The Paladin Paradigm - A Shift for Better Balance

[Billnye]

[SIZE="5"]Table of Contents[/SIZE]

1. Overview
2. Current Perception
3. Problems
4. Paradigm Shift - Obtaining Balance with Paladin
5. TL;DR

Overview

As most readers can see, there have been many new threads and comments about how paladin (among other things) have become unbalanced with the introduction of Abyssea and level cap raises. In this thread I would like to address some misconceptions about how the game is designed and developed, the current unbalanced nature of the job Paladin, and finally a simple and intuitive adjustment to regain balance back to paladin job (and maybe more).


Current Perception

Many realize that in order to keep a massive multiplayer online game running smooth, there has to be design and development that facilitates people working together. FFXI uses a basic yet effective class system to allow players to experience the different ways to work together as a team.

The class system is broken into three broad classes with specialty classes within:

• Tank Class
• Damage Dealing Class
• Support Class

The Tank Class has the responsibility of controlling and manipulating the damage output of the enemies.
The Damage Dealing Class has the responsibility of doing damage to the enemies.
The Support Class has the responsibility of making sure the other two classes are performing at optimal capabilities.

Players have evolved the Tanking Class (and the other classes as well) and divided it into two smaller categories of Tanking: Blink Tanking and Blood Tanking. Blink tanking came about with the job Ninja and the ability to cast copies that absorb damage, thus mitigating damage, and even further evolved with the addition of third eye and seigan. Blood Tanking is the ability to manipulate the amount of damage taken so it is manageable while still controlling the enemies damage.

As said before, there are two different key roles the Tank Class has to provide: Manipulate damage (blink, third eye, physical damage taken down, etc) and control damage (who the enemies deal damage to). Players have strove to maximize and evolve the manipulate damage role. From blood tanking with 1-2 jobs only, to blink tanking with ninja, to blink tanking with ninja subbed, to utilization of job specific abilities (third eye, counter stance, etc) players keep finding ways to manipulate the damage.

However, the current view on the role of controlling the damage output has remained quite steady throughout the years. Players build enmity towards themselves so they are the target of damage from the enemies. This is the current paradigm that everyone abides by. Why? Because it works. Until Abyssea came around....


Problems

For the sake of this discussion, I will only go in depth the changes have affected the Tank Class. The Damage Dealing Class and the Support Class discussions are for another day.

With the implementation of Abyssea, game mechanics have changed. The inclusion of increased critical hit rates, boosted stats from cruor buffs, and immense resource regeneration (refresh atma, regen atma, regain atma, etc) have allowed players to enhance jobs to fulfill more than one class.

Before Abyssea, the ideal way to "tank" was to control the monsters attention to oneself through four ways: Dealing Damage, Healing, Job Abilities, and Enfeebling. Back when players didn't have enhanced stats, controlling the attention through dealing damage was difficult for the average player (note: not impossible by any means, just difficult). Controlling the attention through the use of enfeebles was another way players tanked, however Square Enix made it very difficult to continue this method. The use of job abilities always helped tanks control the attention through simple abilities like provoke, soul eater, sentinel, etc. This method assisted players by allowing powerful ways to keep the attention of monsters. Along with job abilities, Paladins also used healing power to control the attention to oneself.

Now that Abyssea is out, the most common way to control the attention of the enemy is through damage dealing. As many know, there is a maximum amount of attention one can achieve. Before Abyssea, players would need a combination of dealing damage, healing, job abilities, and enfeebling magic to consistently remain at the maximum level of attention. With powered up stats, players now only need to deal damage to remain at the maximum level of attention.

This is a problem for two main reasons: mixture of class roles (damage dealing + tank) can lead to extinction of jobs, and mixture of class roles lessen the amount of team work needed to complete objectives. From a player's perspective this is good. However from a design/business perspective this is bad. Mixing roles would ostracize people who love the jobs that become extinct.

The point of this thread is to examine one specific job: Paladin. Paladin can no longer fulfill its class role of tank with the current tools at its disposal. Virtually any damage dealer can reach the maximum attention level and stay there. So how do we fix this problem? Let's explore some possibilities.


Paradigm Shift - Obtaining Balance with Paladin

Paladin can no longer fulfill the tank class with every damage dealer able to fulfill both classes more effectively. So how do we fix this? Here are some of the various fixes you can read about all over the place:

1. Increase Paladin's Damage Dealing Capabilities.

This first suggestion is to increasing paladins damage dealing capabilities to balance it out as a tank. Others are tanking because they do lots of damage, why can't paladin? The main reason of why this would not work is because you are just repeating what happened to paladin in the first place: you would ostracize jobs. If paladin became as strong as warrior with the defensive capabilities, why should people play warrior or other damage dealing jobs when they can get both defense and offense capabilities in one.

