Give us back the old Paladin

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Originally Posted by Crimson1345

Paladins used to have res outside of battle originally but SE removed it since made it too easy in POTD lol.

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not even true,
only removed because it was a role skill from CNJ
and role skills got an overhaul in SB.

Anytime a change happens in the game one person is going to like it and the other will dislike. It's the nature of the beast for MMORPGs.

First of all back in 2.0 you need Cnj and Gladitor for Pld. It wasn't just a role skill originally. Second of all Pld's use what kind of magic? White magic. Like for example FFXI. Res was useable outside of battles. The POTD remark was a joke but on the more important thing though is Pld could res in POTD originally so it was true. If a tank lives and manages to stay alive from enemies and cannot reach a Return they could res the healer for example. This was in FF14 realm reborn. No need to take skills away honestly. Now its getting worse as classes are losing there identity even major websites are covering it. Some changes were nice like removing flash for our Aoe that was a good change to have acutal aoe abilities to help us maintain enemies better. Not all changes are bad but the pld overhaul and losing its identity. SE is trying to make things to simplified at the moment. FFXIV is losing its own identity. Some Moderaztion is ok but too much is never good for a game. They need to find the balance. As stated when using skills now on pld looks so clunky and broken compared on how it used to be before 6.3. Bring back pre 6.3 PLd and just buff potency and call it a day. They could took more time on the overhaul and have testing way more for it. Maybe waited till 7.0 for example. Tanks are meant to take dmg and should not need to have a burst 2 min window. Maybe War or Drks. Each tank should have there own purpose is all. Like DPS why would you pick RDM over Nin for example? Some classes feel way more fun to play or you feel like its more smoother to yourself. That feeling is being stripped away. As an 1.0 player FFXIV is taking a few wrong steps. Not hating the game or devs but hoping they realize this and do the right thing. Bring back the good FFXIV that drew players to it.

Hm...

I disagree. PLD right now is more responsive and more flexible than it's been since HW, and feels a lot more polished. I don't like that everything's bowing to the 2 min meta, but New PLD feels more functional than Old PLD did. Having one ranged GCD you can move up to 5 GCDs is far more useful than having 4 of them at once whether you need them or not that have a static location in the rotation and can't be relocated. Not having to deal with ANTI-intuitive cursed openers like popping FoF 15 seconds before the fight isn't a loss. Complexity is one thing, but clunk, anti-synergy, and anti-logic are not complexity, nor are they good design.

My big issues with the current design is it didn't address PLD's button bloat, even though it could have (instead adding slightly to it), FoF and Requiescat should be one ability (since you never use them separately anymore), Requiescat should be ranged at this point instead of melee (they even fixed GNB's Continuation because it was doing that same thing), Goring Blade has no purpose in existing, Expaciation and Circle of Scorn should honestly be combined together, Cover shouldn't cost Oath Gauge to use (and never should have), and...honestly that's about it.

Everything else in the kit works, there's a lot of flexibility now that it lacked before, the rotation's no less engaging than before (the rigid rotation of Old PLD was hardly anything to write home about and the new one offers more choice; more choice = more skill expression), and some of the unnecessary clunk has been removed. There's still some there that could use some work and PLD really needs to have the button bloat addressed, but aside from those two things (which were also problems with Old PLD), New PLD is shaping up to be an actual good rework. Rare as such a thing may be, they seem to have caught lightning more or less in their bottle this time.

Honestly the one thing the "rework" was set to achieve failed so hard. PLD right now is only worse in almost every way than it was before the changes in 6.2. Damage-wise, under buffs it's about the same as 6.18 PLD but in lower buff comps it's now the absolute lowest of all the tanks when before it was sitting rather comfortably just below DRK. The new rotation isn't engaging. 1-2-3-4-4-4 spam, use HS before you do a RA, and press boring blade and mash one button for burst, it requires 0 thought. In fact, the only GOOD thing to come out of the rework is DM Holy Circle so it can actually get some use in dungeons but that's literally it. Situational mitigation with veil would have been fine with the HS change and the fact you can hold HS for up to 5 GCDs but I can see why people might not like it and it being changed, we got extra buttons at a time where we're suffering from bloat and boring blade is by far the most egregious change as it feels just so out of place. They tried to make it feel more special with new VFX but it did **** all.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Everything else in the kit works, there's a lot of flexibility now that it lacked before, the rotation's no less engaging than before (the rigid rotation of Old PLD was hardly anything to write home about and the new one offers more choice; more choice = more skill expression), and some of the unnecessary clunk has been removed. There's still some there that could use some work and PLD really needs to have the button bloat addressed, but aside from those two things (which were also problems with Old PLD), New PLD is shaping up to be an actual good rework. Rare as such a thing may be, they seem to have caught lightning more or less in their bottle this time.

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The only choice you have now is when you use HS, that's it. Both rotations are just as rigid as each other, just you can shift one button now within the next 5 GCDs. Both rotations have mandatory atonement drops to fit all your buttons in. The old rotation was rather damage consistent throughout so you could do 2 different openers for killtime/mechanic dependant things. One was early Requiescat which helped align with the burst design of jobs and requires a ~17s countdown timer, the other opener was the "standard" opener which was slightly less optimal but allowed for you to be flexible with your Req. timings for if you needed to move out of melee range to help your team with a mechanic or if the boss was going to jump and required no timer.

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Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

Honestly the one thing the "rework" was set to achieve failed so hard. PLD right now is only worse in almost every way than it was before the changes in 6.2. Damage-wise, under buffs it's about the same as 6.18 PLD but in lower buff comps it's now the absolute lowest of all the tanks when before it was sitting rather comfortably just below DRK.

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PLD was the lowest tank DPS wise before the changes as well. Also, Goring Blade's VFX have not changed.

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Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

Both rotations have mandatory atonement drops to fit all your buttons in.

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Current PLD does NOT have mandatory Atonement drops. Your DPS is all but identical whether you choose to drop them or not.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

PLD was the lowest tank DPS wise before the changes as well. Also, Goring Blade's VFX have not changed.



Current PLD does NOT have mandatory Atonement drops. Your DPS is all but identical whether you choose to drop them or not.

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I meant to put .28 not .18 and I did fact check myself and yes you are right goring did not recieve an animation change, that must have been me huffing copium on release hoping they did SOMETHING to it. Also yes, you are right the atonement drops are not mandatory but they are if you want to optimize. As for PLD damage, the only fight PLD performed worse on was P8S phase 2 specifically. Every other fight besides P8S P2 my point stands as that's just the job interaction with the downtime of the fight.

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Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

The only choice you have now is when you use HS, that's it.

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Which is MORE CHOICE than you had before. Not only that, for an "only", it's a pretty big deal. You can use it any time for increased uptime during disengage periods, and it increases PLD's sustain consistency. WAR, DRK, and GNB all heal as part of their base rotation. Old PLD did not. It was, in fact, the ONLY Tank that did not. All of its health regeneration/sustain was packed into Requiescat, unless you were being bad and using Clemency. Moreover, the rotation is no less engaging than before. "Ooooh, you don't press 1-2-5 after 4-4-4!!" Meh. Color me unimpressed. The upkeep on the DoT was hardly engaging, especially since it was automatic as part of your standard rotation, unlike BRD or the Healers where they have to actually go out of their way to apply/maintain them (not often I'll say Healers have more engaging DoT gameplay than something else, but this was one such case)

Being able to shift your disengage by 5 GCDs, or around 15 seconds of time (including its own GCD) is pretty significant for timing fight mechanics, something you COULDN'T do under Old PLD. Moreover, hardcasting HS isn't as much of a DPS loss as it was before, because there's no Goring DoT to drift, which was bad. This collectively makes the Job far more flexible in combat.

And, as Mikey_R already corrected, there is no mandatory Atonement drop under New PLD. If you want to hyper optimize, you can do it, but the math-heads have done the number crunching and said the difference is so negligible to not even bother with it; something those types of people generally don't say, meaning it truly is negligible. Besides, if you liked Old PLD, then you can hardly complain about that.

The Old PLD forced you to do one of five (FIVE, not two) openers depending on what you were fighting. New PLD requires only one, not because it's less flexible, but because it's MORE flexible and doesn't NEED nearly half a dozen openers to adapt to encounters.

PLD before was the worst DPS Job. That hasn't changed, and it will likely get some potency buffs to bring it up a bit now that they've made the changes to the rotation. The new rotation is no less engaging than the old one, and arguably a BIT more engaging since it's less hyper-mechanical and anti-intuitive and actually has a little bit of flexibility - some choice is better and more skill expression than NO choice. Old burst phase also required 0 thought; Old PLD's burst phase was hardly some galaxy brain operation - you hit Req, HSx4, Confetior x4 (since Swords was the same button). That's hardly more thought required than the new burst.

I can see some people complaining - because people will literally complain the sky is falling about any change at all (and also NO changes being done when they think a Job needs changes) - so that's something that's going to happen and there's no way to avoid it. But objectively, New PLD is better than Old PLD. All the complaints against it, Old PLD had and had worse. The only way New PLD is worse is it has one more button, but given PLD was already button bloated, that was a problem with Old PLD, and New PLD can fix that by just folding Goring's damage into Swords and combining FoF and Requiescat; I suspect one or both of those things to happen in the future. And at least it got something USEFUL, its "missing" mitigation.

