FINAL FANTASY XI Job Adjustments Manifesto: Paladin

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Originally Posted by Septimus

So, instead of improving Paladins, we should instead do less damage? That solves all of the problems.

And don't try to condescend to me about the "old days". I spent years in a tree trying to get a dragon. I was in the first NA group that ever killed Tiamat. I was in the first group that ever fought Jailer of Love who found out that it invincible. I know all about the old days.

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Pst, if you want to be a heavy DD and get away with doing spike damage I hear there's a job that can do that.

Just throwing an idea out there based on the direction the manifesto sounds like its going in and what most people think PLD needs. A self only cure spell equal to roughly the healing of Cure V, but with an addition effect that gives a hate over time similar to Helix spells that every 9-10 seconds adds to hate as if you cast the spell again lasting for about a minute. Also throw in a powerful divine spell that does around 600-800 damage with a 90second or more recast that gives the same effect. I honestly don't know exactly how the enmity numbers work, but I think that if we do the effect of illusionary hate for the mobs that a PLD would better keep hate off DD heavy damage. Maybe depending with these effects active it would also avoid the hate reset issues by the fact if the effect is going on at that time it would randomly throw in a bunch of hate on the reset value.

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Originally Posted by Coldbrand

Pst, if you want to be a heavy DD and get away with doing spike damage I hear there's a job that can do that.

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Yeah, everyone go SMN. Now the PLD doesn't have to worry about losing hate. Problem solved without having to fix any borked game mechanics!

Armies of PLDs and SMNs, destroying the game!

and a token WHM, BRD, and RDM.

Maybe a THF.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Paladin has a high amount of defense, so we are not thinking about adding a high amount of attack power on top of their defense currently.

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Then make it so people will have a reason to invite a Paladin to the party. For example, having a Paladin in the party would grant an automatic Buff to each person in the Paladin's party depending on their job.

1. All Jobs -25% Enmity gain (except the PLD)
2. Magic Attack Bonus +10 (BLM only), +100 TP Bonus (SAM only) etc.
**This effect would not stack if there's another PLD in the same party

SE's solution to the pld holding hate problem is to get a thf in the party..... lame

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Originally Posted by Camate

In the next version update, we are planning to add an ability that will temporarily increase the activation of shield blocks as well as make is so no enmity is lost.

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This will be different from Reprisal how?

And I realize I'm the only one who cares about this, but when will size 4 shields ever be useful?

Paladins damage output is so bad comparatively to other jobs, I don't understand why they can't see that a modest boost could go a long way in helping the pld keep hate control.

They should really consider giving pld a hasso like mode so they have something to contribute when they're not tanking.

Gamer: "Square enix. Im a whm and i have enmity issues. Will you give us an ability to reduce our enmity? Like a pax spell?"
SE: "We suggest you team up with a thief or sub dragoon so you can jump your hate away"

Its not surprising they're pushing THF when the only thing they want THF to do is TH whore and Control Enmity.

The problem is 25% Enmity on a 1minute timer split across 17 other people in the alliance, 11 of which you can't hit with your JA cause its party only, forcing you to either shift THF through parties, or bring a THF For each party, is not enmity control.

Its a hassle not worth the effort and is a futile attempt at use. If they want THFs to be invited for some form of Enmity control they need to give them real power in the area. 2 Abilities on a shared timer doesn't cut it SE.

Play your game more.

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Originally Posted by JovialRat

SE's solution to the pld holding hate problem is to get a thf in the party..... lame

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Holding hate isn't even the problem.

Give PLD Cure V and let us merit it so it can regen enmity over time. oh ya!

I want Shell V too



I'm running out of ideas. sigh..

You could have a THF come along to help your PLD hold enmity!

... or just have the THF tank outright to begin with...

We'll just have to start rotating thfs in to the dd party to steal hate from them. I think about 15 should be able to keep a decent dd from getting hate right? I'm honestly disappointed with the ideas for pld.

