The necessary Paladin overhaul (Here you go S-E - I've fixed the job for you)

[Karinya_of_Carbuncle]

Any mob below IT is another story. They become 'soft' and DD's just generate too much hate and the mob usually goes down faster than a PLD can cap their enmity. Still, a PLD should have some method of mitigating that.

ITs are soft these days too. Heck, even most NMs are soft. That's why people are doing 2k, 3k, 4k WSs. Mobs need to get back to the level of DEF/EVA they had in RotZ/CoP, where it actually took work to do damage, rather than instantly killing mobs by standing near them with a weapon out. The current state of NM fighting (aside from extreme lowmanning) consists mainly of holding back on damage so you can get in your droprate-boosting weakness procs before accidentally killing whatever pathetic weakling is ineffectually trying to nibble on you.

What made Atonement great was that (1) you didn't have to load up STR/ATK/etc. gear for it, because its damage wasn't determined by those stats, so it still performed well in actual tank gear, and (2) it was unaffected by mob DEF/EVA, so you could deal full damage to it even on HNMs (or what passed for HNMs in ToAU -- already showing serious stat/difficulty decay compared to players with merits).

CdC has neither property, it's just plain OP if you have it (and the DD gear, and now atma, to support it) and opens up even wider gaps between normally geared and extremely geared players.

This is actually part of the mobs-are-too-weak problem: SE can't design most mobs to be so strong average geared players can't fight them at all, but because of the now-excessive influence of gear, overgeared players destroy them with ridiculous ease. This game is unfortunately starting to resemble WoW where your gear defines you more than your job and level and ability to play that job does. Abyssites and atma have some of the same problem, but thankfully only inside Abyssea.

[Greatguardian]

Mobs haven't changed; the definition of Average Player has.

If we were all as terrible at FFXI as we were in 2005, these NMs would be just as challenging.

[Gallus]

Kinda short on time - had jumped on to update my post and was surprised how many replies I've had the past few days. I will make a longer reply later after I read everything, but in regards to the first few responses: Arguing that getting the empyrean weapon balances the job isn't fair at all. Every job will perform a similar % better by acquiring an empyrean weapon. While Paladin's gear selection can be lacking at times, and that does have an affect on performance, I think that's only a small contribution to why the Paladin job has been performing so poorly.

[Greatguardian]

Kinda short on time - had jumped on to update my post and was surprised how many replies I've had the past few days. I will make a longer reply later after I read everything, but in regards to the first few responses: Arguing that getting the empyrean weapon balances the job isn't fair at all. Every job will perform a similar % better by acquiring an empyrean weapon. While Paladin's gear selection can be lacking at times, and that does have an affect on performance, I think that's only a small contribution to why the Paladin job has been performing so poorly.

Paladin does not perform poorly. It performs just as well as THF, BST, PUP, JishnuRNG, and COR. People who try to bring PLD to things instead of MNK/NIN/WAR in Abyssea tend to perform poorly because there is no real reason for a smart player to bring PLD to Abyssea. Also, getting a Baudelaire+2 is nowhere near difficult either, and Vorpal Blade is no slouch in the meantime. There's a huge grey area between "Having an Almace" and "Spamming Sanguine Blade/Atonement with a PDT/VIT sword while idling in VIT/DEF gear".

[Aeonk]

Kinda short on time - had jumped on to update my post and was surprised how many replies I've had the past few days. I will make a longer reply later after I read everything, but in regards to the first few responses: Arguing that getting the empyrean weapon balances the job isn't fair at all. Every job will perform a similar % better by acquiring an empyrean weapon. While Paladin's gear selection can be lacking at times, and that does have an affect on performance, I think that's only a small contribution to why the Paladin job has been performing so poorly.

Maybe it's not fair. But that's the way it is. There is no other piece of gear you can get that will boost your performance the way an empyrean will. AF3+2 is definately sexy, and frankly one of the best AF3 sets in the game... but it won't solve the fundamental problem of "you can't cap hate 30 seconds after the fight starts." Almace or WoE sword does let you accomplish this, even if it means piggy-backing off of another Empyrean's WS to make a lvl3 SC.

