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

[Alerith]

All that does is scream volumes about Enmity design. >.>

FTFY

It's not the job. It's the game. It's a case of trying to fit the round peg (PLD) into the square hole (Game Design). You can't just discard the peg because...well...I cannot fathom the rage that would come from simply deleting a job.

[OmnysValefor]

Concerning PLD, perhaps the mistake was the plethora of -DT gear available to most every job now.

On one hand, you gotta love it because it puts some of the responsibility for the player's life in their own hands, and brings more considerations to what gear you'll carry. On the other hand, you're left with what a few of the last several posts have pointed out. Either a PLD has to tank it, or anyone can.

[Alerith]

Either a PLD has to tank it, or anyone can.

To further complicate matters, making something hard enough that it requires a Paladin to tank it probably means that it requires one of the aforementioned shields. Meaning that if it requires a Paladin but requires an Aegis or Ochain, then that means PLDs without them hardly benefit at all. Inversely, if it's tankable by a PLD without either shield...you probably don't need a PLD to tank it.

[Duelle]

Concerning PLD, perhaps the mistake was the plethora of -DT gear available to most every job now.

On one hand, you gotta love it because it puts some of the responsibility for the player's life in their own hands, and brings more considerations to what gear you'll carry. On the other hand, you're left with what a few of the last several posts have pointed out. Either a PLD has to tank it, or anyone can.

-DT is not really the problem. It's more the fact that it was used as a solution to the bigger problem that is damage mitigation.

Looking at FFXI's Paladin, I can tell you it has almost none of the staples of tank design, either on purpose or due to developer shortsightedness. By staples I mean:

* Inherent improved enmity generation: At the baseline, a naked PLD should be able to generate more enmity than a naked <insert any other job>, be it through enmity bonuses to all actions, more JAs and spells that can be spammed to make up for the enmity generated by the DPS, and/or slower enmity decay compared to other jobs
* Inherent greater survivability: Baseline, a PLD should have better survivability than other jobs through greater damage mitigation or damage avoidance; this ties into
* Better results/scaling with armor values and defensive stats compared to other jobs: A PLD should be seeing greater benefits from stuff like armor values and shields as a whole compared to other jobs. Bringing in the tower shields example from last page, a PLD should see notably superior benefits from equipping a tower shield than a DRK.

As of right now, PLD is basically designed within the mold of a DPS job but with lesser damage potential and some non-damage abilities to try to push it into the tank role. Maybe the job was intended to occasionally take hate to give the healers a breather rather than full-time like we'd expect from a tank. I also keep in mind Tanaka aimed for this game to emulate designs from the console FF games, where there was never a need for a tank job.

[OmnysValefor]

Yeah I've played other MMOs, and though their entire design is different I understand what you're talking about. WoW's Paladin has "Righteous Fury" - All divine magic generates double~ (they change it sometimes) enmity. It's like Yonin on steroids.

I can agree that other jobs have better defensive tools. Fan Dance, Seigan, Utsusemi. Shield is a helluva tool in the right scenario and shield was, of course, a boon to PLD/NIN.

Back then, due to less available and less...attractive -DT gear, tanks were the only thing that could tank, but the monsters hit hard enough in the gear players would wear that blocking or blinking was your only hope.

Buffing PLD in the damage department (something they've said in the past they won't do) would also do well to keep PLDs coming. I would enjoy such a buff, but they've painted themself into a corner. If PLD did more damage, then it has the chance to be Invincible *and* a good DD.

That's the problem really is that they're all over the map and make a mess for the next team. You can't really nerf Aegis or Ochain. Re-calibrating blocking would be unfair to those who've built Ochain (yeah, like me) but PLDs need both shields to be most effective. At the moment, there's nothing unfair about Ochain. It's there, it's free, it just takes time, or less time and gil.

[saevel]

Remember the original FFXI job system was based on early EQ and without many of the established roles and methods present in the modern MMO world. SE never designed any job as "tank" because EQ and previous games didn't have dedicated tanks. They had defense melee jobs that could take more hits then others but at the sacrifice of damage output. Enmity generation was a function of the monsters AI and typically greatly favored the nearest thing to the job and taunt mechanics (forced hate).

