Is it time for SE to give PLDs a good bump in terms of DPS?

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Is it time for SE to give PLDs a good bump in terms of DPS?

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Short answer is: no.

Long aswer is: Heavensward is less than 3 months away. A balance patch for Lv.50 tanks would be pointless right now, without any kind of knowledge of what's to come (both regarding the new skills and with the Dark Knight place in the tanking meta). Besides, the differences between PLD and WAR right for the current content are not a problem, so adjusting them now would achieve almost nothing.

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Originally Posted by Brightsayge

instead of increasing pld dps why don't they just lower war dps...

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Why would anyone lower dps? That is just silly.

I'm still in the camp of

- Yes do increase PLD MT dps, but in a more roundabout way. Essentially give them a CD or trait Bulwark so that when an attack is blocked, it does damage to the attacker. That would increase MT damage while minimizing OT dps gains. Only problem with this is they could still get these gains if MTing in SwO, which could potentially mess up SwO vs. Defiance-Off dps balance. Another potential is traiting Shield Swipe so that it does extra damage IF in ShO, which would essentially do what the previous idea was, just would have to be activated manually and would limit gains solely to ShO. Something along those lines I feel would be a better route to increasing PLD MT dps, while making it function differently than WAR and very uniquely PLD.

- Yes, I would love the Oaths to be taken off the GCD. Putting in a short CD on the oaths like Defiance has would be fine with me.

These types of changes I wouldn't expect until the expansion though as the new post 50 abilities may address such things.

i wouldn't say pld needs a boost really, i don't do the math but ive noticed my attacks are getting pretty strong and im not even in full 130 gear, but i do have melded 110 right side, although there geared more for war than pld, probs should make another set. ive never had issues with holding hate but then ive never tried in raid with an equally geared war going full out.

however i did have to hold back quite abit the other day tanking t10 because the war i was with wasn't generating as much hate as me. not that he was bad cus actually he was great but we just had a difference in gear mainly he was using shiva axe and me zeta.

since i don't use a parser i don't know what my output was, it was also my first time tanking but i know my second run with an equally geared pld i could push my dps more, even though i was mt for back end of fight because of how mechanics went. would of been nice to see the difference in performance of both groups.


I also would like to see oaths of cd without mp cost or atleast reduced mp cost. if they had a delay they may not be as useful as you think as sometimes you only want to be in sho or swo for a very short period of time, and a cd may effect it in a bad way. especially anything beyond 5secs. also the mp used needs to be regenerated potentially if we need to switch oaths often which affects dps.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

- Yes, I would love the Oaths to be taken off the GCD. Putting in a short CD on the oaths like Defiance has would be fine with me.

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Just to clarify, I think the PLD oaths should work exactly like the NIN venoms currently do (off GCD, don't interrupt combos, using one puts both on 5s cooldown).

In terms of extra DPS only available in ShO, someone had suggested having spirits within ignore the shield oath damage reduction. I think that and circle of scorn both ignoring shield oath would allow for a reasonable boost without effecting anything else.

So... why are we increasing PLD ShO DPS again? Is there like... a reason or...? Are PLD's just jealous that they don't have literally everything?

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

Are PLD's just jealous that they don't have literally everything?

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About sums it up.

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

So... why are we increasing PLD ShO DPS again? Is there like... a reason or...? Are PLD's just jealous that they don't have literally everything?

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Well, if my math is somewhat correct, then having CoS & Spirits ignore the ShO reduction only provides a 11 potency/GCD boost. This still puts them slightly behind a SP > BB only WAR. As you pointed out, this is not something that a half decent WAR is going to be doing very often (or at all) in practice. Seems reasonable.

If you are going to give PLD something like unchained, why not give WAR a shield as well?

On a serious note: if you are complaining about the low DPS in Shield oath, then just tank in Sword oath with 110 melded accessories, use FoF and Bulwark together (= high potency shield swipe spam) and watch your DPS skyrocket. Use defensive cooldowns before big hits. It's so easy to reach 350+ DPS with a Paladin MT in FCoB I could cry.

Guess if you really want to DPS while tanking, use all vit/parry melds and have a Det focused atma, then go yolo-SwO in all fights, even the ones where ShO is blatantly superior.

...Who am I kidding, no, don't increase paladin DPS. Instead give them more tanking utility, like Damage Shields and stuff -- preferably stackable with Eye for an Eye from Sch/Smn.

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Originally Posted by Perzeval

If you are going to give PLD something like unchained, why not give WAR a shield as well?

