Paladin's improvements wishlist. Let's show SE our people power!

[Zagen]

I would like to see harder content such as Voidwatch with more rewards that are worth and rival Emp+2 for all jobs not just a few.

[Yukichibi]

Job Trait:
Enmity reset immunity, which will never happen so: resist death/doom

Job ability:
Makes you the target of the mob for 10 seconds regardless of current enmity, recast 1 mn (adding the same effect to invincible should be implemented).

Spell:
Migawari like spell.

Weaponskill:
No idea.

[Cursed]

Job Trait:
Intimidating PresenceLv.90
occasionally steals enmity from other party members/ally members and increases rate of intimidation.

Job Ability:
valiancy Lv.85 PLD
Duration 30 seconds
Recast 5 minutes
Self Target
50% of total dmg from Physical and Magical Area of effect attacks will be absorbed by the PLD for the duration of 30 seconds.

Spell
BenevolenceLv.80
TARGET: Self
Grants a cure effect for party members of 25% of Damage received upon Successful blocks of physical attacks and 25% of MP to party members when taking magic damage.
Duration 2 minutes
recast 3 minutes
MP Cost 120
Casting time 2 seconds


Weapon Skill
chivalrous Blade. Lv.425 Sword (??)
Quested
Start NPC : Excenmille
Description: Delivers a 3 fold attack. Chance of critical hits varies with Enmity.
VIT 60% Mod.

These are neither ground breaking, when keeping in mind the current status of other jobs, and [/B]they serve to give PLD more utility and reason to be in a party/alliance.

[Unleashhell]

Sorry in advance as from my understanding you only wanted us to post once, and that you only wished for ideas and not comments, but this post is in regards tomy original post and I don't think there is much to suggest anyways on new adjustments to Paladin. :-(

Cure V is actually a must for Paladin now or atleast by 99 it will be, as I read in a thread elsewhere, it is true that as of the level cap increase, the newer Notorious Monsters and Monsters in paticular do hit for a much larger sum of damage and Cure IV nearly won't cut it. Not alone. I think it is time for one more step up in Cure tiers.

Possibly it was my post if you been following all threads like me. Unless someone also mentioned it in one of their posts. Either way this was my suggestions to help make PLD better. I willl just copy and paste my other forum reply as well as add a few more ideas. Keep in mind it will take more then just a few abilities or spells. It will take game mechanic changes.

See Below From my other post:

There are a lot of things wrong with PLD. But their are also a lot of things wrong with the actual battle system. For instance when 2 hand weapon jobs got massive damage dealing increases the enmity system was not adjusted. Damage dealers get tons (and I mean TONS) of food options for attack and accuracy. Paladins really do not have a lot of options. Tacos are still the best overall food for VIT and DEF. Granted we can use an attack food but what would be the point? Sword damage and delay cripples Paladin even if you use attack food. Almost all Paladin WS are low damage output with the exception of CDC.

What they need to do for Paladin is give a separate enmity cap. Something that exceeds the current max, even if it is an ability. This way a paladin can cap hate and then use this ability to further hate control. Now there has to be game balance along with this. We cannot have paladin have a hate lock, there has to be some sort of repercussion to damage dealers at times. If they do massive 2-3K weapon skills inside or outside of abyssea they should get hate. There is nothing wrong with that, its part of the risk / reward in fighting. If you are going to risk massive damage output you will suffer some sort of consequences. This issue now is paladin needs something to get that hate back, which cover now starts to handle that situation. Paladin still needs more and on a shorter recast time like the OP. Something that is two minutes would not be that bad.