So when SE build the FFXI job system they build the six basic jobs and just went from there. Warrior was the original job designed to hold the monsters attention and was given a balanced mixed of offensive and defensive abilities, it was adequately balanced back in 2002 / 2003. Paladin was just an upgraded Warrior that sacrificed the offensive abilities to gain some defensive ones and access to low level white magic. It wasn't until years later that SE got around to "fixing" PLD's defensive system and making shields actually work, before they were just like guard / parry. They never looked at the enmity system and how it applies to the role of "tank" and the result is what we have today. Taunt mechanics are pretty much the only way your gonna get a job with such weak damage output to hold a monsters attention and not die. Defense scaling, enmity scaling, and ability access are all screwed up in FFXI.

[Alerith]

Yeah I've played other MMOs, and though their entire design is different I understand what you're talking about. WoW's Paladin has "Righteous Fury" - All divine magic generates double~ (they change it sometimes) enmity. It's like Yonin on steroids.

I can agree that other jobs have better defensive tools. Fan Dance, Seigan, Utsusemi. Shield is a helluva tool in the right scenario and shield was, of course, a boon to PLD/NIN.

Back then, due to less available and less...attractive -DT gear, tanks were the only thing that could tank, but the monsters hit hard enough in the gear players would wear that blocking or blinking was your only hope.

Buffing PLD in the damage department (something they've said in the past they won't do) would also do well to keep PLDs coming. I would enjoy such a buff, but they've painted themself into a corner. If PLD did more damage, then it has the chance to be Invincible *and* a good DD.

That's the problem really is that they're all over the map and make a mess for the next team. You can't really nerf Aegis or Ochain. Re-calibrating blocking would be unfair to those who've built Ochain (yeah, like me) but PLDs need both shields to be most effective. At the moment, there's nothing unfair about Ochain. It's there, it's free, it just takes time, or less time and gil.

I agree with this.

What it comes down to is the fact that SE has backed themselves against a wall in regards to Paladin, and they are too scared of its remaining potential in the one area they refuse to touch: Damage.

Give a PLD proper damage output with it's current level of survivability and you have just broken the game. (Not that they aren't already starting down that path with Delve.)

If a PLD can do proper damage and shrug off Firaga IV or Death Scissors, why bring anything else? It would completely invert the current dynamic. Instead of PLDs being few against the many DD, you would have PLDs everywhere and every other job would be excluded.

You can see an very simplified version of this in FFXIV 1.0. where if you wanted to fight Ifrit, you had to have the Sentinel job ability or you were barred from joining some parties.

[OmnysValefor]

They could control having too many PLDs by things like shield mastery where a significant portion/majority of a paladin's TP comes from being hit.

They could make our attack based of the damage we take, or the damage we mitigate. Creed +2 proves that the server is keeping track of both how much damage could have been done and how much damage was taken.

Doing these things makes it so that more than two paladins, really more than one, hinders the group.

I'm not saying PLD needs a damage buff, but... PLD needs a damage buff if SE expects us to keep a position in the group.

[Alerith]

They could control having too many PLDs by things like shield mastery where a significant portion/majority of a paladin's TP comes from being hit.

They could make our attack based of the damage we take, or the damage we mitigate. Creed +2 proves that the server is keeping track of both how much damage could have been done and how much damage was taken.

Doing these things makes it so that more than two paladins, really more than one, hinders the group.

I'm not saying PLD needs a damage buff, but... PLD needs a damage buff if SE expects us to keep a position in the group.

A stacking buff that increases your attack as you receive/mitigate damage would be something really nice to have, but I don't think it changes how PLD would be used in either case. If you do that as things are now, DD will have to intentionally hold back so the PLD can build and maintain its attack stacks, just to be more useful in...dealing damage. So you have to withhold damage so a PLD can build up and deal more damage. It's counter-productive.

Yes, it would prevent PLD stacking, but it also doesn't help them in the long run either.

On shield mastery, I would like to see TP gained proportionate to damage blocked. Similar to how Ochain converts damage to MP as a percentage, I'd like to see something similar with shield master.

However, even that is limited by the issues I just brought up. PLD is a very stick job to mess with.

[OmnysValefor]

There are ways around that though too. Giving paladin a massive enmity ability to open a fight with (and Ninja and Runefencer as well) is just common sense. PLD isn't present in zerges for the obvious reason. Voke, flash, and a mediocre ws might keep hate off the first round of ws's (it might, but probably won't) and by the second round, someone else is tanking.

It's all downhill at that point, if you're landing every hit, you're ws'ing at 1/5 (that's probably generous) the rate of the SAMs in your group. In many groups, it's made worse that the DDs are getting bards and the paladin isn't. (Unless each party is getting songs).