Shadowbringers Paladin: Complaints, Feedback, and Suggestions

Spirits Within should at least have it's current HP based to damage removed, it's a pain Healers having to keep you real topped off just to keep max potency. Divine Veil should count to any Heal not GCD based heals, while Warrior pops it for free.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

Divine Veil should count to any Heal not GCD based heals, while Warrior pops it for free.

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Either that or it should come with a significant enough benefit compared to Shake it Off to justify wasting a GCD on it.

I think PLD is in a fine position as is. High party utility, dots, melee and ranged dps options, only job that can block (currently*), best invul, can glam two weapons, etc. One thing I will say is that rotation is extremely rigid and having tanks get access to DHC was a mistake imo. I get that it was used to balance against WAR's IR but I'm here looking at Tenacity, at tank stat, yet no tank wants it. This has probably been the best iteration of PLD yet and hopefully it doesn't get jinxed by the "poster boy" curse that has plagued FFXIV since 2.0.

Shadowbringers PLD is the best designed tank this game has ever had and doesn't need any big changes.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Either that or it should come with a significant enough benefit compared to Shake it Off to justify wasting a GCD on it.

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No, it should be worse than Shake it Off because PLD also has Passage of Arms.

I think that if you want Passage of Arms to occupy the same niche as Shake/Missionary/HoL, you would need to be able to continue to move and attack with it active. Passage is also supposed to double up as PLD's answer to Thrill of Battle, but I'd take the combination of Shake and Thrill over Veil and Passage.

Passage of Arms only works in coordination and strategic timing. Yes it reduces more damage, but buff stacking for one attack isn't good and it only lasts 5 seconds after moving again, it causes issues with DPS up time however I understand the intermission mechanics. If Warrior wasn't the lowest tank DPS in meta comps, Pld would automatically be replaced by GNB/DRK because of how insane Warrior is with self healing, it literally has better cooldowns than Pld except the Cover part.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

Passage of Arms only works in coordination and strategic timing. Yes it reduces more damage, but buff stacking for one attack isn't good and it only lasts 5 seconds after moving again, it causes issues with DPS up time however I understand the intermission mechanics. If Warrior wasn't the lowest tank DPS in meta comps, Pld would automatically be replaced by GNB/DRK because of how insane Warrior is with self healing, it literally has better cooldowns than Pld except the Cover part.

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I'd assume that is exactly why warrior does the dps it currently does, if it had the damage output of a paladin or gnb then you wouldn't really want any other tank (besides obvious penalties for stacking the same job).

I would assume take the Drk for more immortal Warrior.

Really the Oath gauge is just underwhelming. It feels like a waste of space and you could possibly get away with removing it from your HUD completely.

I do agree with Clemency becoming a OGCD and costing 0 MP with a cooldown similar to Aurora. However I have used clemency to save dungeon runs where the healer dies by using it on dps to keep them alive. I could see how the casual player would hate this change.

PLD has the most number of actions so it is very interesting to see what they will cut. My issue with PLD is the clunkyness of divine veil and the job gauge. Hopefully they can clean up the job since it is the poster job for Endwalker but then again we saw what they did with DRK so dont hold your breath.

If they're going to keep with PLD not having cast times I'd kinda prefer if we moved away from the Holy Spirit / Confiteor thing and into something else. Either something with the shield like shown in the trailer or a different one minute gimmick.

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Originally Posted by DaulBan

Either something with the shield like shown in the trailer or a different one minute gimmick.

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That was Shield Swipe, which we lost in Shadowbringers.

My only complaint with Paladin is how doing it's rotation "normally" causes drifting. Hoping this is changed at 90.

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Originally Posted by Otorinth

My only complaint with Paladin is how doing it's rotation "normally" causes drifting. Hoping this is changed at 90.

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Even if things more or less stayed the same, I'm pretty sure doing something as simple as 'nerfing' the HS and Confiteor MP cost to 2500 to remove one HS cast from the rotation would help shore it up a bit. A single GCD drift from raid buffs (assuming buffs are on CD, which depending on disengage they aren't) is probably fine.

