Endeavoring To Awaken --A Guide To Rune Fencer

Yes it breaks the cap lol, I'm pretty sure that was one of the first things tested when the job came out. They don't exactly give MDT anyways- they're a multiplicative reduction term for their respective element, sort of like how Barrier Tusk works with PDT.

Specifically, Valiance/Vallation most likely provide SDT.

I agree because I believe it also works on breaths and other attacks that don't always use -MDT.

I guess the solution is to test Rayke vs Vallation?

Totally does, altough technically Valiance doesn't give you MDT so we shouldn't really be saying it "breaks the cap", but the result is the same, it allows you to reduce magic damage taken (of a specific element, and including breath damage) further what the 50% MDT would allow you to.

Well, to be fair... although I agree that RUN is better than PLD at defending against magic, it's not as if Aegis doesn't also do the job extremely well. Either one is perfectly capable of dealing with magic damage fine (and for that matter, PUP too simply by virtue of tons of HP/regen and use of attachments/maneuvers). It's not really a game changing difference that RUN is a bit better at something that they can all do very well.

The current big 3 tank jobs do still all have their particular niches though.

RUN:
(+) Rayke/Gambit are great at enhancing nuke damage from your backline (entire alliance). To me this is easily RUN's biggest advantage. Tank + solid magic buffs in one party slot, assuming you're able to use a nuke setup on whatever it is that you're fighting.
(+) Valiance/OFA helps with party protection
(+) Good status resist capabilities
(+) Best magic defense (damage-wise), though it's not as if the others aren't fine too
(-) Most fragile tank when it comes to taking physical damage. Most at risk of death from a nasty TP move, mistimed /NIN shadows, a couple quick crits, etc. Healer may need to be more on their toes with a RUN tank. RUN doesn't have a whole lot of glaring downsides, but this is the big one and admittedly a pretty major risk for a tank! Obviously less of a consideration on stuff with comparatively less damage spike abilities, so it's a major but situational downside.

PUP:
(+) Properly outfitted automaton is basically invincible in any 1-on-1 fight without gimmicks. Best physical damage reduction of PLD RUN PUP; somewhat weaker magic defense but who really cares when in almost every case you can still just soak up spells with massive HP/Regen and repair/maneuvers (Chainspell? Pop a water maneuver or 2 for some extra MDB and use repair, no problem.)
(+) Requires very minimal support or separate healing/buffs; the master can even /WHM and fill a secondary role of -na/erase/haste or tossing a few cures on party members WHILE tanking, and the need for less tank support might potentially allow for use of fewer party members on mobs whose HP scales by party size
(+) Limited weakness from dying. If anything funky does happen and the tank dies, it's as simple as using a JA to call a new puppet with no 3/5 minute weakness on the tank (just need a little time to reestablish hate, as any tank would).
(+) Simply ignores some extremely troublesome stuff like charm and encumbrance
(-) Some enmity issues with stuff that isn't a standard 1-on-1 fight. Worst of the tanks at dealing with multiple adds (for instance, popping an NM that spawns adds that go after popper? they go after squishy master, not puppet). It's troublesome to maintain vokes/flashes on multiple targets. Also harder to manage hate resets than other tanks due to enmity abilities being used on timers and it's not always possible to just hold a JA in wait to use it after a reset. Odd specific enmity circumstances like WoC (which simply ignores puppets).
(-) Doom suuuuucks, can't remove it and puppet is just gonna die if it gets doomed. Some other enfeeble spam can be a bit annoying annoying to deal with timer-based Repair/Maintenance (though most can just be ignored - e.g. it's irrelevant if your puppet is silenced or paralyzed)
(-) Sometimes positioning can be a pain. For example, can't turn to avoid gaze or back tank stuff like a player tank could, puppet won't always get in close enough range to avoid Marine Mayhem, etc. (yeah, Super Arciela in SR can be annoying for PUPs with MM and doomga!)

