Possible Paladin Rework...

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Originally Posted by Inosaska

Sad to see that PLD has not been fixed even after my lengthy leave of the game and just returning back to the game. I was going to continue to level the class and maybe see that they fixed it but from this thread it appears nothing has been done to fix the issue.

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Well tanking shouldn't be easy, but I think the threshold is getting a little too high for tanks who have to be married to VIT (on relevant content) to really keep up with hate. I'm going up equally geared tanks all the time, I can be in DPS gear and Sword Oath and unless they're fully focused on hate (WAR's included) I still end up stealing hate most of the time if I don't back off.

This is the 4th or 5th time they've made some kind of adjustment to Tanks Enmity potency abilities, but it doesn't address the overall mechanics when every major gear patch DPS will be getting another additional +25 STR/DEX over the tanks without some kind of adjustment that would actually scale more in line with the tanks stats vs' dps based stats which tank isn't focused on.

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Originally Posted by SwordCoheir

This is the 4th or 5th time they've made some kind of adjustment to Tanks Enmity potency abilities, but it doesn't address the overall mechanics when every major gear patch DPS will be getting another additional +25 STR/DEX over the tanks without some kind of adjustment that would actually scale more in line with the tanks stats vs' dps based stats which tank isn't focused on.

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The solution to this is to take Shield Swipe off the GCD, decrease the potency to 180 and add enmity x3 to it. It should have been done in the first place for 2.4 but I guess they thought we had trouble holding hate against BLMs.

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Originally Posted by Wintersandman

Shield Bash should be off gcd just like the Warrior ability.

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Sure why not, then also give it a 20s CD like the WAR ability.

They just need to make paladin have more abilities like a warrior does I leveled a warrior and stopped playing my paladin because it's so boring now compared to my warrior.

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Originally Posted by Starbirth

The solution to this is to take Shield Swipe off the GCD, decrease the potency to 180 and add enmity x3 to it. It should have been done in the first place for 2.4 but I guess they thought we had trouble holding hate against BLMs.

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That's not a solution, it's another band-aid temp solution, because what I specified pertains to Warrior as well. The only reason it doesn't seem as prevalent on WAR is because WAR got their own band-aids a little while back, and just because the playing field is a bit more even between the two jobs doesn't mean the issue has disappeared.

Really all I'm trying to convey is instead of making these band-aid patches to our enmity potency every major gear update, why not change the factor that affects our potency to something that's in line with tanks specific stat or mechanic focus such as.

1. A have the potency of Enmity be based on VIT/Max HP instead of attack potency since VIT/HP is more of tanks focus in endgame content.
2. Instead of having STR be tanks primary stat change it to VIT, it would scale better and at a similar rate as DPS jobs making the hate control more manageable.
3. For every parried/blocked move you gain hate equal too the amount negated x3/x1 (x1 for shields to keep it from being a huge advantage over WAR.)
4. When in Shield Oath/Defiance your Enmity potency increases based on your iLv or VIT.

I don't really understand why getting less str is a problem.

Paladin at i90 (95 weapon/shield) gets 158 str from gear in full fending. Monk in striking gets 224, about 141% what the pally gets.

Paladin at i130 (135 weapon/shield) gets 272 str from gear in full fending. Monk in striking gets 388, about 142% what the pally gets.

That's a very small relative increase, and I stress RELATIVE increase, because the absolute values don't mean anything. Every attack in this game is a function of potency - there are no attacks that deal, say, 50 damage plus a scaling value, which is where tanks run into trouble in other mmos, because the flat value tends to be very large, and their scaling is poor.. Your potency per second doesn't change much with gear - it goes up very slowly with skill/spell speed, with an occasional jump if you hit a breakpoint, but gains in strength don't affect it at all. Str is, essentially, just a multiplier on your attack damage, and if you held hate with 70% of the multiplier the dps got back in coil one, you can hold hate with 70% of the multiplier the dps get now.

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Originally Posted by Menae

I don't really understand why getting less str is a problem.

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Ummm, what? STR has significant value to damage which in turn increases the base value which the enmity potency modifiers will multiply. My own damage goes up 200-300 damage average in full STR gear, which is why I can pull hate off equally geared fending, Shield Oath/Defiance tanks, good lord if I go Shield Oath nobody is gonna hold hate off me.

Anyways, by your own math the DPS went from +66 STR over tanks too +116 over tanks that's pretty significant in the long run, and that's +116 STR now, what's gonna happen when the next gear patch hits +176 over tanks? That's kind of pushing it.

