Yoshi P's Stance on Pld

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Originally Posted by ArdorGrey

A lot of pld players seem to be of the mindset that this sort of favoritism was actually "balance", and that if pld can't solo tank everything then they need the damage output of warrior, and warriors ogcd stun, and warriors stance dancing, and warriors slashing debuff, and halone needs to apply path debuff on top of all pld's personal utilities buffed massively, on top of hallowed ground, and only then will their perception of "balance" be achieved.

Let's not even go into some of the really extreme theories that suggest pld also needs its own stack resource generation on top of all that.

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You sir, seem to think that PLD is just fine. Please explain to me why this is the case. I will then direct you to anyone of the 20 posts I have made that point to the contrary.

PLD is a broken mess right now. Any thought to the contrary needs to be rethought.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

So basically, when I'm reading you I'm under the impression that you don't want your lackluster PLD job to be improved. Fine.

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Your definition of lackluster is different from mine. The metric you use is different from mine as well.

If you want, we can run down the list. Not that you'll care what I think.

Clemency: Off-tanking tool that is hybrid off-healing. The issue here is that some think that just because they get Clemency during the PLD questline it's something that should be usable while main tanking. This is obviously not the case because, as I've mentioned before, hybrid off-healing involves giving up something to do something else. If you want to make it easier to use while MT, you'd need to make it instant and give it a 20-30s cooldown. It'd remove concerns of getting interrupted, but it would also trivialize the MP cost attached to it and limit its use greatly.

Divine Veil: This is a raid mitigation ability. The mistake here is that people are comparing it to Delirium/Storm's Path/Halone when it's an ability of a completely different nature. And obviously it's not going to be up every time. It's there to help the healers in moments of high raid damage or to mitigate damaging phase transitions. Pretty useful for Bismarck EX and A4. The only real improvement that'd make sense would be to remove the need for a cure to activate the effect.

Sword Oath/Shield Oath: Some people call PLD clunky because switching from Shield Oath to Sword Oath costs MP and a GCD, forgetting that it's a conscious design decision since you're supposed to stay in one or the other unless the situation calls for switching (read: tank swaps and burn phases when you're no longer getting hit by the boss).

PLD obviously has room for improvement, but not in the way some people have been suggesting.

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Originally Posted by ArdorGrey

Such a well reasoned post from the guy who wants WAR nerfed...

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The amount of butthurt in that thread. Sorry world. D:

For the record, its no nevermind to me what they buff or nerf, I just wanted to discuss the idea and do a little bit of devil's-advocating in the process, and there was definitely some decent discussion in the first 20 pages of that thread before it devolved into whatever it is now.

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Originally Posted by Exodus_Kenpachi

You sir, seem to think that PLD is just fine. Please explain to me why this is the case. I will then direct you to anyone of the 20 posts I have made that point to the contrary.

PLD is a broken mess right now. Any thought to the contrary needs to be rethought.

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There's a world of difference between thinking pld is fine and thinking that it needs help but a lot of the people demanding buffs, and the sort of buffs they are demanding is ridiculous and founded of personal poor play habits or a stubborn adherence to the sacred cows of vit stance and full time tank stancing. I would heartily appreciate it if you could point out where I said that I am in the former of the two camps.


Warrior is great under the current meta. Pld isn't. But for every well reasoned pld post actually underscoring the issues I see a dozen saying that pld literally needs everything war has or more, or blaming their own personal poor dps on their class instead of coming to the forums and asking about pld dps rotations(which do exist and are a thing), or saying that they should be able to pull dps without giving up vit accs or stance dancing.

Here's a mind blowing news flash: I have all 3 tanks at 60, and actually play pld a lot outside of savage. Their aoe dps sucks. Their aggro gen is a bit lacking, the overemphasis on physcial mitigation is dumb if they're also dealing with the lowest personal dps, especially in tank stance. I totally agree most of their utility is busted to hell atm. I've completely taken shield swipe off my bar.