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Understand, there ARE such things as "bad reworks".

This PLD one is not one of them. In almost every way, it's an improvement. In the few ways it isn't, Old PLD had the same problems and so was no better.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Understand, there ARE such things as "bad reworks".

This PLD one is not one of them. In almost every way, it's an improvement. In the few ways it isn't, Old PLD had the same problems and so was no better.

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Aren't healers complaining at how little they have to heal now? At least every friend I have who heals in savage/ultimate says that. It's definitely better now than it was in the pandaemonium first tier with how much tanks need to be healed because of DoTs but adding more self healing only takes away from healers. Second, what do you mean healers have more engaging DoT gameplay than old PLD? Healers just press one button every ~30s and call it a day at least PLD had it baked into the rotation and it flowed well. Sure you can argue the old burst was just as easy but it at least punished harder for messing up unlike now how you can only mess up but using a physical GCD (except boring blade) during blades combo. Also at least the filler required a bit of thought of knowing when to drop the atonement and when to do your dot and if you do make a mistake, how to correct it. Now it's literally just 1-2-3-4-4-4 spam and that's not fun to me. PLD absolutely was not the worst DPS out of the tanks before, that was WAR and this is easily verifiable. In Ex4, PLD was top dps of the tanks (even though extremes are honestly getting super easy damage checks). P7s? 2nd highest tank. Every other fight than P8S P2? just below DRK. Now? Dead last in every fight by a fair bit so if that's not a nerf I really don't know what is. It performed fine as a tank in and of itself it just had a natural drift which set itself apart from every other job in their burst patterns but the lack of losing too much damage during filler more than made up for it. As I mentioned above, PLD only suffered in P8S Phase 2 because of the timing of the forced downtime there. It underperformed in DSR too for the same reason but it was only a little behind WAR. At least I think we can both agree that we disagree with how we feel about the changes because personally, they just stripped PLD of anything that made it unique or interesting and turned into "GNB we have at home" but that's just the DM change and the burst structure that makes it feel like that. They're going too far with the homogenization of jobs and I really hope they do something about it in 7.0 rather than double down on it.

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Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

Aren't healers complaining at how little they have to heal now? At least every friend I have who heals in savage/ultimate says that. It's definitely better now than it was in the pandaemonium first tier with how much tanks need to be healed because of DoTs but adding more self healing only takes away from healers. Second, what do you mean healers have more engaging DoT gameplay than old PLD? Healers just press one button every ~30s and call it a day at least PLD had it baked into the rotation and it flowed well. Sure you can argue the old burst was just as easy but it at least punished harder for messing up unlike now how you can only mess up but using a physical GCD (except boring blade) during blades combo. Also at least the filler required a bit of thought of knowing when to drop the atonement and when to do your dot and if you do make a mistake, how to correct it. Now it's literally just 1-2-3-4-4-4 spam and that's not fun to me. PLD absolutely was not the worst DPS out of the tanks before, that was WAR and this is easily verifiable.

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Yes and no, healers are complaining about the amount of downtime of pressing the same DPS button in contrast to the amount of time spent actively healing (which are mostly done instantaneously with oGCDS and without much thought required). Usually that leads to 2 points of discussion - add more DPS-oriented skills to keep engagement or add more damage to heal. Renathras is one of the few who oppose giving more DPS rotations to healers. This is a more recent thread if you want to see where that discussion is going.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Yes and no, healers are complaining about the amount of downtime of pressing the same DPS button in contrast to the amount of time spent actively healing (which are mostly done instantaneously with oGCDS and without much thought required). Usually that leads to 2 points of discussion - add more DPS-oriented skills to keep engagement or add more damage to heal. Renathras is one of the few who oppose giving more DPS rotations to healers. This is a more recent thread if you want to see where that discussion is going.

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I see, thank you for the clarification. I don't play much of a healer myself but as I said I have friends who do and that's just something to they say a lot so I naturally assumed it was the case. I can't exactly speak for healer mains on this one but the thread looks like an interesting read so I'll definitely check that out.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Yes and no, healers are complaining about the amount of downtime of pressing the same DPS button in contrast to the amount of time spent actively healing (which are mostly done instantaneously with oGCDS and without much thought required). Usually that leads to 2 points of discussion - add more DPS-oriented skills to keep engagement or add more damage to heal. Renathras is one of the few who oppose giving more DPS rotations to healers. This is a more recent thread if you want to see where that discussion is going.

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One of the few on the forums. Though even there, there are a number of people with the "Either give us more to damage or give us more to heal (or both)" camps. Most of the people that are "more DPS buttons" only are so because they genuinely feel that the game design can't support a GCD healing model. Thing is, it used to, so it clearly can. It's more a matter of if the community would adapt to it...which it probably can, since it managed to adapt from it just fine.

I'm actually in favor of a hybrid approach where each Healer is given a different rotation (one like today probably WHM, one based on DoTs probably SCH, one based on GCD buffs probably AST, and one based on non-DoT damage rotation like RDM or SMN probably SGE); so I'm not, strictly speaking, opposed to more DPS buttons. I'm just opposed to them across the board. I don't favor trading one form of homogenization for another, with the other being even more divorced from the concept of Healer than the present. :)

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Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

Aren't healers complaining at how little they have to heal now?

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Some are.

Many aren't.

This last tier nearly broke a bunch of groups because the Healers weren't used to the spicier damage from all the bleeds and were having to adapt to actually needing to use some GCD heals, which they'd gotten used to not using.

Ultimates are weird, since the healing is HYPER scripted (moreso than any other encounters in the game) and comes in very exact, but heavy bursts. It's why an AST could solo heal the last one.

By "more engaging DoT gameplay" - If you apply something as part of your standard rotation, it's not engaging, especially if it's rigid. Old PLD and still DRG both have/had DoTs that area applied as part of their standard rotation. They don't have to track a DoT timer to know when to refresh it, they simply do their standard rotation and the DoT is applied. Both Goring and Swords DoTs were applied this way. If you were simply doing your rotation, your DoT had complete uptime on Old PLD. There was no chance of your DoT falling off unless you deviated from your rotation, since the DoT was tied to the rotation. It wasn't a separate button, it wasn't a timer you watched for when it was about to fall off to reapply it. WAR Storm's Eye was more engaging than Old PLD DoTs, because Storm's Eye isn't part of WAR's standard rotation (Storm's Path is), meaning they had to at least keep an eye on its timer to know when to get ready to refresh it. Old PLD's main two DoTs, Goring and Swords, were both braindead since they required no thought to apply. The only thought was in Circle ofScorn (which you used/still use on CD or you were wrong) and in remembering to use FoF before the first Goring of your physical phase so its buff would capture both DoTs.

The DoTs themselves weren't engaging, since you did nothing special to apply them and you weren't tracking when they fell off. There was no risk of them falling off unless you weren't doing your rotation at all, in which case you had bigger problems.

Contrast Healer DoTs, which while not terribly engaging either, were still more engaging since they could fall off. They weren't part of your standard rotation (insomuch as Healers...have a rotation), so they could fall off and you had/have to pay attention to their timers to know when to refresh them, and have to refresh them manually and deliberately. It's not an automatic part of "Well, if you're spamming Glare correctly, your DoT will be up 100% of the time without you having to do anything", which is what Old PLD's DoTs were.

That is - by being "baked into the rotation", it wasn't engaging, since the DoT application and risk of it falling off were nonexistent unless you simply weren't doing your rotation.

"the old burst was just as easy"

That's my point, yes. The punishment is just an accessibility argument, not an argument of good design. Being punishing isn't inherently god-tier design.

The filler didn't require thought, though, that's my point. The entire rotation was Royal, Goring (FoF just before -3), Royal, Goring, Swords, repeat ad nausea. That's not terribly engaging compared to New PLD, with the difference being New PLD actually gives the player agency. Where you move your HS to, for example, gives you agency in how the fight plays out (both in terms of sustain and disengages), where Old PLD didn't. The rigidity of Old PLD meant you had two options: Doing it right or doing it wrong. There was no variation. The only "choice" you had in an entire 2 minute or so rotation was "do I drop an Atonement from the first Royal or the second Royal?", which was less agency than New PLD has.

PLD was the worst Tank in terms of damage before. Recall that WAR got buffs in 6.1 and 6.2, that put it ahead of PLD. PLD also had a wider spread (variance), while WAR's (due to being easier) was much narrower. PLD _IS_ doing less damage now, which I suspect will be addressed with some kind of potency buffs in the next patch, but PLD wasn't doing god-tier damage before. It was back of the pack before the change. P1S (using it because it was well before the patch and people aren't running and parsing it in modern gear), the first PLD in the list, that is, the top PLD in damage in the fight records, is...well, I'd like to tell you, but I went through 10 pages, the top 1000, and they were all DRK and GNB. There is not a single WAR or PLD in the top 1000 for P1S.

...okay, I kept going. 1168, page 12, is the top PLD.

