The Problem(s) with Paladin

[Eagleheart]

Greetings.

Allow me to preface my post by saying that I am very grateful to Yoshi P, Dev Team, and the community reps for all their hard work on FFXIV, and I profoundly wish for 2.0 to be a blockbuster success. ( o.O) I pay for two accounts, I have been since payment requirement resumed, and I will continue to for the foreseeable future.

I'd also like to say to the community reps who will hopefully read this (;@_@) Your patience astounds me. If I had your job, I'd have nuked the entire forum from orbit by this point. Thanks very much for all that you endure.

My post today is in regards to Paladin and how it still falters in its assigned role. Paladin struggles to find a niche in the current Jobs lineup, and I think it very important to consider that it is not tweaks and adjustments, but rather, a concept change, to bring Paladin up to speed with the current, and, to the best of my knowledge, future direction of the game.

Below are the points I've prepared. (>> ) Tried to make 'em quick and concise, and easy to pore over.


(1. HP
Strong oneshot moves are a much greater threat to PLD than WAR. Period.
Shield block does not proc on 100-tonze swing, for example. Further addressed in Defense.


(2. Offense
Paladin has no capacity to assist in speed runs, and its existing abilities are not sufficient for crowd control, even when not gunning for speed runs. Even Circle Slash was taken away.

Game is AOE-centric, Paladin has nothing for that. Cannot even use Foresight/Overpower, because Paladin is denied the capacity to parry.

(3. Defense
Parrying is superior to Shield block, period. Takes 2-3 shield blocks to equal damage mitigation of one parry.

Warrior received an ostensible nerf in Rampage adjustment, nerf actually turned into a big buff. Paladin's half-a-minute guaranteed blocks do not compete with Rampage parrying enhancement.

If a Warrior is under attack, their Rampage is not going to fade, it's going to stay. This goes doubly if they are under attack from multiple targets. Concept design of Rampage adjustment flawed.

Paladin is no better at dealing with magic attacks than Warrior. Until 1.22a hotfix, it was, in fact, worse, due to Fighter's Cuirass/Vengeance. Hallowed Ground is 15 minutes, and so does not give Paladin a real edge against magic monsters, as it's a 20-second desperation ability, on a long cooldown, not something you use to keep damage manageable throughtout a fight.

All of the above ignores that any critical hits the Warrior lands replenishes the Warrior's HP due to Rampage, and that this HP resupply is inexhaustible, unlike Paladin's hapless MP pool.

Warrior damage mitigation now equal to, arguably superior to Paladin, IN ADDITION to their higher HP.

(4. Mods
Paladin's offense is further hampered by requiring MND as their secondary.

MND is hard to gear for when tanking. VIT and HP are what a tank usually loads up on, VIT happens to be secondary mod for WAR's damage, and Warrior does not need to build for HP, leaving them free to gear for offense, which Paladin cannot do without compromising their already-weak survivability.

Paladin suffers a loss of STR from GLA, further hampering its already-low offensive stats and capacity.


Bullet points, the tl;dr version of tl;dr!


- Warrior survivability higher than Paladin

- Warrior utility in multiple-target situations vastly superior to Paladin

- Warrior defensive capacity equal to or superior to Paladin

- Warrior equip optimization for tanking allows them to gear for additional damage without sacrificing survivability. Paladin must gear specifically to match Warrior survivability, thereby falling further behind offensively.

- Warrior offensive capacity vastly superior to Paladin, marginally less so after 1.22a. Riot Blade is still eighty seconds, and Rage of Halone is 30. That makes no sense. Warrior combos are faster, and still stronger.

- Removal of enmity bonus from Phalanx hurt. A lot.
No, seriously. Phalanx was actually useful when it had an enmity bonus. Now, it's just a low-damage throwaway, or opener for Spirits once a minute.

- Second Wind is freebie. Holy Succor is not.

