Paladin DD Set Up

"hey-let's-just-get-along-carebear...."

This is precisely what I AM.

I, like you, am just stating an opinion, and pointing out what I've seen. I see long-winded arguments as "drama." Not drama as in "I HATE YOU BLAH," but drama as in a conflict of opinions.

I am no carebear, but some of my lsmates call me "Fruitcake". You're free to call me that :D

Problem:



Solution:

Ignore it and scroll down past the wall of text found to be so offending to your eyes...

Basically it.

You could look at it like this... Makes things easier. I'm not saying which DD is best or anything just humor me.
Lets say Dark Knight, Warrior, and Samurai are the Top 3 DD's in the game because Of Damage output alone. Nothing else being looked at. Only Damage given out.
I will say they rank on a scale of 1-10 at a 10. Reaching 10 or near 10 for this Dark Knight Warrior or Samurai ? how hard is it.
Well all things considered that if you compare these jobs to others. To gear these jobs to do 10 or near 10 even an 8 or 9 is far easier than Most jobs. A statistically neutral mob i guess you could use.

A Paladin excels at Hate control and damage reduction with the ability to cast certain select support spells to aid them. To reach a 10 even a 7,8 or 9 in terms of damage would require an insane amount of resources time and effort. You may think it unrealistic, impossible or even ridiculous. But it's possible. I'm no Paladin. In fact i don't even have the job unlocked. I love other people playing it though. And I've seen said unrealistic, impossible and ridiculous Paladins. We have at least 2 or 3 on Kujata. They Blew my mind. Would i believe it if i hadn't seen it? I'm not sure. I mean maybe if they would have relay'd their gear setups to me ect. But i'm going to back those paladins Ive seen with every bit of my being. Because i know for an absolute 100% fact it is possible.

It goes for every single job that if you are under geared you are not living up to what your full potential is. An under geared Warrior Samurai or Dark knight Still being used in my above context of being hypothetically the top 3 DD on a scale of 1-10 if under geared. does that mean they still rock? No they don't, they are just average or under average.

Everything, and i mean literally everything has been previously stated. If you want to take everything i say out of context, Blow it out of proportion, Call me a ignorant, narrow minded, shallow moronic idiot Like Smurfo. Go ahead, really. If you honestly think i deserve that then by all means flame the absolute hell out of me.

The debate was never originally about whether or not it was seriously unrealistic, there was no set amount of time laid before us to achieve DD setup goal, No certain amount of gil allowed to be spent. He wanted suggestions. It was about a PLD DD setup. nothing tough about that is there? I didn't think so.

Edit: Read my previous posts if you think of going off on me. I covered my own *** already. Many many times. Why? well a hypocrite once told me he hated people taking what he said out of context and blowing what they said out of proportion in unrealistic situations.

Whole thread was tl;dr but:
Get Excal and profit.

I'm the new Avatar they've been promising! ohoho! You have to summon me though, so I'm afraid there's nothing I can do now.

Sorry. /leave

/ma "Wooooodum" <me>
/wait 1
/ja "Astral Flow" <me>
/wait 1
/pet "Kick ***" <t>

Wooooodum uses Kick ***.
The server takes 9999 damage.
Wooooodum defeats the server.

Speaking of new avatars, I hope it's Phoenix. Showed my friend my FF7 Emerald Weapon save earlier and my love was renewed <3 Now there's an avatar you could depend on. None of this Carbuncle shite.

You just can't seem to post without throwing my name out there eh? You are that fascinated by talking to me?

Look man it's over, dead, long gone, like 3 pages ago and you're still pulling my name up. I've provided clear cut reasoning for my opinions as have you, let's just drop it already. You have an opinion as do I.

Edit: The one thing that strikes me as very odd is that the OP never even mentioned a level of gearing for this job, I think the majority are assuming 75 and thus the debating ensued.