PLD:
(+) Easily the best tank choice for supertanking and handling multiple enemies. Can get hate well, turtle up and take multiple hits (unlike, say, RUN/NIN blinking stuff)
(+) Significantly better physical defense than RUN, weaker magic defense but Aegis is plenty.
(+) Traditional and simple to grasp for many groups, so maybe more pickup friendly (though I'd consider this a somewhat minor advantage, if you intend to play with a familiar group surely they can get comfortable with non-PLD tanks with a small adjustment period)
(-) Not much additional benefit like RUN's indirect boost to alliance nuke damage and party defensive buffs, PUP's lessened support requirement & master PUP/mage party support
(-) More reliant on RME shields/weapons for high end tanking than RUN (and obviously PUP)

Honestly, to me I'd rather use a PUP or RUN tank over a PLD for most situations in 2016 because of their added benefits... as long as there aren't any of the particular situations that make those two less viable. The one big exception being PLD for a fight with a tank holding multiple mobs.

Your bias is showing.

RUN isn't fragile in the slightest. /BLU solves pretty much every problem and for when that doesn't work you have /NIN. RUN doesn't "mistime" shadows, they have capped fast cast along with stupidly high parry rates vs JT.

The whole "RUN doesn't take physical damage well" is a left over belief from right after it's release when people didn't know how to play it and it didn't have it's JSE and advanced gear.

Bias? Come on, I actually just suggested that I generally prefer RUN (and PUP) tanks to PLD. And I don't even have PLD leveled, though I do have a RUN with everything but Epeo, and a high end PUP with all the tanking stuff.

But I can admit each of the tanks has their stronger and weaker points. RUN certainly has sufficient tools to be able to mitigate physical damage well enough for most circumstances, and I never said it didn't. But that's probably its weakest point, especially in comparison to PLD and PUP who are both ridiculously strong in that department. You're just plain wrong if you're seriously saying RUN is on the same level as those two (not that it means RUN is useless).

Talk about subjobs filling the gaps all you want, but that still doesn't make RUN better than PLD, because PLD can use the exact same subs for the same additional benefit (in addition to their built in advantages of shield blocks, sentinel, etc.)

As for shadows, all the fast cast in the world doesn't mean anything if you get slowed and shadows stripped a couple times in succession, silenced at the wrong instant, or you just plain space out for a second and end up with a quick shadow wipe + WS taken (hey, having a couple beers and zoning out fighting the same Reisenjima NM for a couple hours can do that to somebody...). If you're playing perfectly, sure mega-FC and utsu is usually fine in a blink tank fight. But RUN's greater reliance on properly maintaining shadows is still a higher risk that isn't as important to the other tanks. They just have more margin of error there.

I've been in enough fights with my RUN and PUP and the LS Aegis PLDs (one Burt/Aegis) to be pretty confident that among the three options, RUN is more at risk of dying to physical damage. Maybe some of that is on healers who could have been a little faster (never claimed our group is the best of the best), but again, we're not talking about whether RUN can survive in optimal conditions (obviously it can)... we're talking about getting greater margin of error to allow for the occasional slip-up. RUN is more reliant on not screwing that kind of thing up.

I still say PUP is significantly more damage-proof than either PLD or RUN. I can literally afk a couple minutes in most fights and the puppet still lives... can't pull that off on RUN. If we're simply talking total damage mitigation (and no special considerations that are harder for PUP to deal with), I'll take an automaton over either RUN or PLD. Of course, that's not always the only consideration... I actually want to start using my RUN more often to speed up nuke-based fights!

Mistimed shadow def can happen with R0 or human error though. Human make mistakes, there are just time that we accidently hit that temper macro instead of utsusemi. I think Anza's comparison between 3 tank jobs is as none-biased as it can be. But this is ffxi, whenever we try to compare the strength and weakness between jobs, you see people pop and defend for their favorite jobs.

RUN *does* have a predilection on being on the more fragile side.
Light armor really shoots itself in the foot compared to the heavy sets PLD has available (and then shield on top of that).

