What To Merit As PLD?

I never knew IR can be used by war. O.o

Actually i see IR as a Magic Def Set. Good to macro in for lowing the dmg on magical attacks when fighting mobs that use a lot of it.

so imo, its a good set to get as a magic def set. Macro in as needed.

Placebo nay! Though the slight difference you do see only appears after the final merit. If you plan on maining a DD or something, then by all means don't merit evasion, but since I career PLD and only get asked to come PLD, I find it worth while :p

Vit is a nearly useless merit. Cap your STR and spam atonement.

Divine is an entirely useless merit, at least cap healing or enhancing if you want to cap your magic skills for paladin.

Capped parry merits would probably do more good than capped evasion.

I don't understand this, how is the final merit any different than picking up 5 vitality somewhere else? I thought vitality lost it's popularity years ago, though I guess this could explain why I still see so many bibiki seashell, knightly mantle, durandal paladins.

As far as Rampart on Tiamat goes, if you're utilizing a full blown mdb or fire resist set, the benefits for this fight as far as a magical stoneskin go are pretty negligible. Phalanx 2 with a good fire resist set and you can easily see 0 to single digit attacks in the air.

I still wear a bibiki seashell sometimes :(
it's golden when killing KA!
but the vit bonuses? ya ... no

Oh ya for sure, gogo Aquan Killer.

I was refering to the evasion merits.
VIT is still important, not much, but still has it's uses. If you Aug your Cerb Mantle, and you get some +VIT, you wouldn't be too bummed right?

Given the difference can be seen if you stack some or not. Merits also go hand to hand on what gear you have available to you. I.E. The guy who has full Koenig is sure not to even touch VIT merits, but the Taru pld who's full timing AF might.

As for the whole 'Why Merit 5 VIT instead of picking it up on some gear elsewhere' is for the purpose of putting that VIT equip into something that can't be merited, like haste.

Like I said earlier though, what merits you have depends on what gear you have, and what events you often find yourself doing.

Placebo yea. Your evasion rate is easily floored on any monster above your basic trash mobs (and probably even against them), 8 EVA skill will not change that fact. As for VIT merits... 5 VIT is ~2 less damage per hit, 10 more damage on Rampart, and may or may not even give you 1 more HP on a Cure. You have Utsusemi, shield blocks, and strong defensive gear when necessary. 5 VIT is an unnecessary drop in the bucket; merit STR and kill the mob a little bit faster instead.

I'm not saying it makes all the difference in the world, but seeing 1-2 Tail Smashes miss on a Kirin zerg before getting the extra 8 skill levels IS something. 5/5 STR is good, I never had anything against it, its just with Atonement dishing 700+ most of the time, I don't see me NEEDING to get the +5 STR anymore.
I'll take what little more defense merits I can and put survival and hate maintenance as my priorities considering it's my top role in the party.

5/5 guardian most important group2, will change how you use sentinel sometimes. 95% of enmity accumulated while sentinel is up with stay there, great for tons of situations where DD can just let it go. I did 1 iron will for my cotank if they are having trouble. and then either 3/5 fealty or chiv and 1/5 the other. or 2/5 both of them. I chose fealty because its hawt to resist enfeebs.

group 1 would be shield bash and sentinel to full.

i also did 8/8 sword and 4/4 shield 4/4 enmity and im 4/8 hp right now

Pretty sure Guardian only affects enmity loss from damage taken during Sentinel, almost useless as /NIN.

@OP: 5/5 Fealty is pretty awesome, as is Chivalry if you like to solo or Ballista often. Iron Will is completely useless.

Group 1, Bash/Sent are probably the best choices. Consider doing STR merits too, so you are less likely to hit for 0 (for Atonement TP), Sword/Shield merits. Evasion isn't really helpful since it's so low already, Parry can be handy.

As for HP/MP do whatever you need. I don't recommend enmity merits since it can hurt for other jobs, but Crit- is really helpful.

Iron Will is not completely useless. That's a lot of -interrupt. Hell for spells I already use -interrupt gear where I'm not using shield skill or something else important. It's not the BEST thing to merit (over fealty or chivalry) but it's certainly not "useless."