My only real question at this point is what level range is the OP looking for? Because my opinion of this subject was based on the assumption - as many others had that you are looking for a lv75 DD build... in which case it's just not really worth it unless you're super rich or have alot of time to invest in obtaining certain gears, you will most likely slow down your own exp/hr meriting as that job vs. any other.

If you are looking for a build for getting to 75 and DD'ing along the way, i think it would be much better to have asked the question with a bit more detail. Level range looking for the advice is a very critical detail, not only due to the fact less people may have argued endlessly over it's right to exist, but because those who did post relevant advice would have been able to narrow it down better.

i seek apologies! you made me sad =( afk4life.
Jk. You don't have to i'm just messing.

I agree with what you said.

Wow you guys are bloodthirsty... never realized how many closed-minded people there are in this game until this thread.

For the last... pretty much year, I have been building a DD set for my pld. Why? Because I love pld. I don't want to level anything else to "be a DD." I've proven to myself, and others, time after time that I can, in fact, DD on pld. Why else? Because its NOT a standard party role, yet it is capable of it and I enjoy that. Same reason I was building a DD set for my brd (however, brd I'd never get a chance to DD in anything but solo or duo situations, unlike pld.) Same reason I went nin/rdm between 40 and 53. Same reason I bought a wyvern earring for /drg whenever I finally get it up for events (and go war/drg for random bcnms and stuff).

Its fun to me. Thats all. Its fun, AND it works.

Almost every single party I have parsed I came out top, or close to it (that includes alliances.)

A few weeks ago I was in a merit party, I decided to go /nin and dual wield, and parse it. War/nin, war/nin, war/nin, pld/nin, brd/nin, and whm/blm. Well I parsed it, war/nin, pld/nin, then other two war/nins... the other two were so far behind us that if you added their scores over the last 2 hours, it would've equaled either one of ours. (Mamool Ja camp, so mamools and puks)

Sam/war, nin/war, mnk/nin, pld/nin, sch/rdm, and rdm/whm -- troll camp... I came out first.

Farming despot. First. Farming water. First. Farming diorite, usually first (of the alliance, sometimes second depending how long we're there... only diorite do I ever use food for, because adding food gives an unfair advantage considering parses, if noone else uses, but pretty much everyone for our shell used for diorite farms).

Sometimes I go and use a staff instead, or gsd, and still put out really good numbers, even though I don't have merits or anything in that.

Top that off, most the parses show something else... not only do I tend to appear at the top of the damage list... I am almost always the highest curer, so I help out by curing myself and others, to the point I usually surpass the whm/rdm (it depends on the situation, but most of the time I'm tied or cure more)-- which means that I help the party out in more than just "damage."

I do a lot of solo-work on my pld, so my DD set comes in very useful for me, but even without it... its less than 1x a month I even put on my full def gear, because I rarely have a use for it. All I really use it for is tanking big stuff, like gods, or new NMs haven't experienced before. Nyzul isle, merit parties, campaign, solo, gods-farm, limbus climbs, MMM runs,ENMs, KSNMs, etc, I all use my DD set for (now I'm not stupid and I won't be dual wielding when mobs hit hard and stuff, so alter considering the situation. I have shield skill a macro away, so if I'm /war or /rdm and feel I need more, hit it and I'm in all DD gear w/ some shield skill macroed in. If I feel like we REALLY need my enmity/vit set, its also a macro away, but more and more I'm getting more comfortable tanking in pure DD that I rarely feel the need for that set except for big stuff.)

Its situational, yes. But most situations I find myself in, it works, and it works well.

Now... I spent 14 months doing nyzul, long before the changes to it, just to get askar... for my pld, and for my pld alone... so I have a full set now... that certainly helps in the damage department-- but pretty much everything else is obtainable by the average player (and even thats obtainable if you put time in... as I said, I spent 14 months on it... 7 months before first drop even).