P4 phase 2 the top PLD? 537 on page 6. PLD's median report was only a smidge above WAR's, as was its absolute 100 max, but its low point was also well below WAR's. PLD's upper quartile (75%) was about even with DRK and GNB's median (50%). And that's for all of P1-4S.

PLD is also the bottom of Ex4 per the current spread. WAR (oddly enough, though I guess it makes sense as that fight's hectic and WAR is easy to keep chugging along with) is the top, then GNB, DRK, then PLD (though GNB's 100 is actually a big higher than DRK's which is a bit higher than WAR's, which is...higher than PLD's). We get the same picture in Ex3, just with GNB and DRK swapping places.

No, PLD was not topping the charts before by any stretch of the imagination. You may be able to find individual PLDs that were top for specific moments in time, but merely clicking over and looking at the bar graphs OR the long-form rankings, the truth reveals itself.

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Now, don't mistake my argument:

New PLD isn't perfect, and Old PLD had a different "feel", which it's valid to complain about if you enjoyed the feel of it. I'm not being sarcastic when I say this. Feel is a good chunk of how enjoyable a Job is to play, balance, numbers, and mechanics be damned. A Job can be the best in the world but not feel good, and it won't be fun. A Job can, conversely, be doing poorly in a balance sense but just feel good to play.

But in objective terms, Old PLD was not just fine or anything. It was not topping the charts, it wasn't in a happy place, and the nuance was often not actual choice but a binary "doing it right or doing it wrong" situation.

Now, as a person that advocated for the old WoW talent trees before they were taken away, even such illusions of choice can sometimes be good for a class or good for a game. So I don't want to discount that. But objectively speaking, New PLD does actually offer more true choice and agency to the player than Old PLD did. It offers more skill expression, it just doesn't punish failure as harshly.

Old PLD performed fine as a Tank, but so did every other Tank, in terms of being able to keep agro and mostly in terms of mitigation. Old PLD actually had a slightly weaker personal mitigation suite (was "missing" one and another was based on block, which didn't work against bleeds) than the other Tanks, but it was still generally functional. Though it was bottom tier in terms of DPS, which is largely all people care about once you've met the bar of "don't die to tankbusters and can keep agro", which every Tank can.

I also have my own complaints with New PLD, such as several of the abilities seem tacked on "just to keep them" (I have a similar issue with New SMN where the entire Energy Drain/Aetherflow/Ruin 4 just seems tacked on legacy and is dissonant with the new design...but in that case, New SMN has such a slim kit already that removing them would remove what relatively few abilities it has overall). Like I see no reason for FoF and Requiescat to be two separate buttons (since you'll always use them together) or why Goring Blade...even still exists.

But on the whole, it wasn't a bad rework.

I do agree that Homogenization is an issue, and the 2 minute meta is driving that hard right now. Healers still have that worse than Tanks, though. I guess I just don't feel that the Tanks are the same playing them. Maybe it's just me, though. DRK is the only one I don't play, but WAR, PLD, and GNB all feel different to me to play. Any Job in the game can be distilled to "button that does damage, resource spender, buttons that don't do damage", but at an actual, functional analysis level, the three all play differently from one another (as differently as you're going to get and still be Tanks in a fantasy setting, anyway...)

I highly disagree that PLD is a GNB clone. Honestly, it feels closer to WAR to me than it does to GNB. People say it's the same because it builds a resource to spend, but GNB's stocks to 3 and it has 3 different ways (4 if we include AOE...let's not) to spend it vs PLD's 1 + 3 where there is only one way (again, ignoring AOE) to spend each. Not to mention two of the hallmarks of GNB play are that it has a super rigid rotation (more akin to DRG and, honestly, OLD PLD was more akin to GNB in that sense) and a fast pace, high APM rotation. PLD lacks both of those. Old PLD was closer to GNB in the rigid rotation department, and New PLD doesn't have a higher APM or pacing than Old PLD did. PLD is still thin on oGCDs...which I honestly like. "Builder-spender" is hardly GNB exclusive, as WAR has the same thing. Indeed, DRK is the one Tank that DOESN'T strictly work that way...because it doesn't build in the same way.

PLD had buffs in 6.2 which is when the new tier released making the old one locked out. You are comparing data from a pre-buffed old PLD to a buffed old PLD. In the current spread yes, PLD IS doing the worst because they nerfed the job from what it was in 6.28 going into 6.3, which is what I am referring to. To get a better comparison, you look at data from current tier fights and compare them to how they perform after changes within the same tier/timeframe. If there was no data for this, I would not have made a point about it. But just to amuse you, endsinger, hydaelyn, zodiark in patch 6.28, PLD was last overall because of its ranging damage spread because the job was easy to mess up on and those who actually cared for the fights or even going out of their way to log them stopped doing so after 6.1 because there was no point in actually doing so (look at number of logs and you'll see what I mean) and in the top-end of 95+ (you know, when people do their rotations somewhat properly and don't die), PLD performed 2nd highest or 3rd highest. In 6.3? Dead last in endsinger and zodiark but not with Hydaelyn. Asphodelos is a locked zone so no new logs can be uploaded currently and can't recieve data for 6.28. My point is that it WAS in a good position damage-wise and they nuked it.

Also yes you're right. It's rather disingenuous of me to call PLD a GNB clone (not like its entire burst structure is basically 1:1 with GNB- oh wait, Confiteor and Blades=GF and Double Down, boring blade=sonic break without the dot, CoS=Bow Shock, Atonement=Burst Strike, DM HS=Bullets without the gauge that lets you stack them) when in reality it's the offspring of all the tanks combined into a disaster of a job. It has the MP management of DRK and the simplicity of WAR and basically everything GNB has (but worse).

"But in objective terms, Old PLD was not just fine or anything. It was not topping the charts, it wasn't in a happy place, and the nuance was often not actual choice but a binary "doing it right or doing it wrong" situation." So there should be no difficulty in the jobs at all then? I kinda liked how there was a clear distinction between a PLD who knew what they were doing and a PLD who didn't and now the only thing seperating them is "who can crit/dhit more" because the job requires less thought than it did before and you actually have to go out of your way to mess up on new PLD. If I'm going into a savage or an ultimate I'd like to be able to know that I cleared because I knew how to play my job as well as doing the mechanics correctly not just doing mechanics while doing something so incredibly simple that it's almost mind numbing.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I highly disagree that PLD is a GNB clone.
Not to mention two of the hallmarks of GNB play are that it has a super rigid rotation (more akin to DRG and, honestly, OLD PLD was more akin to GNB in that sense) and a fast pace, high APM rotation.

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This is probably a vibe thing so feel free to disagree here, but if we consider the following:

PLD Filler 1-2-3-4-4-4 is essentially two of GNB 1-2-3 (without the benefit of solid Barrel's healing/shield)
Goring Blade is Sonic Break (without the DoT)
Req is a damaging Bloodfest (with a less interesting resource generated in "Confetior Ready")
FoF is just no Mercy
Confetti is like Double Down
Blade of Faith Combo is like Gnashing Fang pre-Continuation that happens half as often.
(DM) Holy Spirit is Burst Strike with a cap of 1
Spirits Within/CoS are Blasting Zone/Bow Shock

If divine might stacked to three and they added a Holy Continuation that procced after Sword Combo or Divine Might Holy Spirit, it would be almost _exactly_ like a more flexible Gunbreaker.
(Yes, I am aware that you could probably do this with any of the tanks, but PLD and GNB feel especially similar in this regard)

I think considering "strictness" and "high APM" as a Hallmark of Gunbreaker play is fine and all, but that's why it's not a "gunbreaker clone" but instead a "more flexible, half-baked gunbreaker" (like a level 60 gunbreaker). It's a point of comparison similar to how post 5.0 DRK felt like a WAR with more oGCDs.

It's fine if you don't see it that way, but from my end I have my hotbars set up (mostly) the same between the two jobs so PLD just plays like a lesser version of GNB.

The old rotation had a lot of room for improvement, but it was satisfying to have about 45 seconds per minute of buffed GCDs where each felt impactful. Learning fights and how to min-max each of the buffs accordingly was the skill expression (I would argue that the fight by fight openers were 100% skill expression. The naive rotation for PLD was absolutely "good enough" for most content (yes, even savage prog).

The new 6.3 version, while flexible, has minimal skill expression since every fight will play out exactly the same. Divine Might doesn't provide skill expression, it just gives a slightly more damage and mobility than slide-casting previously. With only 5 meaningful GCDs per minute (Goring + Confetti combo under FoF) the other 75% of our rotation is just filler with minimal DPS impact. It doesn't feel at all like adding any more mastery or skill expression to me.

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Originally Posted by nia_saeli

This is probably a vibe thing so feel free to disagree here, but if we consider the following:

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Right, but that's what I mean about if you pull things into too much of a vacuum, everything feels the same.