But! RUN can get over 50% PDT without a Mythic. (Or in this case, fake mythic.)
But a Burtgis PLD is pretty much on par with Epeolatry... I say on par rather than slightly behind due to the aforementioned lower DEF of RUN.
RUN kills PLD, NIN, and PUP when things get stupid with magic (including enfeebles, pflug is basically unnecessary unlike Fealty).
And -75% PDT more than makes up for the light armor... Not as much as Aegis shuts out magic damage (obvs as 50>25) but it certainly equals/exceeds Burtgang+Shield Physical Damage Reduction.

And then gifts and empy pants force a certain amount of parrying.

And while RUN has come a long way since the beginning of SoA and gained multiple easy ways to reach -55%PDT, that doesn't mean that RUN does not have the physical weakness.
And treating /BLU's DEF buffing as any different than /NIN shadows is critically failing at the underlying principles of them: mitigating damage.

But really, all this is moot. I can't think of a single situation of the current end game where a PLD would use Ochain and not Aegis... And anywhere Aegis is being used, RUN excels.
(Kudos to SE for nerfing Ochain by making it irrelevant, since that also boosts RUN's relevancy.)

And heavy armor shoots itself in the foot compared to light armor for MDEF and MEVD. I've had to purposely add MDEF/MEVD into my WAR's "stay alive" sets for this reason.

The bias exists in the two different standards being applied to each tank.

RUN has lower defense and is therefor "frail" and counted as a negative. PLD has lower magic defense and magic evasion yet that weakness is entirely ignored, even counted as a plus.

The reason PLD's use Aegis on high level ***is because all shields have shitty block rates on anything over level 130. Due to the RE shields not getting iLevel upgrades and shield skill vs level being the big component for block rates, OChain might as well be a level 99 AH shield for all the blocking it's going to do. Aegis at least gives you something that's useful by lowering magic damage. RUN's natural traits, gifts and gear selection end up being more powerful then Aegis. Run's parry rate ends up being about the same as PLD's block rate with OChain vs 130+ stuff due to JT/Gifts/Gear give a boost to the floored rate, not to mention RUN ends up parrying more then Aegis will block. Parry's ignore 100% of that attacks damage while blocks only mitigate a percentage based on the shields defense and type.

Damage * Mdiff * Resist * MDT * SDT * (weather / ect.. ect..)

Everyone is concentrating on the MDT portion but completely ignoring the Mdiff and Resist sections. Mdiff = MAB/MDB and Resist is MACC - MEVD with +resist acting as a bonus to MEVD. RUN can lower damage further by exploiting other components of the magic formula instead of relying on a single one.

Anyhow the assertion above was most definitely biased through using different standards of comparison with PLD getting some hand waiving in the form of "it's good enough so we won't judge".

Are there any math or parse to show that a perfect geared Mythic pld/blu in full souveran hq using ochain takes more or equal total damage after getting beat up for half an hour?

V.S perfectly geared RUN/blu with ergon.

I think pld gets "it's good enough so we don't judge" bouns points because pld pt are far less likely wipe even on magic nuking mobs. I mean, when is the last time that you see pld with survivability issue on mob that nukes.

Thus people can kinda ignore it.

However run has higher playskill requirement on both tank and healer, a r0 or mistimed utsusemi on higher lv NM could lead to death and wipe, especially if you don't ergon as a safety net. You probably wouldnt see pld die that easily if they r0 for 5 sec. So RUNs weakness is less forgiving in a way.

Anticipating the incoming "but but nahhh" I decided to go through the traits and gifts of each job and add them up, yeah it was far worse then I expected.

RUN
Trait +22MDB
Gifts +56MDB +70 MEVD

PLD
Trait +0MDB
Gifts +0MDB +42 MEVD

That's right, PLD gets zero MDB gifts and obviously has zero MDB traits. Neither of their tanking subs provides MDB. So before gear we are talking RUN having +78 more MDB then PLD, RUN tanking gear has even more MDB then PLD's tanking gear. And that's without going into magic evasion, which again RUN has far more of.

As for Parry, RUN has +13% from JT, +8% from gifts and +4% from legs. +25% to whatever base rate the RUN can get from their iLevel weapon. And unlike Aegis/OChain, iLevel weapons actually have +skill on them.