I just moved servers, so clicking my name'll show my last used set of gear... which is my standard idle/dot gear... (except that loq. earring is brutal most of the time, and suppa turns to fowling if I'm using gaxe or staff or club)... ws wise... still building, but pieces that change... --> pallas (gonna get alkys soon), --> heca feet, --> warwolf belt, --> hauby and thats about it... *shrug*

(Btw, its not that my parser is biased or anything either. I parsed my nyzul group time after time, where I was the brd... we had pld/nin, drk/sam, drk/sam, (thf/nin or drg/(sam/war)), whm/sch and brd/whm... and the pld/nin always came in second, surpassing one drk/sam every time, and just shy of the other... thf would be less than him, and drg would tie depending on runs)

--- as for what to get to start? Start with a hauby. I was using a DD set from 60 onwards, and took me ages to get askar, so had AHable gear for the longest time... Hauby, RK breeches, sipahi turban, dusk gloves, woodsman ring, garrulous ring, potent belt, amemet/amemet+1, assault earring/ fowling earring, chiv chain/ pcc, company sword (<--- most my parses was mainhanding company, sub joyeuse... I just recently invested in an organics... which I love, but company is still very good, and very very cheap), iron ram shield... *shrug*

Just... while leveling... use shield gear... a lot. Unless your like using a 2hand, if your using a shield, put on your gallant breeches, your shield torque, your buckler earring if you have it... 90% your damage reduction comes not from your def, but from your shield... the rest is pretty much sentinel, and a small smidgen from def/vit. So optimize shield to its max, then fill out in DD stuff... until you're more involved and experienced w/ your prey, and feel you can do without it

and merit it DDwise as well.. crit merits, sword merits <-- that'll help a lot

No offense to you or your friends, but they suck;

PLD out damaging SAM's with a Staff? They must be reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally bad for that to happen as a trend.

But like I said, no offense to any of you, it's just the way SE designed it. There's no reason you should be out damaging a Samurai, especially if they're subbing WAR. That would either mean you have everything a PLD could get to boost their damage (+1 Heca everything, Relic, etc), and that the SAM was semi-naked or semi-AFK. PLD's just can't keep up, so I don't know which it is... But it's one of them.

In before "PLD can DD", I'm not saying they can't or shouldn't, but SE did not design SAM's to be out damaged by Staff wielding PLD's. They just didn't @_@

SIDI!!! I've seen you on the FFXIclopedia.org forums often^^ Welcome to FFXIAH.com forums, GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN. *Cover*

5 pages and all anyone is really saying is "to be or not to be"

Can PLD dd? Yes. Should they in your average party? No.

5...pages....

Some thoughts and guidelines culled from personal experience here...

If you're going to do this, do it right. DD PLD's will need two sets of gear: 1) A TP set focusing on haste and acc & 2) a WS set. For WS you'll either be spamming Vorpal Blade or Atonement.

Vorpal Blade uses a 30% str mod, so be mindful of stacking STR pieces. It's also a multi-hit WS so ACC is needed (think life belt, pcc, sniper, woodsman, chiv chain, ohat, scorp harness). Realize if you're stacking alot of STR, use sushi. If stacking more ACC, eat the meat.

Atonement is a different beast. Outside of Nyzul Isle, you're going to cap out at 750 dmg. If you use it right off the bat you're going to do < 200. Atonement requires you to build up hate first. Usually I save it for when a mob gets around 50% hp, by that point I know I have enmity built up. Note also that enmity + gear has a direct effect on the WS damage so wearing it as you TP will help you hit the dmg cap sooner.

So why go through the trouble? Well because it's fun, as PLD you're always getting hit and it's damn nice feeling being able to dish it back out. Yet on a practical level, I keep DD gears for the following reasons:

1) Farming - I've been going PLD/ THF since level 60. PLD was my first job and I had no choice, how the heck else was I going to make gil? Honestly, I've had a good run of it too... Now that I have a level 75 thf, I'm phasing this out, but the gear will be kept since there's other instances where it's helpful

2) Missions/ Quests - I'm rank 10 in all nations and I get asked to help out alot. I'm usually PLD/NIN, sometimes /WAR but in both setups it's fun as hell to go toe-to-toe vs. mission bosses, killing them and help setting a server record. So far as quests go, I've gone and done them lowman... 4 people or less. I can't always get DD friends to help so I have to supply my own muscle. Being self-sufficient in this regard is a relief.

