Paladin: Possibilities

[Greatguardian]

Do not tell me "You don't know any better" if you can't figure out what it is I'm trying to say in the first place: The general issue on the "Concept" of Tanking needs to be addressed.

Concept. Concept. Concept. Do you understand what the word means? Because I clearly remember having to explain myself over and over again in "A Ninja without Throwing".

The concept of Tanking, the Paladin job, and the desirability/love/adoration of Paladin pre-Abyssea are three different things. I will not address them together, as that would be a fallacy.

1) Desirability of Paladin pre-Abyssea:

As I already said, only mid/low-tier shells "Loved" Paladin as much as you claim it was loved. Good shells were already using Monk, Samurai, and Dark Knight tanks and killing things twice as fast. In these shells, the only Paladins were pretty much just the established oldies who loved their Aegis/Excal shinies. No Endgame Linkshell of any tier ever needed "More" Paladins. It was not in high demand. Either a shell had their tanks (whether they're Drks, Sams, Rdms, Mnks, or Plds), or they didn't and they weren't really a shell.

2) The Paladin Job:

I actually don't have anything more to say about Paladin. You haven't said anything about Paladin either. I'll leave this as is, as it is moot.

3) The concept of tanking:

It is always better to not get hit than to get hit. Period. Always. Every single time. Zero is always less than any positive number. That is all there is to it. As long as the option to not get hit exists, getting hit will never, ever be preferable, let alone ideal.

[Akujima]

3) The concept of tanking:

It is always better to not get hit than to get hit. Period. Always. Every single time. Zero is always less than any positive number. That is all there is to it. As long as the option to not get hit exists, getting hit will never, ever be preferable, let alone ideal.

How about this.

Just don't engage in combat ever. Doing that will make you less likely to ever be hit at all.

[Greatguardian]

How about this.

Just don't engage in combat ever. Doing that will make you less likely to ever be hit at all.

I can engage in combat and still not get hit. Two birds with one stone. Booyah.

[Zyeriis]

@greatguardian
Arguing about the player's past and present views upon Paladin, regardless of the legitimacy of those views does nothing to further the thought process behind coming up with ways to adjust and repair Paladin as a job.

It. has. nothing. to. do. with. it.

The job is broken, you clearly believe that, so what's your problem? What is your argument? You offer absolutely nothing to the thread, all you do is bring up how much better other jobs are at specific aspects of tanking. So what? That means we shouldn't bother trying to think of ways to correct this? What players think the job currently is, is completely irrelevant to the discussion about making the job useful again. They only serve as the reasons WHY there needs to be a change.

Gear also is not a solution to a job that is broken at it's core just because it's easy to obtain. If that were true, I want them to break every other job in the game and make it so the only way to make those jobs useful is through gear. Oh wait, then how would we get the gear?

Maze analogies? Fine, tell me a reason why they can't make Route A and Route B, the same distance. Things that are different, can't be equal? or do you just not want them to be equal so that people will pick the one you have over the other option 100% of the time?

3) The concept of tanking:

It is always better to not get hit than to get hit. Period. Always. Every single time. Zero is always less than any positive number. That is all there is to it. As long as the option to not get hit exists, getting hit will never, ever be preferable, let alone ideal.

Again, Talking about Paladin (and non-blink tanking) in it's current state has absolutely nothing to do with coming up with ideas to equalize the two (other than being the reason/cause, rather than a point of discussion and a "counter-argument").

Stop arguing the cause, start arguing the solution.

[Ravenmore]

Thing is NINs were all over this same argument not to long ago. Why cause PLD got everything they did and more. Before that plds were on the outs till they nerfed BRD/NIN, NIN/BRD, NIN/DRK all before abyssea. Even recently they nerfed RDM tanking and now they taking the Cure cheat from RDM. Though that hurt PLD almost as much, but least they didn't take away anything from the job it self. Look at from SEs point of view at every turn we (the player base) try to find ways to not use pld.

[Akujima]

@greatguardian....

Stop arguing the cause, start arguing the solution.

Well said man. That entire post was a thing of beauty.

