The dev's 'vision' for pld, and the problem i see with it

[Kavik]

Paladin:

Vision
Paragons of virtue who never hesitate to step in and defend their friends in a fight, nor to take the brunt of enemy attacks while wearing the heaviest armor imaginable.

We respect the unselfish and bold nature of the paladin, so we plan on further developing their ability to maintain control of battles and keeping others out of harm's way, if only temporarily.

Example Adjustments
Adding a new ability that reduces the amount of damage taken by a party member for one hit.
Adding a new ability that slows enmity reduction.

i would like to call to attention the letters that i have increased in size. As a pld who has been a hardcore pld since i began playing this game almost 8 years ago, i have seen all the trials and tribulations pld's have gone through. I used to have to cover the blm MBing crabs in the boyoda tree. You subbed war, because pld doesn't get a decent hate generator of it's own, you were the tank. Now you say, pld will be able to keep hate 'if only temporarily' and 'member for one hit', this is NOT what pld is, this is not what pld should be. This doesn't give pld anything, pld is useless as a tank, we can't do dmg, cures don't keep enough hate, our 'put this on the ONLY hate generating move you have' ability is WAY too long, i'm talking about divine emblem. Sentinal and rampart have at lowest a 4:10 recast, shield bash is never going to do enough dmg to actually gain the mobs attention, there again 5 min recast is standard. Meanwhile, the war, blu, mnk, nin etc, is pumping out 3k+ ws/sc's, it just doesn't cut it. PLD is supposed to be the end all be all tank. I want to make it clear that i am in no way suggesting you make it require a pld to tank, but what if they were the BEST hate keepers ever (invincible no longer serves this purpose, anywhere except at low lvls and don't get me started on it being incorrectly named because you are in fact not invincible by any means). Give us an ability that acts like the chigoe NM in wajaom woodlands, call it enmity lock or something, once we have the things attention we use this ability and the mob cannot turn to other players regardless of hate. It lets the other jobs go ape-s**^ without rendering pld useless.

This is what i get out of this post, and especially the words i mentioned earlier. The SE devs want pld to get the things attention and then PROMPTLY have the nin/war/thf/dnc/blu/drk or whatever dmg'er take enmity and be able to tank it while the pld sits there and twiddles their inaccurate, low power sword wielding thumbs, every 5 mins we can 'cover' and take a hit or 2, or buff the party(rampart, sentinal is useless if you don't have enmity to start with), there again every 5 mins. I fail to see how these updates are going to put pld back in the tanking seat in anytime in the future.

I am all for an ability that reduces the amount of enmity lost while taking dmg etc etc, but the fatal flaw i see in that is, if you're not taking dmg say from an aoe and the mobs attention is somewhere else because you can't compete with that Ukko's fury war in the first place..... how is it going to help that we're not losing enmity?

It is my conclusion that the dev's just don't give enough of a crap about pld to actually give it something useful, and if they don't care the community doesn't care. Everything from lacking a applicable job ability that allows us to maintain enmity, which is our job, to the GIMP and by god i mean GIMP jobemote we get. "Enveloped in a sacred radiance"? really? you took a sparkle and coated us in it, at least RDM got FLOWERS! An original emote that pertained to their story line/history.

now i realize i went on a rant, but i can't be the only one that thinks this is unfair and the dev team not thinking at all about the function of a job.

[Galadrial]

I agree.. PLD has and always will be my favourite job to play. All i see in this proposal is 'lets makes the DD cause more damage than they already do, and give other jobs even more tanking ability while we're at it'. PLD needs a JA as suggested above or, just much much better ways to keep hate. We have a A+ in sword so whats wrong with actually dealing damage to go along with that skill level, aswell as being the best at taking actual hits. I don;t like the way SE added the temporarily bit.... it almost seems like they don;t want a PLD to tank and just tossed this in at the last minute.

[Inafking]

I've alrways said that a native provoke would be useful. I'm glad someone else noticed they overlooked the enemity issue. I have more to say about gear, but I have my own thread for that.

[Bumbeen]

I've alrways said that a native provoke would be useful. I'm glad someone else noticed they overlooked the enemity issue. I have more to say about gear, but I have my own thread for that.

Why do you think damage mitigation is the problem? Nobody wants or needs damage mitigation.

[Unleashhell]

There are a lot of things wrong with PLD. But their are also a lot of things wrong with the actual battle system. For instance when 2 hand weapon jobs got massive damage dealing increases the enmity system was not adjusted. Damage dealers get tons (and I mean TONS) of food options for attack and accuracy. Paladins really do not have a lot of options. Tacos are still the best overall food for VIT and DEF. Granted we can use an attack food but what would be the point? Sword damage and delay cripples Paladin even if you use attack food. Almost all Paladin WS are low damage output with the exception of CDC.