3) Instanced Events - Nyzul Isle is my best example here. My static runs DRK/SAM x2, THF/NIN, WHM/SMN, BRD/WHM and me on PLD/NIN. DD is more than covered and I pretty much am able to solo DC mobs on the kill all floors. Also my TP setup allows me to spam Atonement, which you ought to remember counts as magic damage, on those pesky pudding leader mobs. Overall having DD gears makes me useful and prevents me from being a total drag on the pt. Mind I'm still expected to function as a backup healer, and a scout since I have crim legs and can outrun everyone, but being able to DD helps us clear floors faster than if I just brought tank gears instead.

4) non-Pug Meripo - I would never join randoms kitted out in my DD setup. Actually there's no way in hell I'd get an invite in the first place, so who am I kidding? However, every so often I am able to pull friends together to merit and it's fun to bash on mobs.

I believe you put words in my mouth. Majority of the time I'm using 2 swords (don't even get to go /war too often anymore), but there are cases where I will use a staff or gsd for fun or for use (nice to swap in staff get a few hits in, get a spirit taker and wham 150-300 mp back w/o tping up to 300 for a 12 min chiv... 'course really depends on situation... of course what is REALLY fun, but rarely seen, is actually staff-tanking and spamming cures because you get mp back so fast XD a little DD there, but really its all in the cure spamming, so fun). And I wasn't just talking about my friends, almost all my parses are with random general people, people in sky shell, people who join ksnm with me, people who do this or that or whatever. Never said I out-DDed sams w/ a staff, but I have w/ a sword no prob. (Even on pots, haven't really gone /war so maybe the extra 10% double att helps more, but as it is, I hit hard enough w/ my swords that the blunt-dmg increase isn't really anything more than what I already do...)



Haha, hi :P And yeah... I tend to lurk a lot... not so sure how often I'll be posting around here <.<;; but I will lurk :ninja:

and atonement is god... I don't bother stacking up enmity gear for it, if planning on using it, usually will be able to have hate high enough... or just a nice sentinel-flash and its pretty decent :P (well, have enmity gear and use it for tanking gods and big things... but your also getting hit and stuff so constantly decreasing your enmity, so it tends to hang out around 400 dmg for me... unless I get it right after a hate move XD)

Unfortunatly, for most meripo and stuff, it goes way too fast to build any hate whatsoever for atonement XD booo

speaking of bard solo try that out in campaign. Im pretty much using my thief WS (hecatomb) and TP (everything but homam, replaced with pretty much dusk) gear and evisc. spam. min/march. I just want goliard body for the 4% haste and i'll be happy lol.

Something to do with vorpal blade. They nerfed something to do with its critical hit % on it didn't they? i just remembered someone saying that once to me. Atonement seems like an interesting Weaponskill i had no idea it worked off built enmity. This has nothing to do with anything except my own curiosity.

Parsing random things you do an coming out on top, isn't at all un-natural maybe i'm the only person who does this but for sky and such events after 15mins i go into "sky mode", aka depression? I guess thats too steep. But after however many friggin years its been in sky, face it were all a little numb to the experience and want it to end before its even begun (other events for some people). Point is my skill level drops and my probability i'm going to mess up Sneak attack or trick attack go up about 75%, and I've played thief all my ffxi life. That being said. Are your DD's actually going all out on these mobs? If they are how are they geared.