But if you even try to push SwO and use FoF intelligently you can still do good ST dps. All they need are a few tweaks, not massive overhauls or every single toy every other tank has (funny thought that no plds ever even talk about wanting Drk abilitities even though Drks are fine atm too, though I'm sure you wouldn't agree mr war/war). Stance dancing isn't clunky, it's the one single thing that actually requires any thought on the class, and people complain the class is too easy and simple and boring out one side of their mouth while saying they want stance dancing to be turned into an instant win button out the other side instead of acknowledging giving ogcd instant swapping to drk and pld would be far, far more powerful than what defiance currently does.

When mnk got its tweaks people at first called them so minor as to be consolation buffs. The way it's turned out monk is far enough ahead of nin in st dps that there's a lot of debate as to which one is better overall now, and most at least agree that the line is so blurred and people are so geared that nin isn't on lock anymore.

I do not think pld is fine. I have never said this. I've "+1'd" and posted positive responses to intelligent posts on the problem. What I don't think is fine is people who want the game to revolve and change around them rather than accept that metas change and currently vit stacking turtles aren't all the rage.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Your definition of lackluster is different from mine. The metric you use is different from mine as well.

If you want, we can run down the list. Not that you'll care what I think.

Clemency: Off-tanking tool that is hybrid off-healing. The issue here is that some think that just because they get Clemency during the PLD questline it's something that should be usable while main tanking. This is obviously not the case because, as I've mentioned before, hybrid off-healing involves giving up something to do something else. If you want to make it easier to use while MT, you'd need to make it instant and give it a 20-30s cooldown. It'd remove concerns of getting interrupted, but it would also trivialize the MP cost attached to it and limit its use greatly.

Divine Veil: This is a raid mitigation ability. The mistake here is that people are comparing it to Delirium/Storm's Path/Halone when it's an ability of a completely different nature. And obviously it's not going to be up every time. It's there to help the healers in moments of high raid damage or to mitigate damaging phase transitions. Pretty useful for Bismarck EX and A4. The only real improvement that'd make sense would be to remove the need for a cure to activate the effect.

Sword Oath/Shield Oath: Some people call PLD clunky because switching from Shield Oath to Sword Oath costs MP and a GCD, forgetting that it's a conscious design decision since you're supposed to stay in one or the other unless the situation calls for switching (read: tank swaps and burn phases when you're no longer getting hit by the boss).

PLD obviously has room for improvement, but not in the way some people have been suggesting.

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The metric Freyyy uses for the term lackluster is savage, the one you use to say that it isn't is nA4.....in savage, Oppressor hits you for over 3200 on an auto attack, 8500 for a cleave, and about 14,000 (if you have 60% mitigation) for a tank buster. This is only the first floor of savage. In A3s Living Liquid at times can crit you for 11,000 on an auto attack. This information alone renders any argument you have made moot.

Clemency is for the most part worthless as OT or MT since it can be interrupted and has a 3 second cast time. You CAN'T use it as off-tank because the healers will beat you every single time with their (1.9 second) cast times. You CAN'T use it as main-tank because of the 3 second cast time, it can be interrupted, the enmity and damage modifiers for Paladin being the lowest will not allow you the time to cast it, and the healers will still beat you to the cast.

In savage content there is never NOT high damage and raid wide AoE. At times people will survive raid wide AoE with only hundreds of points of life (2k life if everything went somewhat according to plan.) In content that doesn't hit like a pool noodle Paladin falls flat for every skill it brings with maybe the exception of Rage of Halone. A regen tick, I believe, should also activate Divine Veil but if used soon enough it doesn't really need changed for the activator. Cooldown is really this skills weakness.

Paladin stances punish you entirely too much in savage content. You lose a GCD, your combo, aggro, dps, and mp JUST for 20% better damage reduction or an extra auto attack each time you switch. At the end of an encounter you will have lost perhaps 5-7 GCD's if you switch twice for each tank buster....that WILL wipe the group. I can accept 3/4's of that punishment but not all of it. This isn't conscious design, it's flat out ignorance of combat flow at this point. To stay relevant in end-game content every job needs to do damage fast if given the opportunity. Savage content (especially world first/progression) is nothing but a burn phase where you only stay in tank stance just for the critical damage that would kill you otherwise.

