Enmity

[Dale]

I have seen quite a few posts thus far pertaining to Enmity challenges, and some posters even going so far as to suggest the paladin should have his enmity output doubled to make them more viable tanks. Now with this I have an issue, and I will explain why.

One of the key differences between a good player and a bad player is the ability to manage their enmity. This is a big part to the challenge of this game - and the fact an effective damage dealer can rip hate off the Paladin is the way it should be. It makes the battle more interesting and thought-provoking. If the Paladin could simply keep hate all the time easily no matter what the other members of the party did the game's battle system would suffer greatly as a result.

Example: state of point if a Dragoon goes nuts at the beginning of a Nm fight spamming weapon skills and dies because of it, that is the way it should be and is not the fault of the Paladin, and buffs should not be giving to the Paladin to prevent this from happening either, else many fights would turn into bland "spam the most damage you can as quick as you can till its dead" monotony This would be dull and way too easy.

Paladins need to learn to stop blaming themselves with damage dealers draw enmity and get themselves killed, because 9 times out of 10 it's usually not the paladin's fault, but the dead guy's because he took a bigger bite then he could chew.

[Bilonn]

I agree fully with this.
It's like I've said:

A Paladin -should- be the first one to die if things fail out. However, if it's some DD's fault for starting opening on the mob at 100% health with every hate-gaining move he has available, there is no way I'm going to be able to save him, and I'm not going to worry about it. Futhermore, if I were to get "why didn't you tank it off me", I'll tell them why, and if they don't like it, I can find other people who know how a party operates to join up with. (In fact, this is one reason why I prefer to keep to parties with LS members only...)

I know how it works from both sides. That's even why, as I'm working on Samurai now, I KNOW not to open against the mob with a WS. I wait for a short while, letting the tank take control, and -then- I open my can of whoop-ass on them. Only time I purposefully went in and pulled max hate was when it was [Last Boss] for me that day, and I burned my 2hr and chained the sucker--but everyone, even the healers, knew I was going to do that before I did it.

Know your job and how it works--but know how the other jobs have to work too! A tank can't work right if the healer spams high-tier cures, if the mages blast nukes, or if the DDs start skillchains too soon!

[Kirth]

That's not the reason people are suggesting enmity changes. It's because there currently is no need for Paladins and there need to be incentives for utilizing the class in group situations. It's not just enmity changes either; people are just brainstorming up some suggestions for creating a niche/role for Paladin in the future.

[JagerForrester]

Exp parties have leaned towards zerging everything because it's possible to kill this way and live through it.
And NMs have been shadow tanked more often than blood tanked. Because sooner or later, a healer runs out of MP to heal blood tanks and the DDs that get hit with AoEs.

The idea of slowing down to keep control of a monster or taking damage is incomprehensible in FFXI's change of gameplay for the community. Beating things down while taking little to no damage as possible is everyone's mindset. Someday I hope PLD will shine again where monsters will be forced to be blood tanked because shadows would disappear if hit by a monster that can see through Utsusemi and/or Seigan.

[Rieul]

The main reason to stack Enmity atm (imho, of course) is due to the HIGH amount of mobs with hate-resetting moves in Abyssea.
So even if you were doing everything you possibly could and the mob uses a TP move that resets your CE and VE to 0…
You better hope you have some Serious Enmity to stack on that Flash or you and your PT are outta luck.
I think if there were less mobs that could reset enmity at the blink of an eye PLD would be more viable then as a Main Tank again. I suppose it is how it should be however and PLD has been reduced to a puller/DD/backup_healer for the time being.

[Mordanthos]

That's not the reason people are suggesting enmity changes. It's because there currently is no need for Paladins and there need to be incentives for utilizing the class in group situations. It's not just enmity changes either; people are just brainstorming up some suggestions for creating a niche/role for Paladin in the future.

Even if the player base believes that PLD has no use in NM fights, it doesn't completely eliminate the fact that u can still use a PLD as a great tank anyways, whether its dying slow or not, its going to die anyways. No one said just because we dont "need" paladins anymore we just arent going to use them. I'm positive if you shouted in Jeuno to start an NM camp session for seals on your paladin, you could still easily get a group going to tank it, ive had people send me tells to come tank stuff. PLD isnt a dead class, they tank just fine, just open your mouth in town and "start" the group, you are afterall, suppose to be the leader of the group, so show some initiative and start your own group. Yourhealer will be happy to have a PLD as there tank since they have less MP consumption to heal you anyways in the long run.

