How Would You Balance The Jobs?

The main issue is it requires more effort to do what pld can do, same reason why most bandwagon DD players prefer MNK.PLD is the bandwagon easy tank job.

It's a bit of everything you said.
I think Afania's post sums up well my thoughts.
It requires much more effort compared to PLD, to produce similar results.

The "people not used using RUN" certainly is an important factor here, but it's undeniable that RUN is not as efficient/easy to use compared to PLD.

It has some niches where it does a really good job, for instance in Marjami runs I find it easier to tank on RUN/BLU than PLD/RUN, but that's kinda the exception here.



I don't know what they should do to "fix" it.
Its main issue lies in the core concept of the job (i.e. the runes, the fact you cannot get a protection against all elements at the same time or non elemental stuff etc).
Before thinking to fix RUN specifically they should work on fixing tanking in general though, enmity system is still far from where it should be in a MMO imho.
Atm the only part of content where you really need a tank are some BCs and you need to deploy RNGs to make it work.

In my opinion this clearly shows how something is "broken" there and they're being obnoxiously slow in acknowledging it and trying to fix it.

Sadly its just better to tank that zone on SAM.

Mostly people unfamiliar with how it works. I wasn't joking when I said it was just like RDM HNM circa 2005. The reason RDM could tank back them was it had naitive MDB, access to enough PDT/def gear and tons of self buffs centered around survivability coupled with the great CE building tools. PLD's hate tools where largely centered around large VE spikes while slowly building CE or having CE planted on them by TA. RDM's couldn't spike VE but built CE much faster then a PLD due to spamming cheap fast casting low recast enmity spells.

RUN is very similiar. You have a metric ton of self buffs centered on survivability, everything from RDM and then some more while also having lots of hate tools that gave CE. Going /BLU eliminates it's physical weakness as well as giving in two high enmity spells, Blank Gaze and Jettaru with BG able to be cast non-stop with haste and inspiration. I've tanked a ton of stuff on RUN and once you get used to it you practically laugh at everything, the only thing that was ever scary was Ice Tiger immediately after glassy nova.

Which brings us to PLD, for PLD to "survive" it merely needs to equip O.Chain and stand facing a certain direction. Shell and gear has enough vanilla DT to ensure they don't get one shoted by magic, if they aren't using Aegis, and they are virtually immune to physical damage anyway. They don't need to build hate anymore, RNG's give them hate via Decoy shot. So our real tanks are now RNG's who control enmity via DPS transfer.

Both RUN and PLD are pretty much equal in effectiveness, RUN requires more knowledge of game mechanics and button mashing while PLD is pretty dumbed down, provided you have OChain and RNGs. And while I know I'm about to get a bunch of crap from the PLD elite here, the truth is RUN has far more hate tools then PLD, especially CE generators. Not only do they have two VE spikes (Flash + Foil) they also can get a ton of CE generators, especially from /BLU. Native barspells and a natural resistance to all debuffs coupled with the ability to become virtually immune to a single element. That's without getting into stuff like One For All and Rayke / Gambit. The downside is it's far more complicated to play.

Well, you won't get any crap from me, I've pretty much been saying this the whole time. lol. Particularly on the OF. I've done several enmity generation arsenal comparisons.

RUN has waaay more CE tools. And ridiculous spell spam speed. PLD is a lot tougher, and has far far better access to enmity+ gear, so it loses less CE, and gets more mileage out of the tools it does have.

Speaking of enmity gear. rager ledelsens +1! Nice enmity/haste feet for RUN. Pretty much the equivalent of Creed sabatons in enmity/haste. Except they're Ilvl.

I really can't see why people would think RUN is "less efficient" than PLD. The bottom line is RUN has a different method to tanking, and if the RUN is good, then you won't have a problem. I really don't care for PLD much, mostly because I've been to too many events where the PLD couldn't stay alive or hold hate. RUN doesn't need fixing, except Liement overwriting the other buffs and lasting 10 seconds.

I do wanna point out that Valiance offers other melees the crazy Fast Cast and elemental damage reduction, meaning I don't need to bring RNGs to anything ever if I don't want to.

It's different in that it mitigates less damage than PLD. It's suitable, but it's worse. There's really no sense in pretending otherwise.

It's like having Ochain only for 2 minutes.

It's like having an overly complicated Ochain only for 2 minutes.

I can literally position myself in front of a target and AFK on my PLD and still "tank" more effectively than my RUN.