Paladin has more than just some room for improvement. It's living in a two-room apartment when it needs a football stadium in terms of adjustments.


I ask you to please, before you speak on behalf of why and where Paladin needs improvement, do savage content. You're most certainly not seeing what you need to.


EDIT: Until a reasonable change is made, people have resorted to click-removing the oath they've chosen off the buff bar just to avoid the excessive punishment. At the very least it shouldn't drop your combo.

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Originally Posted by Shining_Tiger_Excalibur

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Holy crap. A wellthought out post. I am so glad you made that post and saved me the trouble. There are far too many people who do not understand tanking or understand the feasibility of certain moves posting here.

Like I love when a DPS main who uses PLD to grind tomes jumps in here and uses their runs of Neverreap as a baseline for their arguement.

Bravo man. Good post.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Also the tank is too busy staying alive to be watching the HP pools of other people. This is taking me back to the idiocy in 1.0 where people were expecting the PLD tanking the boss to do part of the healing instead of the actual healers...

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"Solid rock on which the party's defense is founded." You have 30 seconds between Sheltrons where you have no control over whether you stay alive or not other than Clemency. Most of your defensive CDs are already spoken for in boss fights. If you're not raiding, you literally do not have to try to stay alive - your defense and shield will do that for you. Really, the reason not to Clemency isn't because you're focusing on staying alive, it's because you potentially lose so much damage. But even with slow Clemency right now it is your DUTY to watch party HP and save the other players if your healer is occupied. It's just overly difficult and requires a lot of communication because Clemency is so slow.

I seriously do not get this unwillingness to take on a little bit of extra work in order to increase your value to your party. The most fun I have had in Heavensward has been when first learning a couple of fights on paladin while my healers and DPS still aren't used to it. I get to do EVERYTHING - heal, DPS, tank, and mechanics. I ended up having to switch to dark knight in A3S/A4S (mostly because drk is OP in 3 and pld is awful in 4) which is boring in comparison even with all of its off GCDs and stuff because you have no way to help your party members other than just doing mechanics for them.

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Originally Posted by ArdorGrey

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So Mr. Mind Blowing News Flash, I too have all 3 tanks a 60. The flaw in your reasoning is you think that the current CONTENT is the issue for PLD. This is wrong, it is the current META. These are two totally seperate issues. You could make a fight specifically taylored to PLDs tools and skill set and guess what, WAR would STILL preform in the encounter better. You failed to touch on the fact that PLD offers absolutely nothing to the raid group. Literally nothing that matters at all. This is the issue.

Sure you can put out decent tank DPS by taxing the ever loving shit out of your healers, sure you can preform decently in every encounter, but why? Why go through all that pain when you could literally take the same amount of skill applied to PLD and apply it to WAR and become infinity more valuable to the raid.

I will even go so far as to say that you could completely change the meta of FF14 tanking to be more like WoW where healer MP drought is your enrage and becuase of the uptime of WARs CDs it would STILL do better than PLD. This is a huge flaw... Like mind numbingly huge.

That is why you are seeing people asking for radical PLD changes and asking for things that resemble WAR. At the end of the day PLD not only needs potency buffs but it needs to be given a rework of its skills. A PLD with a DPS buff and a littlr bit more utility would be similar in appearance to a Drk.... Which brings me to my next point...

DrK does need a rework. One of the main draws of DrK was that it could bring INT down to the table so that way the group could bring a NIN... But as you pointed out now that MNK has gotten a pretty substantial buff some groups (mine included) are running DRG, MNK, and Double WAR. This is once again an issue. A class should NOT be defined by a singular ability and tanks should not have utility gated behind positions (Reprisal, Shield Swipe). DrK is nonwhere near the mess that PLD is but it has a lot of room for improvement.

People need to stop accepting mediocre design and then asking for nerfs of other, better designed classes, to match their mediocrity.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

I've had plenty of opportunities while off-tanking stuff like A4. Yes, it's normal mode since I don't have time nor the desire to raid savage, but the opportunities are there.

