FINAL FANTASY XI Job Adjustments Manifesto: Paladin

[Quan]

Throwing my 2 cents. I apologize in advance for any miss use of words or wrongly stated information:

I didn't read the whole thread, but I feel the frustration of many about how the PLD job has developed over the years, and how any adjustments made by SE still leave a huge gap to fill in regards to useful abilities, spells, and stats compared to other jobs. Everybody knows most DD melee jobs can deal high damage which is the main and fastest source of enmity generation in the game, and with a healer support, said jobs can stay alive to keep the attention of the monster for as long as needed. In the case of the PLD, it loses in damage to DDs. On defense, PLD outranks any job, but without enmity, there is no point in looking at it due to the fact that most of the time other jobs do the tanking.
During the wyrm era, PLD was somewhat useful for fights that took a long time to win. Still, once people found out fastest ways to complete the same fights, i.e., Fafnir, Nidhogg, Tiamat, PLD was left as a job one needed to just gear up for show, and for when fights went wrong and there were full alliance wipes. Now after abyssea and voidwatch, fights are even faster requiring jobs that can deal great amounts of damage, PLD is not one of them.
Dear SE:
Do I want PLD as the ultimate DD job? NO
Do I want PLD as the ultimate tanking job? YES
What can you do for PLDs SE?
- Really simple, ADD a job ability that keeps the enemy(ies) full attention on the PLD until the player is KO or leaves the battle. This ability should have a 30sec recast(for mobs that reset hate), and please don't combine it with Invincible or any other ability that takes minutes to reuse.

The benefits of my request, which I would think other people have made as well, are that no one would complain about it because it doesn't increase the damage dealing capacity of PLD and it will keep the hate on one player regardless of damage dealt by others. Flash is not enough, Cover is not enough, Sentinel is not enough, etc., but this ability will be enough to make PLD even more useful than it is now. Another benefit, this ability is that it is FAIR; the attention of the enemy will be focused on the PLD as long as the player is alive, which makes the player dependent on the PLD resources, such as, healing and defense, and it makes the PLD dependent of other healer jobs to maintain hate.
Last but no least, the job should be enjoyable, there is nothing more frustrating than having to run after a mob that is going for a BLM or a RNG after a high damage spell was casted or a weaponskill went off. I understand all DD should use "moderation", but that's a word that doesn't exist in fast pace battles.

Thank you.

[Tildarus]

Paladin has been somewhat obsolete for as long as I have played. I started about 6 months after NA release and I loved the idea of PLD from the time I heard about it. I was quite good at and took pride in the role but about the time I got to 40th level I became a glorified puller because the game does not need tanks for almost all the content. My brother played BLM and got three others and I pulled they nuked straight away and when I lost aggro we all cast a couple of low level heals on each other and went back to work. Fortunately for many PLDs people didn't take to this idea for along time. They all wanted a tank, healer and three DDers. The secret is out, you don't need a tank. Even fighting most NMs temp items and DDers with a good WHM can be managed quite easily. This is insult enough, but not being able to get seals as PLD is hard pill to swallow. I have to go on my BLM and stagger because I can't get an invite or even people to go with me if I am on PLD without the mockery. Worse I can't solo the NMs and mobs that subtlety classes can to get pop items. I have no problem farming stuff with THF because of evasion and high DD output compared to PLD. PLD is too gear dependent and the small kid on the playground wanting to play dodgeball. I guess i will just do what everyone else with an understanding of how useless PLD is and level a BST. Love SE but I feel jipped for my loyalty to a job SE can't iron out.

[Aeonk]

The issue with asking for a hate locking JA is it takes away any/all strategic enmity management required to actually tank in the game. We don't need an easy button for hate management and it's not realistic to think that is the answer.

2 things are going to have to happen.

First and foremost, the overall hate cap needs to be increased. We're beyond the age of the game where 800 dmg was considered "pretty good", but the hate cap hasn't changed to reflect that. 1 or 2 WS's putting you at hate cap is where the issue is. Even if a DD didn't want to tank and was trying to hold back (understandable considering the DD's who carry proper MDT/PDT sets is really low), they shouldn't be expected to just stop WS'ing in order to "let" us tank.

Second, give PLD a slightly higher hate threshold than it's counterparts, maybe only accessible by a job trait. Nothing too high, nothing too low. What this would do is still put emphasis on building hate quickly with all the tools we have at our disposal, and once you reach that individual hate cap, it puts emphasis on mitigating damage taken so you don't dip down back into universal hate cap ranges and cause the mob to spin like a top.

What about easy content you ask? Well it would still be beneficial to bring a PLD, but not required. Even on some of the easier VW NM's, the ability to focus all dmg done onto the one job that's better at mitigating it than any other means you need less support to keep the rest of the DD's alive. replace a WHM with a WAR instead, and there you have it.