Next paladin needs a meritable cure potency or an ability that increases the potency of cures for a period of time. It would be nice to see a 20-25% cure potency for paladin. Something that lasts maybe 2-3 minutes with a recast of 5 minutes would be perfect imo. At level 99 paladin cannot use cure V because of the less enmity generation that cure V currently has. They would have to adjust cure V so WHM could still use it without the enmity generation. This is assuming paladin would even get cure V which I would highly doubt. Keep in mind HP goes up at 99 as well as new gear that may increase HP even further as well as possibly further HP merits, so little old cure IV will not cut it. Keep in mind, not only is this a form of hate control for paladin but it can be very helpful when curing DD's in a pt that took hate from a massive weapon skill, again current cure IV will not cut it.

Damage output is another issue paladin has. Swords are just too slow and the damage / delay do not help at all. Base damage on swords needs increased. Some sort of Store-TP would be helpful as long as it is a worth while amount. SE took the empyrean set in the right direction with adding haste to the legs, feet and hands, but failed to add more VIT to that set. Granted the enmity accuracy and attack are very well needed. Not to mention the DEF is pretty nice also. Speaking of DEF, this also needs to be reworked. Currently once you hit a certain point of DEF going any higher will have very little to no effect. Paladin is known for having high DEF to help absorb some of those hard hits but what good is all that DEF if it becomes useless beyond a certain point.

Paladin also needs some kind of AoE ability that covers each party member much like rampart that while in effect will greatly decay enmity of party members over a short period of time. Granted this will be more helpful in endurance fights rather then a quick kill situation. This ability lasting 30 seconds with a 5 minute recast would suffice.

Keep in mind Abyssea is NOT all there is in FFXI. People need to think of level 99 without all of your Atmas and Abyssites. We need harder mobs that require a PLD tank, and require more teamwork with a party or alliance. Not just a trigger / kill type of system.


To sum up:

Better Food choices for DEF and ATT

Rework Defense to have more of an impact on battles.

Better PLD swords with higher base damage and weapon skills, maybe a VIT mod based weapon skill that is Paladin specific. Some kind of Store_TP effect.

Rework Enmity mechanics in the game or give Paladin an ability to lower a parties enmity. Maybe add Enmity down to Rampart or something like that.

Meritable Cure Potency maybe 5% per upgrade.

Shield Mastery IV


Other thoughts:

Flash II on a 2 minute recast.

Provoke would be nice but is not necessary.

Shield Bash on Aegis should be much higher then 280. I should be more in the 500 range.


None of this mentioned above would make Paladin unbalanced and imo are reasonable changes.

[Ryx]

Weapon Skill
chivalrous Blade. Lv.425 Sword (??)
Quested
Start NPC : Excenmille
Description: Delivers a 3 fold attack. Chance of critical hits varies with Enmity.
VIT 60% Mod.

Why do you want to make this VIT-based? I fail to see the logic in that. PLD isn't naturally loaded on VIT, nor is it supposed to be. You macro VIT in for rampart potency, and only the stuff you're carrying with you that happens to have VIT on it, like Valor Cape, Hero's Galea, etc.

Make it STR based instead. We're naturally fairly high on STR, tied with DRG among other jobs. We're also capable of loading up on STR+ gear for WS a fair bit better than we are at VIT gear (or any other stat for WS), which also helps on a minor scale going into base damage, not to mention the derived attack. STR mod WSs have always had natural advantages because of these. (I want CdC to be STR-based, please?)

Mind you: I DO like the notion of making the chance of crits based on enmity, like a new version of Atonement.

Personally, I'm thinking it would be more appropriate to have a passive trait that raises our crit rate or a damage bonus based on being the monster's target. It's part of the argument is that Wars & Mnks raise their output when the mob is attacking them, why can't we have something that results in a similar effect?

Not that I'm saying I don't want to see new WSs at 400+ skill, I think we should, but to ask for it to be PLD-specific? I think you'd be better off asking for them to re-work Swift Blade, which is already PLD-exclusive. They've overhauled WSs before. Swift Blade is already a three-hit WS with STR & MND mods, just make it crit, increase fTP, maybe make the STR mod more potent, and non-CdC PLDs have a good alternative to Vorpal Blade.