Think of this more along the lines of having to give up something to do something else. As a ret paladin in WoW I was spending Art of War procs on off-heals when needed (since said procs made Flash of Light instant cast). Here, instead of spending procs that could go to DPS spells (Exorcism) to off-heal, I'm giving up 3 seconds of DPS uptime and a chunk of MP. It's a trade that makes sense if you've played a hybrid before (hence my RDM comment).
I can think of several scenarios where Divine Veil's mitigation is a boon, and comparing it to a permanent damage reduction of boss damage is comparing apples to oranges. PLD's answer to Delirium and Storms Path is Rage of Halone. It's not a completely equal analogue (hence the issues we've been seeing as of late), but is one nevertheless.
This. Divine Veil only costs you time. Succor costs MP and Stoneskin II can't be used in combat. That's sort of where the balance is.
All you'd be doing at that point is turning it into another defensive cooldown.
Read my comment on hybrid gameplay. Also the tank is too busy staying alive to be watching the HP pools of other people. This is taking me back to the idiocy in 1.0 where people were expecting the PLD tanking the boss to do part of the healing instead of the actual healers

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There are opportunities for PLD's new heal spell, I listed them in my previous post. I'll say it again. Your healers sucked. Are new healers. Are new players to the fight. A4 doesn't require a PLD cures, No raid will. Other than that you just wasted time, lowered your DPS and probably rose the over all damage taken, marginal at first but increases each time you use it as each time you use it, you're wasting a GCD and a extra .5 seconds. The only exception is transition phases, in which case Stone skin is better as your healers are probably topping people off at this point.

All raid damage, as far as I can remember is magical. If SE changes this and throws in physical damage for raid damage, RoH effectiveness will go up a bit for that particular fight. Other wise the only thing it really lowers is outgoing Auto attacks, which no one cares about. So PLD's answer to Delierium and Storms Eye is not RoH as the other two also fill in the role of lowering Raid damage.

DV is PLD's personal boon and no, comparing it to War's -10% damage and DRK is not apple to oranges as all are applied when raid damage is going out, the only expectation in this case would be DRK's in which case they may save it for tank busters. The reason you may see it as that is because of PLD's natural lack of helpful utility that works in currently all or just about all meta. In either case I'd take the tanks that can put up the damage reduction at will, Dish out damage, and still live through the hits that PLD can live through.

DV doesn't personally cost you mp, but it does cost someone else MP due to the fact that you still need a cure to activate it. Less, but still it cost mp. Also I've never heard of a good SCH inside of a functional group really running dry on MP because of a AoE shield for a scripted AoE attack. So really it costs the following, time, someone elses mp, coordination that could possibly effect the entire group as the shielding is based off the positioning of the actual PLD. If said cure goes out too fast while the PLD is away from the group or people are still gathering it's a bust.

And lastly quite a few jobs at the moment can be considered Hybrid already as some DPS are outfitted with support attacks and abilities to aid other classes. Tanks are Hybrid as well as they've the ability to support the party, "Tank", and DPS. The classes that DON'T get utility are often the ones that get left out of top tier groups and normally are considered weak. This is one of the reasons why Nin and BRD/MCH are almost always a staple in a raid group, as they are currently the "support" classes of the game.

One thing I do not think should change about any of the tanks is the inherent GCD/oGCD-ness of their stances. Deliverance/Defiance being oGCD is literally a part of the playstyle and mechanics of the job. PLD isn't designed to be a stance-dancer, regardless of how do-able it is and the many ways you can make it more fluid (combo, pop Rampart or something while the GCD ticks, SwO, weave in FoF, back to combos). That is not to say PLDs DPS (or raid DPS utility) and/or enmity could/should not be raised in some fashion, but the stances are on the GCD for a reason. And when you look at DRK, they intentionally didn't give it a DPS stance (don't say Darkside. That's a buff not a stance, its no more a DPS stance than Maim was for WAR in 2.x) and made it so that you can disable Grit oGCD, just not turn it on, and instead gave it an out-of-tank-stance-only CD.

Anyhoo, regardless of what gets buffed or nerfed, I don't think any changes should literally make the jobs play different, as very little is wrong with the design of any job's playstyle at the moment. The flaws are in execution and in interaction with content, and in numerical shortcomings.