Or you can just Skip 1 Holy Spirit, and another Holy Spirit in next rotation to stay aligned with instant Trick Attacks (Only 2 Holy Spirit skips), nothing wrong with it, speed runners do it.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

Or you can just Skip 1 Holy Spirit, and another Holy Spirit in next rotation to stay aligned with instant Trick Attacks (Only 2 Holy Spirit skips), nothing wrong with it, speed runners do it.

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Not really a speedrun thing, so much as a region thing.

Some top NA/EU players.

Some Japanese ones.

They're basically co-equal DPS-wise. I'm not making a judgement call on whether or not one is better than the other, just saying IF they were going to standardize the 'shorter' rotation they may as well force it with the HS change since that's simplest IMO.

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Originally Posted by MrThinker

That was Shield Swipe, which we lost in Shadowbringers.

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No it isn't. Shield swipe didn't have that flame animation. If anything it is likely the new Paladin capstone that allows for a BLU style counter attack off of Passage of Arms.

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Originally Posted by DaulBan

Not really a speedrun thing, so much as a region thing.

Some top NA/EU players.

Some Japanese ones.

They're basically co-equal DPS-wise. I'm not making a judgement call on whether or not one is better than the other, just saying IF they were going to standardize the 'shorter' rotation they may as well force it with the HS change since that's simplest IMO.

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You're comparing 5.5 logs. 5.4 logs on Speeds completely destroy the 5.5 competition it's not even funny. Once main raid patch is over, so is the competitive. Speedruns tend to be the response for top damage logs.

Edit: Or the other way is cheat the system for rank 1. Speedrun on top of a top notch damage log Plds will have skipped one Holy Spirit if they had a Ninja who TAs off cooldown not delayed.

My only complaint with PLD is that I don't have an AoE heal or a raise.

In actual complaints rather than wishful thinking: the Oath gauge is a clunkier version of ability charges. It'd feel much smoother as two charges of sheltron, which could just share charges with cover and intervention. Sucks to not be able to use it at the start of a fight or after a rez. Everything else is fine-to-great.

I will specifically defend Divine Veil: it's felt satisfying and come in super handy for helping with healing and mitigation bottlenecks in E12S, since you can put the buff up well in advance to be consumed during the (several) tiny windows between stuns and raidwides. The restrictions on activating the shield felt really annoying with random players in casual content but felt really rewarding when working with a consistent healing team in challenging content. Though it could stand to be more powerful given the trouble you have to go to compared to other tanks' raid mitigation abilities.

PLD is the last tank that needs adjustments.
His only flaw is the gauge.

Give him a ogcd heal with his gauge and let it build up faster when he gets hit and this flaw is fixed.

Also, you can see it already in the trailer, PLD might get a shield attack or something like that. Finally the shield class is using his shield again.

I don’t play PLD much, more of a GNB/DRK player, but when I do I don’t feel much wrong with it from my entirely casual view. Gauge is a little....ehh. I really do hope we get to use the shield more in combat leading into EW.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

No it isn't. Shield swipe didn't have that flame animation. If anything it is likely the new Paladin capstone that allows for a BLU style counter attack off of Passage of Arms.

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It is a near one for one animation of Shield Bash.

It -might- get an upgrade.

Keep in mind cinematic ability representation doesn't always line up with in-game. Remember the Dark Knight at the end of the trailer? That was Stalwart Soul -> Flood of Shadow.

The Shadowbringers trailer? That's the limit break sound cue. You're splitting the sky with LB3. Not how it works normally, I know.

Been playing PLD lately and I do have a few issues, though they're more like personal nitpicks rather than inherent job flaws:

-The gauge, at least in Alliance raids, is straight up useless if not main tanking, this is not a problem exclusive to PLD but I don't think a gauge should feel irrelevant in any form of content (though I'm aware if they give PLD an "Energy Drain" it will become the go-to instead)
-It has arguably too many buttons: I think either Fast Blade or Royal Authority should turn into Atonement while the effect is active, and could say the same for Holy Spirit replacing Shield Lob and Holy Circle replace Total Eclipse during the Rquiescat window but not sure if the game coding allows for weaponskills to turn into spells
-Cover should have a longer range
-Divine Veil should just give the shield directly without the need of a pre heal

There are two things I'd like to see for PLD in the future.


