Level 75 TK here. I'm just a little curious about how my defense stacks up against a human tank of a similar level. I'm not talking about pdef though. I'm talking about damage reduction. TKs have guard stance as well as shield fortress. At my level, with guard stance alone, I have 1300ish pdef on +0 nightmare set before song of earth (I don't know how much SoE adds because I haven't partied with a sws in ages). But this is NOT the whole story. Quite the opposite. Rarely do I ever use guard stance outside of a straight pvp where I am being hit because the mp consumption is just too high. Shield Fortress is still to most people a total mystery. What does it do? It adds pdef onto your shield; this means you will never see how much pdef is added by this skill. You can only see it in the damage you take. In the limited testing I have done, the skill's damage reduction seems very close to what I get out of Guard Stance - i.e, 300-400 pdef. So all told, I appear to get something like 1.8-2k pdef fully c3 buffed including shield pdef (I have no clue about the c4 buffs so .... yeah).
Anyway~~
1. Do you human knights use your toggle skills? If so....
-When? During raids? Tanking full parties? When soloing with buffs? Duoing?
-Try to describe your uses for those skills, or how you find them useful.
2. How much pdef do they seem to add, and how much do they subtract from your block rate?
3. What level are you? Don't have to be exact if you don't want to, just say around what level you are please.
As I said already, I'm trying to draw a comparison between the two seperate styles of elf vs human knight. As it is right now my TK with just a nm shield and a DLE w/health & pp buffs can kill most archers in the arena thanks to these skills - they usually hit me for 100-200 armorless but with a shield.
Sorry that post might be a bit disorganized. ><
IIRC, the 360 degree toggle for palys only reduces blocking power, not blocking chance. It most definately goes on, since any block is better than no block.
As far as i know or what the description says, Shield Fortress does "only" increase the shield defense rate. What means to me that you block more often. If you block more, your shield p.def counts on top of your normal p.def, not a dmg reduction as you describes.
Pdef should be all the same if all tanks have same lvl, except paladins and temple knights fighting undeads. Guard Stance has same effect as humans Majesty, at least Majesty is more a buff then a toggle and uses way less MP.
My one and only toggle skill, Shield Fortress, i only use at raids because of the mp usage.
Shield Fortress increases shield pdef dramatically. I think it's a little weird for a DA to be telling a TK how shield fortress works. o_o;; And err if you didn't see it yet Daoreen, I am not asking anything about SF.
Thanks for the replies. Would still like to get an idea of just how much "pdef" you get out of your skills though but I guess you don't really have a good point of reference. How much do you lose from the 360* block skill? How much do you gain from the other?
It sounds like SK/TK may just have better damage reduction when using all toggles, but DA/Paladin have more in normal situations because the mp usage of GS/SF is just way too high to spam.
For me, with shield fortress is toggled on, I noticed an increase in the occurance of "Excellent shield defenses" that I get, which drops the attack down to 1HP damage. Whereas, normal shield defense only drops the damage down as per the pdef of the shield you are using.
Usage of toggles:
Aegis Stance: Mass PvP, Raid Bosses w/minions
Shield Fortress: All PvP, All Raid Bosses, emergency usage in PvE.
Majesty: I only use when I solo or in small groups when overbuffing isn't a problem or when the Healer can't keep up. In a stacked group, this skill is rarely needed, and can cause over buffing.