More Paladin-centered shields needed to close the gap with Aegis & Ochain

[OmnysValefor]

Oh I know, like he said. Flare's enmity, without flare's damage. A passive trait to pld increasing divine enmity would do just that. My point was that Holy / Holy 2 are already pretty awful. They've already got the low-damage aspect down, all they need is more enmity.

[Demon6324236]

Ah, well in that case I most definitely agree, no matter how you try PLD will never do any kind of respectable damage with Divine magic, nerfing it further... that's like if they took SMN right now and nerfed its avatars, its just kickin ya while your already to weak to do anything in the first place.

[Alerith]

Damage, be it with the sword or divine magic, is the only area left where PLD's potential hasn't been fully explored. Chant Du Cygne is great and all, but it doesn't make you a viable source of damage. Atonement and Spirit's Within had the right idea, but that concept fell off the face of the earth. A direct damage boost to either sword or divine magic is no good either, because then you've broken the game due to PLD's current ability to mitigate damage.

Maybe a single target weaponskill that acts like Atonement but also collects a percentage of enmity from your party and applies it to damage?

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

Or maybe they could find ways to encourage jobs to use weapons other than their single A+++ choice. But then we'd end up with some sort of crazy, mixed-up world of SAMs using bows, MNKs using staves, and WARs using any of the 183 weapon choices they have that aren't a Great Axe.

[OmnysValefor]

Your snark is obvious, of course those jobs used to use those weapons, but always because they were an A+ choice for the task. Not once has anything subpar become a trend in this game, not that I can think of. SAM/RNG's didn't just SAM/RNG and go, they built entire gearsets, ate different food. The first person to do it might have had a special-snowflake+min/maxing mentality, but others followed because it was a very strong source of dmg.

[Mirage]

I seriously think more weapons should be more viable for more jobs. What's wrong with making more variety in the game? What's wrong with having poles and clubs be viable weapons for monks? What's wrong with having bows and polearms be viable weapons for sam?

Except that it might be harder to actually balance for SE, that is. But that's SE's problem, not ours!

[OmnysValefor]

I wouldn't mind using club on PLD if there were good options, but there aren't, besides the delve reward, but I don't want to give up WS points for Realmrazer.

[Duelle]

I seriously think more weapons should be more viable for more jobs. What's wrong with making more variety in the game? What's wrong with having poles and clubs be viable weapons for monks? What's wrong with having bows and polearms be viable weapons for sam?

Except that it might be harder to actually balance for SE, that is. But that's SE's problem, not ours!

You'd have to either adjust weapon skills so that they are job-inherent instead of weapon-inherent, or simply make all weapon skills the same and raise/abolish proficiencies across the board.

I don't see either happening.

[Vold]

As far as hate control goes, I recall this one MMORPG I had played for a few years. About 5 years into the game's existence the warrior tank class got a pretty big boost to holding hate. Just by engaging the warrior would essentially get a dev created "cheat" where by the only way to drag hate off of the warrior you would need to not be using your abilities to lose hate(like what BLM gets for example)

I can provide more examples but what it boils down to is this: SE can make it so that a PLD holds hate forever. They just don't want to do it. They can't really do it. Not yet anyway until they are well into their new plans for EQ/WoW end game.


Beyond that I just don't have an answer for making PLD useful beyond the ochain/aegis. The only way to do it is to use cheats. Whether it's the above or have NMs detect jobs and if any job other than PLD is tanking it gets utterly raped(for example a war tanks it gets hit for 2k damage, PLD tanks they get hit for 300 dmg) or both or whatever. Cheats are cheats. A lot of MMORPGs have to resort to them for tank classes because the last thing you ever want to do is create a tank that's as powerful as DD and tanks. It just goes against the laws of... something.


I have an ochain and aegis and I'm totally for more options for lesser tiered shields. But make no mistake, no one who does their shout groups will care about anything less than ochain unless it is practically ochain. After going through my 75 colorless soul farming I'm not sure how I feel about such a shield. But I'm already used to the treatment with delve weapons so whatevs man. Whatevs.

[Zagen]

As far as hate control goes, I recall this one MMORPG I had played for a few years. About 5 years into the game's existence the warrior tank class got a pretty big boost to holding hate. Just by engaging the warrior would essentially get a dev created "cheat" where by the only way to drag hate off of the warrior you would need to not be using your abilities to lose hate(like what BLM gets for example)

I can provide more examples but what it boils down to is this: SE can make it so that a PLD holds hate forever. They just don't want to do it. They can't really do it. Not yet anyway until they are well into their new plans for EQ/WoW end game.


Beyond that I just don't have an answer for making PLD useful beyond the ochain/aegis. The only way to do it is to use cheats. Whether it's the above or have NMs detect jobs and if any job other than PLD is tanking it gets utterly raped(for example a war tanks it gets hit for 2k damage, PLD tanks they get hit for 300 dmg) or both or whatever. Cheats are cheats. A lot of MMORPGs have to resort to them for tank classes because the last thing you ever want to do is create a tank that's as powerful as DD and tanks. It just goes against the laws of... something.


I have an ochain and aegis and I'm totally for more options for lesser tiered shields. But make no mistake, no one who does their shout groups will care about anything less than ochain unless it is practically ochain. After going through my 75 colorless soul farming I'm not sure how I feel about such a shield. But I'm already used to the treatment with delve weapons so whatevs man. Whatevs.

Even if PLD was able to hold hate 100% of the time that wouldn't matter for anything outside of the "PLD holds a monster" situations. Currently that's Plasm farming (which is super tanked so hate isn't the issue) or groups who're diving into content without feeling confidant in using a more aggressive strategy yet.

As someone else had mentioned even if it's a monster that rips through DD's HP meaning they can't fill/share the tanking role then the monster just gets stun locked or PD/Embrava cycle zerged.

The whole combat system would need to be reworked in order for PLD with or without Aegis/Ochain to remain a relevant role in combat dynamics.