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Originally Posted by SwordCoheir

Ummm, what? STR has significant value to damage which in turn increases the base value which the enmity potency modifiers will multiply. My own damage goes up 200-300 damage average in full STR gear, which is why I can pull hate off equally geared fending, Shield Oath/Defiance tanks, good lord if I go Shield Oath nobody is gonna hold hate off me.

Anyways, by your own math the DPS went from +66 STR over tanks too +116 over tanks that's pretty significant in the long run, and that's +116 STR now, what's gonna happen when the next gear patch hits +176 over tanks? That's kind of pushing it.

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Of course it does. My point is this: assume an optimal paladin rotation does x enmity per STR, and an optimal dps rotation does y enmity per STR (or INT/DEX/MND, whatever), including all multipliers for shield oath, sword oath, etc. If tanks are consistently getting the same ratio of STR to dps (current ratio is about .7 for tanks), then as long as .7x > y, how much actual strength you have is irrelevant. You could have 7,000 STR to a monk's 10,000 STR, and as long as .7x>y, you'll still hold hate.

Paladin changes are something that I have been thinking a lot about lately and here are some of the changes that I thought would really make PLD better/more enjoyable to play.

1) Better dps when solo or main tanking. WAR has a huge advantage here and something should be done to help bring them closer together. One idea I had was to make Spirits Within ignore the damage reduction from Shield Oath similar to how some WAR abilities ignore the penalty from Defiance. That is all I've come up with so far, so if anyone is so inclined please post ideas. It should only increase dps when in shield oath and not sword oath as OT warrior and PLD damage are not too far apart. Also, I'm cool with WAR having a little better dps than PLD, just not to the level of disparity that exists now.

2) The Oaths should be taken off GCD. I have been experimenting with oath/stance dancing in order to make playing PLD more dynamic and interesting, for example popping a defensive CD and swapping to sword oath for the duration of the CD to squeeze out a bit more dps and then switching back to shield when the CD is done. However, with the oaths on gcd I find myself often not able to make the quick oath swaps that I want because the gcd has locked me out. So let's say I'm OTing in SwO and adds spawn that I need to pick up, its approx. 2.5 sec until I can swap to shield oath and then another 2.5 until I can properly engage the target. 5 seconds is a long time to have to wait and a lot can happen during that time. Taking the oaths off gcd would allow for quick on-the-fly swaps which would make strategic stance dancing to maximize dps more viable.

3) I am combining two into one for this suggestion. First is the most asked for suggestion for PLD, a second 3 part combo from riot blade. Second is a "takes more damage from x" debuff like WAR's slashing damage debuff. What I was thinking was to add this debuff to the 3rd attack in the combo and having it something that makes sense with riot like "reduces targets magic resistance by 10%".

4) Cover needs to be improved. First, it needs to not only redirect physical damage but any type of damage. It is already incredibly situational as it is, it doesn't need anything else to narrow its potential usefulness. Also it needs its range increased, sometimes my cover target just being on the other side of a larger mob places them too far away from me to use cover on them and since as a tank you are usually on one side of such a mob and facing it away from everyone else, that situation happens more often than it should.

5) Awareness, its a bit of a waste of an ability AND a trait. Just remove it as an ability and add its effect as a trait advancement to another ability like Bulwark. This would then open up an available ability slot for the new combo attack that I brought up in #3.

3+5 Alternative) A potential alternative to suggestions 3 and 5. Instead of removing Awareness as an ability, keep it as an ability and have the duration granted by the trait just built in. Then by freeing up that trait slot have it used for "Enhanced Riot Blade", which would allow you to combo another Riot Blade off of a comboed Riot Blade and then apply the debuff brought up in #3, essentially giving you a 3 part combo (Fast Blade>Riot Blade>Riot Blade) that applies the damage resistance debuff without exactly creating a new ability. However this "enhanced riot" blade may need a different animation than the regular riot blade as doing two back to back could look weird. While I list this as an alternative, just doing suggestions 3 and 5 would probably be better.

Although PLD have lower dmg while tanking, their dps is sightly higher compared to warrior while offtanking considering PLD are more defensive tanks while warriors are more aggressive and high dmg tanks. It's obvious to know why they have lower damage.
Warriors need to do quite a few things to get more mitigation. Keeping Storm path up, timing IB for big attacks. While PLD mitigations are just a button away, their 90sec def cd rampart with compared to warriors foresight is just clear which is better.
Also even tho the self heal from warriors are low in high lvl raids it does help as they need the self heal to compare with the increasing block rates and strengths of PLD shield. If PLD gets a dmg buff then warriors need a mitigation buff or self healing buff