1. Make Shelltron a flat 20% damage reduction for 6 seconds instead of a block. Since they nerfed Paladin shields to always have the exact same block strength and block rate at max level, regardless of ilvl, you can not get more than 20% damage reduction anyway so you might as well remove the annoying restriction that shelltron gets ignored by enemy critical hits.


2. Change Clemency so that it becomes an oGCD in exchange for a certain amount of Oath Gauge. I'm not sure about the exact amount but let's say you have 50 Oath Gauge, you can now choose to spend that 50 gauge to either use Shelltron, Intervention or use Clemency as an oGCD instead of a 1.5 seconds cast. This would allow paladins to actually get some use out of that ability besides emergency situations and would give them additional options to keep their oath gauge from overcapping whenever mitigation isn't needed.

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Originally Posted by Allegor

It has arguably too many buttons: I think either Fast Blade or Royal Authority should turn into Atonement while the effect is active, and could say the same for Holy Spirit replacing Shield Lob and Holy Circle replace Total Eclipse during the Rquiescat window but not sure if the game coding allows for weaponskills to turn into spells

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Both PLD and WAR have had a lot of ability power creep over the years. PLD just has a bloat of abilities from having a bigger action budget than the other tanks, and WAR achieves a similar effect by combining multiple, sometimes unrelated effects into a single button press. Both could benefit from some pruning.

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Originally Posted by Allegor

-It has arguably too many buttons: I think either Fast Blade or Royal Authority should turn into Atonement while the effect is active, and could say the same for Holy Spirit replacing Shield Lob and Holy Circle replace Total Eclipse during the Rquiescat window but not sure if the game coding allows for weaponskills to turn into spells
-Cover should have a longer range
-Divine Veil should just give the shield directly without the need of a pre heal

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That's a hard nope on all of these from me.
-Atonement change would remove PLDs ability to optimise rotation around fights, or use Atonement shift rotation. (getting four Atonements under FoF instead of three.)
-Pulling with Holy Spirit will become impossible, when it's a gain to pull with Holy Spirit and allows for PLD to start their rotation sooner (sometime face pulling is better depending on jumps in fights), and in certain fights, like E6s, Hades Ex, it was a DPS gain to use 1 Holy Circle, before debuff applied, preventing further DPS to be dealt to one mob.
-Cover's length is perfectly fine as is, if someone is standing 30yalms away and dies, that's their own fault for being in Narnia, in the first place, any strats that require the use of Cover, are done in such a way that person requiring a cover will be in range.
-This is only more homogenization, better to keep intact the 30 second window, and after 30seconds like Horoscope, or Excogitation, the shield applies to the party, while also retain the GCD heal trigger, if Veil is needed sooner, and apply the 10% shield to the PLD that used it.

Decided to chime in here as a tank that cleared all of savage on content. While I don’t think endgame should be the end all be all of balance, it’s important to consider how the job performs across all skill levels. I won’t go in to every single point the OP mentions but I will go over certain abilities and the changes I want.

1. Fight or Flight
The issue is indeed it’s long duration and how popping it when a boss jumps feels bad. You either hold it (throwing off your synch with party buffs later) or just use it and get what hits you can out of it. There are times I popped it early just to get some of use out of it rather than hold it. But I’m not sure what the solution is, getting the two Goring is critical but the bleed doesn’t last quite enough to not get overwritten so I’ve considered maybe detaching Goring from the combo itself. Make it a standard “apply bleed” button.

2. Requiescat
Having it make your spells instant cast was a god send but I’m not a fan of the decreased potency. I do like that that I can apply it when I need to run out though maybe it needs to increase auto attack range for the duration.

3. Clemency
I’m torn on this because of just how damn powerful it is. This one ability allows paladin to solo things that other tanks might not be able to sustain themselves against while also being able to do trash pulls they might not be geared for. It creates this weird scenario where it’s overpowered in small groups but mostly pointless in bigger groups where the enemy hits too hard and you need your MP to deal damage. You can clutch or spot heal yeah but in most situations you probably won’t need it.