Spell
Benevolence Lv.80 PLD
TARGET: Self
Grants a cure effect for party members of 25% of Damage received upon Successful blocks of physical attacks and 25% of MP to party members when taking magic damage.
Duration 2 minutes
recast 3 minutes
MP Cost 120
Casting time 2 seconds

This idea needs tweaking, but it's not actually the worst idea I've heard. 25% of magic damage taken converted to MP for party members is too potent, I'm thinking more like 10% (500 damage = 50 MP, for example). 25% of shield blocked hits isn't absurd for physical damage, but I'd add an amendment to this so that it varies with shield size. Say for example, you're using a size 1 vs. a size 3. If you took 25% of the resulting damage from both, the size 1 would be WAY ahead of the size 3, blocking more often and taking more damage. So make the % depend on the shield size, say 10% for size 1, 20% for 2, 30% for 3, 40% for size 4, probably 25% of size 5, and 5% of size 6 (I wish I could say higher, but Ochain blocks wayyy too much).

Recast vs. Duration needs to be adjusted. Proper haste build + buffs could allow you to full-time it with ease, which SE won't allow for such a unique effect. Reprisal's a good example to base this on, so just mirror that: 3 mins recast, 1min duration, 1 second casting. Might also be a good idea for them to over-write each other.


A few other comments...

Hate-locking / hate-stealing: Please, STOP asking for it. It's absurd, it won't help, it's a cheap gimmick that won't solve anything without causing more problems. The LAST thing SE wants to do is unbalance the game to the point where non-blinking VIT/ENM+ turtle PLDs can tank over serious DDs. If you want to tank, you have to put the work into being good at the job, not stuck in the dark ages when people thought their AF1 set was all that was good about the job.

There are problems with the enmity system, yes. They need to be addressed, I'm sure SE knows about it. However, basing things on what happens inside abyssea is NOT a valid test to discern what those problems are and how much things need to be adjusted. Abyssea is NOT a fair sample of what this game is, or how things work, PLEASE stop asking for adjustments on the scale that will let you hold hate inside abyssea. It won't happen, there's no point to doing it.

Let the harder events come, let SE gauge how bad things really are in serious situations, so they can get an idea of how to much they need to adjust it.

What we DO need to ensure, is that PLD is capable of holding hate and doing its job on the HARD stuff...which we need to see more of. Voidwatch is a good start, and I sincerely hope that SE continues to RAISE the difficulty level as we progress away from kiddie-land Abyssea.


Cure potency: novel idea, but not really worth making into a trait. Enmity is based off the amount of HP cured, but Cure IV fundamentally isn't enough to keep up at this point. Even if we could reach the 50% cap on cure potency, I don't think it would make a huge difference. Instead, just add a couple more pieces of gear here & there. As-is, I'm at +15/20% (Others/Self-target) Cure potency without compromising sword or shield to do it.

Paladin DOES need a new spell, or some means of dumping larger amounts of MP into converting hate at one time. When we learned Cure IV at lv55, we only had the MP to cast it a couple times before we emptied our entire MP pool. At that level, it created a huge spike of hate, compared to what our melee could do in the time it took to cast Cure IV. As an elvaan paladin with zero MP merits, I typically have around 400 MP outside of abyssea, and NO problems keeping my MP up without refresh buffs unless going cure-bombing. The problem is that right now, we can't even justify casting Cure IV half the time, because we end up with less hate taking the time to cast it than if we had just meleed instead.

I'd like to see something where I could dump 200+ MP quickly into generating a nice big spike of Cumulative Enmity, to recover from a hate reset, since holding TP to WS after a hate reset is counter-productive in that you're lowering your overall DPS in the process. It has to be a very high MP cost spell, with a LONG recast, so as to prevent it from being a regular use spell, but to have it there in a pinch when a hate reset does happen, and you need to quickly gain control of the monster. It needs to target the monster, so that it cannot be used to steal an NM you don't have claim to. I could see this being very useful in a co-tanking situation, as a means to pulling it off the other tank on short notice.