What sets your PLD apart from others is your Askar alone? i can pretty much fill in what your using for your other slots with my imagination. Certain parts of askar are nice indeed. But it has some highly irrelevant pieces as well... in terms of what you may want DDing Hands legs and feet all together give you +3Str +9Dex Haste 2% Acc+5 Attk+5 (without the accuracy and attack converted over from str and dex mods). Those are the only stats on 3 pieces of your gear. I'm not saying they are useless but If you are indeed out parsing war/nin (a pretty standard nothing special about them DD assuming they don't have ridill) in merit pt well id imagine them not well geared especially if 2 of them = your total dmg output. If your using that as your main argument for a merit party then I think you should get a new example. Your war/nin friend who parsed the same as you i am assuming since you compared him/her to yourself. I'm more interested in them.

You can see what im saying right? I don't believe your lying, I've never said that once, I believe your a good damage dealer. But, i am sure you can imagine my need for wanting details on the matter.

Just wondering who you were directing the comment at? Or is it general?

Well I have rajas, ulthalim, cerb mantle, suppapapapapo, pcc, swift belt, brutal, organics/joyeuse (<--- that right theres where it helps, joyeuse hits so fast, and double attacks os often that gives me a nice boost of DoT, then helps me ws for more often... now my wses dont average that high because I don't have the best ws set yet... seems to be about 450 average, sometimes a 300, occassional 800s, but seems to stick around 500 when averaged together... yet its more often wsing from most other DDs, because most DDs dont use a double-attacking weapon (ridill if they had it, kraken I suppose if they have it, both of which aren't so common))

All pretty standard for DD gear for DDs... I'd use homam hands over askar if I had it (although I rather enjoy full set, because +10% hp is quite handy to have, less enmity loss for getting hit, larger cure zone, and for those days when you wanna stack up the hp gear and land a nice spirits within :P), body I use a hauby over askar if I have bad acc at the moment (having 297 sword skill helps a lot, although I lack in as much acc gear as other DDs so usually use sushi over att food, but sometimes switch things around and use coeurl subs and hauby instead), Im still working on it and still want to improve it, but for the time being I am quite capable of DDing. <--- don't have much else because don't have time for big endgame stuff... nyzul was lowman, and everything else I farmed for, because I'm too busy w/ school and whatnot to spend time in dynamis/limbus/sky/hnms and whatnot... >_<; was in sky for a short time, but can't atm.

I never said I was the best DD. I am still a pld, my first and foremost job is to survive, and make sure I can hold hate. I find it a LOT easier to hold hate when I deal as much damage as the DDs around me, rahter than just going all defensive and hope I can keep up with their damage-enmity.

And yeah, thats why I don't depend on one set of data. Why I parse more than one case, more than one instance. If you tell the ppl your parsing them, then suddenly everyone starts going further out and trying to do their job more. I go into sky mode as well, and usually leave parser running, engage character meleeing, and start reading up on forums, and manga, and a book and stuff, coming back every few seconds to switch targets/ws and whatnot, even so, I stick up with there. Merit pts, ppl tend to have to stay on task because mobs come so fast and go so far away, so more 'reliable' in the sense of producing good parses... on other hand, DoT damagers dont do as well there, because mobs do die so fast they don't really get a chance to put into their worth (and pld is definitely a DoT damager...)

Atonement is awesome... basically once you reach a certain level of enmity (CE and VE combined it seems), you will cap out your atonement damage at 750... every 100tp 720-750 dmg is SOOOOOOOOO nice, if you keep your enmity up (great for elementals and stuff since its magic based like spirits within)-- on other hand, isn't a good ws to start with because you haven't hd time to build up enmity... I've had cases where I hit wrong ws and dealt like 10 dmg because I just engaged them XD