I dunno man, I tanked Celestial Nexus on Difficult in Espial gear. RUN's method of tanking is taking little to no damage at all (while also resisting statuses). If anything, RUN needs less support than a PLD. How is that worse?

So basically RUN is harder to play but played right can tank anything that needs tanking a PLD would be brought to.

can there be balance with all the jobs if all the jobs were broken and op?

I would say RUN is a little more dependent on taking advantage of the enemy's behavior, whereas PLD has a relatively same battle plan in most fights. There are definitely fights I would say either job (gear/support depending) would have an easier time in, but there's no reason either can't handle anything in the game.

When people say RUN is a bad tank, they're actually saying they haven't seen a good RUN before. Just like how I rag on PLDs, cuz I've seen so many garbage ones, but of course there are plenty of excellent ones who make tanking anything look like a breeze.

Honestly we need some RUN videos of handling situations that PLDs are usually called upon so people have a template of what they might do or how they should play. As Saevel said before, it's like RDM where once people 'see' it, they're more likely to replicate it.

I feel that mechanic heavy jobs need explanation because everyone isn't familiar with VE/CE, how each JA works and wtf they're supposed to be doing in fights. Perhaps I haven't seen these but it'd be appreciated.

RUN tanking now seems to be treated like NINA tanking was a few years ago. PLDs were always treated as the more stable option, but a well geared and knowledgeable NIN could tank most mobs/fights just as good, sometimes better.

No cause right now every job is OP for all the content beside high clvl incursion, yet everyone keep asking for sam or mnk for delve when shouting.

I'm a good RUN and a good PLD. RUN is still worse.

That pretty much sums it up. RUN/NIN is actually a much better blink tank than NIN is at present. In situations where Utsusemi is impractical (like Delve), RUNs will usually try something else like /BLU (Cocoon and enmity blue magic spam), /DRK, or /SAM. Between those three, they each have their advantages that can vary depending on the fight and your setup. I'm big on /SAM since I can just use Hasso and go all out offensive, and switch to Seigan for crazy crap.

I used to love NIn/DRK and /RDM tanking. Nothing quite like taking sub-400 Citadel Busters at 75 cap.

You'd probably enjoy RUN tanking then, since you can pull off a lot of similar things. I imagine that if RUN was around at the 75 cap, it'd have been much more popular, due to enemies like Tiamat, Cerberus, Ultima, Ixion etc. that are heavily focused on a single element. It's hard for me to get to try a lot of those things, but I did mess around with ENMs solo and had some fun there.

I'm speechless how much crap the RUN camp can generate out to justify the job. I'm sorry to said at this point like someone point out it don't do anything exceptionally well and that is why people give it the F U when it come to setup parties. by the way I have RUN leveled and geared too and that job is no way justified in anyway to take a party spot.

I wouldn't go as far as to say don't use it if you're certain it won't cause any issues. As I've noted, it's still a functional job, it's just demonstrably worse than PLD.

That said, underdog jobs are always defended in this manner, and it only serves to hurt them in the long run. Things change when you *** to the devs about them, not when you pretend they're not there.

exactly, they should bish at the dev to boost the job instead telling them its good enough. all the situation they trying to defend is joke when a pld rolling with high defend/dt/pdt/mdt(50%) with not only O or A but both shield switching when the situation call for it. Hell I didn't even bother to bring burtang to the discussion because not many have it.

Didn't ergon "fix" run compared to pld?

They can't even fix tanking in this game, I like run, but outside of niche fight where you use nin and blink tank, I don't think we'll ever see a better fix to run :(

It helped tremendously, but being limited to mitigating a single element is still a major drawback

Also, I'm not terribly keen on a job requiring what amounts to 2-3 mythics in order to be "fixed"

Sub really plays heavily into how you tank on RUN. You have two "full time tanking" subs, NIN and BLU, and they each have their own pro and con. NIN gives you utsusemi and with Inspiration you'll have ridiculously low Ni and nearly instant Ichi recast/cast timers to go with being essentially immune to magic. If the NM is constantly wiping / ignoring shadows then you have /BLU which offers the +50% defense of cocoon along with MAB, hate tools and some killer job traits just for sh1ts and giggles.

RUN has far more hate tools then PLD does but also requires more MP and button pressing then PLD. Mostly of the disparity boils down to O.Chain being stupidly broken for taking physical damage, it requires zero skill to equip and drooling level skill to face in the right direction. RUN on the other hand requires the play be familiar with the fight and be pushing buttons, meaning paralyze and silence can actually effect you so your healer has to have brain cells.