Cover-type effects: Again, PLEASE stop asking for it. You can say it helps when stuff goes wrong, like a whm/rdm using convert when they run out of MP. I'd rather keep stuff from going wrong in the first place, like the whm not running out of MP by using the proper /sch. If someone who cannot handle the mob in their face is pulling hate, and you're doing your job properly, then it's their fault. Big example: Ranger. They're already slated for adjustments to help fix their enmity generating problems.


Fixing defense: Is not likely to happen. It won't even be to our benefit if it does. You are NOT supposed to gear for defense, that is NOT going to change. Physical & Magical Damage Taken- as appropriate for heavy hits, but Defense & VIT are all but worthless. Phalanx is a much more reliable damage reducer for the individual hits, I just wish PLD didn't get screwed by how it tiers above 300 skill.

[Ryx]

Personal suggestions:

One of the major downsides to Pld tanking is that we're getting hit, even when we block. The Monster gains TP, we're hit by any additional effects its attacks have, etc. If the monster has an additional status effect, it's going to get past the shield. I would like to see a passive trait that increases resistance to status ailments when shield blocking. I'd love to make it a gauranteed resist, but that would be too powerful for an Ochain paladin. So instead, make it an increased resistance to it, so we're afflicted significantly less often on shield blocks than if we were taking the hits directly in the face.

Yes, I know we already have an effect like this when it comes to TP moves, but when the monster has additional effects on its regular attacks, as-is becoming common with new NMs (Azdaja, Apademak, Moira, Krabimanjaro, etc), it seems like I'll have the status effect put back on me before my whm even finishes taking it off.

Example:
Job Trait: Resilience
Obtained: PLD lv50*
Description: Increases resistance against status ailments when blocking with a shield.

*Successive traits raise resist rate.

And on the topic of shield blocks, feel free to call me crazy, but let's add another trait to it.

Job trait: Indominable Will
Obtained: PLD lv93
Description: Reduces Monster's TP when blocking with a shield.

Amount reduced would have to depend on shield type. Let's just say they gain 50% of normal when blocked by a size 1, 25% for size 2, gain no TP against a size 3, and lose 2~3 TP when blocked by a size 4. Sadly, to keep things balanced, Ochain cannot be included in this.

Job Trait: Crusade
Obtained: PLD lv60*
Description: Grants increased critical hit rate (or damage bonus) when holding the monster's attention.

*Successive traits further enhance critical hit rate (or damage bonus).

If you want Paladin to stand out, you need to enhance what it specializes it, and reward it for doing its job. This means enhancing our shield blocks, so that even if (barring Ochain) they don't block that often, it's more than just a damage reduction bonus when they do. It also means enhancing our damage output, as a reward for being the monster's target. Monk and Warrior already have it, why don't we? I'm not saying we need counter, or retaliation, but we do need something (ideally a passive trait) to happen in our favor when we have hate to help us keep it.

You look at what they're talking about for ranger's example adjustments, they're rewarding ranger for behaving like ranger. Reduced enmity for staying out of sight, enhanced subtle blow for being at a distance, it's all designed to help RNG be more RNG-like. If we want PLD to be more PLD-like, in that we hold the monster's attention and protect our party, then we need to enhance the things that make us unique as a job. Enhance our sword skills and our shield skills, to better control the mob.


Overall tho, the big thing is to remember the game balance: We may want to see a few adjustments, but I don't want to see skill taken out of the equation. Use every tool at your disposal to be the best that you can be, gear swap for EVERYTHING, and constantly strive to improve yourself. A number of paladin's problems are player error, and the last thing I want is for SE to accomodate for that.

And that's my two gil on the matter.



P.S: I apologize for ignoring the request of the OP's wishes for this thread, but I felt this needed to be said. I want SE to hear more from the PLD forums than silly requests to make us into the popular kids at school, to break the game in our favor, or level the playing field between the ant & grasshopper players.