@ Greatguardian bringing PLD to abyssea is a matter of circumstance. My group in particular doesn't use WAR, because it's not needed. I get to dick around on PLD, and to cover Shadow of Death the Empyrean DRK comes to play. May not be the lowest # of people required for the event, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

[Gallus]

I'm not saying that it isn't fair that paladin needs empyrean to excel. I'm saying that it's a terrible argument. You might as well go to every job forum and post threads titled, "So you want better job balance and improvements for your job? Get an empyrean." That aside, yes, obviously gear can improve any job. Paladin's biggest issues stem from Job capabilities, abilities, and traits. I'm not a career Paladin. Heck, I hardly play the job. When I am on Paladin, despite having rather exceptional gear, I always feel like I'm wasting the time of others and should be on a more productive job (I pretty much only touch it anymore for screwing around out for one goofy reason or another). When there's a Paladin in a group with me, I pretty much have to simply smile and accept that they're contributing slightly more than the key bearers. In regards to PLD performing as well as THF, that's simply not true. Inside abyssea, THF is a monster, hitting with nearly 80% crit rate and never letting up. Treasure hunter is just icing on the cake next to that. PLD can't come close.

[Rhaegar]

How about this for an idea: Instead of raising the hate cap only for PLDs, why not greatly increase the amount of hate that is lost by getting hit? Tie into this greatly boosting the amount of enmity the PLD keeps when getting hit via certain pieces of gear such as creed collar. The end result I'm seeing in my head is a DD grabbing hate after WS (which happened often enough even pre-abyssea), them getting smacked a couple times, and then mob turning back to the PLD. Then, as the PLD is getting hit, they aren't bleeding of enmity like crazy due to gears and JAs that are keeping them from losing enmity as quickly. Something like this would allow a group to bring a PLD to an event if they wanted and actually have it function viably, but at the same time wouldn't take away from other players' desire to lowman stuff with DDs and big WHM cures. Another idea to go along side this is to give PLD a cure5 powered spell that is self targetting only (we don't want PLDs taking the place of WHMs, that would mess with balance hence the self target only restriction) that uses the C1-4 enmity generation formula. Also, in addition to the enmity loss increase from being hit, make an adjustment to Shield Mastery so that no enmity is lost on a successful shield block.

These are just some thoughts I had bouncing around in my head, but I think they would do the trick to allow PLD to cap and maintain hate over other jobs without totally destroying game balance.

That being said, even if PLD can be made to cap and maintain hate over other jobs, I don't think that alone would save the job. Because, let's face it, a WELL GEARED MNK, WAR, or NIN and a WHM can duo 90% of the NMs in abyssea and kill pretty quickly. A PLD and a WHM could do the same, but not efficiently from a speed standpoint. Unfortunately, giving PLD a lot more DD potential would upset game balance towards PLD making all other DDs essentially obsolete. And, with CdC a PLD currently can do a decent job of dealing moderate damage. However, in the end, it's honestly up to your individual groups preferences. Some ppl don't mind or even prefer to do things with a few more ppl rather than duo or trio, but as Aeonk said, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

@Gallus: really, that is entirely dependant on how the PLD is being utilized. That THF is an awesome DD in abyssea, tis true. So let that THF focus on DDing. PLD is hands down, one of the best pulling jobs around, and pretty much the only thing I still utilize my PLD for. I wouldn't say that it's the job that isn't contributing. I've been in parties where you can "insert any job here" and have them contribute next to nothing. Just like everything else in this game, it's the player that contributes or doesn't. No matter what job you are showing up to in a group, a good player will always find a way to contribute something to the group cause.

[Greatguardian]

@ Greatguardian bringing PLD to abyssea is a matter of circumstance. My group in particular doesn't use WAR, because it's not needed. I get to dick around on PLD, and to cover Shadow of Death the Empyrean DRK comes to play. May not be the lowest # of people required for the event, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

This is pretty much exactly how my Almace PLD buddy ends up using his Pld whenever we feel like dicking around, lol. We generally just do that whenever we don't need red for something, and he's also our best Whm anyways, but yeah I know it happens. Pretty much anyone who does know a darn thing about PLD is sure to be an exception anyways.

[Cursed]

I'm so tired of PLD fix threads... I don't care anymore. Aegis looks good on my mithra manequin.

[Tyraant]

I was thinking some sort of ja that resembles emnity douse. make it alliance PC target, possibly like a hate reset for 1 person.

maybe also adjust atonement so dmg isn't capped @765, and fix monster resistance to atonement.