So a tank's #1 priority is to build hate...
And Paladin's do it through healing....
Right? With me so far?
Then can someone explain to me why that is the class that gets the most damage mitigation abilities?
Aren't they contrasting ideas?
Seems silly to me... So if the IDEA behind Paladin is fail.... If the theory behind the entire existence of the class is illogical... How can the class thrive?
I know what you're thinking... PLD was tank king in FFXI....
But why do you think that was?
It wasn't because of healing....
PLD's weren't spam self healing on HNMs
And it wasn't because of hate.... Sorry, but it wasn't....
It was for survivability....
Paladin is used when it is the only class that can tank the MOB and survive (Or has, by far, the best chance at survival)
People seem to be clinging to an idea of PLD that was broken... even in FFXI
Fight starts... PLD goes into damage mitigation mode (through shield abilities or shadows) and flashes repeatedly for 2-3 minutes.... (idiotic)
Then DD's get some TP and trick attack WS (You know it as Collusion, and only the warrior benefits from it)
Paladin only shines in that rare situation where any other class would die while tanking.
The new buffs to PLD are nice... but don't address the issue...
Before these changes... PLD can't tank most things and WAR can...
After these changes, PLD can now tank these enemies it couldn't before (Which is nice for people who love PLD and will play it regardless) but WAR will always be better
I don't know why people think being able to block more (While admittedly nice) will make PLD better at generating enmity (which is the definition of tanking)
How can PLD ever expect to be viable when the premise behind it is so flawed?
There are actually quite a few different things that could be done to make PLD viable...
(But to do so, you have to get away from the "Heal for hate" paradigm... it wont work
You can't do all of these suggestions either or else PLD becomes OP....
But here are a few suggestions...
1. Make Blocks generate enmity (With the Block rate increase, this would be awesome)
2. Make Sentinel WAYYYYYYY better. (Let's be real, it sucks now)
3. Give PLd Collusion. (It's awesome)
4. Give DD's trick attack (You knew i was going to say that)
5. Make Rampart a way bigger AOE
sidenote: Rampart is such a tease. You think you're going to grab all of this enmity, but each person you use it on has to be on the enemies enmity table and standing next to you... weak
6. Lower War Drums cooldown
7. Buff Phalanx with more damage or supercharge the enmity gained from it
8. Lower the Spirit's within cooldown even more
9. Make Blocks generate really good enmity (Sorry, I had to list it twice)
There are obviously more ways to make it work, these are just my thoughts
And like I said... you can't do all of these things or else PLD becomes super OP... and we don't want that
Lastly... think about this
with MRD>WAR, most tanking abilities come from the job (WAR)
with GLA>PLD, most tanking abilities come from the class (GLA)
Since Job abilities are exclusive and most class abilities are not, that means WAR has access to it's tanking abilities as well as those from GLA... While PLD only has the GLA tanking abilities, since MRD hardly has any
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