I do not mean to offend anyone, I merely felt it necessary to explain WHY certain ideas are NOT the message we should be sending to SE.

And keep this in mind: We do NOT want PLD to gain power to the point of replacing DD jobs. We suffer the neglect in abyssea at the hands of War, Mnk, & Nin, we do not want to be the ones causing such grief to others in a scenario where PLD-burning is an effective tactic.

[Andrien]

Hmm, many great ideas in here.

Job Trait: Fortification
Lv95
Occasionally resist 10% damage

Job Ability: Radiance
Lv95 5min recast
Convert TP and 120MP
Heals all friendly targets within range. Greatly increase Enmity.


Spell: Smite
Lv95 instant cast. MP cost 80. 2min recast
Attacks with light magic that reduces the enemy resistance against light magic by 20%. Increases Enmity. Duration 10 sec.


This is a weapon skill I always wish they'll give us lol
Weapon skill: Lights Blade
Lv95
Deals light elemental damage. added effect enmity gain. (strongest light elemental weapon skill)


I hope I didnt copy anyone else idea, since I was to lazy to read the whole thread ^^;
thoughts ideas, what do you guys think? Devs too!

[Raka]

Job Trait: Fortification
Lv95
Occasionally resist 10% damage

To be honest, this may be fine as a fulltime Job Trait. I like this one, kinda feels like we should have had a damage reduction Trait by now, but since we have Phalanx now I'm unsure about that.

Job Ability: Radiance
Lv95 5min recast
Convert TP and 100MP
Heals all friendly targets within range. Greatly increase Enmity.

Converts TP to MP or did you mean converts 100 MP to TP? Depending on the potency of the healing effect, I think having all three of those benefits would be too much for a single Job Ability; Especially with 5 minute recast.

Spell: Smite
Lv95 instant cast. MP cost 80. 2min recast
Attacks with light magic that reduces the enemy resistance against light magic by 20%. Duration 10 sec.

Sounds like a Ninjutsu effect, maybe if they choose to add another offensive spell to Paladins Magic list, it'd likely be Banish III or Holy II. Would like to see some decent potency though should they add one or the other.

Weapon skill: Lights Blade
Lv95
Deals light elemental damage. added effect enmity gain. (strongest light elemental weapon skill)

If they give us such a Weaponskill, I'm almost positive it would be Uriel Blade.
Great ideas still.

[Andrien]

Converts TP to MP or did you mean converts 100 MP to TP? Depending on the potency of the healing effect, I think having all three of those benefits would be too much for a single Job Ability; Especially with 5 minute recast.
.

Job Ability: Radiance
Convert TP and 120MP
convert both mp and tp to heal all friendly targets. tp effects healing potency. this makes more sense.

With Chivalry in mind, you can merit it down to lower its recast. Who knows in the next merit tweaks we might get it to as low as 5mins. With this ability I figured what better way to spend our MP and TP together in a good way to grab some hate.

Spell: Smite
Smite will help with the potency of light elemental weapon skills and magic. Not just for undead but all monsters just like ninjutsu

[Raka]

Job Ability: Radiance
Convert TP and 120MP
convert both mp and tp to heal all friendly targets. tp effects healing potency. this makes more sense.

With Chivalry in mind, you can merit it down to lower its recast. Who knows in the next merit tweaks we might get it to as low as 5mins. With this ability I figured what better way to spend our MP and TP together in a good way to grab some hate.

Ah, alright. Thanks for clearing that up. Have you decided how much HP is recovered for xx TP?

Spell: Smite
Smite will help with the potency of light elemental weapon skills and magic. Not just for undead but all monsters just like ninjutsu

Yeah, I kinda figured you were heading that way with the spell, but maybe 15~20 sec duration to the Light Elemental Evasion/Defense(or just Evasion) effect. All and all, sounds good.