4. Intercede
Both underpowered yet situationally useful in clutch moments. I’ve hit someone with low HP when an aoe went off and seen just barely survive when they wouldn’t otherwise. My problem is just how awkward it is to do that and the speed it requires. Once more though in an ideal situation you won’t really need this. It can be useful for mitigating certain tank busters but with folks using ults and super mitigating the extra % from this isn’t really needed.

5. Intervention
I love mobility and gap closers but this has the unfortunate side effect of being used in our dps window so even if we need to gap close it probably won’t be up anyway. I’ve started using it outside my burst window in certain situations even though it’s not optimal just to get to the boss faster (9S after knockback) or making sure I get in quickly enough that the boss doesn’t move (10s run out for sword and 11s fire burnt strike).

6. Cover/Sheltron
Not much to say because they should be detached from the oath gauge.

7. Divine Veil
I coordinate with my healers in savage to let them know it’s up to pop with Succor but there have been times they’ve missed it or were just slightly out of range. I get not wanting homogenization but it really should apply the shield on cast.

8. Passage of Arms
I use this ability precisely once in the entire final raid tier, the last Shockwave pulsar at the end of Terminal Relativity, and that’s it. The rest of the time it wasn’t needed or the dps loss was too much. Want to make paladin unique? Make passage an aoe damage mitigation like drk and Gnb have while also giving them Veil to function like shake it off. That would give paladin a unique flavor. Also before you say “that will make paladin too good!” I adamantly disagree. It already has those exact same abilities natively, this just makes it less inconvenient.

9. Spirits/Circle
Not the most exciting GCD’s I agree. Spirits should lose the potency loss and circle needs it’s duration set to 20 or 30.

10. Oath gauge
So I understand why people want an offensive use for this gauge. But keep in mind that it carries a very real risk of being reserved solely for that purpose. The heavy dps meta of this game means that if we get an offensive purpose to the Pld gauge no one will ever spend it on any sort of defenses and if we were to remove cover/sheltron from it (which should happen by the way) then it becomes pointless for anything but the offense.

A) Get rid of the gauge entirely. I wouldn’t be against this, I was against it from the very beginning and firmly maintain not every job needs a resource to manage. This is my personal most favored solution, I think gauge is redundant and the Job as a whole would be better off if the entire concept was scrapped.

B) If we really have to keep the gauge, add an offensive move that we can utilize but add a long enough CD that it’s not the only thing we spend it on. They clearly want us to use it for defenses but there are too many times where we aren’t spending it on anything. Some sort of move that costs 100 gauge but gives us enough time to use it for defenses before the next offensive move comes off CD would be ideal.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

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I do agree with you that job balance should not be entirely balanced around end game, however, my personal opinion is it should carry a significant weight as end game players are the players that typically get the most out of said jobs, when compared to those that happily stay with more casual content, which of course, is perfectly fine. I'm not saying therefore we should have overly complex rotations, but when the majority of the casual player base don't really care about perfecting rotations to the same level of end game players, some feedback, if taken onboard would only serve to further take the elements away from jobs that once made said jobs fun, i.e the lowering of the skill ceiling this expansion. So, while I agree only in part, as everyone should be able to grasp the basics with some minor effort, every job should have a means to excel above the less motivated, much like Paladin, in it's current iteration.

I'd also like to critique some points,

1. I agree bosses jumping/ untargetable as you pop Fight or Flight is irritating, but that's on you to learn to adjust for in future, much like if any jobs presses a buff or applies a debuff to a boss in the same scenario, there is no difference. Typically Balance map out Paladin's rotation to the GCD for certain fights, especially those with awkward timings, and or give advice which can be invaluable. Fight or Flight naturally desynchs from raid buffs anyways, due to Paladin naturally having a 63 second rotation, so you should never worry about rotation desynching, unless a specific fight warrants using the 60 second rotation (dropping 1 Holy Spirit from Requiescat window). Yes getting 2 Goring blades under Fight or Flight is important, there are scenarios leading to downtime, you can adjust rotation to get more Atonements beforehand. Personally I think Fight or Flight works well as it currently is, and complements Requiescat well, albeit maybe a little less so in ShB, with the removal of the physical damage aspect off of Requiescat.

