Paladin: Possibilities

[Zyeriis]

Modifications #5

2) Combat Roles

-2B) Stabilizer/Savior
This combat role is pretty much what Paladin boils down to in it's current state. They're basically the "back-up" should things go wrong. The problem is this "back-up" is seldom required, let alone is it useful on a day-by-day basis. I, personally, would rather see Paladin get advancement in other areas but, I must post this possible solution regardless.

Why not expand upon Paladin's ability to be there when some one else fails? Give them abilities that can save people from impending doom (cure isn't really what I mean here). -Na spells in particular, such as Cursna, would give Paladin a little more leeway, without replacing White Mages in any way. Yes, Paladin can sub White Mage and get these spells, as can any other Mage but, adding the spells specifically to PLD as a main would allow them to keep their /nin, /dnc, or /war (situation depending) and still have them.

--2a) Reviviscence
Naturally, just giving PLD some -na spells won't help it all invite wise or in truly becoming a full-on savior-esqe job. Reviviscence, a special spell specific to Ferreous Coffin (a Freelancer Campaign NPC) remove weakness from a player. While Ferreous is a White Mage and higher level/tier raise spells are pretty much a white mage's trademark, I see potential in Revivscence being given to Paladin exclusively.

"Why should Paladin get the best Raise spell in the game, that would be nothing more than a gimmick ability to get people to use Paladin again?"

I won't deny that this would be a relative gimmick to give to Paladin but so was giving Refresh to Red Mage. Also, it wouldn't have to be able to raise people, it would just have to remove weakness. Couple that with high mp cost and even higher recast time and it wouldn't be so overpowered (unless of course, you simply have an army of paladin's in your alliance while a small number of people take on the NM without worry). In which case, I am open to suggestions as to how to balance this particular idea out or any other ideas that could be added to this one (savior-esqe role in combat).

6) VIT/Defense

-6A) VIT/STR + Def/Atk Scale
The statistics and formulas behind the calculation has always been broken. No one can deny this (only bring it up repeatedly, by stating something everyone already knows and is completely irrelevant to other ideas thus far in the solutions listings). The thing I don't think anyone knows is as to "why?" this has never been fixed. So, we need to either A) wait for SE to tell us why (like we've been waiting for all these years), B) come up with ideas to get around it without changing the game at all (see: "I want Paladin to DD better"), C) not use paladin (already being done and isn't a solution), or D) request a fix to this broken scale.

I'm going with D (anyone shocked?). However, there are potential problems with doing so. Such as having to rework pretty much every NM and enemy in the game to coincide with the change to the scale. This is no simple, easy, or non-time consuming task I would think. That problem though, is more of a lazy/unwillingness by the dev team to fix something so very broken. That laziness has given us things like "VIT now affects damage taken by critical attacks". Which, no matter how potent this buff to VIT may be does in no way change day-by-day calculations of non-critical/normal damage versus normal defense/VIT, which is the problem. How many NMs can you think of that are notorious for their critical hits?

Some will say that -PDT is the solution here but, they seem to not realize that the jobs that are causing PLD to lose it's place in the game, can also use these things. This is why there needs to be either A) a nerf to DDs being able to wear these -PDT pieces of equipment or B) the scale of STR/attack vs. VIT/defense to be rewritten.

Not only will a rewrite to this flawed scale improve Paladin's useful in survival, it will also affect the enmity gain of the DDs that seek to out-enmity the PLD through damage spam. Enemies will be affected by the increased effectiveness of VIT/defense vs. STR/attack and DD damage capabilities may drop (thus enmity-rate drop) that rely heavily upon STR.

People may be outraged by this: "I can't do ridiculous amounts of damage anymore!? /ragequit" > "They want the game to be balanced? Screw that, I want to be inherently better than other jobs!" > "They're nerfing our ability to survive while at the same time being able to deal tons of damage? That's stupid, I want to be able to do both at the same time regardless of job!". Is it really that big of a deal to level the playing field? They could very well level it without affecting damage output.

[Akujima]

Some will say that -PDT is the solution here but, they seem to not realize that the jobs that are causing PLD to lose it's place in the game, can also use these things. This is why there needs to be either A) a nerf to DDs being able to wear these -PDT pieces of equipment or B) the scale of STR/attack vs. VIT/defense to be rewritten.

...

People may be outraged by this: "I can't do ridiculous amounts of damage anymore!? /ragequit" > "They want the game to be balanced? Screw that, I want to be inherently better than other jobs!" > "They're nerfing our ability to survive while at the same time being able to deal tons of damage? That's stupid, I want to be able to do both at the same time regardless of job!". Is it really that big of a deal to level the playing field? They could very well level it without affecting damage output.

What I think happened, is that PLD was the only Job out there that could tank effectively in the past. The only other way to defeat certain bosses, was to "Zerg" them before the boss went ape-$hit and killed all the Melee. (IMO "Zerging should not be possible, due to it stripping dynamics completely out of the game, but that in itself is another topic altogether.)

While I agree that PLD should be a tank, I disagree that it should be the only one. That being said, I agree with your point that if a job outputs major damage, it should also have to sacrifice it's survivability.

The flop by the developers, was to add Equipment and Spells (allowing more jobs than one to access them) that allow certain Melee jobs to "Tank" effectively. What they should have done, was to decide which of the other jobs was going to be a "Tank" and give them the appropriate JA and JT in order to do so.

Arhat's Gi set, Jelly ring, ASA augmented legs and Twilight Torque, all opened up the possibility of Melee mitigating so much damage, it turned PLD into just a "precaution" type job. These -PDT gear sets along with shadows from Utsusemi, really tipped the scales too far for Melee's being able to "Tank".

While your other suggestions are great, I really feel that without doing these two major things, it will be very difficult to revive PLD as being seen as "useful" to the majority of the player base. These two things being:

1. Screw it and make PLD a DD. (something I don't want to see happen) or...
2. Nerf other jobs ability to "Tank" effectively, and decide which other 1~2 jobs can than be another "Tank" Class.

#2 would be met with heavy opposition. And I worry that due to this opposition, the developers will "turn a blind eye" to what could (IMO) bring more balance and dynamics to jobs as a whole.