[Carth]

Stop arguing the cause, start arguing the solution.

Except GG brings up an excellent point of which everyone continues to ignore in this thread, thus making all these solutions, outside of reverting back to the old shield system (with the current proc rate), flawed.

The very core of PLD's job has always been a broken mess. PLD's best role, tanking, has always been competed because the system for Defense and VIT is terribly flawed due to pDIF and level difference.

Shadow tanking is, and always will be the method of tanking vs anything worth throwing a tank at, and since all jobs can get Utsusemi it makes it hard-pressed for any PLD to tank well since they can't keep up with the DPS and spike damage the DDs bring.

Throwing more hate spike/enmity control tools at PLD does not help it, at all.

PLD as a whole has always been the "safety net" job. When your players aren't perfect or well-seasoned, a PLD is great to bring out to secure your victories, but when all your players are very well skilled, PLD loses it's luster. This trend only really changed when Atonement was introduced and gave a big boost to DD PLDs (which is a path worth updating).

If you want this "safety net" trend to end you have to think outside the box for once.

[Akujima]

Thing is NINs were all over this same argument not to long ago. Why cause PLD got everything they did and more.

I think what needs to happen is SE's stand on what the characteristics of each job consist of. At the moment alot of them feel bland, and it's quite hard to feel any difference between them.

MNK's smash stuff, WAR's smash stuff, NIN's smash stuff, THF's smash stuff, SAM's smash stuff, WHM's heal stuff, RDM's heal stuff?... SCH's heal or nuke stuff, BLM nuke stuff. Anyhow... Mage jobs seem to be fairly okay. And nobody is going to argue whether or not a WHM is meant for healing.

NIN when it was first conceived was meant to be a "jack of all trades" melee job. One that could Nuke a little, Throw a little, Melee a little and Tank a little. The spell Utsusemi changed all that forever. Now people started playing NIN as a tank, because they could effectively mitigate damage altogether. NIN as a Sub-Job became the norm for most melee because of Utsusemi. So in actuality, this damage mitigation "fad" that lead to the demise of PLD being useful, was brought about amongst the player base themselves. It's not one particular persons fault, but a fumble on the part of the developers.

The rest of this post, explains what that fumble is.

RPG's have Classes (in this case "Jobs") which are characterized by certain abilities. Most can be summed up in having 6 different qualities which are:

The "Tank"
Melee DD
Ranged DD
"Healers"
"Nukers"
And "Support"


Allowing "Melee DD" to effectively "Tank", will give less importance on "Tank jobs" and their usefulness. Allowing "Nukers" to effectively give "Support" will make "Support role jobs" fail to be as wanted as they should be. Of course, nothing has to be so rigid, as to not allow for some breathing room when it comes to these traits and characteristics. But tipping the scale too far, is when we see the imbalance.

Which leads to my final point...

There's just going to have to be an acceptance of what a Job CAN and CANNOT do. Without this acceptance, there can never be balance when it comes to the definition of Jobs as a whole.

[TybudX]

The only reason DD jobs got a bad rap for "Dying easily" is because most DDs sucked and didn't carry PDT/MDT sets.

Actually, the only reason DDs got a bad rap was because most healers sucked and insisted on trying to keep a PLD alive instead of curing the real tank.

[Zyeriis]

@Carth
While I have ignored the fact that VIT/Defense to STR/Attack ratio has always been completely broken (I've argued about this in other threads) it doesn't mean I have forgotten about it. Unless of course, you're not specifically talking to me (or at all). I simply haven't gotten around to typing out potential solutions for that aspect. I've rather been focusing on ways that Paladin can be altered/adjusted to fit in the current scheme of things without that level of re-coding (reworking the str/attack vs. vit/defense scale completely which would include rewriting just about every enemy in the game probably to be just as damaging as they are now).

As for enmity/hate control abilities and cap increases helping it at all, that's a matter of opinion. I've proposed a possible (keyword of this thread) solution regarding enmity cap increase in Modifications #4.

I guess I'll get to work on solutions to the busted VIT/defense scale post (modifications #5) tomorrow during the maintenance.