Pld doesn't have any native offensive JAs, its true, but its still got its capabilities... first and foremost is the versitality... plds have an A+ in sword, A- in staff, A- in club, as well as a B in great sword... thats 4 different weapons they are capable of wielding effectively (now club I worked my *** off getting black halo and getting a morgenstern and unlocking it... only to find it really really sucks, haha... even on blunt-weak mobs, its like... HELLO I DO NO DAMAGE!!! HAHAHA) so for some cases... like those limbus floors, where you need to switch weapon types... pld can do it quite effectively (joyeuse/ what is it a tuck type? or epee... cna never remember... for piercing, normal sword/gsd for slashing, staff/club for blunt... so can even deal blunt dmg and still tank w/ shield if you need XD), so knowing when to use what can prove to be quite effective... and for strict DoT... they do fine weilding their sword, so so what if they needa depend on sub for any offensive JAs, if they DID have any offensive JAs it'd be overpowered, because they're mainly built defensively

I'm not saying I'm the best DD, nor best pld DD at all, but just that pld is capable of dealing as much damage as any other DD if they build for it. But its more like a thf and ninja, where its more damage over time, rahter than a drk/sam/war where they have large spike dmg-- so not for zergs at all

I don't remember their gear, but know its not like I /checked and went "ROTFL! OMG! HE'S WEARING FULL WAR AF AT 75!!! ZOMG!!!!" or anything (haha, I wuoldn't ever act like that anyways, but you get my point), its the standard gear any war would have while working for the more... exclusive gear. The one who did do more I don't remember either, but he did have some sky gear (haidate, osode) and stuff... not "pimped" as these days refer to it, but still well geared. (Since it seems "pimped" wars have to be adaberk/ridill wars *shrug*)

And yeah, I don't know if vorpals been "nerfed" or not... don't really pay attention to all that, but I definitely seem to find that swift is more RELIABLE in numbers, although vorpal can get much higher, but varies a whole lot more... but heard that swift can't crit on it, and vorpal can... actually just found out that only wses that actually say they can crit in it can crit unless stacked with SA *neverknewit*

For fun, I'm planning on leveling up more subs for my pld, to try it out in different situations (I'm dying to try a SATA 300-tp full swing on either a skele/pot or open mouthed fishy... wanna see it XD), and /sam to check out seigan-tanking with staff/gsd (if w/ staff, should be able to tp enough to hold hate fine from cure-spams... even if dont hold hate, cna just cure IV the others and keep spirit-takering myself just fine... I've done it /war successfuly, so /sam should be really cool, so really wanna play with that... with gsd... jsut straightup DDstyle)... and some other 'stupid' subs for fun :P

...sorry for double post... BUT OMG THERES A WOW AD NEXT TO THE POSTING BOX!!!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GO AWAY!!!!!! >_________<

Yea my friend could pull off a Sword War pretty well (apparently, i never saw her). Till they did something with the critical % on Vorpal.

Cool Thank you Sidi =)

If you wanna throw your stuff up here Malekith, by all means ^^ it was originally directed to Sidi though d= sry. Well some of what i said was in general actually like atonement n stuff. Didn't know thats how it worked i haven't really looked into the mystic weapon stuff~ Nirvana staff makes me drool, thats all i know haha.

Yeah... my friend is an adaberk-ridill war (different server though, so have played his chara, but he's never seen my pld).. its pretty amazing... I still don't really get why people would wanna use swords on war or anything though, because typically they are fairly weak compared to other weapons (ridill is an exception, because good base dmg and 2-3 atts)... but organics is pretty nice because its comparable to an axe, which is just amazing (company is good too, people overlook the hidden effect quite often, but for smaller pts, its not as useful :P and no crit/str XD)

But yeah, I don't want to be best DD ever, I just wanna be recognized as capable of keeping up with others, and I have reached that goal, so makes me happy :P (people sometimes get annoyed/upset/shocked/amused that pld is pretty much my only 75... yet I have all that gear for it XD they assume I got for something else and use on pld, but really... nope worked on DD gear for pld first, since most defensive gear is endgamestuff and can't get from AH or anything XD... boxers I farmed for, but I still have stupid stuff like gallant body... *cry* XD)