Even if it gave 100% interupt reduction, it only applies for the 30 seconds Rampart is active, so during that phase you need to:
Have shadows wiped/Have Rampart up/Ni isn't ready/Bash isn't up to stun for ichi/No other stunner.
Nothing wrong with interupt gear, but comparitively to other merits, seems a waste IMO.

having swapped my 4/5 guardian over 2 4/5iron will (76% interrupt), i love the iron will merits better, ramparts iron will also givs same effect to everybody u hit with it
when tanking things like JoPrudence and the like, with nasty trip attacks u can still get ichi up

since stun spell is useless on all SEA Jailers, and my shield bash is 4:10 recast

and after ramparts gone u can sit on reprisal to buy some more time

no, guardian is any enmity during the sentinels active time frame, so you can spike and hold large sums of enmity in a small amount of time. Theres no way its just for the damage taken :/. Since sentinel also boosts enmity gained from using other abilities while in effect.

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Sentinel

Guardian is a Paladin merit trait which reduces the CE loss from damage taken while under the effect of Sentinel. This CE loss reduction is -19% with 1 merit and increases by -19% each additional merit (to a cap of -95% CE reduction). Guardian does not affect the VE decay rate of -60 VE per second.


Taken directly from Kanicans LJ.

So, the damage you take while under Sentinel (Which should be pretty low) or the enmity lost from losing a shadow is the only enmity you'll be saving with Guardian.

What about subing WAR on JoP since well, you cant blink it.

PLDs who cant be versatile and adapt to situations are the worst, worse than PLDs meriting Iron Will and VIT.

/facepalm

That's exactly what i did when i saw your page.

obviously i'll never be as cool as you, troll on good sir.

It is 45 seconds of relatively uninterrupted spell casting assuming you know how to use a valor coronet. I don't know what you do on paladin but the situations in which i am fighting it is usually me and a co tank that are pld/nin. If not Pld/nin i'm usually Pld/rdm for magic based mobs however pld/nin is the tank of choice on anything that is moderately difficult.

Now if you look at the merits to pick from there is chivalry which is good depending on how fast you deplete your mp pool and i dare say everyone would recommend putting some points into it as a result. The most debatable are the last 3 Iron Will, Guardian, and Fealty.

Fealty is awesome but the recast on it is 10mins. If you're fighting something for 1min or just using it through a chainspell it's awesome and i certainly wouldn't fault someone for putting a point or two into it depending on how often they feel they need a trait like that.

Guardian will certainly help you keep hate during sentinel a job ability that should already pull hate off most things when you use it assuming you don't have some fool in your LS firing off sidewinders and nukes at the start of a fight. But if you have a LS that has no one to TA hate onto a tank this could be something to look into, or if you're fighting weak mobs like in Dynamis that are hard to hold hate on. I consider this to be more of a low end "end game" merit where you fight things that don't have much defense and which are easy to lose hate. If you primarily do things like Limbus, Dynamis, and Sky maybe this really is the best merit for your situation.

Iron will however is more for fighting monsters that are a notch higher on the difficulty scale. These are things where the paladins probably wont lose hate as easily since DDs wont be doing as much damage. Additionally maybe you have people putting TAs onto the tanks at your event. That is when Iron Will starts to shine as a choice because it becomes more important to keep the Plds alive than it does the DD. If you are Pld/Nin and lose shadows, maybe something just striped down your Ni with a well timed Aoe then you have a number of options to help you stay alive. You can Rampart and rely on shield blocks to get your spell off. You can sentinel to wait it out and recast your Ni or get lucky and block on an ichi cast. You can shield bash which doesn't always allow for enough time to get Ichi up. Finally, with Iron will merits you can use Rampart with valor coronet and have 45 seconds to cast whatever you need to stay alive. Assuming you merited sentinel and rampart recast this gives you a lot of safety.

I really think you've underestimate the merit and that may be due to the type of linkshell you're in. I merited Iron will and can safely say it is excessively useful in nearly all fights with the exception being those where you don not stand toe to toe with the monster. The only doubt i have is if i should reduce chivalry to a 7:30 recast (since i have alot of mp) and put 1 into fealty.

I've not regretted meriting iron will at all but here is the question I've been thinking of. I looked at wiki for fealty info and it says it draws a bit of hate. I wanted to know how potent is it in that respect.

Fealty and Chivalry both generate hate, 300VE (Kaeko Units)
1/6th of a provoke.

Having the right gear & merits allow you to tank in situations where you normally would require more support to be effective.

Most of these abilities don't seem impressive on their own when you have WHM/RDM haste stacked with marches from BARD and/or RDM refresh and ballads from Bard, plus the mob is Elegy'ed and Slow/SlowII'ed. The point of these merits is to give you an edge when you lack adequate support and still be able to perform the role of tank.

