Paladin: Possibilities

[Greatguardian]

Thank you for being so constructive instead of just trolling on a word play.

I'm not trolling and it's not word play. DD jobs being able to survive while maintaining capped Enmity and dealing damage is nothing new and has been happening for years. I've seen people tank Khimaira on Corsair =/. It's not hard for anyone to stay alive against an NM, and if the Devs were to make it harder, Paladins would simply suffer too since they're not really much better at staying alive than some other jobs (and some are just plain better than Paladin at staying alive).

[Zyeriis]

I'm not trolling and it's not word play. DD jobs being able to survive while maintaining capped Enmity and dealing damage is nothing new and has been happening for years. I've seen people tank Khimaira on Corsair =/. It's not hard for anyone to stay alive against an NM, and if the Devs were to make it harder, Paladins would simply suffer too since they're not really much better at staying alive than some other jobs (and some are just plain better than Paladin at staying alive).

Thanks for your opinion (yet again) based upon personal experience (which can differ among other people, which is why it is called "personal" experience) that offers absolutely nothing to thread (again). If you're going to continue being so arrogant, why not grace us "rubbish" people with your brilliance as to how to fix the things you repeatedly bring up? That too hard for you?

[Greatguardian]

Thanks for your opinion (yet again) based upon personal experience (which can differ among other people, which is why it is called "personal" experience) that offers absolutely nothing to thread (again). If you're going to continue being so arrogant, why not grace us "rubbish" people with your brilliance as to how to fix the things you repeatedly bring up? That too hard for you?

How is saying that other jobs can hit capped PDT with damage-mitigating abilities of equal or greater strength than a shield "Basing things on personal experience"? It has nothing to do with personal experience. It is simply how the game works. Paladin does not really have anything so unique in the damage mitigation department that other jobs are unable to reach the same defensive peaks while maintaining a stronger offense. Obviously, this excludes Ochain.

I never called you rubbish. I called ideas rubbish, whether they're yours or not. You take things too personally. I'm the only one being personally "attacked" in this thread, and I'm not even getting mad about it. I've already mentioned once or twice (honestly, why repeat myself 5 dozen times?), as have plenty of other posters of a similar mindset, that Paladin only really needs a proper offensive buff to make it relevant enough that it wouldn't be a complete and utter waste of a slot.

I mean, as far as Abyssea is concerned Paladin will always be a waste of a slot, but who cares? Abyssea is midgame content in a niche environment. Making Paladin interchangeable or even occasionally viable among DD tanks is more than sufficient for overworld content, and the way to do that is to give Paladin more of a punch. Considering the premise of the job, it's unlikely Paladin will ever really be "Top Dog" or "Absolutely Vital" in FFXI.

[Byrth]

Here is a link that you may find enlightening: http://kanican.livejournal.com/13848.html

It takes under ~7000 damage to cap both kinds of Enmity. For most DDs, that's 2-3 weaponskills and the hits it takes to get the TP. Paladin may take longer to hit the cap because it does less damage, but it will eventually reach it. Things is though, once Paladin is at the hate cap, what happens? You've done 7000 damage and the monster has 100,000 HP. Even assuming you have a Chant spamming Paladin, it's going to be a long fight if you don't put another DD on it.

Once you put another DD on it, they catch the Paladin's hate almost instantly (only 7k damage). Then who the monster faces (who is "tanking") is going to depend mostly upon how often they're acting. JAs, spells, etc. all have a 2 second inactivity following them, so the best way to keep capped hate is actually just to autoattack (assuming you generate CE faster than you hemorrhage it when you autoattack) and WS after you take damage. This is obviously in conflict with the best way to kill the monster, but we'll ignore that.

So on high HP monsters that take physical damage well, unless you bring a lot of people and rotate DDs or kill really slowly (people do damage and wait for their VE to decay, lean on Enmity Douse/Manawall/Super Jump/whatever), there is no good way to let Paladin keep hate. It comes down to a simple frequency of action (how frequently you re-cap CE), so there's absolutely nothing you can do about it with all your JA suggestions (which inherently are accompanied by a 2 second delay).

One option would be a JT that affects the caps of the Enmity system. If you want to make Paladin "The Tank," the easiest thing you can do is raise its Cumulative Enmity cap to 10150. That's it, and you can pick the cheesy name if you want. They have to keep generating CE because they lose it through hits and shadows, but as long as they don't eat a a lot of damage that their DDs avoid, they don't have to worry about losing hate.



That said, holding hate is patently not the problem Paladin faces. Lets say you have two O.Chain/Almace Paladins tanking/DDing a monster. Do you know how you could kill it faster? Use two Monks! Do you think that would be more dangerous? Well, don't worry buddy. I'm sure you'll meet a good WHM some day.

Heck, yesterday I "tanked" Azdaja on my Dancer again. One of the meanest monsters in Abyssea, flail-tanked by a support job. Why would anyone use Paladin over that? Until SE makes a monster that can't be tanked by a job that's also providing 10% Haste to the other "Tanks" fighting it, there won't be a place for Paladin.


