Savage Alexander and the Paladin Exodus

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Originally Posted by OPneedNerfs

The usual argument WAR/DRK will give is the shield argument. They somehow say parry is crap but think shields r OP. Hypocrites everywhere.

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Block used to be pretty good around the FCOB cycle when physical damage was plentiful and a Dreadwyrm Shield/Aegis Shield Zeta would block about 34% of physical damage approximately a third of the time, so the passive physical mitigation was around 10% on average. But shield stats are downscaled significantly at 60, an Antiquated Prytwen only blocks 21% of physical damage on a successful block, so block is weaker than it has ever been.

Block also blocked a lot of significant damage like Death Sentence, Raven's Beak, Bahamut's Claw, Critical Rip, Secondary Head, Revelation, etc. before. In AS it basically blocks nothing worth noting.

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Originally Posted by Coatl

From a glance, PLD's magical mitigation really doesn't seem that far off from DRK or WAR provided you have a MNK in your static. However, the most well-rounded and impactful of the tanks is undeniably warrior. Aside from multi-purpose mitigation, they provide added dps to the raid via both Storm's eye and their OT stance and that's something no serious raid will ever consider throwing away regardless of what tank has better mitigation vs whatever specific fight.

TL;DR They all have about the same mitigation but WAR+DRK > WAR+PLD in terms of DPS.

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Every tank buster being Magical damage means that I can use Dark Arts + Dark Mind and have a cooldown nearly as powerful as Sentinel on a 60 second cooldown. This lets me Shadowskin more aggressively to drop Grit and use Blood Weapon at no cost of effective mitigation increasing my DPS even further. Dark Knight is miles ahead of Paladin on Magical mitigation. This isn't at a glance either, this is in practical application. This is on A3S and A4S, the hardest content in the game.

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Originally Posted by Coatl

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Check your timers and numbers. Foresight is a 2 minute cooldown on paladin and dark knight, 90s on warrior. Thrill of Battle is 20% HP. Hallowed Ground is a 420 second cooldown. Sentinel is 40% mitigation. You forgot Sheltron, which will be amazing for single hit physical tank busters, but I doubt we'll be getting many of those in the future because Sheltron exists. You also left out Raw Intuition for warriors.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...xander_savage/

More perspective from another endgame raider, the Paladin analysis is fairly accurate. Worth a read and further evidence that endgame groups simply don't want Paladins anymore.

Anyone recall world first T5 being PLD/PLD?
Eff me, my first runs at Caduceus in i70 as a Warrior didn't cut it #Hoodswipe. I had to raid as a dps to get my chest, and wait for a few weeks for myth gear to attempt that as a tank. Then the hottie came and #rejoice. Wait your turns PLDs of the forums. It'll come

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Originally Posted by Iagainsti

Anyone recall world first T5 being PLD/PLD?
Eff me, my first runs at Caduceus in i70 as a Warrior didn't cut it #Hoodswipe. I had to raid as a dps to get my chest, and wait for a few weeks for myth gear to attempt that as a tank. Then the hottie came and #rejoice. Wait your turns PLDs of the forums. It'll come

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And we'll have spent all our esoterics gearing up another job and not go back to paladin because of the gear discrepancy.

"That time" should never be a thing. Ever.

This is the point of not having every damn job perform the exact same role as their counterparts. Some jobs are and will be better at certain aspects.

As I've said before, there's a large gap between being "better in some aspects" and being outright detrimental to a group. A1S-A3S clearing this week was the easiest it has ever been since switching to Dark Knight and the benefits in A4S are already noticeable. With less gear.

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Originally Posted by sydh

This is the point of not having every damn job perform the exact same role as their counterparts. Some jobs are and will be better at certain aspects.

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And you can't see that as being a bad thing? Luckily enough Yoshi does see it thus and generally jobs are buffed so they are as viable as the other jobs in the same archetype.

FFXI was terrible for that.

I wouldn't be so quick to say that. For all we know this is how Paladin is supposed to be performing. The intent of this thread is to garner the development team's attention and get acknowledgement and confirmation of the state of Paladin as a job.