For example, what if we looked at it this way:

PLD Filler 1-2-3-4-4-4 is essentially two of WAR 1-2-3 (without the benefit of Storm's Path's healing)
Goring Blade is Primal Rend (without the gap closer)
Req is a damaging Inner Release (with a less interesting resource generated in "Confetior Ready")
FoF is just Infuriate (with only one charge)
Confetti is like Nascent Chaos
Blade of Faith Combo is like Fell Cleave spam under Inner Release (indeed, it's MORE like this than it is Gnashing Fang)
(DM) Holy Spirit is Fell Cleave when used to prevent overcapping Beast Gauge
Spirits Within/CoS are Upheval

...indeed, some parts (Req/Confet Inner Release/Fellspam) are PLD being more like WAR than like GNB.

And unlike GNB, WAR and PLD have a similar APM.

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But that's my point: People are zooming out as far as the first TOP clear group and saying PLD and GNB look the same, when PLD from that distance looks just as much (if not more) like WAR. It plays more like WAR and has a cadence more similar to WAR, with a similar APM. And, personally, I find APM determines how a Job feels to me more than most other things.

From my end, I have all 4 of my Tanks (even the DRK I'm leveling still) and half my Melee set up the same way. And all four of my Healers are almost set up the same ways. That's not really a PLD/GNB thing, I don't think.

...but I'm not using that to say they're all the same. NIN and DRK arguably play very similar - a busy burst with lots of weaves followed by a really lax "filler" downtime period until the next burst phase - but no one's arguing that DRK or NIN are clones of each other, even though they have a lot of overlap in playstyle. Hell, NIN and WAR do! I think when people zoom that far out to make comparisons, you run into the problem of almost every Job in the game, and almost every design possible, will ultimately appear very similar.

This is because there are only so many kinds of damage rotation profiles: Proc based, priority system, builder-spender, resource based. Almost every damage rotation can, in some form or another, be put under the umbrella of one of those four. And there's often overlap between them, such as proc based leading to a priority system (RDM) or that a resource can be set up in a builder-spender system (like Arcane Mage used to be in WoW with its mana). But those aren't meaningful ways to look at things, because at that "altitude", everything looks the same anyway.

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Again: I get some people liked Old PLD. I'm not speaking against that.

What I'm speaking against is that Old PLD was good or that New PLD is bad; New PLD offers more flexibility, choice, agency, and skill expression than Old PLD did. The main differences are that Old PLD was less intuitive (you HAD to read guides to play it well), was more clunky (so "mastering clunk" was required to play it well), and was more punishing to failure (so you were more actively griefing your party if you fat-fingered something on Old PLD). And I know it's a feel thing...but I NEVER felt Old PLD's buffed GCDs "felt impactful". Nothing "felt impactful" about landing Goring under FoF.

The new version is more flexible and has far more skill expression, since you have actual choices, and those choices aren't "Do you wish to play wrong today?" The entire rotation before was filler outside of Requiescat, so that's really no different. Old PLD didn't feel like adding any mastery or skill expression to me. But that's because I've never considered "mastery of clunk" to be skill. I consider it more "fighting the controls". A lot of old games were considered hard if they were challenging but had tight controls. Stuff like Battletoads. But then you had games like Superman 64, which were hard to beat because they were just so bad with such horrible controls. Then you had the games that were easy but also had good controls that were smooth as butter and a joy to play, and so were fun, stuff like Kingdom Hearts, I guess.

I don't mind Jobs being like Battletoads (some being like that are good for the game, imo), I like Jobs being like Kingdom Hearts. I'm not really in favor of Jobs being like Superman 64. :)

Don't mistake me, though:

I don't like homogenization, and would be fine if Old PLD remained. The 2 min meta is killing the game, imo, since it's forcing all Job designs into a 2 min burst cycle system, which prevents a lot of other types of Jobs (DoTs, sustained damage, etc) from being viable.

I'm just saying that, objectively, New PLD is actually NOT a botched rework, and is a decent Job in vacuum (e.g. if they had added an entirely new Tank and it was New PLD, it would be fine; I just don't like things being taken away from players that did enjoy them, felt the same way about SMN, too), and it's not a GNB clone any-more than WAR is.

EDIT:

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Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

PLD had buffs in 6.2 which is when the new tier released making the old one locked out. You are comparing data from a pre-buffed old PLD to a buffed old PLD.

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No, I'm comparing actual data, not cherry-picked data.

It's kind of weird because there was no new Savage released in 6.2, but if we're talking PLD's overall performance, that shouldn't matter anyway. All the data agrees that PLD was on the bottom, either slightly above or slightly below WAR (when WAR wasn't top, which it was in Ex4 - the example you brought up had PLD at the bottom!). The P1-4S data says this. The Ex3 data says this. The Ex4 data says this. Hell, the Aglaia data says this.

Literally every piece of commonly run content in 6.2 had PLD at the bottom in terms of damage. I can't find a single boss fight that shows PLD consistently topping the charts. Can you find any one and actually give me a pointer to it? Because I can't find any. I can find a few isolated cases where a PLD was topping the charts for brief periods, but those seem to be highly volatile and not representative of the Job as a whole. All the general metrics say the opposite, and I can find just as many individual cases where PLD is not the top Job. If Savages, Extremes, Alliance Raids, and Ultimates are all saying the same thing, I'm sorry, but I don't see how you can be right.

I DID say that New PLD seems to be doing even less damage than Old PLD (which is in direct opposition to the goal of the rework, meaning they'll probably patch it to boost its burst), but there's not a single site or fight I can find where PLD was the Tank Job topping the others overall.

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It's rather disingenuous of me to call PLD a GNB clone ... when in reality it's the offspring of all the tanks combined into a disaster of a job.

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You could just as easily say they're the offspring of PLD. As I point out above, WAR and PLD are actually more similar than PLD and GNB in a number of ways. Inner Release is far more similar to Requiescat than Bloodfest is.

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In the current spread yes, PLD IS doing the worst because they nerfed the job from what it was in 6.28 going into 6.3, which is what I am referring to.

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Yes, but this is what I'm saying you're wrong about:

PLD was ALREADY the worst in 6.28. That's why they even did a rework in the first place. Why do you think they reworked PLD and not WAR, GNB, or DRK?

The simple answer is the obvious one - because PLD was doing worst in the meta and they were trying to prevent it being shut out for the entire expansion until they do...whatever they're going to do in 7.0.

It wasn't in a good position in 6.28. That's WHY they nuked it.

Note that WAR wasn't doing fantastic either, but they buffed its potencies and it was doing decently. PLD was not and had a wider spread, meaning people below 75% were often doing less damage than the average WAR was.

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So there should be no difficulty in the jobs at all then?

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I hate it when people do this bad faith argument nonsense. "When did you stop beating your wife?"

I ask you, where in...

"But in objective terms, Old PLD was not just fine or anything. It was not topping the charts, it wasn't in a happy place, and the nuance was often not actual choice but a binary "doing it right or doing it wrong" situation."

...are the words "there should be no difficulty in jobs"?

I didn't even MENTION difficulty. I mentioned that there was no choice - YOUR ARGUMENT - and instead of making an argument for how you thought there was, you asked me when I stopped beating my wife.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Right, but that's what I mean about if you pull things into too much of a vacuum, everything feels the same.
No, I'm comparing actual data, not cherry-picked data.

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You're not, you're comparing something completely different. If I was cherry picking data, I would only choose the fights that make PLD look good. Just because PLD had a shaky start at the beginning of EW until 6.2, does not mean PLD was in a bad state in 6.28 just before 6.3 was released.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

PLD was ALREADY the worst in 6.28. That's why they even did a rework in the first place. Why do you think they reworked PLD and not WAR, GNB, or DRK?

I didn't even MENTION difficulty. I mentioned that there was no choice - YOUR ARGUMENT - and instead of making an argument for how you thought there was, you asked me when I stopped beating my wife.

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PLD absolutely was NOT the worst in 6.28, if you did your rotation properly you'd be around DRK damage and if you've experienced players who can't get that high then that's not the jobs fault, it's quite literally (and I do not mean this in the memey sense) a skill issue. People found PLD "too complex" that they messed up their rotations and started to fall off hence why the spread of dps was so big. PLD got the rework because of its reliance on even spread of damage which set it apart from other jobs because it didn't fit well into the meta so they made it a "bursty" job to fit. Keyword here being well because yes WAR still underperformed that is true but PLD was absolutely fine where it was in damage, it just didnt give that much out during raid buffs due to its natural drift and different nature to its burst structure. The only people who suffered taking a PLD over GNB/DRK were damage buff givers like DNC but even then the difference would be (from what I have seen going from 6.28 to 6.3) ~30-40 dps gain for their respective buffs. That doesn't even cover the amount of dps PLD lost going into 6.3.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I hate it when people do this bad faith argument nonsense. "When did you stop beating your wife?"

I ask you, where in...

"But in objective terms, Old PLD was not just fine or anything. It was not topping the charts, it wasn't in a happy place, and the nuance was often not actual choice but a binary "doing it right or doing it wrong" situation."

...are the words "there should be no difficulty in jobs"?

I didn't even MENTION difficulty. I mentioned that there was no choice - YOUR ARGUMENT - and instead of making an argument for how you thought there was, you asked me when I stopped beating my wife.