2. Increase Paladin's Maximum Enemy Attention Level (hate cap)

This suggestion is to increase the maximum enemy attention level for the job paladin. I'm not a programmer, but I think this would entail a lot of work to program. Even if not, why should paladin be the only job to have increased hate cap? Depending how how much of an increase, this could make paladin overpowered by making it the only job to be considered tank, and again this would stray away from the objective of balancing the jobs. From a player point of view this would be the best fix. From a designer point of view, this fix would just cause more problems down the line.

3. Give Paladin More Job Abilities and Spells that Build Attention Faster

Some have suggested a plethora of new job abilities and spells that would help paladin's gain attention faster. This would be nice improvement upon the job, however no spell or ability that builds attention (hate) would help balance the job. The damage dealers would still reach the cap just as fast.

So how can we balance the job if none of these other suggestions would work? Let us think outside the box and back to the basics. Remember, balance is achieved when the three classes all work together without interfering with the others' roles. Paladin was meant to be a tank class. So how do we allow paladin to become a wanted tank again?

Remember, a tank class has two different key roles: manipulate damage received from monsters and control damage output from monsters. Paladin already has great sources to manipulate damage received from monsters through shield block, ninja sub, defense, job abilities, gear options, etc. Increasing the ability to manipulate damage received would not work towards balancing the job. So let's take a look at that second key role.

Is there a way to balance the job by affecting the way a tank controls damage output from monsters? All we need to do is just change our perspective a bit. The current paladin tanking paradigm is to have paladins focus all attention on themselves through gaining and maintaining hate through healing and job abilities. To balance the job out in the current environment, all we need to do is shift that paradigm from gaining and maintaining hate through healing and job abilities to redirecting others hate onto oneself to maintain attention of the monster.

You may be thinking there is already an ability that does that. You are correct. There is. It is called Cover. Currently Cover redirects all attention from the enemy onto yourself. Cover is a 15-35 second ability that can be redone every 3 minutes.

Here is how you obtain balance with paladin: make cover last for 5 minutes (+1 minute for each merit) with a recast of 30 seconds.

How would this balance the job? Simple:

1. Allows Paladin to fulfill its class role of manipulating and controlling damage.
2. Does not interfere with damage dealing jobs. In fact encourages damage dealers to push their potential. Full time hasso, soul eater, etc.
3. Parties do not need a paladin to operate, but the inclusion of one is no longer "dead weight".
4. Allows paladin to utilize their job abilities and magic as intended, not as sole hate generators.

In conclusion, this suggestion to balance the job Paladin by shifting the paradigm (current accepted method of operation) from generating and sustaining hate to redirecting hate through the increased use of the job ability cover can work. People just have to think outside the box a bit more.


[SIZE="5"]Too Long Didn't Read (TL;DR)[/SIZE]

-Paladins can't compete with damage dealers for maintaining hate and increased length on cover can balance the job

[DamonWolfe]

Or simple make Cover a job trait, which would always be active, which would allow it to do this job at all times.

[Mojo]

nerf PLD plz

[Loir]

Or simple make Cover a job trait, which would always be active, which would allow it to do this job at all times.

The conga line starts behind the ochain marshmallow.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

nerf PLD plz

Agreed, it's already over powered.
SE please stop listening to comlainer PLDs complaining, it's ruining the game balance.

[Billnye]

For starters, this isn't a "complaining pld complaining". I don't even have paladin leveled. Anyone with any amount of awareness of how game design and development works, can see that by making a job unfavorable is harmful to the integrity of balance.

Now, to have cover be a job trait would be a little too much. The fact that it can get dispelled helps balance the power of the ability. Having it be a trait also eliminates the skill factor of the ability. One needs to know when and more importantly who to cover and reactivate cover on. The more interactions with a job ability makes the skill factor more important.

This is just a basic idea of how to balance. There is a fine line between Balance and Overpower. SE did a great job of starting to balance damage dealer jobs with the inclusion of Abyssea. Remember when it was only "cool" to be a Ranger? How about Black Mage? Or Sam? With Abyssea, any damage dealing job (to an extent) can operate efficiently and effectively.

The point of this thread is try to get people (and hopefully devs) to change their thought pattern of how to adjust jobs. It just happens that I used Paladin's situation because it's the easiest to explain/most complained about. Instead of trying to "one up" other jobs to be better, why not make it so more jobs and players can work together to make things better (synergy, not the craft)?

[Illianna]

The only problem I see with this, is that no enmity is transferred upon usage of this ability. Truthfully, if rather than an extended duration, they just cut down the recast time and made any damage dealt by whoever was covered count towards the paladin's enmity instead of their own, I could see this being alot more feasable. As it stands, You're taking the damage whoever you're covering would be taking, but they're still generating hate, and you're losing it (by taking damage).

[Gotterdammerung]

Theres 3 types of tanking now.
Blink- mitigate damage by not getting hit.
Blood- Mitigate damage thru defense pdt vit

and the new one

Sponge- live thru cure 5/6 spam.