Granted the above is kind of a moot point when under ideal conditions the DD's are rocking Fanatic's drinks 24/7. The above suggestion was more or less made with the notion that Fanatics is not going to be a permanent thing in endgame from here on out (at least it better not...)

Just my 2 cents.

[Babekeke]

Maybe you missed this from the new 2 hour thread:

[*]Paladin
The new 2-hour ability can be used for cases where just turtling up with Invincible and letting an enemy wail on you will not turn the tides of the fight, since you can enhance your defenses while reducing an enemy’s HP with the reflected damage.

*As mentioned previously in the post about adding an enmity boost effect to this ability, we understand the problems with the enmity cap. We plan on considering this for paladin in general and not limiting it only to the new 2-hour ability effect.

PLD:
Once we are able to talk concretely about the enmity adjustments we will be making a comment, so please wait a bit on this.

[NanoFox]

well the enmitty system is gonna need a dramatic overhual if Pld is gonna ever get back doing what it does best.

[Nawesemo]

Here's my take, if your in doubt, you take the pld, if victory is certain, you ZERG it... Someone said it below "we can't expect them to "let" us tank.", ....that's their bad when they die then.... But yeah, a lot of jobs can do well in mitigating dmg, and making crap die, but them aegis. And o chain plds.... They still know they're the bomb. I think for the most part, when a pld is needed by a group they shine, when its not.... It had lost its place.... My thinking is saying maybe the dds got all their sparklies and are e peening out.... And crying when their pld cant get the mob off of them in the 3 seconds it took the mob to rip their,face off.... "Letting" your tank tank, has always been part of the plan..... We often are just not that patient when we can ZERG so much. The 3 hour hold fests are over, unless we want em back. And let the tank tqnk.....(keep in mind, our plds are pretty buff, aegis and/or ochain, empy or mythic or just a paloladin. I like em in my alliances though.

[Babekeke]

Here's my take, if your in doubt, you take the pld, if victory is certain, you ZERG it... Someone said it below "we can't expect them to "let" us tank.", ....that's their bad when they die then.... But yeah, a lot of jobs can do well in mitigating dmg, and making crap die, but them aegis. And o chain plds.... They still know they're the bomb. I think for the most part, when a pld is needed by a group they shine, when its not.... It had lost its place.... My thinking is saying maybe the dds got all their sparklies and are e peening out.... And crying when their pld cant get the mob off of them in the 3 seconds it took the mob to rip their,face off.... "Letting" your tank tank, has always been part of the plan..... We often are just not that patient when we can ZERG so much. The 3 hour hold fests are over, unless we want em back. And let the tank tqnk.....(keep in mind, our plds are pretty buff, aegis and/or ochain, empy or mythic or just a paloladin. I like em in my alliances though.

An interesting observation, and something that played on my mind in abyssea yesterday. Our group was helping a NIN to get all of his gear, which involved killing both Indrik, and Kakawhatever (the other Unicorn in grauberg for nin back). As anyone who has fought these mobs before will know, both mobs have the ability to 1-shot most jobs that don't have Scherzo/Migawari/Earthen armor.

This meant that as THF, I had to be cautious, as even with -DT/Regen atmas I'd be toast if I caught the wrong TP move. Luckily, we had a PLD in our group with aegis/ochain (I assume he used Aegis for this but didn't check). Due to the ridiculous hate cap, it's not long before we're both bouncing hate, depsite me using TA Exenterator a couple of times at the start.

To counter getting 1-shotted, I had to "let the PLD tank". Not so easy when every time I hit the mob, I pull hate; so I had to melee 2-3 attack rounds after each TP move used by the mob, then turn and let the PLD take hate again until mob uses TP move again (2 in Indrik's case as it cures, then uses Attack TP move back-to back each time).

So, not easy, not quick, but possible. In abyssea for kill speed, it's probably faster to just zombie with apoc atma TBH, but outside, certainly the way to go.

As for the fix, the change to enmity for PLD doesn't have to be all that drastic. If the current caps are 10,000 CE and 10,000 VE, SE only needs to up those caps for PLD to 10,100 each to allow them to stay above the DD's hate cap most of the time.
Only massive damage moves are going to drop the PLD's hate enough for the DDs to get hate, just like back at 75.

[Anais]

You realize that means pld can never, ever lose hate no matter what he does, or anyone else in the alliance does, right? The only thing that would ever make a pld lose hate in this case would be the mob using a hate reset move.

The gimpiest gimp of a pld would be able to keep hate over any DD, no matter how strong they were.

Do you seriously think this is a good idea?

Not really, lets say a monster faces drk, then pld stays in the middle, at this point monster still targets drk but "thx to this new trait" drk just receives half of dmg and the other half is directed to pld, in the case pld moves from the middle, monster keeps facing drk and the dmg gets back full to drk.

ofc it would not be a 50%, it could start with 20%, then with some "new" armor might come with an extend to this ability, like: "Companion gloves: def ?? agi ?? dex ?? Valliation +5"


i digged this idea from another thread,