- In order to actually get any MP from Outmaneuver, you have to pair it with Divine Veil. Waste of an ability slot, since you only ever use Outmaneuver if Divine Veil is ready.

- Warrior AF is useful. Paladin AF is not.

- No, seriously. Two pieces of gear with either straight enmity, or an enmity bonus effect, and offensive stats/solid HP (in the case of Fighter's Burgeonet and Fighter's Breeches) is vastly superior to five pieces with Enmity from 1 to 5, and lackluster tanking stats.
There is a good reason Touch of Rage materia got doubled in potency. Enmity is very incremental in effect, Paladin's AF enmity is *worthless*.

- Paladin is at a disadvantage while kiting, needs to stop and cast magic to heal itself, Warrior has Second Wind/Featherfoot, can dodge a hit, restore HP, keep going. This might not be so bad if Warrior was not already superior in all other categories. Instant cast Holy Succor would help this, an abrupt halt can be managed with turn-to-face-target H key before starting cast.

- Flat Blade's high enmity modifier is good, but the weaponskill itself is rather weak. Strong targets reduce the effectiveness of Flat Blade to being roughly equal to Skull sunder, perhaps a little weaker.
Again, this might not be such a problem if Warrior was not already superior to Paladin in every other category.

- Warrior has Antagonize IN ADDITION to Sentinel. Antagonize with AF head is a 1.65x enmity multiplier, 1.5x without. Paladin has nothing even remotely close. WAR AF head also has +60 HP, small bonuses to their damage mods, and +10 crit rate. PLD AF head has a good MND bonus in comparison, but no HP.

- Antagonize affects all abilities. Sentinel, at this time, only affects damage from auto-attack and weaponskills.

- Collusion. Partially nerfed, but another enmity advantage over Paladin, while Warrior already has no problem competing with/besting Paladin in enmity output.

- Cure enmity is divided up amongst active opponents, according to player testing. Enmity incurred from a Holy Succor divided amongst six to eight targets is inconsequential.

- Stat comparison:

HP: WAR +400
MP: PLD+700 (irrelevant to WAR)
STR: WAR+20 (mod for both PLD and WAR)
VIT: PLD+12 (mod for WAR)
DEX: WAR+21 (Parry/block rate)
INT: WAR+30 (Irrelevant to both)
MND: PLD+21 (mod for PLD)
PIE: PLD+30 (With all that PIE noted there, PLD has a total of +8 magic evasion over WAR. Fellow posters, please do not begin ranting about how Paladin is superior on magic mobs. That number is flatly irrelevant, and we all know it.)

Summation:

Paladin fails to be a superior single-target tank.

Paladin fails to be a superior multiple-target tank.

Paladin fails to be a superior offensive tank.

Paladin fails to be a superior defensive tank.

Warrior is still superior in all categories. They might have actually increased their lead now with Rampage becoming better at defense.

Paladin cannot even adequately defend itself, let alone party members. The concept of Cover is slightly flawed in XIV, because if your target is out amongst the mages, your most immediate problem is not the physical attacks the mob will deal to its current target, but rather, the powerful AOEs that it will use instead. Cover does not actually provide much in the way of protecting the party.

A damage reduction aura would be a better application for Cover, or a new ability once level cap is raised, rather than simply replacing Cover as it is now. The central point is that Paladin needs to be able to do three things effectively;

(1. Keep the target/targets enmity on the Paladin.

(2. Survive the enemy's assault.

(3. Minimize the risk to the rest of the party as they attack the target, and facilitate the no-holds-barred beatdown of the target. Hate redirection, damage mitigation auras, enfeebling of the enemy (defense down, evasion down, crit evasion down), et cetera. Divine Regen is a good idea in this vein, and a good start. Collusion falls under this category, but a better idea for Paladin is, again, mitigation of incoming damage for the party, and enhancement of the party's offensive capacity against the enemy.

The latter is doubly important if Paladin is to remain void of AOE damage potential.