[Nepharite]

Even if the player base believes that PLD has no use in NM fights, it doesn't completely eliminate the fact that u can still use a PLD as a great tank anyways, whether its dying slow or not, its going to die anyways. No one said just because we dont "need" paladins anymore we just arent going to use them. I'm positive if you shouted in Jeuno to start an NM camp session for seals on your paladin, you could still easily get a group going to tank it, ive had people send me tells to come tank stuff. PLD isnt a dead class, they tank just fine, just open your mouth in town and "start" the group, you are afterall, suppose to be the leader of the group, so show some initiative and start your own group. Yourhealer will be happy to have a PLD as there tank since they have less MP consumption to heal you anyways in the long run.

Yes pld can tank fine, its just not as effective as other tanks.
A mnk can cap ve/ce much faster than a pld could ever hope of doing. Plus it has a lot more survivability than a pld.
So basically mnk beats out pld on the 2 most important parts. (gaining/keeping hate and staying alive)

edit. Also to those saying DD should manage their dd output to not draw hate is for pld tanking, but if you have a dd tank then that usually allows the other dd to go all out. Its just more effective.

[Anethia]

I had the idea that paladin should either have a flash 2 or a native provoke ability. This would allow paladins to make use of other subjob options besides warrior for hate management and damage mitigation.

My other idea was in regards to /nin. This seems to be the sub of choice for pretty much any situation now. That being said nin is the only job I can really think of that is nerfed the most when subbed, with yonin and innin being rendered totally unusable by any other job/nin. They are great hate management tools and should be made available to be used by other jobs when subbing nin.

A lot of people will cry "oh no you can't do that, it'll make nin useless and blah blah blah". Not the way I see it. Nin already gets 4 ni shadows and 3 ichi shadows. 5/4 if they have the +1/2 af3 feet and they also get migawari ichi. Not only that but have some of the highest Eva in game. My suggestion is to make the abilities like /Sam seigan and hasso. the positive effects on those when /Sam are only half that of a full sam while the negative effects on recast timers are the same as a full Sam. In other words yonin and innins positive effects would only be half that of a full nin, while the negatives will be full strength.

At that point it can be up to the paladin to use a shield for extra defense, or offhand a sword for extra damage. Though paladin/nin will still only have 3/3 shadows per utsu ni and ichi and still be as evasive as brick wall.

[JagerForrester]

evasive as a brick wall.

I laughed.

But I do agree PLDs should get provoke, maybe not at the time Wars get it or when PLDs get it when subbing, but somewhere when all PLDs ever sub WAR for is for provoke.

[Runespider]

There are loads of ways to fix pld if Square really wanted to.

The emnity idea would work, allowing cures to exceed the current cap, dissallowing any DD tanking (since damage done by any source would be unable to exceed the old cap and mages curing you would be killed) and giving pld a JA that allows it to also exceed the cap (give it to nin too but using this JA would greatly nerf its DD capability equalising it to pld as a tank). So like, any form of damage can go upto the current 100% cap at best, but cures, pld&nin using the special JA can take it upto 150%. Every job in the game should not be able to cap hate as they currently can.

Another way is to make new endgame mobs that simply don't take damage well at all under any circumstances and have lots of conal aoe moves(or normal moves being conal aoe, like iron giants), very high -damage taken and -magic dmg (lower hp to make the fight lengths about the same). In this way holding hate via damage simply won't work and again cures would exceed a DD's ability to tank anything at all. Specific tanks would be the only jobs able to hold hate while DD pick away at it. Mobs like this of course would also need to go into hyper rage mode doing massive unstunnable aoes if their hp bar drops too quick (to stop zergs and make the fight more tactical).

Lastly make all endgame mobs have high regain and lots of aoe moves, also make them rage within a fairly short amount of time to force you to put a lot of DD on it. Now give pld spells which give defferent types of auras, ie -50%+ damage taken to everyone within 10 distance of the pld. Pld with -dmg taken aura that covers all the DD allows you to take the mob down with lots of DD on it, also the mobs should have regular stages where it cannot be damaged every 5-10% hp taken aswell as -dmg to ranged attacks to stop zerging or getting around the need for auras.

The current hate system is stupid and terrible, makes no sense the hate system does not give benefits and ways to exceed current limits to it's tanking classes. Laughable design that a powerful DD can make a paladin useless and unable under any means to get hate off them lol