Just off the top of my head, I'd like to see Fealty actually make you immune to more status effects. Considering it's a 1 minute duration and a minimum of 10 min recast I don't think it'd be too terribly over powered to let you be immune to terror or death.

What I find funny about this, is that the Devs want us to tank, but they want it to be hell to get hate... Why would you want us to be a tank, but have every other job not only hit harder then us, but faster with all of the DD traits they have. I hardly view Fencer as a game breaker, it would only give us a lower crit amount then most PLDs have when they equip RR to keep hate (must say something to SE if 95% of PLDs equip an atma that grants crits, in order to compete with other jobs to tank..... somebody else smell that coffee or is it just me?), and the more we generate enmity, the less we have to worry about hate decay, and the less we have to worry about hate decay, the more we can tank, and the more we can tank, the more useful PLD will be, and with that finally we can see PLDs actually.... oh Idk, being used...

The problem isn't that we loose hate, its that we share it too easily with other jobs, who gives a crap about loosing enmity, I can tell you right now, no PLD geared properly suffers from this, especially with the gear you can get for it.... so why add more JA's that will pan out to be well..... worthless.

The issue is that the only way we can effectively hold hate, is with provoke, and the only provoke in this game that is effective, is from /WAR... That is the issue SE, nobody cares about enmity decay, because that hasn't been the issue. Why would you preach about opening up this game for jobs, and giving them versatility to match situations, and yet.... you would only have 1 sub that can actually continuously generate hate and become an effective tank (setting damage mitigation aside and focusing on immediate enmity generation). Idk SE, but you sure have us screwed up and on a double edged sword here, you want us to tank, yet you want to grant us no effective way to hold hate.... Please make up your mind on what you want us to be....

I mean there is a reason why PLD started getting haste gear and gear with DD stats on it, because back in the day when you gave us only Defensive Stats, it wasn't enough, and then we had to multi task physical dealing damage and damage mitigation, its about time you wake up and realize that we can't go back to how this game was. When DD's are pushing out 3-4k spike damage, and we are lucky to get a 1k WS, and yet are expected to tank when we are easily out classed in damage. Sure we can take a beating, and thats great, yet it won't do much good, unless all the DD's die and we slowly tank it and dwindle it down.

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Originally Posted by Scuro

The issue is that the only way we can effectively hold hate, is with provoke, and the only provoke in this game that is effective, is from /WAR...

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This is the part where I realized you weren't serious.

Bottom line... the dev's dont want to give pld an ability that will effectively HELP pld to cap their enmity quickly, like other jobs can, i go back to the point that, if you don't have hate in the first place, there is NO reason to have gear that reduces enmity lost when taking dmg, to take dmg, unless it's an AoE, you have to have hate, so there is a serious catch 22 here and it seems as if the dev's have no want need or desire to fix it. Also, as a note to the dev's since you seem to finally be sort of reading what we have to say... PLEASE stop answering USELESS questions. I don't mean just as it pertains to pld, i have noticed this on a number of the job threads, these questions have no base in the reality of the player base.

So yeah i think a great idea would a Shield Throw like Captain America, it's a boomerang so you don't lose your shield, Capt A was a kick ass pld, his shield has more Shield Bash than 10 Aegises...

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Originally Posted by cidbahamut

This is the part where I realized you weren't serious.

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And it was at this point I realized..... your level 6,

anyway, /DNC has provoke (weaker then /WAR voke).... yes, every other has abilities that can gain hate when spammed, sure. Yet /WAR is the only one with a massive hate spike and can be spammed every 15 seconds to continuously feed us hate in a battle against PLD/WAR and PLD/*insert job here* PLD/WAR will be the better initial tank, and because of that will be able to use its tools effectively to keep hate, rather then other jobs that rely on hoping for initial hate so they can use their tools to continuously keep hate, such as jobs like PLD/DNC.

In short, troll else where please.

Provoke is on a 30 second timer dude, I'm not the one who's terribly confused here.

30, 15, who cares sorry I didn't bother looking it up, point is, its fast and can be used more efficiently then other hate spking tools lol @_@

Not really. Provoke is 1800 VE, that won't hold hate for long at all.