You're cute, this thread is cute, it's all just so cute, and hyperbole. If we were talking about AST you'd have a case.

This thread isn't about Astrologians, it's about Paladins; and this isn't hyperbole. Paladin is the weakest tank of the three and detrimental to progression on A3S and A4S in their current state. A3S was doable albeit taxing due to the discrepancies in DPS. A4S is even worse. Paladin groups require far more gear to make up for this and thus a greater amount of time to complete content.

This is from actual experience.

Welcome to individual characteristics, I'm sorry that paladin isn't a necessity for literally every piece of endgame content since T1. You're going to find some fights that are harder / easier based on your party composition, and based on the individual strengths and weaknesses of each class. PLD and WHM have had a sweet ride up until this point as they have been the universally required classes for physically every piece of progression content ever. But just because a fight is harder for your class in literally a single instance, than it is for others, does not mean paladin is going to disappear from endgame, that's complete hyperbole.

Welcome to every other class ever, since 2013, and everyone managed to get along just fine, and complete endgame content with physically any party makeup, even poor summoners in 2.0. Is pal min / max efficient in A4S? Hardly. can the content be completed with it? Certainly.

Your tears are so salty and sweet, much delicious, such tasty, wow, so salt.

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Originally Posted by Kyne_Lyons

Tank balance is a huge issue right now, but nobody clearing the content as Paladin is ever willing to talk about it until they get to A4S, which is the purpose of this thread. The most demoralizing thing is that I can switch to a Dark Knight, a job I have no Esoteric gear for, and get better performance on this encounter in every single metric. It's heartbreaking.

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I know exactly how you feel.

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Originally Posted by Steb

PLD and WHM have had a sweet ride up until this point as they have been the universally required classes for physically every piece of progression content ever. But just because a fight is harder for your class in literally a single instance, than it is for others, does not mean paladin is going to disappear from endgame, that's complete hyperbole.

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There's an enormous difference between not being required for progress and actually being detrimental to progress.

When next content comes out and its all physical damage PLD will be broken.

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Originally Posted by sydh

This is the point of not having every damn job perform the exact same role as their counterparts. Some jobs are and will be better at certain aspects.

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And that should not be the case.

Ever.

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Still no.

One should not have to level all three tank jobs up in order to actually tank all the content in this game without being forced to wait it out.

I want to play a Paladin. I am a Paladin. I should not have to level DRK and/or WAR just to be accepted as a tank in Savage.

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Originally Posted by sydh

This is the point of not having every damn job perform the exact same role as their counterparts. Some jobs are and will be better at certain aspects.

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Okay. Then lets make some mobs 30% resistant to either blunt, piercing, or slashing damage. Also Ifrit and Shiva are cured when attacked by their respective elements.

This is an old idea, but one I've always liked. Give paladin a second set of stance options (works with same restrictions as diurnal vs nocturnal on ast) where in one stance, the shield acts exactly as it does now (though making it work against magic as well would be nice) and in the other stance you completely loose the ability to block but it increases your DPS by some percent. What ever amount works to balance paladin vs dark and war.

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

And that should not be the case.

Ever.

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I disagree. I feel the root of the problem here is the job specific eso gears. Remove that, and there is much less of an issue because people then can switch around much more easily.

Of course, in a perfect world, SE would be able to design varied and interesting encounters that are perfectly balanced for a wide variety of very different jobs of each roles. This is not a perfect world, however. So if we push too hard for balance, that would only result in either homogeneous classes, where every classes is more or less the same with a little bit of gimmicky unique identifying trait (see AST) or encounters that would feel very similar.

As in, they would need to follow a strict checklist when designing encounters, where each one must have something that plays to each class' strength and nothing where a class perfectly counters the mechanic of the fight. So, cannot have magic only fight (pld will be left in the dust) or phys only fight (pld will be too op), even when lore calls for such a fight. Cannot have a fight with too much movement (what about blm?), too much raid-wide damage (whm only pls), etc. I think this would only lead to boring fights that all feel samey (or, boring jobs that all feel samey). This is also not sustainable moving forward, as more jobs are added, the constraints and/or balancing act would only get worse and worse.