On a serious note: if you are complaining about the low DPS in Shield oath, then just tank in Sword oath with 110 melded accessories, use FoF and Bulwark together (= high potency shield swipe spam) and watch your DPS skyrocket. Use defensive cooldowns before big hits. It's so easy to reach 350+ DPS with a Paladin MT in FCoB I could cry.

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T10-12 were done in i110 gear of course you can sit in SwO at i130. When the new raid comes out you'll be in shield oath again doing 220 dps or whatever the i130 ShO dps is.

if plds got a bump in their dps, their gameplay would have to get a bit more complex than 1,2,3....

because playing a warrior is so complex.

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Originally Posted by Brightsayge

because playing a warrior is so complex.

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It's hard to suck at PLD. It's easy to suck at WAR.

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Originally Posted by Perzeval

It's hard to suck at PLD. It's easy to suck at WAR.

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In all fairness it's almost as much hard to suck as paladin than as a warrior.
123 vs 123145 i wouldn't call it a huge difference. Unlimited rampart for warrior. I play both paladin and war and they require the same lvl of knowledge and skill, lets be honest.

IB being on GCD is not an issue considering the huge cast time of every tank crushing mechanic. Don't have stacks? Infuriate is on 60 seconds CD, and building V stacks is fast, still lacking? Vengeance is 2 minutes CD, still lacking ? Thrill of Battle is 180 seconds? Still lacking Holmgang has same CD as sentinel. Still lacking? well gtfo and play something else than tank :p

In both situation you need to know the boss rotation to perform decently so no there is no difference at all.

I've seen more bad paladins than bad warriors. To be fair though, I've seen more paladins than warriors in general. Score one for derp finder.

WAR is definitely more complex than PLD unless you decide that doing 200 DPS on WAR is ok. You'd also be surprised at how bad many PLD mains are at IB timings. If you wait until you see the cast bar of the tank killer you will be too late if you are still in a weaponskill animation. Optimizing the use of Infuriate and IB so as to not waste stacks and maximize buff uptime requires more thought that PLD CD rotations.

ToB is 120 second btw.

Following your arguments, it's pretty much hard to suck at any class since there is no really super complex rotation involved in FFXIV.

However, there is absolutely no resource management or timing knowledge involved in playing a PLD. Opener? Activate FoF and go leeroy jenkins. The boss is just autoattacking? Do 123. The boss is going for a tankbuster move? Do 123. A WAR at least needs to show some raid awareness during progression to apply SP before the shit hits the fan. A PLD does not need to care. Ever.

And yes, while most tank busters have a cast time, the cast time is usually 3 seconds while the GCD is 2.5 (or 2.4). Depending on server latency, the selfbuff from IB often is not counted towards damage mitigation if you apply it within the last 0.5 - 1 second of the tank buster cast. The swing itself has some animation time and the selfbuff is only applied when the swing actually hits, not when you press the button. And tank busters with longer cast time like Flatten still requires you to time your IB correctly to mitigate the 3 Flarebreaths afterwards.

So... to summarize.

PLD is fine in the DPS department when specced properly. However in the instance where full VIT gear is needed PLD loses out in the tank stance department. So, in the instance of new content where gear doesn't exceed the content PLD would lose out in the tank stance DPS battle.

Yes... we all know that WAR is generally more complicated... but lets be honest there isn't a single role in this game that is truly difficult to play.

Well timed stone skins and covers during progression really seperate the good and bad PLDs.

The rest is stance dancing and learning/maxing your CD rotation.

Also, Hallowed Ground exists. I don't know why we're undervaluing a 10s immunity here. Tank DPS isn't everything and, when learning, people prefer the safety net of PLD to the DPS increase of WAR. This has been true for progression in literally every raid so far.

since i am still relatively new to the game, how are you able to score dps ratings as high without even becoming a burden to your healers? and if i am seeing 1k crits on a WAR, is it also possible for PLDs to crit as such? as my preferred class is a PLD, i don't want to end up being set aside because of WAR = end game and PLD = newbies. as i have also played 2 healers and found both very well balanced, i want the same to be true to both tanks.

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Originally Posted by rawker

since i am still relatively new to the game, how are you able to score dps ratings as high without even becoming a burden to your healers? and if i am seeing 1k crits on a WAR, is it also possible for PLDs to crit as such? as my preferred class is a PLD, i don't want to end up being set aside because of WAR = end game and PLD = newbies. as i have also played 2 healers and found both very well balanced, i want the same to be true to both tanks.

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Most groups run with one WAR, one PLD. Best bet is to have both ready to go and since they share gear it isn't a large task to gear both.

PLDs doing 400+ DPS as MTs are over geared for their fights and have very good healers, along with knowledge of the fight. I've seen T10 WAR parses over 460dps but typically they are OTs.

