scrumpy said:
So the War/Nin, who is our tank, is CONSTANTLY giving me advice on what enfeebs she wants to see and what not. She keeps requesting Slow and Haste more specifically, which I explain to her that Slow is hard to get to stick on crabs so i'll use it when i have Elemental Seal charged, and otherwise i will keep it paralyzed.
sorry, but I would have done the same thing as your tank. A war/nin can indeed solo tank, BUT they need more PT support in order to do it well. Any good tank needs PT support but even more so for jobs that are not the best at tanking.
The reason for slow specifically is not exactly all about keeping shadows up longer, helping you get to the next available set of shadows. Althought that is a LARGE part of it there is also a major issue from the cast time itslef. Without slow, casting Ichi can become a question more about luck than timing or skill. Haste has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. The problem is the mob needs to not attack within the casting time. Otherwise, not only is your Ichi getting interrupted, making it almost MEANINGLESS to even sub NIN in the first place, but at the same time YOU AREN'T attacking which means now you also have a hate problem. I'm not saying it is impossible to tank under these circumstances but it is MUCH harder and much more dangerous for the tank. If that was me I'd be pretty scared. Eva gear helps to hold shadows but WARs are not going to be that concerned about evasion. They are pretty darn good DDs when well equipped. So if, under these circumstances, you have a WAR tanking, they're gonna get pummeled and they're not going to be able to do great damage. They're going to need defender, forget about berserk, its just not good. And there is truly no comparison between war/nin and nin/war when it comes to shadows. None.
As a Nin I first cast blind and slow. THEN paralyze. Why? Because paralyze doesn't hit every action. Slow does. Slow means I have a better chance of getting my shadows back up between swings while paralyze makes it more of a lottery. You don't know when paralyze is going to take effect for a particular swing so its only lucky if that happens when you happen to be casting Ichi.
Comparing Ichi to NI would be.... ridiculous. The chances of Ichi being successfully cast while getting hit are like... um... pretty damn small considering a hard hitting mob. Ni, on the other hand, you can get hit and have a better chance of still casting it. Getting hit while casting ichi is almost a wast of time. A war/nin is going to give you a different balance between hp loss/damage dealt/ and attacks evaded, not be as good as a nin in attacks evaded or as good as a pld in hp loss.
And if for whatever reason it becomes difficult for me to tank a certain mob (resistant to my debuffs or whatever) best believe I'm going to be communicating with my RDM about it.