We are aware that paladins are having a difficult time when damage dealers push the limits of their abilities in battle and we plan on making adjustments so that it’s easier for paladins to grab the focus of a target. However, since it would quickly become boring and lack any sense of challenge if party members were able to fight without fear of enmity as long as a paladin is present, it will be necessary to take into account the proper enmity balance between every role in party situations. Not only thieves, but magic and songs amongst other things are there to assist in taming enmity, so it would be beneficial to utilize those tools as well.

In regards to increasing the enmity for paladin’s cures, we are currently looking into it.

Since paladin would pretty much be able to do anything if we increase both its defense and attack, we will not be doing this. (A paladin’s weapon skill damage output isn’t low by any means.)

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Originally Posted by Camate

We are aware that paladins are having a difficult time when damage dealers push the limits of their abilities in battle and we plan on making adjustments so that it’s easier for paladins to grab the focus of a target. However, since it would quickly become boring and lack any sense of challenge if party members were able to fight without fear of enmity as long as a paladin is present, it will be necessary to take into account the proper enmity balance between every role in party situations. Not only thieves, but magic and songs amongst other things are there to assist in taming enmity, so it would be beneficial to utilize those tools as well.

In regards to increasing the enmity for paladin’s cures, we are currently looking into it.

Since paladin would pretty much be able to do anything if we increase both its defense and attack, we will not be doing this. (A paladin’s weapon skill damage output isn’t low by any means.)

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Well, they need something more than not knowing what to do...

What about some "Enhances Provoke" or "Enhances emnity" gear to be used when using provoke or flash. Or possibly make monsters get pissed off (give emnity to pld) that theyre doing less dmg than normal by the use of "Physical Damage Taken -" gear, so neither the DEF nor Attack of a PLD would be a factor into emnity. So stacking PDT gear would result in better emnity, but it would actually eat up slots used for other gear normally used when attacking with weapons like Almace. That would also be beneficial to the people who have spent years building Aegis. the MDT- on it could do the same, which would also benefit them in the same way. NIN tank would also benefit from this by using shadow mantle/ring.

Actually, i like this idea... yeah it'd take some code work, but it's a lot more efficient than trying to come up with new abilities, and formulas for "balancing" pld. People have been upset at pld ever since Abyssea came out... the Atma on DD's has ruined PLD.

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Since paladin would pretty much be able to do anything if we increase both its defense and attack, we will not be doing this.

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Is the development team that certain jobs are already capable of doing "everything" (e.g. monk) and that paladins are *disporportionately* less capable of both defending the party and causing damage?

You can't use a paladin and force all the damage dealers to hold back to let the palading have hate, when a Monk can hold hate through damage and allow the damage dealers to do whatever they want. It just doesn't make sense. Paladin, in some way shape or form, has to be *better* at holding hate than other jobs, or it will never be used to the level it should be. It shouldn't be impossible to take hate from a paladin by any means, but a party shouldn't have to feel like it's making itself weaker by adding a paladin.

Yeah, pretty much for Almace Paladins only as far as WS damage goes.

....looks like SE is aware about the problem pld is having... but also sees that its very hard to fix said problem without making the job incredibly overpowered.

......................this doesn't look good for pld.

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Yeah, pretty much for Almace Paladins only as far as WS damage goes.

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Like an Almace is *so* hard to get. If it's so hard for you get the NQ WoE version. Trust me a PLD with Ochain and Almace (both of which are easy as hell to get, I see them everywhere on my server) is far stronger than a MNK or NIN in terms of overall survivability and damage output. With Shield Mastery you're getting tons of TP from shield block procs and your weapon skills are doing 3-5k depending on gear/food/buffs. Even outside Abyssea, CDC still does a solid 2-3k which is higher than most WS in the game outside abyssea.