I would rather have both the fights AND the jobs be varied and interesting. And if that means that some jobs are quite a bit better at some fights than others, so be it. Of course, nothing as far as rendering a job completely useless like making ifrit completely immune or even absorb fire damage. But at the level of AST for a1s or a2s pre-buff is okay in my opinion, it is definetely still possible to use that class in the fights, everyone may just have to work a bit harder if they really like the class and want to use it anyway. The key here is that there should be other fights where they shine, a class cannot be bad in all fights.

FFXIV is already in a unique position to be able to deliver on the above. We are not locked into playing just 1 class, like in other games. It only needs a slight tweak to make this possible:
- Make sure that the raid-relevant gears for a given role is shared (so this means that mnk, drg, and nin should share a gear set).
- For weapon, I guess they should stay separate, but perhaps give discount for 2nd purchase of weapon for the same role group.
- Give extra armory bonus for each class at the same role that you have withing the same role. For example, leveling the 2nd tank nets you additional 25% exp boost, and for the 3rd is additional 50% boost, etc. (sch/smn complicates this, but I think they are destined to be the only exception to the rule moving forward anyway, so lets just ignore them).
- rework glamour so that they are tied to the job and item, instead of just to the item. I already hated how when I make a glamour for my pld, my war is "forced" to be glamoured the same way. This needs to be changed so that I can glamour them separately, even when they are wearing the same thing.
- AF gears can still exist, but more as a starter gear (it being the law tome gears would have been perfect) and later on for cosmetic only.

So for those hardcore players chasing whatever-first, they would need to make sure they are flexible enough to be able to play all jobs within a particular role at a very high level, so that they can optimize the fight to the max and beat them at very low ilvl. This is probably an interesting exercise of min-maxing for them anyway. For more casual groups, they can afford to let their players play their favorite classes and wait out until they are sufficiently geared to clear. PF will of course be full of people demanding only the most optimal party composition AND overly high ilvl, but not like it hasn't already happen now.

I feel rather than trying the imposible to try to balance every class and every every encounter perfectly, this is the most viable way going forward that would please the most people.

Astrologians took forever to be made viable and they're a new class. Dunno how much hope there is for paladin.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

World firsts and second guilds are trying to beat the fight undergeared. This will be a non issue in 1 or 2 months when the majorty of average FCs beat it. I am not in a world first FC wouldn't switch from Pld to a job I have no esoterics gear on.

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There are other peoples progressing savage aswell besides these "WF elites" ya know? and im not fine waiting 1-2 months just for the hope of clearing content that is about to get old anyway. Now if only we had more than one raid instance then this wouldnt be so bad, but atm there is only Alex and nothing else.

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Originally Posted by Synestra

There are other peoples progressing savage aswell besides these "WF elites" ya know? and im not fine waiting 1-2 months just for the hope of clearing content that is about to get old anyway. Now if only we had more than one raid instance then this wouldnt be so bad, but atm there is only Alex and nothing else.

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Not to mention that as people gear up they are actually moving to Warrior-Warrior teams since they are vastly superior in everything and healer potency is getting to the point that Warriors don't even need to be in defiance to tank most of Alex Savage, can hold threat just fine using their highest potency, highest hate combo, cheese through most tank busters with holmgang and their massive DPS increase they bring doesn't even allow enough time for the Limit Break penalty to even matter.

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Originally Posted by OPneedNerfs

"Wait for next endgame raid and pray x class does better there"

If devs actually thought that way, WARs would still be the way they were in 2.0. The only fight they had issues with were T5.

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What? 2.0 WAR was noticeably worse than PLD at tanking in any content from stone vigil normal on up.

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Originally Posted by Alistaire

What? 2.0 WAR was noticeably worse than PLD at tanking in any content from stone vigil normal on up.

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Only when played by idiots(4 man content).