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First off, that's the most atrocious analogy I have ever seen. Second, everything you have been saying has been heavily implying that you don't want difficulty so that is an error on my part if you didn't mean to make it come across like that. While difficulty is subjective, my idea of "rotational difficulty" is a rotation which is rigid enough to where you can either do it right or you can do it wrong and actually requires you to think so that's just my interpretation. There can exist nuances within a rigid rotation like openers or how to recover if you mess up or if you should DoT or get some instant damage out. If anything new PLD has less nuance than old PLD. The rotation is just as rigid with the exception of DM HS.

PLD remains the least played tank across the tier, with 20k recorded parses for 6.3 compared with the ~30k of drk/gnb/war. In fact, it seems that the rework has had the effect of increasing Warrior's playrate rather than paladin - rising from ~45k to gnb/drk's ~60k and pld's 30k in the 6.2 patches.

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Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

You're not, you're comparing something completely different. If I was cherry picking data, I would only choose the fights that make PLD look good. Just because PLD had a shaky start at the beginning of EW until 6.2, does not mean PLD was in a bad state in 6.28 just before 6.3 was released.

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You literally only chose ONE fight which you thought did make PLD look good. And the thing is, it doesn't even do that - looking up that very fight shows PLD was not at the top. I can't find any point in time that it was. And all other data says that wasn't true. It does, in fact, mean that PLD was in a bad state in 6.28. Again, that was entirely the reason it got a rework.

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Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

PLD absolutely was NOT the worst in 6.28,

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Of the Tanks, across all players clearing any level of content (Savage bosses, Extreme bosses, 24 man bosses, and Ultimates), PLD was the worst or functionally tied (with WAR, usually) for the worst. There was no point that I've been able to find where PLD was the best, and you've not provided any. When DRK wasn't the best, it was almost always GNB, not PLD. And in the few cases neither were (Ex4), it was WAR that was the best and PLD was still the worst. I can't find any data supporting PLD being the best at any point in EW. In fact, all of EW, people had been complaining about how PLD was worse than even WAR.

PLD was not "absolutely fine" by any stretch at all. Even before the rework, it was getting routine potency boosts in the prior patches. Because it was not "fine", it was weak.

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Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

First off, that's the most atrocious analogy I have ever seen.

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It's the most common example used to show a Loaded Question Fallacy has occurred: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

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A loaded question is a form of complex question that contains a controversial assumption (e.g., a presumption of guilt).[1]

Such questions may be used as a rhetorical tool: the question attempts to limit direct replies to be those that serve the questioner's agenda.[2] The traditional example is the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Whether the respondent answers yes or no, they will admit to having a wife and having beaten her at some time in the past. Thus, these facts are presupposed by the question, and in this case an entrapment, because it narrows the respondent to a single answer, and the fallacy of many questions has been committed.

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Your question, "So there should be no difficulty in the jobs at all then?", is a Loaded Question/Many Questions Fallacy, since it's supposing that in suggesting Old PLD was not fine is somehow also suggesting there should be no difficulty in Jobs, and/or suggesting my position has been that there should be no difficulty in Jobs, a position I've never held.

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Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

Second, everything you have been saying has been heavily implying that you don't want difficulty

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Howso?

Where have I ever said - because I've never implied, much less heavily - that I don't want difficulty. I even have said that difficulty is good (my Battletoads example), but that clunk is not the same thing as difficulty/challenge. You read something into my post that didn't exist, and then attacked that rather than...the words I actually said.

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Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

While difficulty is subjective, my idea of "rotational difficulty" is a rotation which is rigid enough to where you can either do it right or you can do it wrong and actually requires you to think so that's just my interpretation.

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And that's fine. But it's subjective. Many people like DRG and find it easier than any of the proc or bursty Jobs. They find BRD overwhelming and NIN too busy. But DRG is the one that has the rigid rotation. Likewise, "requires you to think" is subjective. To me, once you had Old PLD's rotation down, there was zero thought. It was identical every time. There was NEVER a point in Old PLD where you thought "Should I use Royal here or Goring here?". If your DoT was up, you used Royal. If your DoT was falling off, you used Goring. There's no thought there. The static rotation was Royal Goring Royal Goring Swords repeat. The only deviations where when the boss became untargetable and/or add phases...which just caused a "record skip" after which you went to the same rotation again. If a boss was about to be untargetable, that was the only time there was any deviation from that rotation, and that's true of literally every other Job (even Healers; if their DoT is about to fall off but the boss is going untargetable soon, skipping out on the Dia to cast a few more Glares is actually the DPS gain). That doesn't require you to think. That requires you to rote memorize and regurgitate. It's like the difference between a history exam and a physics exam.

Which isn't a BAD thing - some players enjoy that kind of gameplay, and as I said, I think there should be Jobs in the game for them.

I'm just saying it wasn't objectively better and New PLD isn't objectively worse other than it needs a balance pass on its potencies, which I suspect it will get in 6.35.

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Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

The rotation is just as rigid with the exception of DM HS.

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...which is why the New PLD rotation...is objectively less rigid... <_<

I didn't say it was a LOT less rigid, though it's that, too - for example, casting a non-buffed HS in place of an Atonement is only a minor DPS loss and so is arguably less rigidity, whereas under old PLD, it was simply disallowed since it would throw off your entire rotation and push your Requiescat phase; not to mention you didn't get the one "free" HS.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

PLD remains the least played tank across the tier, with 20k recorded parses for 6.3 compared with the ~30k of drk/gnb/war. In fact, it seems that the rework has had the effect of increasing Warrior's playrate rather than paladin - rising from ~45k to gnb/drk's ~60k and pld's 30k in the 6.2 patches.

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Yup. Though the exact reasoning is kind of elusive.

The people that liked Old PLD surely don't like WAR more (seems they'd move to GNB or DRK instead, if anything), though I guess WAR does a bit more damage?

As I say, I think they should have left Old PLD in the game, so...

I was wrong with my perception of what you said and I apologize for that. As for damage numbers, the only fight PLD was on par with WAR was in DSR. The GNB/DRK meta was never going to change even with the 6.3 changes but that's just it; old PLD didn't even need to be meta, it just needed to be fun while also not a hinderance like it was in 6.0 and that's exactly what it was in 6.28. For individual damage values, ex4 in 6.28 across all percentage values, PLD was top but for absolute maximum yes it would be beaten by DRK and GNB because of the 60/120 burst meta but that doesn't mean PLD was that far behind in absolute maximum damage. GNB had 7256.75dps and PLD was just below with 7219.8 dps. P7S DRK had 7473dps and PLD was 7524dps. It only started to fall off if you look at aDPS values but that's only because of the 60/120 meta and PLDs differing burst nature. The overall damage provided by a PLD, if you remove buffs from the equation, was on-par with DRK/GNB. As you said, the current 60/120 changes are killing the game and PLD is proof of this.

I guess my main point is if I wanted to play GNB, I'd just play GNB, but I didn't want to play GNB I wanted to play PLD and what we have right now isn't PLD. It's a simplistic, "half-baked, slightly more flexible GNB" and it's frustrating. The lost damage just feels like kicking while it's already down. The changes didn't revitalize the job like what happened to NIN when they did the NIN changes they've only succeeded in lowering the amount people play PLD because it's in a worse state now than it was in 6.28. Both damage-wise and gameplay-wise.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Right, but that's what I mean about if you pull things into too much of a vacuum, everything feels the same.

For example:

...
FoF is just Infuriate

...indeed, some parts (Req/Confet Inner Release/Fellspam) are PLD being more like WAR than like GNB.

But that's my point: People are zooming out and saying PLD and GNB look the same, when PLD from that distance looks just as much (if not more) like WAR. It plays more like WAR ... with a similar APM.

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Apologies, I'm not tyring to misrepresent your post, but it's too wordy and the forum is giving me a 3000 character limit for some reason.

So, while I can see your point, "FoF is just Infuriate (with only one charge)", really? While I'll admit that Req shares more similarities with Inner Release than Bloodfest, FoF (20s damage boost) shares no similarities with Infuriate (give you a free Inner Chaos) to the point that your response feels pretty close to trolling.

On the otherhand, I realize that I forgot to include the major important point for why the GNB and PLD flow feels so similar (even if their APM is a different order of magnitude). FoF and No Mercy are the same exact ability (sans a 5% difference in damage) with different names and have the same impact to _how_ GNB and PLD do their rotation.

FoF/No Mercy both dictate the overall flow of the rotation as the cornerstone of doing DPS as either involves hitting FoF/No Mercy and sticking the following 5 GCDs into an 8 GCD window
- Goring Blade/Sonic Break
- Confetti/Double Down
- Blade of Valor Combo/Gnashing Fang combo (3 GCDs)

The last 3 GCDs are filler based on remaining cartridges (in the case of GNB) and priority (in the case of PLD). This gives both PLD and GNB the same "personal burst" which they have to make use of in all content whether there are party buffs or not. Even if we go ahead and say that Req is just a "PLD themed Inner Release", it's usage is still dictated by fitting it into FoF/No Mercy window. Not to mention that both Blades and Gnashing Fang can both be broken if you hit one of your 123 combo. IR and Delirium have no such restriction (playing and optimizing for raid buffs is a different point entirely).

It's a bit disingenuous to declare that I'm "zooming out and saying PLD and GNB look the same" when just the effect of FoF/No Mercy on the rotation is just so similar.