In regards to making Paladin a worthwhile job, capable of bringing any sort of usefulness to a party, we currently have no plans of allowing the job to be as good as the jobs that we like (such as NIN and SAM) in either tanking or dealing damage. We suggest that you invite a THF (since we can't figure that one out and someone needs an excuse to) in order to make up for this shortcoming.

See how well SAM and MNK tank on Voidwatch NMs. PLDs rejoice that the future of endgame content doesn't lay in Abyssea. MNK/SAM/DNC tanking is dead on newer NMs, they get wrecked. Voidwatch NMs have ridiculous accuracy and spam AoE all day.

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Originally Posted by Camate

We are aware that paladins are having a difficult time when damage dealers push the limits of their abilities in battle and we plan on making adjustments so that it’s easier for paladins to grab the focus of a target. However, since it would quickly become boring and lack any sense of challenge if party members were able to fight without fear of enmity as long as a paladin is present, it will be necessary to take into account the proper enmity balance between every role in party situations. Not only thieves, but magic and songs amongst other things are there to assist in taming enmity, so it would be beneficial to utilize those tools as well.

In regards to increasing the enmity for paladin’s cures, we are currently looking into it.

Since paladin would pretty much be able to do anything if we increase both its defense and attack, we will not be doing this. (A paladin’s weapon skill damage output isn’t low by any means.)

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Do you understand that Paladins have a difficult time even being invited because most damage dealers are also capable of tanking?

There's no point to better enmity tools if we can't add anything to the battle. There's no need for Paladin's defense, and its potential offense doesn't offset its TP feed.

Atonement damage is capped at 750 (often lower because it's dependant on enmity which is constantly being lost), most other jobs can break 1000 fairly easily with non-Empyrean weaponskills. Inside Abyssea, Vorpal Blade is completely outclassed by nearly everything else available to other jobs. The only real options for Paladin come in the form of Caladbolg and Almace, and expecting every Paladin to have one or both of these is just unreasonable.

Enmity control is a secondary issue. The primary problem is that Paladin adds nothing to a party as endgame currently stands. If you're determined to keep Paladin a defense-only job, why not further enhance our durability instead of handcuffing us to subbing Ninja, to allow us more freedom in our support job choices?

Paladin has been stuck in the mire of mediocrity for years and years. If you don't want to move it towards a stronger offense, that's fine, but that means you must advance it in a defensive direction. Leaving it where it is and focusing on enmity generation will solve nothing.

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Originally Posted by Selzak

In regards to making Paladin a worthwhile job, capable of bringing any sort of usefulness to a party, we currently have no plans of allowing the job to be as good as the jobs that we like (such as NIN and SAM) in either tanking or dealing damage. We suggest that you invite a THF (since we can't figure that one out and someone needs an excuse to) in order to make up for this shortcoming.

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...so in your eyes SE should buff plds attack and def so that it will be an unkillable god that puts all other jobs to shame? Job balance be damned let make pld overpowered so everyone will invite them!

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Originally Posted by Camate

Not only thieves, but magic and songs amongst other things are there to assist in taming enmity, so it would be beneficial to utilize those tools as well.

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Camate, would you please please please convey the feedback that the playerbase says this is not the case.

For THF to be useful or desired for Enmity control, the developement team would need to update the job in a way that would likely upset the balance they are so worried about protecting. It would have mean a THF could always keep enmity on your tank by using its various tools.

This would also mean that a PLD would have to be unable to do its job without a THF.

Collaborator, Accomplice and Trick Attack do not control enmity. Collaborator is a THF tanking tool, and Trick Attack is a DD tool. These are their only functional uses in today's FFXI.

THF can play with enmity...but putting the phrase "enmity control" and THF in the same sentence is a joke.

I don't understand how they think paladin weaponskill output is strong. Compared to white mage maybe. Still doesn't change the fact that most melee jobs can weaponskill almost twice as fast in many cases. I can't imagine Paladins parsing much higher than 50% of what a typical melee dd can do assuming they're both engaged for the same time. I certainly don't think Pld should have high damage potential, but things like not hitting for 0-20 on hnm and having an effective magical damage spell you can throw out aren't unreasonable or game breaking.