Allow me to give you a breakdown of how Combat skills, Other skills, along with Tier 1 and Tier 2 merits come into play:

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Combat skills:
Sword - Since the release of Atonement, Paladin tanking has changed somewhat. Depending on what we're tanking (assuming it is safe to melee) Atonement can become one of our most powerful tools for building and maintaining hate.

Shield - This is definitely useful to anyone who considers themselves a main paladin. The better your shield skill, the more likely you are to block and therefore successfully cast Utsusemi despite getting hit.

Parrying - If you have NO OTHER combat merits, this is definitely useful because Parrying procs before your shadows are taken, and the occasional parry can help you in a lowman/solo HNM holding situation, BUT I would strongly advise against meriting this thinking you'll tank better. Parrying skill is very low on Paladin and is unreliable at best, but when it kicks in, damn it's nice.

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Magic Skills

Enhancing - Nice for PLD/RDM solo, but quite honestly if you have any other jobs that can benefit from merits in this category, you're better off.

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Other Skills

Enmity Increase - This used to be mandatory for Paladin tanks back in the day but quite honestly you can tank just fine without it. Two things that have made a huge difference in how paladins hold hate is through the use of cure kits (or cure cheats) and usage of the weaponskill atonement. Having passive enmity is always nice, but there are better places to put these merits if you observe the next two merits I'll discuss.

Enemy Critical Hit Rate - The less critical strikes you eat, the less likely you are to die. Dead tank = No tank. You won't notice this merit because you'll likely be tanking as /nin most of your career as a 75 PLD but that's the whole point. If you DON'T notice this merit, that's probably because you're not getting hit much, or not dying anyway. This is a HIGHLY underrated merit and has tremendous value to any main tank. However, if you plan to level DD jobs and such, you may not find this extremely useful.

Spell Interruption Rate - This is a useful merit, especially if you pair it with spell interruption rate gear during mid-cast on utsusemi. You can stack a build with both shield skill and spell interruption down % gear. Truthfully, this is a highly underrated merit as well since most Paladins (especially newer ones) think going 4/4 Enmity is all you need.

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Paladin specific skills:

* Shield Bash Recast (-10 seconds per upgrade)

This is a valuable skill, and is useful in many situations. It can be used as an additional hate tool, emergency stun, and a means to give yourself a break if you mess up your utsusemi rotation.

* Holy Circle Recast (-20 seconds per upgrade)

Unfortunately this skill bears little value.

* Sentinel Recast (-10 seconds per upgrade)

This ability, paired with AF2 boots & Guardian merits becomes one of your best abilities in both survival and spiking hate. It is strongly reccomended to cap this skill.

* Cover Effect Length (+4 seconds per upgrade)

A highly underrated ability that is rarely used by newer tanks nowadays. Nothing is more useful than being able to pop cover on your fellow co-tank while you build hate. Imagine just showing up to Khimaira and your friend solo tanking it for 10 mins straight has a significant hate advantage. This gives you the opportunity to save his/her life if they mess up on utsusemi rotations and if you manage to put 2 merits into this ability, you can squeeze two flashes before it wears off. Valor surcoat is an added plus, but don't purposely get hit just to recover mana.

* Rampart Recast (-10 seconds per upgrade)

A phenominal magic based stoneskin and extremely useful for magic based fights like Jailer of Love, Ouryu v2, Jormungand, and Tiamat. Do not underestimate the power of getting hit for zero for 45 seconds (assuming you have a proper resistance build on top of your rampart build)

Group 2

* Fealty (-2 minutes 30 seconds recast per upgrade)

A single point in this ability is essentially all you need. This ability is rarely used in practical endgame situations and spending 5 merit points on the recast timer isn't worth it compared to the other abilities.

* Chivalry (-2 minutes 30 seconds recast per upgrade)

This ability is a must for paladins interested in lowman/HNM tanking. Atonement isn't the only use for TP, especially when you're still holding the mob and need support. Never underestimate being able to convert 300 TP into 465+ emergency MP (that was how much I recovered as an Elvaan PLD).

* Iron Will (+19% effect per upgrade)

This ability seems useful but compared to Chivalry, Fealty, and Guardian.. there isn't much competition. Plus, Rampart no longer becomes a tool for magic based stoneskin if you choose to use this as a -interrupt ability.

* Guardian (+19% effect per upgrade)

This ability makes Sentinel comparable to Invincible in the sense that you can spike hate and take little to no damage for a short duration. It is definitely reccomended that you fill as many merits into this skill as you can.