I've tanked a ton of stuff and honestly the only time I've ever been in danger was on Ice Tiger immediately after Glassy Nova. GN strips all your buffs, which means all your defenses are gone. Then it smacks you which can cause you to take 700~1000 damage. You gotta quickly cast Shell V while your healer drops a cure and Protect V. Afterward you start working on putting your shields back up. An O.Chain PLD on the other hand could just hit the snooze button and continue taking a nap or watching TV.

primary issue, and I doubt it will ever be addressed. overcoming paladin is something that a "normal" run will never fully do as effortlessly, and in some cases at all. shields are too strong, the capabilities of a paladin to put out damage while tanking exceeds run's in almost every aspect (i'm sure people will try to argue against this, go ahead, i want to see your side of it, but from my PoV as a seasoned run it's pretty true).

I love run, and I really with it didnt take an ergon weapon to make it truly shine, but... well, thats just the way it is, and im not sure any other way would truly be possible due to the overinflation of jobs in XI in addition to the fact that any role a run could have filled is oversaturated or not as "useful" in the eyes of the mainstream.

can run fill a tanking role? yes. can it match paladin? absolutely (in some cases, anyway). that doesnt make it ideal, though, and it doesnt get you invites when a paladin that can hold a mob is so much easier to find and play compared to run. an unfortunate truth.

wishlist:
-better ways to mitigate multiple elements at once. even if vallation/valiance had full potency for the cost of only 1 rune slot, allowing full mitigation against 3 elements at once, it wouldnt be enough for everything compared to an aegis. It would, however, lessen the gap a great deal on a lot of targets. RUN's complete inability to deal with non elemental magic damage while Aegis can, despite being called a "magic tank", is pretty laughable too.

-better physical mitigation without requiring an ergon GS. pld doesn't even need ochain (which is significantly easier to acquire as compared to an ergon gs, but anyway) or burtgang (also easier) to destroy run in this regard, this has been the case for a while now with the addition of shields like Priwen and Svalinn.

-reduced dependency on countering dispels. undispellable runes helps. undispellable wards would help more.


there's more, but i can't think of any of it right now.

The simple fact is in situations where you need a tank, an average PLD > a skilled RUN.

PLD also has several subs it can bring to the table for almost any situation. Sub jobs aren't exclusive to RUN.

This I will argue against because both jobs are equally attack handicapped and RUN use's a GS with Resolution while PLD is using a 1H sword with CDC, possibly atonement though I think that's still borked. Add damage from 3 runes, swipe / lunge and slightly better DPS / WS along with accuracy should favor RUN. Then again we're debating which handicapped kid can run the fastest.

When it comes to magic RUN is about on the same level even without Valliance because MDB exists. People keep forgetting that RUN has 22 MDB naked at 99 while PLD has 0 with 12 possible via /RUN or /RDM. Magic damage isn't a serious threat for either job though RUN does have the option of negating it better. Tenacity exists, that's a free -15% resistance to all status ailments along with whatever you get from barspell and possibly pflug.

PLD definitely beats RUN on physical due to shield blocks, yet RUN is good enough in this category that your healer won't ever run out of MP nor will you lose hate at any noticeable rate. We would be down to arguing whether you can make it to the grocery store in 10 minutes or 9.

This is all without including mythics which I treat as special case's anyway due to their relative rarity.

In my DT set as /BLU here is the following stats. Mind you this is in a single overall set, I can squeak more out of each individually but I feel it's rather pointless.


So at this point in time RUN can tank anything PLD can. Healers will be bored to tears with both, most of the time my healer is a cure mule that I dual box. Both will maintain hate with minimal chance of death. Each has a slight edge in different departments but the overall difference isn't enough to make one capable of accomplishing something the other can't. There just happens to be more competent / experienced PLDs in the game then RUN's. If a group is getting a tank from a PUG, it's probably best they go with a random OChain/Priwen PLD over a random RUN though that might change in a year or two.

Wth, no one is arguing whether RUN can get the job done or not, we're arguing that PLD is easier to get the job done.

FFXI always favors brain dead jobs, it's been like that for years, I don't see how that's going to change with a "how to play the job" youtube video nor an 1~2 year gap.....I mean, why bother count shadows or learn about monster move elements when you can just equip a shield and do the same thing.