2. Honestly, making auto attacks ranged under Requiescat makes no sense to me, it's a magic damage buff, auto attack loss should be the same as any other melee based job, while auto attacks are intrinsic to gauge generation, that is up to the player to maximise it's generation, i.e don't come of the boss unless you really have to.

3. Clemency, I honestly think it's a great tool for prog, great for when healers go down, and you can clutch a clear or survive long enough to get a healer up if possible, and for soloing content. Outside of that it's pretty rubbish as far as skills go, due to its heavy cost, when healers have strong(er) heals for cheaper cost, but personally I'm fine with it remaining as is, a clutch skill with some niche uses.

4. It's Intervention, not Intercede, and it is not supposed to be inherently strong, but can be buffed, when kitchen sinking a buster and you have 50 gauge left over you might as well share, especially on double busters. Second buster of e12s door boss where I use hallowed, I still pop all my cooldowns and Intervention my co tank because why not, it costs a couple weaves, and they're back up when I need them next. Otherwise use Intervention on your co tank so you don't cap gauge and to help with mitigating auto attacks.

5. Intervene is the gap closer, you aim to get at least 1 in every Fight or flight window, dump the second in Fight or Flight if you don't need it to keep uptime, same as DRK with plunge, you wanna dump both plunges in burst windows unless you need one for uptime, and same with GNB with No Mercy window. losing a GCD or two and delaying your rotation is a bigger loss than using one gap closer out of buff window.

6. I disagree with detaching Sheltron from the gauge, I like how defensively oriented the gauge is in comparison to the other tanks. Cover I believe should be either one of two things, 20% damage reduction on damage transferred to the Paladin but retain the 50 gauge cost and 2 minute cooldown, or remove Cover from the gauge, and keeping everything else as is.

7. I have given my thoughts on Divine Veil in here a few times, which I think is far better than just homogenization of another skill. I don't like removing the co-ordination element that exists with Veil.

8. Passage of Arms is very much, I hate to say but, you're not using it properly, Passage of Arms is a pop and go skill you never ever channel it ever unless you are in downtime. The Arms up debuff lasts 5 seconds upon use and continue your GCD as you normally would, you do not need to channel. Passage you can use on a plethora of raidwides where your party is grouped up on literally every fight. There is no DPS loss using Passage unless you waste it by using the skill incorrectly.

9. I agree with the removal of the HP penalty of Spirits Within, it's an idiotic caveat on a less than stellar potency attack, and doubly so on a job that's intended to take damage. Circle of Scorn however I disagree with changing it's cooldown, simply because it currently fits perfectly that you will always get 1 per fight or Flight, regardless of if you press it before Fight or Flight, personally is great to use as a buffer so you don't hit your first Fight or Flight before Riot Blade too early.

10. Oath gauge I don't mind keeping it as it, again it sets it apart from the other tanks, maybe in a rather bland fashion, but I rarely find myself complaining about it. I'm personally against adding any sort of offensive option to the gauge and as there is already too many caveats to Paladin's toolkit as it is, I rather we do not add anymore arbitrary trade-offs or drawbacks, I think we can give some caveats to the other tanks toolkits, granted Warrior wriggled it's way out of one already.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

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1: Currently in Savage fights there's no reason to stall FoF, it's perfectly synced up in the fights, Pld will flop like a pancake at any point of delay. Remove 1 Holy Spirit in a rotation (Twice max throughout the fight) to stay aligned with instant Trick Attacks.

4: If you're capping points just use it to stay off cap, mitigating 2 auto attacks is still helpful for Healer dps.

5: You have Arms Length, use it.

7: Certain areas in raid fights the Healer will use GCD aoe heal at rotation, Veil is used on those points.

8: You do not need to hold this ability, you can instantly apply it and drop it. Passage of Arms Last 5 seconds after obtaining the buff.