Give parties a real reason to want a Paladin along.


Thank you for your consideration. (_ _ ) {/bow}

[Lienn]

Good points.

+1

[Eagleheart]

Example abilities could include:

- A technique that mitigates physical damage sustained by the party by 10-20% for a given duration.

- A matching technique that mitigates magical damage sustained by the party instead.

These techniques could ignore the Paladin themselves, and only be applicable to the party members, thereby maintaining a degree of difficulty in keeping the tank up, whilst making it safe for close-range damage dealers to cut loose. Costs for such an ability could include: MP/tic upkeep, akin to avatar perpetuation, TP/tic upkeep, reduction in the Paladin's damage output %, or some other arbitrary cost. Could even get fancy, and call them stances. :3

- An ability to reduce the physical defense, or magical resistance, of enemies in range of the Paladin.

- An ability to reduce the critical hit evasion of the Paladin's target.

I am sure that other abilities could be thought up by people more creative than I. (O.o) These are but a few stray thoughts running through my head at the moment.

[UmJammerSully]

A very well-written thread, nicely done.

Example abilities could include:
- A technique that mitigates physical damage sustained by the party by 10-20% for a given duration.

Rampart? o.o

[Velhart]

Yep, this pretty much sums up what is wrong with Paladin. They gimp WAR, but PLD still can't touch them at all.

[SwordCoheir]

- A technique that mitigates physical damage sustained by the party by 10-20% for a given duration.

That might be an actual suitable replacement for Cover considering it's damn near useless as it is without equipping PLD's sub-par AF body.

Cover- Cover (get it?) your party with divine shield of radiance reducing the damage they take. (Works for all damage like Sentinel.)

This could make difficult events like surviving Garuda's Ariel Blast much more bearable for inexperienced groups, but that's just a single situation.


If I had another thing to address it would be the range of our AoE buff abilities like Divine Veil and Rampart. The range of these abilities is deplorable and often require other players to get close to the front of a Mob to receive the buffs. I also feel that a range boost would help address some of PLD's hate issues by boosting Rampart's ability to hit more players it would in turn boost PLD's overall Enmity generation.

[Dzian]

- In order to actually get any MP from Outmaneuver, you have to pair it with Divine Veil. Waste of an ability slot, since you only ever use Outmaneuver if Divine Veil is ready.

- Warrior AF is useful. Paladin AF is not.

I kinda think they should make Outmanouvere a stance more than a 30 second ability. as a stance it would improve mp supply to some degree.

as for paladin af. it all sucks even the body. the fact that you must use the body if you want any mp back from cover and without the mp your screwed so a paladin is essentially forced into using this one piece of gear. which in itself makes it broken. what they should do is let cover regenerate mp by default. but let the af increase the amount of mp regained. that way cover works regardless.

some level of autorefresh would also help along with more hp.

i feel that the af is designed to be like your standard set of gear that when using you should be able to perfom your job with a decent level of ability some jobs af seems to be really well designed in this respect paladin isnt one of them

[Eagleheart]

A very well-written thread, nicely done.



Rampart? o.o

Well, Rampart does physical defense, but even very high levels of defense do little against mobs with a dLVL gap of 8 or more, especially mobs like Ifrit or Garuda. A straight % reduction in physical damage would do more for party survivability. (o.O ) Ditto magic reduction.

[Yves]

Try using PLD on Garuda. The output is better and Riot Blade does wonders to push total DPS. It isn't perfect but people need to be a bit open-minded in how they approach single-target fights.

[NoloeTazier]

Agreed. If all endgame content is a speedrun or spam until the RNG finally lets you have the weapon you want Paladin will always be ignored. People will always go with Warrior because its simply the best. Every category is superior. You could take away Steel Cyclone from Warrior and give it a WS that makes the Warrior pull out a book to read for 30 seconds for no damage on any targets and it would still be better than Paladin.