(As a side note, the blades combo only "feels like Inner Release" because the combo was consolidated into one button (just like Gnashing Fang). If the blades combo came out during 5.0, it would probably have been three separate buttons similar to how Gnashing Fang was.)

You are free to disagree, as for you the job flow and actions aren't as important as APM, but when looking at the job from how you manage your resources/cooldowns and abilities, I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

edit: This whole discussion actually highlights a pretty big problem with current tank design. The differences between the tanks mostly come down to nuance instead of rotational variety. This is not a problem for DPS jobs as melee, casters and ranged all have wildly different playstyles within their respective subclass. Like, when comparing DPS jobs that have "similar" gimmicks such as NIN mudras and DNC's dancing (pressing buttons in rapid succession to prime your actual attack) or resources such as MNK and SAM's Sen/Nadi (both collecting stickers to spend on finishers -- blitz and iaijutsu respectively). Even in those cases, the rest of the job provides enough rotational variety that it doesn't really feel similar to one another.

Like SAM and MNK could have their gimmicks made _identical_ (either changing Iaijutsu to be like blitz or vice versa) and the basic combos and buff upkeep is enough to still make them "feel" like radically different jobs in the way that tanks just don't, atm.

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Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

I guess my main point is if I wanted to play GNB, I'd just play GNB, but I didn't want to play GNB I wanted to play PLD and what we have right now isn't PLD.

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I couldn't have summarized it better.

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Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

I was wrong with my perception of what you said and I apologize for that. As for damage numbers, the only fight PLD was on par with WAR was in DSR. The GNB/DRK meta was never going to change even with the 6.3 changes but that's just it; old PLD didn't even need to be meta, it just needed to be fun while also not a hinderance like it was in 6.0 and that's exactly what it was in 6.28. For individual damage values, ex4 in 6.28 across all percentage values, PLD was top but for absolute maximum yes it would be beaten by DRK and GNB because of the 60/120 burst meta but that doesn't mean PLD was that far behind in absolute maximum damage. GNB had 7256.75dps and PLD was just below with 7219.8 dps. P7S DRK had 7473dps and PLD was 7524dps. It only started to fall off if you look at aDPS values but that's only because of the 60/120 meta and PLDs differing burst nature. The overall damage provided by a PLD, if you remove buffs from the equation, was on-par with DRK/GNB. As you said, the current 60/120 changes are killing the game and PLD is proof of this.

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I was wondering which DPS values you were using and it is clear you were looking at rDPS. However, to accurately measure how much a tank contributes to a fight, you have to look at their aDPS, of which you have already noted that PLD falls off.

aDPS is far too subject to variances such as what jobs you bring with you into the fight and how well your team play them. Yes I understand that PLD not fitting in with the current job design was an issue but as I said, the job didn't need to be meta because the meta of GNB/DRK would never change. It just needed to be fun while not a hinderance to the party, that's exactly what it was in 6.28. It's just reinforcing that buff providers>non-buff providers and that's just even worse design than one job not fitting with that design.

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Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

aDPS is far too subject to variances such as what jobs you bring with you into the fight and how well your team play them. Yes I understand that PLD not fitting in with the current job design was an issue but as I said, the job didn't need to be meta because the meta of GNB/DRK would never change. It just needed to be fun while not a hinderance to the party, that's exactly what it was in 6.28. It's just reinforcing that buff providers>non-buff providers and that's just even worse design than one job not fitting with that design.

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Which is why the data uses the average over all the data they have to come up with the values, to eliminate the variability as much as possible.

To highlight why it is not fair to compare tanks under rDPS, let's take 2 jobs. Job 1 is pure sustain. It's rotation does the same damage through the whole thing, including the burst. The second job does an enormous amount of damage in the burst, but nothing for the rest of the minute. Overall, after a minute, they will go the same DPS though.

If you then add in raid buffs, which are multiplicative, the sustained job is going to get a bump, however, the burst job is going to get a massive bump, causing it's DPS to skyrocket. If you then take the average over a minute for both, the burst job is going to have a higher DPS than the sustained one. In this case, which tank is contributing more? It should be obvious the burst job is contributing more DPS to the fight because it lines up with the raid buffs better.

This is also why just using rDPS for everything is not accurate. A job using a raid buff gets all the benefits that the other jobs put in. This buff job didn't do anything except put a buff out, the one receiving the buff is the one that put the effort in after all. But, a selfish job gets no benefit from raid buffs, as you jus give that contribution to someone else.

There are pros and cons to both rDPS and aDPS and recognising where, when and how to use the data sets effectively is key, you cannot just look at one and use that as the king of metrics.

Tanks have no raid buffs, so they receive nothing from any other job, all that matters is how well they play into raid buffs, which is where aDPS comes into it, and is the reason why you should only measure tanks based on their aDPS. If a tank comes along that has a raid buff, then the discussion becomes more complicated.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Which is why the data uses the average over all the data they have to come up with the values, to eliminate the variability as much as possible.

To highlight why it is not fair to compare tanks under rDPS, let's take 2 jobs. Job 1 is pure sustain. It's rotation does the same damage through the whole thing, including the burst. The second job does an enormous amount of damage in the burst, but nothing for the rest of the minute. Overall, after a minute, they will go the same DPS though.

If you then add in raid buffs, which are multiplicative, the sustained job is going to get a bump, however, the burst job is going to get a massive bump, causing it's DPS to skyrocket. If you then take the average over a minute for both, the burst job is going to have a higher DPS than the sustained one. In this case, which tank is contributing more? It should be obvious the burst job is contributing more DPS to the fight because it lines up with the raid buffs better.

This is also why just using rDPS for everything is not accurate. A job using a raid buff gets all the benefits that the other jobs put in. This buff job didn't do anything except put a buff out, the one receiving the buff is the one that put the effort in after all. But, a selfish job gets no benefit from raid buffs, as you jus give that contribution to someone else.

There are pros and cons to both rDPS and aDPS and recognising where, when and how to use the data sets effectively is key, you cannot just look at one and use that as the king of metrics.

Tanks have no raid buffs, so they receive nothing from any other job, all that matters is how well they play into raid buffs, which is where aDPS comes into it, and is the reason why you should only measure tanks based on their aDPS. If a tank comes along that has a raid buff, then the discussion becomes more complicated.

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nDPS is a comparative measure to show how much damage a job can do with no buffs attached, rDPS is the value of damage a job individually provides to the party be it through raid buffs or pure damage, aDPS is a comparitive measure to show how well the job synergizes with the fight design/current job designs and as I said PLD did have an issue here and yes you are correct in this and it was rather disingenuous for me to use just rDPS but PLDs aDPS has remained close/slightly under to what it was in 6.28 whereas its rDPS/nDPS has taken a rather big loss. This means PLD is not in a much better state than it was before and is, in fact, in a worse one. Sure they can adjust numbers to make it higher as it synergizes better with the 60/120 design but then we still have the issue of the job not being very fun to play.

I'm enjoying the new PLD more. Small rdps issues can be fixed easily with a few potency tweaks, without having to go back to the old PLD.

I played PLD a lot before the changes. I play it a lot still. Goring Blade aside, I'm pleased with those changes. That said, I do not miss Goring Blade as it was, I just don't care much for what it is (no real change there, I guess). PLD is a sturdy house. It's not overtly extravagant, but you can live in it. Goring is annoying roommate, but you don't see them too much, so it's okay. More tragic is how messy the patio looks. Heaping piles of trash prevent you from truly enjoying the scenic landscape. Cleaning it seems a daunting task, but all the same, Cover and Shield Bash have avoided the bin for far too long.

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Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

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Fair enough. Like I said, I don't think they should have removed Old PLD. I'm just saying I don't think it was in a good place. "fun" is pretty subjective. But it's why I support the game having multiple playstyles.

I think New PLD is honestly a better GNB, just with bad number tuning. It's a lot more fun to me than GNB and it's not convoluted like Old PLD. But I think both should exist instead of one or the other. I think it's better because it allows actual meaningful choice on the part of the player - or what I consider meaningful. GNB's rotation is like DRG's other than the pacing. It's hyper-rigid. So was Old PLD (arguably, Old PLD was more like GNB than New PLD is in terms of design philosophy and gameplay execution). It's one thing nice about GNB - once you know it, you can't get lost - but also bad about it - there's no way to change it up or react to changing situations. New PLD takes the good parts of GNB's builder-spender system but adds in a layer of actual flexibility.

Then it does something else that was probably an accident but works - it adds more. As I say, hardcasting a HS in place of one Atonement is a 10 potency loss, which is pretty negligible considering it's giving you some rotational flexibility, additional sustain, and allowing you to stay engaged with the boss even if you have to be at range for an extended time. GNB, WAR, and DRK all have their ranged Shield Lob equivalent, but none have anything like Holy Spirit, even ignoring Swords. To me, that's MEANINGFUL choice - a small DPS loss for rotational flexibility and optimizing for specific encounters. And while some players prefer a more frenetic combat style, which GNB offers, some of us prefer things to be at a slower, more strategic pace, which New PLD offers instead. Not to mention it doesn't have GNB's problem of trying to weave mitigations into a Gnashing Fang combo.