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Originally Posted by Nektulos-Tuor

When next content comes out and its all physical damage PLD will be broken.

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Imo this why DRK also needs some attention besides PLD, both should be brought up to WAR's level in terms of un-clunkyness and ability synegry/utility because warriors are currenty perfect when it comes to tanking. No sane person wants WAR's nerfed in anyway, why would you want to gimp your tanking buddy?

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Originally Posted by Synestra

Imo this why DRK also needs some attention besides PLD, both should be brought up to WAR's level in terms of un-clunkyness and ability synegry/utility because warriors are currenty perfect when it comes to tanking. No sane person wants WAR's nerfed in anyway, why would you want to gimp your tanking buddy?

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Warriors need to be nerfed if the goal is to bring them in line with the other two tanks. Bringing the other two up to Warrior level would just break the game more than it already is with Warriors sitting a few hundred DPS away from actual DPS classes while bringing a far higher level of survivability. As it stands now, bringing 6 Warriors and a pair of healers is completely feasible to clear the Faust DPS check with ease and make for a ridiculously effective Savage group on all floors. The only major thing that is likely preventing this is finding 5 other groups to give up their geared Warriors.

All the tanks should be pushing closer to current healer DPS numbers. The game is in a completely ridiculous state by having even one tank class with all of its mitigation skills even coming within 50% of the damage of a DPS focused class. Honestly, anyone that cares about the overall health and balance of the game should be looking at current PLD damage and using that as a base and nerf BOTH Warrior and Dark Knight damage down to bring it in line with current PLD damage.

I mean imagine the sh*tstorm that would have occurred if the measly healing abilities of BLMs and SMNs was brought up to a few hundred HPS of the focused healing classes while maintaining their damage capabilities?

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Originally Posted by Ladon

Not to mention that as people gear up they are actually moving to Warrior-Warrior teams since they are vastly superior in everything and healer potency is getting to the point that Warriors don't even need to be in defiance to tank most of Alex Savage, can hold threat just fine using their highest potency, highest hate combo, cheese through most tank busters with holmgang and their massive DPS increase they bring doesn't even allow enough time for the Limit Break penalty to even matter.

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Yeah and im pretty sure you could already do A1S with 6 warriors and 2 healers(im looking at you Xeno and co :P)because they are not really far behind real DD's in terms of DPS when they can go all out in Deliverance. And yeah even my co-tank doesnt really use Defiance much anymore as its not that needed even on busters with proper CD usage and holmgang.

I actually cant wait to see when first 6(7) war 2(1) heals A1S is going to happen, it will be hilarious to watch for sure like previous ones :D

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Originally Posted by Synestra

There are other peoples progressing savage aswell besides these "WF elites" ya know? and im not fine waiting 1-2 months just for the hope of clearing content that is about to get old anyway. Now if only we had more than one raid instance then this wouldnt be so bad, but atm there is only Alex and nothing else.

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We only raid like 1 to 2 hours a week and we beat alex 2 savage last week. Still able to beat stuff with me playing paladin they seem fine to me. 50 or so more dps is not really going to make or break you. Its the dps job to put out the dps tanks not so much.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

We only raid like 1 to 2 hours a week and we beat alex 2 savage last week. Still able to beat stuff with me playing paladin they seem fine to me. 50 or so more dps is not really going to make or break you. Its the dps job to put out the dps tanks not so much.

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The whole point being that if the DPS are putting out their maximum and it's still not enough, you either 1) wait weeks until the DPS get more geared, or 2) try to squeeze out some damage from your tanks and healers.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

We only raid like 1 to 2 hours a week and we beat alex 2 savage last week. Still able to beat stuff with me playing paladin they seem fine to me. 50 or so more dps is not really going to make or break you. Its the dps job to put out the dps tanks not so much.

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Problem is that first 2 floors are more like small taste of what is coming, difficulty is on par with final coil and the real savage starts from A3S.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

We only raid like 1 to 2 hours a week and we beat alex 2 savage last week. Still able to beat stuff with me playing paladin they seem fine to me. 50 or so more dps is not really going to make or break you. Its the dps job to put out the dps tanks not so much.