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Originally Posted by Ophannus

See how well SAM and MNK tank on Voidwatch NMs. PLDs rejoice that the future of endgame content doesn't lay in Abyssea. MNK/SAM/DNC tanking is dead on newer NMs, they get wrecked. Voidwatch NMs have ridiculous accuracy and spam AoE all day.

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What this fellow said.

DD tanks are nowhere near optimal outside abyssea. Especially if they aren't packing empyreans. Asuran Fists is nothing special, and you're not tanking Hahava with it. Or even Kholomodumo.

I always thought a trait for PLD that would work something like a "reverse Subtle Blow", where monsters that strike a PLD gain less TP than usual, would have been kinda cool.

Okay I usually just sit back and read these forums and try to not have my head explode from the poor understanding of the job by the box burned people and or smn burned PLD's that seem to camp this forum. To those PLD's that actually xp'ed the job and by xp'ed the job I mean leveled it without the aforementioned horribleness as well as syninc it to 75 back in the day.

First off its not SE's fault that you don't have a cure kit build or enmity build for all of your actions towards mobs. Instead of being angry because everyone doing an empy weapon caps hate faster than you. Please get off your ass and use the time you spend here bitching to get an Alamce. Not a WoE ODD doesn't exist weapon an actual Almace where ODD Crits reach 500-600 dmg per swing.

Have all abbysites don't care how long you think it will take you just get them all. Get all atma's needed for getting Savior. By getting these you will have all important Atma's need for the next step. Use appropriate Atma's for CDC build. Either RR,GH, Apoc or RR, Savior, Apoc hell even Omni, RR, Apoc-- I think you get the idea.

Once that is done use actual dex + str + atk gear swaps--- for the love of all things sacred stop ws in the same gear you tank in and than bitch it sucks. In fact stop never changing gear period. If your not blinking enough to give your whm a seizure your not playing the job right. I do have sets for when I don't want my shit pushed in by a HNM and I also have my capped haste tp set both are appropriate use when needed.

Lastly, stop asking for more ways to get enmity. It won't help unless PLD is allowed to surpass the hardcap aka. like with Burtgang passing - PDT cap or Aegis with -MDT cap. I could have 40 job abilities to give me enmity but with the gear PLD has already there is no need for more JA's for enmity. We have plenty at our ready if people would just learn to build their kits right instead of taking the fast lazy way out of begging SE for shit we don't need.

Sorry if this angers anyone but really I don't care, I am just tired of seeing horrible PLD's making legitimate hard working PLD's look like shit. That is all continue to whine now.

Just echoing nebo here, we have one thing in collaborator but thats very little if anything even spammed(especially if you cant tank said monster). Even if we trick attack a paladin the damage on TAWS is not going to generate less hate than the next nuke/ws from anyone else. Please tell us what other abilities Thf is getting for hate control that is has been the response in almost every enmity related response.

Also all paladins--- we know that feel bro---thief forums

p.s. give us something that works like the new ranger JA for enmity transfer over time

It still amazes me that people think there is something wrong with PLD. PLD is fine the way it is, and if you were to boost it's defensive capability it would still be useless in Abyssea. What PLD needs is more endgame like Voidwatch. The fact has been said many times. Increase the need for a PLD and there will be no need to "fix" the job.

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Originally Posted by Ophannus

Like an Almace is *so* hard to get. If it's so hard for you get the NQ WoE version. Trust me a PLD with Ochain and Almace (both of which are easy as hell to get, I see them everywhere on my server) is far stronger than a MNK or NIN in terms of overall survivability and damage output. With Shield Mastery you're getting tons of TP from shield block procs and your weapon skills are doing 3-5k depending on gear/food/buffs. Even outside Abyssea, CDC still does a solid 2-3k which is higher than most WS in the game outside abyssea.

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A pld will never do more damage than an exceptionally geared mnk or nin. Only content a PLD is useful on is higher tier VWNM, more so if they have Aegis/Ochain.