What they need to do for Paladin is give a separate enmity cap. Something that exceeds the current max, even if it is an ability. This way a paladin can cap hate and then use this ability to further hate control. Now there has to be game balance along with this. We cannot have paladin have a hate lock, there has to be some sort of repercussion to damage dealers at times. If they do massive 2-3K weapon skills inside or outside of abyssea they should get hate. There is nothing wrong with that, its part of the risk / reward in fighting. If you are going to risk massive damage output you will suffer some sort of consequences. This issue now is paladin needs something to get that hate back, which cover now starts to handle that situation. Paladin still needs more and on a shorter recast time like the OP. Something that is two minutes would not be that bad.

Next paladin needs a meritable cure potency or an ability that increases the potency of cures for a period of time. It would be nice to see a 20-25% cure potency for paladin. Something that lasts maybe 2-3 minutes with a recast of 5 minutes would be perfect imo. At level 99 paladin cannot use cure V because of the less enmity generation that cure V currently has. They would have to adjust cure V so WHM could still use it without the enmity generation. This is assuming paladin would even get cure V which I would highly doubt. Keep in mind HP goes up at 99 as well as new gear that may increase HP even further as well as possibly further HP merits, so little old cure IV will not cut it. Keep in mind, not only is this a form of hate control for paladin but it can be very helpful when curing DD's in a pt that took hate from a massive weapon skill, again current cure IV will not cut it.

Damage output is another issue paladin has. Swords are just too slow and the damage / delay do not help at all. Base damage on swords needs increased. Some sort of Store-TP would be helpful as long as it is a worth while amount. SE took the empyrean set in the right direction with adding haste to the legs, feet and hands, but failed to add more VIT to that set. Granted the enmity accuracy and attack are very well needed. Not to mention the DEF is pretty nice also. Speaking of DEF, this also needs to be reworked. Currently once you hit a certain point of DEF going any higher will have very little to no effect. Paladin is known for having high DEF to help absorb some of those hard hits but what good is all that DEF if it becomes useless beyond a certain point.

Paladin also needs some kind of AoE ability that covers each party member much like rampart that while in effect will greatly decay enmity of party members over a short period of time. Granted this will be more helpful in endurance fights rather then a quick kill situation. This ability lasting 30 seconds with a 5 minute recast would suffice.

Keep in mind Abyssea is NOT all there is in FFXI. People need to think of level 99 without all of your Atmas and Abyssites.

Sorry for the wall of text, I have more ideas that I will post what I think out all the details.

[Andrien]

I concur with the original post 100%

[Cursed]

@ OP - It sounds like you're arguing for PLDs to be capable of attaining 100% of the enemy's attention 100% of the time. You overlooked the consequences for other jobs that deal large amounts of damage. This scenario would make FFXI even less challenging than it is today, and everything would just be zerged down.

Unleashhell is much closer to what needs to be addressed than the OP.

OP's "Throw a PLD into the mix so that no one takes any dmg but the paladin, and just have everyone else go to town on the enemy" will kill FFXI. I would much rather PLD continue to be useless than to see FFXI destroyed.
No thanks. There's no challenge, no skill and no longevity in a scenario where one job can have 100% of the enemy's attention for 100% of the time.

Facts are:
1. The battle system and enmity mechanics needs to be fixed, Not PLD.
2. Game Mechanics have not been changed or modified for a post 75 vanadiel.
3. The "!!" proc system should have remained Abyssea specific. Fact that SE is implementing similar or identical systems everywhere is just telling me they have no will to fix the broken game FFXI has become. The "!!" system is the only reason any enemy in Abyssea stands for more than 30 seconds. Otherwise it would just be Zerg zerg zerg.

I can't believe how much this game has changed for the worse. Once upon a time this game required unique approaches towards different fights, taking into account jobs within alliance, terrain, sub jobs. Now, SSF4 seems to require more strategy and thought than FFXI.

Take note SE, you are ruining a once great game. I, and countless like me, have almost a decade's worth of experience as a player in FFXI. Do your staff members, who are making these decisions, have as much experience?

Perhaps its time for you to start investing in controlled focus groups. It will cost you much less than what its going to cost to repair the damage you've done.
I often tell my game friends, I think Abyssea was SE's way of killing FFXI.

As a pos

[Unleashhell]

Gave you "Like" button Cursed. I agree with you that SE is making the entire game Abyssea. Since they cannot fix the game mechanics they think, "lets just do a trigger to lock a mob so people can zerg zerg zerg... yeah that will fix the game!"

Not...

I have a few other ideas but didn't want my wall of text to get any larger lol.

[Nicholiathan]

A hate lock ability would be horrible. Cast Cure IV on the other alliance's tank and wait till they've got the NM down to 3%, lock emnity and have your DD's finish it. More than anything what PLD needs is a reason to be used. What is the point of having a tank when there is no job that can't stand in front of the monster and take hits all day long?

[Defiledsickness]

good point nicholiathan, pld cant just take a beating. it couldnt at 75 either thats why you'd sub nin and use a haste set for flash. they need to just make pld a melee-mage hybrid that can solo or something so that people who have a pld can use it for something.

however they are bringing back HNM's and pld's are still good for Voidwatch (atonement is still great out of abyssea)

(by melee-mage hybrid i mean actually being able to use mp without MM atma, even refresh2 cant keep your mp up with how much you need to self-heal). pld just needs third eye and provoke.