I used to get a decent amount of flak for not vigorously gear swapping on PLD.
The idea is that at any different time while tanking, you want to maximize out certain tanking aspects, in what can only be described as true FFXI fashion. If you’re casting shadows, you want to maximize haste and recast. If your shadows are down or you’re blood tanking, you want to maximize on shield skill. If you can melee, then you need accuracy too. And so on and so forth.
I was against gear swapping on PLD for a decent amount of time. When you do, your character “blinks” and that if anyone is targeting them (like support jobs), they lose their cursor and have to re-target them. If you’re gear swapping furiously (like being a tank requires), then they have to keep re-targeting you, repeatedly.
Luckily for the playerbase, my desire for social acceptance and being liked far outweighs any practical application or reason I had in my head. So now I gear swap on PLD. A lot. Nothing in this game is worth doing half-heartedly now, after all.
Except now I get shit for gear swapping and blinking. I wind up dead a lot more often because I crazy blink, not to mention the complaints I’m getting from mages for doing so. They can’t keep a target on me because I keep switching in and out gear.
So… Yeah. Really, fuck all of you. I think I’m just going to be a mindless DD that only levels DD jobs, only ever comes on a DD job, and just hit enemies. Seems to save me a lot of trouble and hassle.
They could be using BlinkMeNot on PC since they’re using Windower already anyway or using (in less than greater than brackets used in targetting) [stpt] and [stal] (More on them here for anyone who doesn’t know: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Macro#Selecting_a_Target_.28Pronouns.29 ).
I don’t tank much, but as NIN/DRK I’m blinking like a Christmas Tree. I’ll purposely idle if I’m in dire need of a Cure V and there’s not much else I can really do anyway though. Depending on the WHM present I usually know whether it’ll be forthcoming or not. Post-Mijin Gakure update if I’ve got RR on I should probably fire off that sometimes. Other than Campaign I haven’t use Ninja for anything in quite a while though.
Man, even the melees get off on being Shrödinger’s Adventurer. DRK/SAM is a hilarious foray into flicking the gearswap switch, with the Stuns and Absorbs and weaponskills and Dusk gear being flung around every five seconds.
Oh boy… the controversial topic for PLDs. Blindly following convention isn’t always the best way to go, though if you understand and agree with what other people say, then go for it!
I went back and forth on this issue for a while before I settled on never swapping visible gear on PLD. I’ll change all my accessories all the time in various macros(i.e. Swift Belt, Shield Torque or Ritter Gorget as appropriate), but if once tanking begins for real, I won’t change visible gear once I set it as appropriate for the situation & subjob. I blink like crazy on other jobs, but on PLD, I’ll try not to blink at all. My thinking behind this decision is as follows.
From a PLD’s perspective, I have to stay alive no matter the circumstance. If I die, then that generally means that we are going to wipe (in the case of a solo tank), or damage has to stop until I recover (co-tank situation). I want to be able to accept healing from any source, whether it’s that Spellcast equipped Windower user that basically afks and lets Spellcast take care of everything, or if it’s the PS2 user with no macros and uses the menu for everything. If any healer can’t heal me because of the issue with blinking, then that means chances are higher that I will die. PLD/NIN would be the worst situation since if you’re swapping visible gear to get Utsusemi up, that means that not only do you not have shadows and your HP is getting beat up, but also that healers can’t cure you. Like you said, once you started visible gear swapping, you end up dead a lot more often, which means you can’t do your job. DDs have the same problem with blinking, except that if a DD dies, it’s no big deal, but if a PLD dies, that could mean a wipe or failure for the event.
Also, we can’t just tell people to BlinkMeNot since there are people who play on other platforms, and BlinkMeNot is a violation of the TOS and is justified reason for losing your account.
From a healer’s perspective, I do not use the [stpt] or [stal] in my macros for a few reasons. First is habit, since I like to be able to push left and right to target people instead of just up and down. The other reason is that I use the same macros for healing people outside of my alliance. If the tank party WHM goes does in Dynamis or other big events, I’d want to keep the tank targeted so I can drop cures as soon as I see that HP bar go down. Many top healers would also have their spells ready to go and have the tank pre-targeted in anticipation of needing to cure or remove a status effect. A blinking tank would die in that case since only BlinkMeNot would prevent a healer from losing target.
Anyway, that’s just my opinion on the “don’t blink” camp xD I’m sure people out there think I’m completely wrong and I should die in a fire, but I don’t care and that’s how I’ll play :)
[stpt] and [stal].
These target party/alliance members by selecting them off the party list on the left hand side instead of the character models.
These are frankly easier to use to begin with since you can use either f-keys (which is what you should be using when you do [st]) or up/down arrow keys to target a party/alliance member and you never lose your target.
No excuse for losing a target due to blinking anymore.
You can blink all you want and I’ll keep you alive. Just ask me to WHM for you. >_> And then when I want to play my PLD you can WHM for me! Yeah!