So I guess I don't consider New PLD to be a worse GNB. I consider New PLD to be a better GNB.

But yes, the 2 min meta is killing things, and this is just the latest example... :(

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Originally Posted by nia_saeli

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I was more trying to show that if you zoom out too far, everything looks the same. Moreover, in some of the cases (like Requiescat/Inner Release), PLD is more similar to WAR. So rather than being "a worse GNB" it's more "a mid-point straddling WAR and GNB". It may be that's why it feels so samey to you to the other Tanks. If you think of WAR, DRK, and GNB as the points of a triangle, PLD is now the point in the center of the triangle in between them, whereas before, it was more a parallelogram/diamond with PLD being the fourth point sharing a side with GNB and the other side sharing with DRK (probably, guess it could have been WAR...). This is why PLD simultaneously looks like all three of the other Tanks, depending on which aspect you're focusing more on. I could try rebutting individual points - for example, old FoF did this same thing, though you could just have argued that old Requiescat was PLD's No Mercy; both require pooling resources before using and fitting an exacting number of abilities into their windows - but I think I made the general point and you're not going to agree with the specifics in all cases. But I think the triangle/diamond visualization will probably help.

The point was: Most of the Tanks are similar at this point, especially if you look at things from a distance.

PLD's now basically "all the other Tanks combined". But again, this is a problem that the 2 min meta's forced on us (along with players forcing it on us over time complaining about little QOL things the other Tanks have that they wanted on their own), which is a lot of homogenization.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Fair enough. Like I said, I don't think they should have removed Old PLD.

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I have not gotten this sense from your prior messages, my apologies.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I think New PLD is honestly a better GNB, just with bad number tuning.
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I was more trying to show that if you zoom out too far, everything looks the same. Moreover, in some of the cases (like Requiescat/Inner Release), PLD is more similar to WAR. So rather than being "a worse GNB" it's more "a mid-point straddling WAR and GNB".

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1. Why is it gunbreaker when you talk to one person, but WAR when you talk to me? It almost feels like you are being a contrarian for the sake of it?
2. Old FoF/Req were only like no mercy as they increased the damage of your abilities. Because FoF and Req buffed different parts of the kit, it ended up not being "shove your big hits into these 8 GCDs" and it was more of a "phase transition", imo. While I can understand your argument, the purpose and usage was different enough that it didn't feel like no mercy. For clarification this is just my opinion.
3. The feel of a job is relatively subjective. If it feels like "mid-point between WAR and GNB" then that is correct for you, and while I understand your reasoning, it doesn't feel that way for me.
4. I understand that you can reduce all damage rotations into "Memorize this sequence of button presses to do optimal damage" when you "zoom out enough" and over simplify. I was never arguing that, so I'm still not sure why it was relevant to the discussion. My entire thought was "here are the abilities and how they compare along with how they work in the rotation and it looks incredibly similar".

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Originally Posted by Renathras

The point was: Most of the Tanks are similar at this point, especially if you look at things from a distance.
this is a problem that the 2 min meta's forced on us

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The tanks are too similar even when you look at them closely as well. This is not a problem with DPS jobs (even in the same role). You could remove melee combo of RDM and enochian from BLM and they feel very different in how you approach them. SAM and MNK both share similar resource builders with the Sen/Nadia and they still feel very different and engaging in their own way.

The two minute meta doesn't force any problems on us, it's just making the problems (that have been here since 5.0) with SE's tank job design more apparent. SE if just creatively bankrupt when it comes to designing tank jobs. If you browse this forum, there's so many folks with interesting ideas and creative ideas over what they've done with all the tanks since Shadowbringers. Stormblood wasn't the most balanced of times, but tanks all felt different and were completely viable (even if there was still a lot of jank around optimization).

At the end of the day, I am still of the opinion that PLD could have been sufficiently balanced in the current meta by making it deal more DPS outside of burst with the old rotation (instead of outright deleting it). As the rework to make it burst harder still didn't fix the DPS, obviously lack of burst was never the problem. If upping overall damage made it overpowered in dungeons and solo content, that's fine because "balance only matters for savage/ultimate raid". And don't give me the "but, it's hard to balance burst against sustained" argument, it's just math that you can figure out with a spreadsheet like we've always done. It's not rocket science it just takes the smallest amount of creativity and work.

Out of things to say. I'm just incredibly disappointed that we got a mediocre rework that serves no purpose.

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Originally Posted by nia_saeli

It's not rocket science it just takes the smallest amount of creativity and work

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Think you answered your own question there, it takes the smallest amount of creativity and work, and SE doesn't want to put that in. No, seems they'd rather move classes more and more towards this 'window of power' where EVERYthing happens. Eventually we might even end up at the point where 95% of the damage is in that small 15-20s window every 2 mins, and then for the next 100s you can absolutely ape-mode your keyboard and it's fine, you can still do good damage, as long as you nail that all-important raidbuff window!

Mark this down, future predicting time. 8.0 comes out, GNB will change, it'll have 4 cartridges (so inspired), Bloodfest will change from being a 2min CD that restores 3, to a 1min CD that grants 3 stacks of 'can use Burst Strike with no cost', making it the not-Fell Cleave you use 3 of in a row. The 'Shell Cleave' as it were. Double Down will have it's cost removed, and instead require 'Double Down Ready' from Bloodfest, making it into not-Primal Rend.

Oh, and they'll add a Continuation to Sonic Break that nobody asked for

One important difference between tanks and melee dps is the proportion of your total action budget that is allocated to defensive actions. That's where job design tends to be the most conservative, because it relates to pass-fail mechanics.

The more constraints that you add to the design process, the less unique solutions exist that satisfy those constraints. Let's say that I give you a total action budget of 25 actions. Let's say that 8 are defensives that don't allow for a whole lot of variability. Tank stance, a ranged pulling action, and a gap closer are also mandatory. You have a base single target and AoE combo which locks in another 6 actions, leaving us with around 8-9 actions to work with. Now I also tell you that players expect the jobs to have roughly the same rDPS, roughly the same burst profiles, and whatever else we argue about in these subforums to try to gain a competitive edge over everyone else.

Now let's say a new expansion and one tank gets a really cool action that everyone is excited about. Guess what everyone is going to demand on their jobs? So any existing designs themselves will naturally converge over time in response to player demand, no matter how different they start out. If you'd like, I'd encourage you to try to rebuild the existing jobs subject to the constraints I've offered and try and make them all as distinct as possible. I think it would be quite straightforward to illustrate how those job designs would converge over a few expansions in response to player-driven pressures.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Eventually we might even end up at the point where 95% of the damage is in that small 15-20s window every 2 mins, and then for the next 100s you can absolutely ape-mode your keyboard and it's fine, you can still do good damage, as long as you nail that all-important raidbuff window!

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No question about it. I daresay we're a few dodgy potency adjustments away from it on PLD and DRK already >.>;;

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Originally Posted by Lyth

One important difference between tanks and melee dps is the proportion of your total action budget that is allocated to defensive actions [...]

The more constraints that you add to the design process, the less unique solutions exist that satisfy those constraints. Let's say that I give you a total action budget of 25 actions. [...]
Now I also tell you that players expect the jobs to have roughly the same rDPS, roughly the same burst profiles.

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Please note, this is just my opinion on the design. I think you raise a very valid point on the challenges of creating 100% unique tanks. The tighter action budget (due to the role requirements) along with player demand present challenges.

On the otherhand, I still feel that both are just cop-outs for a lack of creativitity. Even with a very small action budget, you can still be creative and create different feeling jobs. As an example, let's clone warrior's entire kit skill for skill. Even if superficial, by changing the base combo we can change the overall flow and feel of the job by just changing Heavy Swing, Maim, Storm's Path, and Storm's Eye. Here are two examples that took me about 5 minutes to think of:

- Idea #1: Decouple the combo of all skills and give them cooldowns that last multiple GCDs and are adjusted by skillspeed (assume that higher recast means higher potency): "Heavy Swing (1): 2.5 recast", "Maim(2): a 7.5s recast", "Storm's path(3): 12.5 recast" "Storm's Eye(4): with 25s recast". Basic combo becomes: "4 -> 3 -> 2 -> 1 -> 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 1 -> 2 -> 1 -> 4 -> [continue]".
- Idea #2: Combos are decoupled and Heavy Swing (1), Main(2) and Storm's Path(3) change your "stance" based on order that you press them. Storm's Eye consumes the stance effect attack to do a unique effect. e.g. 1-2-3: Storm's Eye applies a dot, 2-1-3: Storm's Eye becomes a damage buff, 3-2-1: Storm's Eye does boosted damage potency. Using storms eye mid-combo would still consume the stance for downtime/alignment (small potency bonus or something)

Do something with a similar flow to the AoE side and perhaps add relevant resources and you have a tank with a completely different flow than any of the existing tanks. Are these ideas good? I don't know, probably not amazing as I'm not a game designer. But SE has a bunch of them, if they had an onze of creativity they could take these ideas and refine them into a fun job. My point here is just that it's about creativity and not constraints.