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A1S and A2S are a cakewalk in the dps department. 3 and 4 need top dps from everyone, including tanks and healers. That 50 dps difference matters a lot.

This will require multiple posts and I apologize for that.
What I see from trying to raise this issue on my server is people immediately assume Paladins are jealous of Dark Knights now that Magic Damage raids are a thing.

This couldn't be farther from the truth in regards to my feelings. They have a niche and I'm okay with that, I'm okay with being the worst tank dps, I'm okay with being the weakest in mitigation with regards to current end-game. I'm glad they've added another tank and broke up the monotony of tanking. However, currently it seems as though that's all they've done what with lack luster "fluff" skills given to Paladin (they have uses, but as the Savage Floors are scaled our worth to the team is brought under severe scrutiny for a multitude of reasons.) It truthfully seems as though they wanted us to be the "support" tank, made one or two skills that confirmed this and then outright gave up after that. I'll do my best describing the issues I see with the "meta."

CONT.
It's been said on other forums (particularly BlueGartr,) Paladin nor Dark Knight compliment one another with skills to help the other (or the team in general) perform better given the extreme need for dps. Seems Dark Knight can hold its own with regards to dps, mp management, and tp management. Warrior, as usual has been at the forefront as a hybrid tank/dps which requires a ton of skill and confidence. Paladin has been, admittedly since the Warrior improvements, the inferior tank job (the introduction of Dark Knight has only increased the observable delta between them.) From what I can gather even with a party composition made entirely just to assist one of the two tanks issues, Alexander Savage Floor 3 seems to be our limit at this current time.

CONT.
Perhaps I'm wrong and I'm just not skilled enough as a PLD and my group isn't good enough either, but I feel as though the longer something isn't done to at least meet content half way in regards to the skills a PLD can bring to an encounter to overcome its faults, it'll become more obvious that tanks don't mesh with one another or the party. If Square-Enix intends for PLD to be the "support" tank, they should make us the support tank. I welcome the challenge using skills as a tank that could be compared to AST in terms of buffing the DPS within a 3 Yalm radius (I guess around 9 to 10 feet since I'm 'murican and "uneducated.") It would be a great way to help overcome my damage deficiencies and keep in line with the lore of being the lowest dps tank job while also confirming that I truly am a "support" tank. I also welcome the challenge of taking on a magic damage raid as a physical defense king since I already have 3 skills that help me tremendously in that regard.

CONT.
Like I've said, I'm okay with being as low dps and "inferior" as I am right now.I'm not okay with Square-Enix giving me support style skills that I can only use sometimes, that have arguably extremely limited use, while allowing me to stay so far behind on skillset as to provoke the community into telling me to "just wait" for better gear or some such nonsense. I'm also not only looking at current content, but future content where a DRK and PLD might be forced to cooperate with massive physical and magical damage to mitigate. PLD in that regard will still be severely lacking in skillset, dps, and overall ability. It kills me that I have to admit that I am the weakest link and there's nothing I can do about it besides level a WAR, take around a month to be even half as good as the ones that are here now and abandon a job I absolutely love because of what it does (and doesn't do.)

FINAL POST
I'm not asking to be Over-Powered, or even buffed for that matter. I just want to be considered, which is what Warriors needed and asked for in previous content. They saw the possibility for the job to do amazing things and it surely does. I see that for Paladin as well, just in a different sense of form and function. Thanks for your time, your consideration, and just the ability to allow us to voice our concerns with current and future content.

And this is where I'll come in to inform you that you can edit a post and not meet a character limit when editing a post.

But of course people are going to lay into you about making 5 posts rather than reading your reasonable perspective.

Welcome to the OF. :)

I'm sorry for being a moron in that regard, then. I suppose if it's a large issue a moderator will contact me and I'll make the appropriate changes. I don't even know if making the changes would still allow people to see posts I've deleted, so I guess I'll keep it the way it is (at the risk of looking like a coward deleting them, figuratively cutting my argument off at its knees.)