From my experimenting with level 75 exping on VTs, PLD damage is VERY important. I wouldn't be able to hold hate, unless I went crazy with blowing my MP, but that just creates more downtime. So thus, I turned to offensive tanking. <3 Company Sword. Don't know what I'd do without that baby for holding hate. And whoever thinks Spirits Within is so great doesn't undertsand what a PLD can really do. I use Bream sushi for +acc and +VIT. No defender. I hit for 40-60 damage per swing. Add in haste and double attacks, and I'm really dishing out some decent damage. Add in 250-400+ Vorpal Blades at 100% TP (compare to 150-200 damage from a 100% Spirits Within, or 500-600 damage at 300%), and I'm definitely adding to my hate control. I get hit for 80-110 damage per hit with sushi, compared to 70-90 with Shallops Tropical. Yeah, I take more damage per swing, but that doesn't matter when the mob dies 0 swings at me sooner. I actually take less damage overall. Add in yet that I block roughly 25% of the attacks with my shield for 30-40 damage with only 240 shield skill, and I'm taking even less. Plus, I can pop on Berserk if needed, and only add another 10 damage taken per hit, and not even noticable for weaker VTs. Even RNGs are impressed at how close to all out they can go. Only increadibly decked out jobs that go all out have taken hate from me, and even they they really have to try. I don't even have the best possible gear that I could either. So to answer your question about PLD damage, yes it is important. The average PLD likes to pop on defender and voke+cure to keep hate. That increases downtime. The faster the mob dies, the better a PLD can hold hate, and the less damage they take. Though this really only holds true for exping on T-VT and some low ITs. For IT+'s, it depends on the mob. Sometimes it's just impossible to hit, or impossible for a PLD to hurt. That's when a PLD's damage output is pointless and is only feeding TP.
As for the OP's post, I like it. In fact, my static tried something remotely similar to it. We couldn't find a BLM, so we opted for another melee DD. And guess what, we managed to get similar exp to a normal setup with a BLM. We had a PLD/WAR(me), DRG/WAR, SAM/RNG, THF/NIN, RDM/BLM, and WHM/BLM. Us melee just went all out. Just spammed WSes, and Sc'ed when we were close in TP, but otherwise it was a waste to hold TP above 120%. We killed everything as fast as we could, and piled on the damage fast and furiously. I even had to use berserk sometimes just to increase my damage output to hold hate most of the time. I think an experimental run on bones or pots(or whatever better mob we can find) will show us how effective this speedkill can be. I know that everyone in my static would welcome a change, especially the mages who just sit and cast the same thing all day. They wouldn't mind getting in on the action. Hexa Strike should tear apart pots and bones. The DRG can easily use Staff on VTs and pull out 400-600 Retributions. I can use Club, staff, or sword. Whatever works best.
Oh, and chaining VTs is a lot more fun and enjoyable than painful IT++ fights. Bigger(as in numbers) doesn't always mean better.
Edited, Sun Jul 3 00:44:43 2005 by csBahamut