Regarding "equivalent rDPS" or whatever metric raider's want, that's just math and a bit of work and testing. 6.3 PLD has (almost) the perfect burst profile for the meta and it's still bad.

As far as homogenization of "cool new abilities that everyone asks for" goes, people don't want the ability itself, they want the function. In a similar vein to giving PLD a gap closer in ShB, copy-pasting onslaught was the boring (and possibly lazy) way to approach it. Again, look at melee DPS, we have 5 jobs that all have movement abilities that vary in some way (shukuchi is ground targetted, thunder clap is targetted on enemy/ally, RPR has a blink, SAM/DRG charge an enemy), while tanks are all Onslaught/Plunge (I forget which came first) with a either 2 or 3 charges.

In summary: It's not constraints that make tanks samey, it's a lack of vision, creativity or interest on the part of the job design team.

Idea #1 is a simplified version of MCH, and Idea #2 is a simplified version of SAM. Which are both perfectly fine approaches. We could see either on used in a tank design in the future. But a lot of people would still complain that you're just functionally following a fixed combo sequence without a significant change to gameplay. Burst profiles do add an additional constraint, because everyone is going to have some variant of 'burst button', be it of the 'No Flight' or 'Inner Delirium' varieties.

The only way to achieve true variety is if less of the action budget is dedicated to defensives. A good proportion of the playerbase would probably be happier overall if you made tanks function more like melee dps, and if you made healers function more like caster dps. The behemoth in the room is that if this game were to be re-released now, it probably would be as an ARPG and not as a circa 2004 Trinity design. The former is what we're slowly moving towards, but the transition leaves us at an awkward crossroads where tanks and healers just don't feel valuable.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

The more constraints that you add to the design process, the less unique solutions exist that satisfy those constraints. Let's say that I give you a total action budget of 25 actions. Let's say that 8 are defensives that don't allow for a whole lot of variability. Tank stance, a ranged pulling action, and a gap closer are also mandatory. You have a base single target and AoE combo which locks in another 6 actions, leaving us with around 8-9 actions to work with. Now I also tell you that players expect the jobs to have roughly the same rDPS, roughly the same burst profiles, and whatever else we argue about in these subforums to try to gain a competitive edge over everyone else.

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There is a world of difference between '25 actions total' and '25 action buttons on the hotbar'. SMN has one of the lowest hotbar-real-estate counts in the game, but it's 'actions' menu is absolutely rammed, due to how those few buttons swap into other buttons. So, yeh, I could give you a GNB that has 25 buttons, but actually has closer to 35 'actions', via clever application of systems like Continuation. God help the playerbase if I had been in charge of GNB design for it's launch, cos first thing I'd do is make it have 6 cartridges (you know, like the trailer implies?), and everything would have been designed around that. 'oo spend one cartridge on burst strike' get outta here

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Originally Posted by nia_saeli

As far as homogenization of "cool new abilities that everyone asks for" goes, people don't want the ability itself, they want the function. In a similar vein to giving PLD a gap closer in ShB, copy-pasting onslaught was the boring (and possibly lazy) way to approach it. Again, look at melee DPS, we have 5 jobs that all have movement abilities that vary in some way (shukuchi is ground targetted, thunder clap is targetted on enemy/ally, RPR has a blink, SAM/DRG charge an enemy), while tanks are all Onslaught/Plunge (I forget which came first) with a either 2 or 3 charges.

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the playerbase: boo we hate homogenization, make the classes different from one another
also the playerbase: yes dood i am making the pog face because PLD now also has a gapcloser, that we won't even use for closing gaps because it has damage attached!

Like, don't get me wrong, some homogenization is good, and necessary. Nobody thought that ShadowWall being 180s CD, and 30% mit, so equal to Veng but with an extra minute CD attached for no gain, was good. Sentinel/SW/Veng being standardized was good. But we didn't need 'all tanks have gap closer, and it has 2 charges', and especially not on 'the tank that has an entire dedicated section of it's rotation being ranged'. What next, we give BLM a raise skill because the other two have it? Or we give DRK a 'this skill heals for 1000+ potency, 1min CD' because GNB and WAR have Aurora/Equil?

The new paladin is pretty fun. Only needs a few potency tweaks and it will be on a great spot

Goring blade sucks without a VFX change tho, that would be the only thing I dislike about the rework changes

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

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I'm aware that the devs have opted for action upgrades/shared hotbar slots in favor of removing actions over the past expansion or so. 25-30 action slots is the average range that most jobs aim for including these tricks, and freshly reworked jobs are naturally on the lower end of this. You can take this as a rigid constraint in job design. You're never going to have 40 unique buttons to press.

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Originally Posted by nia_saeli

I have not gotten this sense from your prior messages, my apologies.

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I generally hold the position, whether I like something or not, that nothing should ever be outright TAKEN AWAY. I think, for example, New SMN is more fun, more intuitive, more understandable, and really more of a Final Fantasy Summoner (mixing both the "persistent" summons of something like FFX with the "big attack fire and forget" summons of games like FF4-9 with a little something of an evoker that takes on the aspects of their summons from what I guess will be FF16), but I also feel that they should have taken all the parts of its kit they just kind of REMOVED FROM THE GAME and instead made a genuine DoT Mage Job, like Green Mage or something, that was basically all those parts that people liked about Old SMN that weren't the Egis. That playstyle existing for people that liked it rather than them losing out.

I feel the same with PLD. I think New PLD is an outright improvement, but I believe the old version should still exist for players that enjoyed it.

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1) It was literally me saying it has aspects of all three and looks like any one of them from a far enough zoom. Did you read the part where I said think of the other three as points on a triangle and PLD is a point placed in the very center?

2) I think it mostly depends on the way you look at it, though I think it instructive here to point out that every Tank has an ability similar to that (except maybe DRK, since I don't know or play DRK to know how it works...but given how everyone talks about its burst, it almost certainly has to...)

3) Feel is, true. I was more talking with mechanics. It borrows something from each of them. Though, arguably, some is merely being borrowed BACK. FoF was No Mercy before GNB was even added to the game.

4) I was pointing out that such comparisons can be made between more than just PLD and GNB. Moreover, they can be made between the other Tanks pretty reliably. It's already a meme that's pretty much accepted at this point that DRK is just an edgy WAR.

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As for DPS Jobs, this also depends on how closely you look. Most DPS Jobs have one of several different types of rotation, and play similarly. Every Melee has a 1-2-3 core rotation, just as the Tanks do. RDM without the melee combo and BLM without Enochian would play...well, not much alike, because RDM would play like SMN. Jolt-Aero repeat 1-2. BRD and DNC are both proc fests of hitting things when they pop. RPR and DRG are different but the same, SAM and NIN are builder spenders, with MNK really one of the only Melees that plays particularly different than the others. You can start pointing out their specifics to argue "No, they're totally different!", but someone could do that with the Tanks as well. Not to mention their AOE rotations are, other than MNK, basically identical, and worse, more or less identical to the Tanks'.

The problem with burst vs sustain balance is you don't know party composition. Do you have a BRD or DNC or MCH? Do you have a SCH/AST or a WHM/SGE? SMN or RDM vs BLM? What about a NIN? If you have a SCH/AST/NIN/DRG(or...RPR?)/DNC(or BRD)/SMN(or RDM), each of those buffs stacks on top to make the burst even burstier and the filler lesser. So the sustain Job needs to do more damage in this situation. But, what if your party is WHM/SGE/SAM/MNK/MCN/BLM? Now THEY do higher damage, so in theory the party does, but now your sustain guy is doing too much damage. Because you buffed him to keep up with the other Tank (WAR/DRK/GNB) during that bursty comps high burst, he's doing way too much damage in the party with low buffs. So now you need to nerf his damage. Wait, but then he'll be doing too little compared to the burst comp and...

You get the idea.

This isn't a problem when burst is diffused - which it was in ShB and before, hence why this wasn't as much of a problem - since the burst won't all happen at the same time most of the time, and the burst vs non-burst case won't differ significantly, meaning you're balancing your sustain to a specific single point. But with the super high burst profile (as much as 45% during burst windows), you're now trying to balance to two different points simultaneously - the high burst party average (what the other Tanks do since they get super boosts) vs the low burst party average (what the other Tanks do when not getting any buffs), and you can't balance to both at the same time. You COULD shoot for the middle, but what this means is you'll be doing low damage in burst parties, which is the meta, meaning the other Tanks will be brought and you'll be left in the dust. Yeah, you're doing more than they'd do in a no-buff party, but no one's intentionally running a no-buff party. If a party ends up with a no-buff comp, it's by accident or circumstance (or in casual groups - where it doesn't matter - by preference of Jobs), not intent.

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Personally, I just want the 2 min meta to go away because then you don't have to worry about it forcing Jobs into the same paradigm. In older MMOs I played, there were often several kinds of damage profiles. Offhand, the main ones were sustain vs burst vs aoe/cleave, builder-spender, resource managers, and so on and so forth.

As some one that came back after years away level 70 was cap last i played the pally does not even seem like a pally any more no real healing. so many spells that do mostly the same thing i mean how many def cooldowns do we need how but just lower the cool down a 2 or 3 tops. controller players only have so many bars. to work with