And just so people understand the degree of difference that MDB makes. Geo-Maliase, that magic debuff that lets us abuse the *** out of nukes, is -30 @900 skill + Dunna and -45 with Idris. Run is getting +78 MDB, PLD isn't even in the same league. PLD needs to wear Aegis just to play on the same field, it still loses badly but at least it's not by an embarrassing amount.

PLD's ridiculous defense would matter more if things like Cocoon, Utsusemi, Foil, and Battuta didn't exist. Shield blocks would mean more if SE didn't nerf the *** out of them vs 130+ NMs, the NM's that actually matter more.

Can I see what data you are inferring this from?

Umm, I don think anyone is trying to argue that RUN takes little nuke dmg here.....just to clear things up, when I first mentioned "aegis can break MDT cap" as an advantage, I was talking about moves like Yakshi's canopierce move. which according to wiki, is unaffected by mdb but affected by mdt-. Thus gives aegis an advantage unless there's other way to deal with it that works better than using aegis.

But for some reason it turned into 2 pages of aegis v.s RUN argument.

Martel did testing on BG vs monsters over level 130. You can find some pretty absurd level regular monsters buried in WoG gates and Inner Sanctum. And yes OChain got a really shitty block rate on them, primarily due to lacking +shield skill from iLevel upgrade.

And Afania this has to do with the above poster's biased as *** comparison, then people piling on top of it. If you are going to compare stuff then use the same standard for both. RUN is as "frail" to physical damage as PLD is to magic damage, probably even less so due to JA / JT / Gifts and subjob abilities. None of which require a Relic or Emperian weapon. Everyone was focused on -MDT and "breaking the cap" they completely forgot how magic damage is even calculated in the first place. Hell last I checked Atteir isn't even a RME and yet that's being compared to Aegis, OChain and Burtang. Doesn't get much more one sided then that.

Links. Links are good.

So is civil communication.

If this was the PLD forums sure, otherwise go look there. And your still butt-hurt from the other day.

"Shitty" isn't actually an objective measurement. Can you provide the data that you are basing your conclusions on? Specifically, the block rate on 130+ for Ochain vs. a 99 AH shield, and the parrying rate for a RUN against the same level.

Block rate in the 25~50% depending on it's level. Aegis had it even lower with Priwen having about the same as Ochain depending if Reprisal was up or not. The numbers were just ~bad~, really shows how important shield skill is and those shields not having it hurts. On lower levels the shields big bonus to block rate saves them, but as the CL rises the discrepancy becomes bigger and bigger. Essentially those shields have a linear bonus to block rate with OChain having a stupidly high one that puts it past 100% on a lot of stuff. For each level above the PLD, the block rate gets lower and lower until eventually it goes under 100%, then under 80%, then under 60% and so on. Once you get into the 145+ range (Kirin / WoC / T4 HELM) Shields just become nearly useless.

Parry rate is piss easy, base + JT. RUN's JT Inquartata and gifts are after level checks and you can't have a negative parry rate. JT is +13%, Gifts are +8% and those legs are +4% for a 25% rate added on top of the parry floor, which I believe 4~5%. Parry checks happen after Evasion checks and the player evasion floor is 20%, so you need to factor that into your calcs. On an CL 999 NM, Run would have a 28~30% parry rate.

I tried digging for a formula showing the shield proc rates, not on the wiki and BG Forums are entirely too unorganized for me to deal with without trying to remember my password.

Further clarifying and expanding on MDB discussion above: if we assume the mob starts with 0 MDB (MDB=1.0), MDB-30 from Malaise is a ~43% increase in damage taken and MDB-45 (Idris) is an ~82% increase. You can further stack MDB debuffs for even greater results; Acrid Stream's MDB-10 is up to a 22% damage boost after Malaise (without factoring in the potential for GEO JAs). It's likely that most NMs have some amount of baseline MDB however, so the actual increase is potentially less.