[saevel]

# Tank Class
# Damage Dealing Class

This is untrue and bleed over from other MMOs. SE has broken down class's into any of the categories you listed. Their dev team simply doesn't think that way. The player-base has instead tried to find the path of least resistance and NA's defaulted to the EQ / WoW / ect.. mentality where the dev's purpose built class's for specific roles. NIN was never, ~ever~ designed as a "tank" class, it was a melee that was hard as hell to kill. Similar to how PLD was never designed as a "tank", instead its a knight with white magic who has defensive traits designed for survivability. MNK was never ~ever~ designed to tank, the player base just abused counter-stance to break the game balance. It was only later that SE decided to add abilities to NIN / PLD for "tanking" and then only because the players kept asking for it. I've seen WAR / THF / DNC / BLU / DRK / SAM / WHM and even BRD "tank" HNM's before. You ain't seen nothing until you've seen a BRD/NIN tanking fafy by spamming mazurka, eventually SE fixed that. Heck BLU has amazing enmity generation spells, can get a full PDT / MDT set, has more defense then PLD, has Head Butt plus a ton of other stun spells, and can do something PLD never could. Generate massive amounts of aoe hate (WoR / Flashga / Exuviation) and somehow still live through it all. Yes you don't hear too much about BLU's tanking things, and this is because it takes lots of skill to pull it off, too many buttons and timers to keep track of.

Abyssea is broke because damage intake is no longer an issue. With Alure / MM / Apoc + Crour buffs a WHM/RDM simply won't run out of MP. I know this for a fact because I dualbox a WHM/RDM while I'm on BLU/NIN and I end up tanking most of the NM's I'm fighting. What you have now is just melee's fighting NM's and surviving through brute cure V / VI power. Of all the jobs in the game, no job is simpler then MNK. You engage the monster, hit counter-stance, then go make a sandwich and watch some TV. Make sure to keep your JA's up and sometimes cast Utsusemi. Basically its so easy its nearly impossible to screw up.

PLD takes skill to tank on. You need to stop thinking of yourself as a tank and start thinking of yourself as a melee with swords and sentinel. Stop using taco's and start using steak. Start doing the math to build maximum WS damage sets, look at gear for the value it adds to your offense and not your defense. You don't need a shield fighting weaker NM's. Heck you don't need a shield fighting anything equal to Sobek. Yet every time I see a PLD in abyssea its always sword + board sporting some mixture of defensive gear. Then go on the forums and hear all the PLD's whining on why nobody wants them.

You want to generate ginormous hate instantly? Have TP ready with full DD atmas set, pop the NM then do Sentinel -> Flash -> Vorpal Blade then immediately beat on the NM while sentinel is up. If its something your spamming, then you don't need to worry about doing that and instead just do what the MNKs, NINs and WARs do, beat on the monster while spamming Flash. Anything large and dangerous you actually want a survivable tank on anyway, I'd prefer a PLD/NIN on Alfard then either a MNK or NIN. Seen way too many MNK's and NIN's be obliterated by that guy.

[gryyphyn]

Tier 2 2 hour, quested, for all jobs, requires 75+. For Paladin:

Night Protector of the Realm [:00 :15/2:00:00]
Ethereal shield, single target, enhances cover, damage mitigation, does not require position directly in front of target.
Effect: Redirects 100% damage taken by target to the Paladin.
Redirects hate gain by target to the Paladin.
All hate gained while the ability is in use is changed to non-volatile.
Physical and magical damage taken reduced to 25% while active.
Resets Sentinel and Cover timer to max (taking in to account merited abilities).
Does not stack with Sentinel, Rampart or Reprisal. Is overwritten by Rampart or Reprisal.

Additional effect: Follow
Monster focus moves the shield effect to the new mob target until focus is on the Paladin. Once focus moves to the Paladin the effect wears immediately.

This effect does not block AoE spells to the party except the current focus/target. Damage dealt by AoE attacks effect all party members normally.

Animation: A translucent, ethereal shield the size of the target fades in to being in front of the target and follows the mob focus blocking and redirecting damage to the Paladin.

Paladins are the example to all of chivalry. It is our job to ensure that nobody else dies by any means necessary. Cover, as it stands, isn't very useful for four reasons: party members who would be covered have a tendency to move; it offers no damage mitigation; you lose hate instead of maintaining or gaining so the focus doesn't change once the ability wears; and players think they have to be standing inside a mob's hit box to DD. We get the title Paragon of Paladin Excellence without being able to illustrate it.

The other reason I suggest this is it's balanced but gives us another 2 hour but is optional.

And another request to two of the above responses: we're not complaining or whining or wtf ever. Paladin is horribly nerfed by a failtastic MP pool, rapid hate decay and the lack of a JSA provoke, all of which we need to do the job we're supposed to.

As for Paladin DD: Excalibur 85 is time intensive but not impossible. I swear by Altana I'll have mine as soon as I can.