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Personally I went with:
3/5 Shield Bash for 4:30 recast
2/5 Cover to be able to squeeze in 2 Flashes during a single cover duration
5/5 Sentinel for 4:20 recast

1/5 Fealty because it's great on dyna-beaucidine boss.
5/5 Chivalry for the 10:00 recast for lowman/holding HNM
4/5 Guardian to be able to use Sentinel as a means to spike both my VE & CE.

Just a correction here: Str does not make you hit for above 0. Hitting for 0 is a problem with lack of att. 5/5 str would only give you ~2.5att as a sideaffect. I'd say it's actually more beneficial for a career pld to merit 5/5 dex for the ~2.5acc, because God knows pld, with standard gear, doesn't cap on anything important. And capping acc should almost always come before adding a miniscule amount of att.

This.

However doing either for PLD should really be saved for last, cause honestly there's better places where you could put the merits needed to cap attribute merits.

It honestly comes down to what do you do for end game on Paladin.

If you're just the run of the mill standard tank;
(Dynamis, Einherjar, Limbus)

Then I strongly suggest the following:

Sentinel 5/5
Rampart 5/5
Fealty 1/5
Chivalry 5/5
Iron Will 2/5
Guardian 2/5

If you intend on branching out to HNM then I'd recommend:
Sentinel 5/5
Rampart 5/5
Chivalry 2/5
Fealty 3/5(Can save your *** at Khimaira during Fulmination mode)
Guardian 5/5

Sentinel should pretty much be saved for a few reasons when HNM tanking.

when shadows are down and the mob is in one of its 2hr modes, and you have hate and are low on HP

spiking hate up to stay on cap when mages are magic bursting on a mob and you know they will pull hate.

Rampart will probably be your best friend if you ever plan on tanking JoL, Tiamat, Cerberus and Khimaira.

Fealty is amazing for Khimaira and Odin, for most other HNMS you'll have a mage there to take whatever de-buffs placed upon you off.

Chivalry is nice as well for holding NMs as long as you can if your team is racing out to support you, sometimes this will happen where rival LSs will be chasing down one another to get to a pop site, and you can run in and claim, not recommended to TP on the NM but if you have a strong chivalry build, for when you do get hit when shadows are down you can revert some of the TP gained from taking a blood hit to your MP pool giving you a chance to live that much longer if your MP has dropped significantly from attempting to hold certain HNMs

they are all real scenarios I've seen myself, so use your abilities wisely and good luck with your paladin for end game.

Fealty merits kind of don't make sense in the situation you just gave. I agree with one, but iirc, 3 merits changes the timer from 20 minutes to 15...
Fulmination is <25% I think? and not really sure why you'd be spamming Fealty on Odin...
Just saying, 20 minute timer lets you use Fealty once on either of those two mobs, fully merited would let you use it twice; but halfway merited should still only let you use it once, unless you're killing super slow...

@Inga

I agree completely with the use of sentinel it's exactly what I use if for. I just don't see the point in meriting guardian if it's only used for 2hrs, casting Ichi, or when in low hp. I'd much rather make rampart more versatile in helping me cast shadows if the need arises.

@Altar

I kinda feel the same way and to an extent even 10mins is kinda iffy if i really wanna merit it to such an extent.

Sentinel with Guardian merits = Instant hate that doesn't easily decay. So whether you're the backup tank or you just arrived at a HNM camp when your linkshell already has claim, the less tools you need to spam to catch up with hate, the better.

Fealty is virtually a wasted merit beyond one to unlock because of the ridiculously long recast topped with the short duration. It's a great ability but you shouldn't rely on using it more than once per fight.

And for HNM tanks out there, you don't HAVE to put any merits in Rampart, assuming you know how to efficiently co-tank. If each tank takes a turn at holding hate during each flight phase, you can stagger Rampart recasts and not worry about your individual recast timers.

Rampart adds much more value to a fight like Tiamat versus Jailer of Love, considering Tiamat's quirkiness with VE.

If you tank Jailer of Love using appropriate PLD/RDM with magic resist and -dmg% taken sets, simply casting Stoneskin everytime JoL casts a Tier IV or -gaIII will mitigate enough damage to the point where Rampart really isn't necessary. It's nice to curb the damage more often, but quite frankly it isn't game breaking.

Ultimately it boils down to your playstyle, but bear in mind, you are much more likely to have a larger support base on planned fights like Jailer of Love, compared to HNMs, so you may want to cater your merits to handle those type of situations.

Anecdotal evidence, woohoo. Your eva rate is still floored.

Sorry for the necroquote, carry on.