Increasing MDB naturally has the opposite result; 78 MDB nets you a 78% decrease in damage if starting at 0 MDB. You're probably starting with a baseline of ~20ish in gear (if otherwise gearing for meva), so it's more like 65% in that situation without accounting for any additional MDB gear that the PLD might throw on. If you want to disregard meva and focus on MDB then you can get up around 80 MDB with a good set and PLD can likely do about the same, so that gift/trait advantage is down to a 43% reduction in damage taken.

50% MDT reduction * 45% SDT reduction from a 3x rune Valiance/Vallation is (1-0.5)*(1-0.45)=0.275, or a 72.5% net reduction. Aegis is sitting pretty at 87.5% plus MDB. Let's take the best case scenario and assume baseline MDB gear, no MDB buffs or food or anything for either:

Aegis: 0.125/1.2=0.1042
RUN: 0.275/1.98=0.1389

RUN is actually taking more magic damage in this scenario, and will also do so if you pile MDB gear on both tanks as per the above. I'm admittedly not accounting for potential differences in INT here, but it's pretty reasonable to assume that whatever difference in dINT isn't going to result in a 30% reduction in base damage.

RUN must force resists to gain an advantage in magic damage reduction. Thankfully it's well equipped to do that. A half resist is sufficient with 3x rune Valiance/Vallation, but if you're dealing with a varying elements then you need a decent 1/4 resist rate just to match Aegis on average. That's without getting into the benefits of consistent damage reduction, PLD's superior HP pool, nor how those numbers change if we give the PLD some MDB gear/buffs and contrast it against a RUN's meva build.

All the PLD has to do is equip a shield and they're basically set. I do think there's a lot to be said for using RUN in high level content, but those benefits revolve more around what it can do for the party both offensively and defensively than in any differences in magic damage taken.

Found some of Martel's testing about level and shield block rates.

Level 105 monster


Level 111 Rabbits, notice OChain is no longer at 100%


Level 126 monsters, watch whats happening to OChain


There was another thread were he did this testing on Apex mobs which go past 130 and even hit 140. OChain's block rate continues to drop as the monsters level goes up, it's not linear and past 130 is where we see under 50% block rates.

Shields against level 133, without and with Reprisal (no skill+ or block+ gear).



Last I've spoken to Martel about it, he has no model for calculating block rate in relation to level; the Aegis and Ochain numbers above are test results. He also never showed me anything past 133, but that's not to say it doesn't exist.

Not to say that there isn't a level that Ochain's block rate will reach your 30% (obviously, there is), but you may want to revisit your original statement.

Umm your talking about relic you know. Essentially something that takes up a gear slot on PLD, is innate on RUN.

Just imagine if your Aegis could become a Job Trait for PLD that's always equipped 100% of the time, 24/7 and lets you use other shields? Yeah that's RUN.

So as I said, PLD isn't even in the same league as RUN. It needs Aegis just to stand on the same field, and then RUN still takes less magic damage due to everything else it has.

Umm post the original link or something, that chart disagrees with previous charts. Well not enough information present to even read it. No images or pictures, the actual link for that chart and it's relevant +skill and target.

Currency is dirt cheap, the trials are a joke at 119, and there's no pluton trials to sink another 100M or so into. Aegis isn't exactly a huge barrier to entry, especially for the kind of content you're talking about.

Doesn't matter. You can't equip two shields at once. Aegis has essentially floored block rate on anything worth writing home about. PLD must give up its physical protection to even be on the same field as the RUN. RUN's bonus's are all innate. We're talking about an Aegis PLD vs a naked RUN.

And no matter what you'd like to make people think, there isn't a Goblin NPC handing out Aegis' to any PLD that asks. It's still a very large investment that your giving to one side while ignoring the same on the other.

Psst about magic evasion. RUN's "fake JSE" just got +50 of it to go with the +70 in gifts RUN gets and the higher amounts in it's gear. That's without touching the elemental resists from Runes or Valiance / Vallation. But hey you, like the original biased individual, like to hand waive stuff in an attempt to argue yourself correct.

Next you'll suggest that PLD's wear the Aegis in one hand, the OChain in the other and have a Priwen on their back while the RUN only wears it's AF weapon.