PLD crits get into the 1400 range and WARs can top 2200 but the over all DPS is closer then their max crit.

PLD is about smaller numbers in rapid succession due to sword oath, though you can crit over 1k with Halone as well. WAR is about bigger numbers, but hits way slower with autoattacks.

So far I've literally left pulling the 'Mad Deeps' up to the WARs lol. Even though a lot of my stuff (You'll see my iLv is still pretty low :P) has good det/crit, the Parry/Vit are my main concerns since in ShO I almost never lose aggro, unless I'm in a CT/ST run with overgeareds :X.

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Originally Posted by Kuurei

the Parry/Vit are my main concerns since in ShO I almost never lose aggro, unless I'm in a CT/ST run with overgeareds :X.

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Parry is worthless.

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Originally Posted by Feylie

Parry is worthless.

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Parry is worthless when you have better options, yeah. Those options aren't quite open to me. XD

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Originally Posted by Kuurei

Parry is worthless when you have better options, yeah. Those options aren't quite open to me. XD

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Just to clarify, Parry works independently of ShO/SwO. Switching from one to the other doesn't make you parry or block any less.

Remove global cooldown from sword/shield oath would greatly improve pld dps.

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Originally Posted by Sunako

Remove global cooldown from sword/shield oath would greatly improve pld dps.

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Any remove any element of foresight from being needed.

In a similar vein, removing the damage penalty of ShO from Spirits and Scorn would reduce the benefit of stance-dancing, but would help at least somewhat to close the MT dps gap; as a PLD should already equal or outdo a WAR in a consistent OT position (GCDs lost to swapping makes frequent changes of position more costly to PLD than WAR), a basic potency buff would solve little. Of course, some deeper improvement to ShO, causing a higher dps potential to certain moves in an interesting way, would be ideal, but would likely be far less simple.

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Originally Posted by Kuurei

Parry is worthless when you have better options, yeah. Those options aren't quite open to me. XD

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You gotta do what you gotta do. But it hurts my soul every time I see tanks willingly stacking parry, believing it's actually going to benefit them significantly.

As lame as dropping Oaths from the GCD sounds (PLDs only want it bc WAR can do it), I think it would actually be an interesting change. It would encourage PLDs to stance dance more since as it currently stands, frequent stance dancing is terrible for dps. If you enable the ability to quickly change Oaths without losing combo, it will allow good PLDs to stance dance effectively to squeeze in more dps during safe moments. To prevent Oath spamming you could increase the mana cost on the Oaths and/or add a cooldown on them just like defiance. Maybe add another drawback such as you cannot block in Sword Oath or something.

i would simply suggest that switching oaths does not interrupt combos like shield swipe. i've also read something on a different forum that the combo is not interrupted when you turn off shield oath, rather than going immediately to sword oath. i just don't know if it is worth doing since you'll lose the additional 50 potency from sword oath.

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Originally Posted by rawker

i would simply suggest that switching oaths does not interrupt combos like shield swipe. i've also read something on a different forum that the combo is not interrupted when you turn off shield oath, rather than going immediately to sword oath. i just don't know if it is worth doing since you'll lose the additional 50 potency from sword oath.

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You only lose the additional 50 potency while you finish your current combo. After that, you can turn on Sword Oath.

If paladins don't get dps increase then have more skills generate threat and skills that already generate threat to have them increased to break past the cheap war snap threat they do so other tanks can't catch up. There are times that I really don't want to off tank...

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Originally Posted by Niurok

If paladins don't get dps increase then have more skills generate threat and skills that already generate threat to have them increased to break past the cheap war snap threat they do so other tanks can't catch up. There are times that I really don't want to off tank...

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TBH How many melee attacks off the normal combo rotation does Paladins have vs Warriors? Not a whole lot. I'm hoping we get evened out in terms of active abilities (even if its not necessarily an overall dps bump) so that we do a touch more than 1-2-3-occasional Spirits Within-Defensive CDs lol. Circle of Scorn isn't much, honestly.

I'm curious what people want PLD dps to be at? I was running T13 a few nights ago and our MT PLD in Shield Oath was pulling almost 400dps, that not enough?

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Originally Posted by Pots_Talos

I'm curious what people want PLD dps to be at? I was running T13 a few nights ago and our MT PLD in Shield Oath was pulling almost 400dps, that not enough?

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Don't... think that's possible...

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

Don't... think that's possible...

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Bah you're right. I just checked my history and he was pulling roughly 330

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Originally Posted by Pots_Talos

Bah you're right. I just checked my history and he was pulling roughly 330

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330 for entire fight unmerged? Thats still ridiculously high if he's in Shield Oath full time. Full slaying accessories?