Tuesday, June 23, 2009

He Who Shall Not Be Named: The Paladin and the Subjob.

He Who Shall Not Be Named is here to bring you everything you ever wanted to know about tanking, and probably some things you never wanted to know and now wish to blot out of your memory, whether you like it or not, Izman is here with the do's and don'ts of tanking, in general, solo or end game.

Hey guys Iz here! And I'm here to give you guys the reader some advice about Paladin tanking. I will be talking about gear, subjobs, parties, merits, and all kinds of other stuff that I can't think of at the moment!

Okay the first topic I want to talk about is subjobs. The most popular sub for Paladin at end game is Ninja. I know 4 years ago if you were to sub Ninja you would be a traiter to all Paladins for even unlocking the job. Another great sub for soloing and tanking a few things like Jailer of Love is Red Mage. The last sub is of course Warrior.

Each of these subs has their strength and weakness. Lets see what each one can and can't do.

Ninja sub. This is the sub that I know I'm always on for events. The strength of Ninja is of course casting shadows. This makes it easier for your healers to keep their mp as high as possible for longer periods of time. The down side of subbing Ninja is that it can hurt your wallet if you don't make gil. Another downside to subbing Ninja is that on weaker mobs is melee can tear hate off you so easily and vise versa on the more defensive mobs.

Red mage sub. This sub is the newest one I have leveled and I wish I got it sooner. Red mage sub is great for soloing Nms, campaign, and tanking a few end game NMs. This sub can make a Paladin invincible on weaker mobs making Paladin just fun to play around on. The strength of this sub is mainly the spell Phalanx. This spell cuts down the physical damage you take by a crazy amount depending on your enhancing magic skill. Add Stoneskin, Blink, and Bar spells this sub makes Paladin an all round hard target to take down. The down side to this is mp consumption. When you sub Red mage you're spamming enfeebling magic like bind, sleep and blind to keep hate. After so long you will run out of mp. Another down side to this sub is that on big nasty NMs that hit hard will still make Phalanx seem like it is not even there. I will have to go into more detail on this sub in another post; since it is so awesome and fun to play.

Okay Warrior sub. This is the sub you and I used when taking this job form 1 to 75 or 74. This is a good sub for the classic style of exp parties that most people do not do anymore. This sub offers Defender wich raises your defense and lowers your attack. Since Paladin can't hit a target and when they do its not for much the lower attack is not a issue. Provoke of course the main hate grabbing and keeping tool for this sub. No need to tell you what it does. And the last thing that lets this sub job keep hate is Warcry. An AoE which raises your party members attack. The down side to this sub is strong mobs will hit you for lots of dammage even with Defender up. Add magic damage casting mobs and you are one dead guy. This sub is the least I use for end game events and tanking.

I know some of you are going what about dancer sub? Well I have not unlocked it and to be honest I'm not going too.

Next Monday I will go over where and when to sub these subs and possibly the gear sets you will want to use. We will see about gear though. In my head it seems like a long post. Until then I hope you enjoy the section on the Tanking portion of this blog. If you did not enjoy it then please E-mail me your feelings at idontcarewhatyouthink@Gmail.com :)

11 comments:

Danielle said...

As an upcoming paladin, I've only really played with /war, but I'm really looking forward to dinking abut with /rdm and /dnc. It's nice to see the pros and cons of different subjects, but I was very disappointed by what you wrote about /dnc.

If it's not YOUR cup of tea, that's a-ok, but if you're trying to write a good guide for everyone it may be a good idea to have an understanding of the pros and cons of EVERY realistic support job. It's not that this is just about /dnc either, as I know a few people who tank /drk and you didn't even mention that one.

It's hard to take this column seriously as a great reference for paladins when you claim that this is a guide to "bring you everything you ever wanted to know about tanking" when you neglect to mention/go into depth on subjobs because you don't care for them. Even if it was a "I tried these subjobs, and this is where it'd be beneficial, but this is why I don't care for it and think other support jobs are better," it'd be something.