Also the "It's your personal experience. Individual to you, that's why it's called personal!" stuff is pretty much BS. Unless you're willing to admit that whatever stranger was cited is a better player than you, has better support, etc., then you can't act like it's outside your realm of possibility and doesn't exist in your reality.

[Zyeriis]

Here is a link that you may find enlightening: http://kanican.livejournal.com/13848.html

It takes under ~7000 damage to cap both kinds of Enmity. For most DDs, that's 2-3 weaponskills and the hits it takes to get the TP. Paladin may take longer to hit the cap because it does less damage, but it will eventually reach it. Things is though, once Paladin is at the hate cap, what happens? You've done 7000 damage and the monster has 100,000 HP. Even assuming you have a Chant spamming Paladin, it's going to be a long fight if you don't put another DD on it.

Once you put another DD on it, they catch the Paladin's hate almost instantly (only 7k damage). Then who the monster faces (who is "tanking") is going to depend mostly upon how often they're acting. JAs, spells, etc. all have a 2 second inactivity following them, so the best way to keep capped hate is actually just to autoattack (assuming you generate CE faster than you hemorrhage it when you autoattack) and WS after you take damage. This is obviously in conflict with the best way to kill the monster, but we'll ignore that.

Hence solutions regarding raising enmity cap in one of two ways: either raise it slightly (to 10150) for PLD specifically or increasing the enmity cap significantly, so as to prolong the time the PLD can hold hate while the DD reaches the cap. (I'm not forgetting the fact that the PLD would need to reach the cap faster in order for this to work but that is a different part of the problem).

So on high HP monsters that take physical damage well, unless you bring a lot of people and rotate DDs or kill really slowly (people do damage and wait for their VE to decay, lean on Enmity Douse/Manawall/Super Jump/whatever), there is no good way to let Paladin keep hate. It comes down to a simple frequency of action (how frequently you re-cap CE), so there's absolutely nothing you can do about it with all your JA suggestions (which inherently are accompanied by a 2 second delay).

One option would be a JT that affects the caps of the Enmity system. If you want to make Paladin "The Tank," the easiest thing you can do is raise its Cumulative Enmity cap to 10150. That's it, and you can pick the cheesy name if you want. They have to keep generating CE because they lose it through hits and shadows, but as long as they don't eat a a lot of damage that their DDs avoid, they don't have to worry about losing hate.

Hmm, the JA ideas were stabs at potential solutions of this problem. I guess you don't see where I was going with them (could be wrong) but, I don't think they'd be completely useless, especially not with enmity tweaks (see above). The enmity siphon job ability was primarily aimed at the problem of recapping CE so quickly. The idea was also to off-set the DDs damage output enmity gain to balance that out with PLD's lackluster DDing (by comparison). Again, I have to stress, that no idea thus far was intended as a singular fix. Mixing and matching potential ideas wouldn't fully repair PLD's usefulness either but, again, it would be a start.

That said, holding hate is patently not the problem Paladin faces. Lets say you have two O.Chain/Almace Paladins tanking/DDing a monster. Do you know how you could kill it faster? Use two Monks! Do you think that would be more dangerous? Well, don't worry buddy. I'm sure you'll meet a good WHM some day.

Heck, yesterday I "tanked" Azdaja on my Dancer again. One of the meanest monsters in Abyssea, flail-tanked by a support job. Why would anyone use Paladin over that? Until SE makes a monster that can't be tanked by a job that's also providing 10% Haste to the other "Tanks" fighting it, there won't be a place for Paladin.

Hence the suggestion that they rework vit vs str and attack vs defense. Even if it wouldn't be that simple, it would be a start.

Edit: Even if the system is working as intended does not mean it's not broken. If it was broken to begin with, thus causing the problems, then it needs to be changed. Just because it hasn't as of yet, doesn't mean it shouldn't be.

Also the "It's your personal experience. Individual to you, that's why it's called personal!" stuff is pretty much BS. Unless you're willing to admit that whatever stranger was cited is a better player than you, has better support, etc., then you can't act like it's outside your realm of possibility and doesn't exist in your reality.

I do believe you just made my point for me (that or you are missing what I was trying to say). Would a better term be circumstantial? Anyway, I was comparing your post about how PLD is "right now the best at mitigating damage" versus Greatguardian claiming that PLD has never been the best at anything (or something along those lines).

Edit: People are arguing different things as to why PLD or the system is flawed, that conflict with one another and are using past experiences to back up their statements (such as corsair tanking khimaria). I don't see anyone saying that some one is better than them, all I see is everyone saying they're better/smarter than everyone else because of what they've experienced. In the meantime, I'm trying to draw from everyone's experiences rather than my own. If I purely drew from my own experiences, then I wouldn't have even made this thread the way I did. I would've made it like the others one where I just state my idea and leave it at that. I want input, and other experiences, and other solutions, even if those people do not agree with my solutions or if I disagree with the solutions. I want them, nonetheless. I simply can't put up with people who deny there is a problem or people who offer nothing and just repeatedly bring up the causes of the problem rather than the solutions.