all 5 main slots, but both DRK and SAM will use one piece of relic +3 and one piece of af+3, both with 10%WSD and both with very decent to high accuracy. That only leave 3 main slots. DRK will also most likely use sulevia feet. Odyssean head and gloves, that DRK will augment, both come with some minimal amount of accuracy (8on head, 10 on hands) already. Even with some minimal acc augments on odyssean, you will be at like 1180-1190 accuracy with main hit without any buffs or food, but if those are not some low accuracy DM augments, they should probably have enough accuracy from regular augments to break 1200 and there is not much you can do here to improve accuracy in that set, because most pieces are bis by far and also most of them already have high accuracy.

Like I said the misses you see are most likely because of 95% accuracy cap, not actually uncapped accuracy.

Thanks for doing spreadsheet work Martel and also thanks Taint for an updated WS set. Revived PLD lately and wanted to play it more so all your input is appreciated!

Another thing to consider with CDC vs Savage Blade is that if you are using either in a group setting (Dynamis, likely), there are probably at least three or four other people (COR, BLU, Fencer WAR) spamming Savage Blade contributing to the resist wall.

there is resistance build up for weaponskills? i thought there is only resistance build up for bloodpact rage.

There is for WS too, but not as common. I think Dynamis NMs is the only place where its used.

but what would be the purpose of that? a penalty for spamming the same WS over and over makes sense if you want ppl to skillchain with each other, but this is alliance size content. these days it is hard enough to convince 2 players to coordinate and create a skillchain, more than 3 players and spamming is pretty much the unquestioned default, you had a easier time to convince ppl the earth is flat than trying to coordinate a skillchain with a alliance.

Basically, doing the same damage type from multiple sources has a diminishing return against Wave 2 NMs (easiest to witness, but I'm sure other NMs in Dynamis D have this 'feature' as well). For example, 3 CORs spamming Savage Blade (sword) will hit a wall after a few WSes, where their Savage Blade Damage will drop to 500-1000 damage. To get around this, you typically have to have about 4-5 damage types (dagger, GK, sword, etc etc)

It's less about skillchaining and more about them wanting people to bring different jobs and weapons, rather than just doing CORx4 or whatever

Oddly, the Odin Prime BGwiki page has the best explanation of this I've mechanic seen put together. And I don't even see anything about it on the dynamis divergence page at all. <,<

They sum it up well enough, problem is the penalties aren't severe enough so it just ends up as a mostly useless annoyance.

Waiting for them to make a mob that zeros all same ws after first use for the entire battle. Maybe reset if you run the entire list for a weapon.

I like to see it as something that lets me contribute to the group's DPS in namis even when I'm spamming Atonement, cause my use of the WS is reducing the penalty on other's WS.

This came up in some discord discussion and I did some testing so I wanted to get it documented somewhere before I forget I ever did it. lol.


Regarding Sentinel Job Points and divine emblem enmity terms. It came up whether they were their own special enmity terms or if they stacked into the same one(but till separate from gear enmity+.) I went and tested. Alt pulled the mob to prevent the +200 bonus CE on pulling.

If they are different terms multiplied by each other then, with no enmity+ aside from sentinel, master PLD and no empy feet on divine emblem.
Base * enmity * DE * SentinelJP
180*2*1.5*1.2=648 CE.
After letting 76+ second elapse to drain all VE away(more stable test results), using Atonement should result in a 107 dmg Atonement.

If they are the same term then
base * enmity * (DE+SentinelJP)
180*2*1.7=612.
This would result in a 101 dmg Atonement after letting VE drain.

So sentinel Job points, and Divine emblem count towards the same extra enmity term. Sometimes called Special Enmity Bonus.

There seems to be a link on both the sentinel and Divine emblem BG wiki pages referencing this term, but it just links to the enmity page in general, and there's no references to special enmity bonus on there.

Going to work on correcting this as these mechanics have apparently been unclear to a number of people.

Sorry if this question has been answered already, just wasn't up to reading through 98 pages; I was wondering what the augments on Souveran pieces should look like. I know the cure received caps at 30%, but wasn't sure if there was a natural order to what pieces get it and if everything else gets path D.

You want Path: C on idle/engaged for the high HP/Enmity Boost, Taking Dmg in Enmity gear makes for less Enmity lost while taking Dmg.

Path: D Hands has uses for a Shield skillset but I would do C on 1st pair.