Anyways... its just my personal belief, that ANY job can DD if they put their mind to it and learn how best to use it... now some cases its impractical, and shouldn't be done, but there are lots of situations people could be a little more open-minded and allow some variance for typical roles (like say, allowing a whm to melee, if they have the gear... especially these days with mystic boon... being able to get a GOOD amount of mp back every 100tp is so handy for whm)... just can be difficult finding the people to let you experiment until you finetune things for the general populous XD (like try a year or two ago, how many people would let a pld in DD gear tank? these days most realize its possible, if not optimal in some cases, but in the past, it'd be an instant WTF ARE YOU DOING GET OUT OF HERE!!!!)
Still, some roles can be a pain >.>;;; like my brd... would love to be able to DD more on it and stuff... but 8 second song casting... then it wears, and gotta run and do 2 sets... so 4 songs, 32 pure singing time, plus runing time, so around 45 seconds singing for every 2 minutes or so (I can't remember the duration... and apparrantly wiki doesn't wanna show me the base-song duration for buffs)... so thats like a minute and a half of melee, then 45 seconds singing, then minute/half melee.... can see how nothing gets done XD.. even for solo, its like... 20 seconds buffing, melee 2 mins, 20 seconds buff, melee 2 mins... SO ANNOYING =_= (yeah, I quit brd for this reason as well XD)

But yeah... as I said earlier, its possible, just work at it and gear it as any other DD (just don't put stuff like... republic subligar on your 67 pld >.>; please... you still want decent def/vit XD)

A lot of people tell me I can't SAM/DNC in meripo either, but I usually show them that not only does it work, but it really works well when you have people who understand how to make it effective as part of the group. However it doesn't work in every situation.

DD PLD is the same way in that it really is effective as a part of the group if you have good gear, good skill, and accept your role as more than just a DD, I'm sure you're fine. It's just not the only way to play the job for every situation. Don't want to see any DD PLD hitting up JoL with the rare, rare exception of people like Stanislav.

As SAM/DNC, I don't put out as much damage as I do on SAM/WAR (which I have a blast meritting on), but that's also not my intent. I usually would do this with Soboro anyway, and just spam WS to close skillchains off other people's WS (amazing how 200-400 extra damage on every WS really boosts your damage, but so many people /fail at skillchains these days it makes a Samurai sad).

DD PLD, you're not going to outdo most WAR, MNK, SAM, DRK or other DD intended jobs, but you can still do a respectable amount of damage and contribute to the group in other ways that they can't. One of the big things is that you can keep your own HP maintained (one of the things that I like with SAM/DNC), which frees up more MP of the healer to do things like Haste everyone in the party continually. Haste costs less MP than one Cure 3, so if you save them a Cure 3 every 2 fights, there's no reason they can't give you Haste.

Even in things like farming Sky, DD PLD can work fine. It just depends on the setup. If you're lowmanning Zip, you probably want to get some serious tanking gear out. If you're farming Water, get that DD stuff on and rock out. It's knowing where to fit in.

DD PLD for a God makes me want to /cry, but then again, so does it when I see someone like SAM/NIN for them. It's all about fitting into the situation. PLD is one of the more flexible jobs when you mix and match the subjobs, so back to the OP, do what you want, have some fun (this is a game), and if you have to, just find a regular group of people to merit with that have no issue with you on PLD for it and go do that.

Reviving the thread--a well-experienced friend of mine tested stacking some DEX too, since Vorpal Blade depends on Crit hit damage (Original description: "Delivers a four-hit attack. Chance of critical varies with TP."). I realize it says "varies with TP," but it doesn't really say it's limited to being modded by TP only. He said it worked pretty well, but I don't exactly remember exact numbers or anything. Any thoughts?

lol but doesnt the +eva on scorp harness get cancelled out by the woodsmans?! Y u so dum malekith

If only the same rules applied to dead threads as dead people.

Report back with your findings.