Omoikitte said...

Speaking as an End game LS leader, if any Paladin in my linkshell showed up to tank anything in the events that I do as /dnc I would immediately ask them to go change, this is a subjob for soloing, not for tanking which is what Izman is going to be covering more than what paladins can do soloing.

While I have seen him do some crazy things solo, essentially the guide is about tanking things at end game, and before you get too heavy handed, I realise that /nin for the longest of times was considered a no-go area, but for the forseeable future I see /dnc remaining in the land of support only. Its a tp based job, which is completely inappropriate for tanking end game, we have nothing that gives TP refresh of any adequate degree to justify the job remotely as a good example of how to tank.

A lot of what a paladin does at end game isn't about meleeing the mob, its about controlling the hate, and managing the situation so that the rest of your linkshell can polish off the target in the most effective manner.

Ringthree said...

I prefer PLD/BLM, so I can warp home and change to another more useful job. Should sub BLM have been included too?

Maybe you should send Iz a message about your concerns, he did leave an email address in his post for people just like you.

Qtipus said...

Iz doesn't have an issue with PLD/DNC itself...he just has so much homo packed into his PLD frame that subbing DNC and prancing around like a drunken ballerina would probably make him explode.

Iz said...

Ok let me clear this up lol. I'm only going to go into details about the subs I have leveled. All the information I'm going to give is something that I have experienced myself. I'm not going to go on forums to find the pros and cons of Dancer and Dark knight sub seeing as I have 0% in using them. But since you're interested in them all I can tell you is that i have really only seen PLD/DNC in campaign and maybe soloing a few weak NMs here and there. As for PLD/DRK I have only heard of it for being done in Kaeko's blog for low manning the ZNm cerb guy. I hope this helps and thanks for reading.

Danielle said...

I'm sorry, I never meant that as a flame of any sort, rather as constructive criticism, so I apologize if I offended anyone.

I've read this blog for interesting ideas/reads about my other jobs, and when it comes to paladin it's nice to read about that too. It's not that reading about those 3 support jobs, which are the big three, are bad, it just would be nice to know the benefits from other viable support jobs that I've seen solo or end game.

As for /dnc not being an end game sub job for tanking, I'm full aware of that, and if this guide is only geared towards tanking in end game then no worries about my comments about it as that was a misunderstanding on my end.

Iz said...

Oh no worries I didn't take it as flamming. I appreciate the criticism since it will guide me to things I should cover in the next post.

Qtipus said...

No no, flame him. He loves it. The hotter the better.

Hotter = more excuse for him to be naked.

samsol the disturbed cabbie said...

Hey iz, its sam...didn't think I was gonna write something did you? Well, I am so kiss my arse lol. Anyways, what about pld/blu? I do agree with some of the other reply posts, how tp should not be used as a tanking method, like a sam would use, but since mp refreshing from support jobs is steadily available, and even more mp with ares body and sanction/sigil buffs, is /blu something you would consider? I don't have /blu leveled personally, but it seems with the right amount of magic accuracy (assuming this is what allows head butt to stick), fast cast equipment (locq, nuevo, homam), shield skill, and lolIron Will (I know its sexy), it seems /blu could rank up top with /rdm..again, I don't lnow too much but I've seen called supertank so maybe you could discuss pros/cons of /blu as well?

Sorry for no email izzy...I post from my cell phone and this way is much easier =)

Araelus said...

It'll be a while in the future, but when I get around to the math of PLD, I'll have to be sure to include some kind of data on supertanking and TP return over time with DNC sub. :)

Iz said...

I have heard the same Sam but honestly I have no idea. I don't see a lot of people as pld/blu and I have never heard anyone say "It would be nice if you had blu sub" lol. But I have heard it being called a super tank with cacoon adding a lot of defense to it, but I'm not sure if its really practical for most things end game wise. I'm sure it can do some 'neat' things to weak mobs maybe.