Clive's Paladin Compiilation

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

You are confusing my post and putting words in my mouth. I didn't say PLD is best played by "casuals." I said that Paladin's toolkit helps a lot in casual content like the daily dungeons and etc, and then said that implying PLD is useless because the toolkit the job has isn't ideal for endgame raiding is basically ignoring the other 90% of the content of the game.

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Raiders don't ignore 90% of the other content in the game. We just understand that raid balance filters down into lesser content. It's not like Reprisal, Delirium, Eye, Path, better sustained healing, higher single-target DPS, and significantly higher AoE DPS suddenly matters less when you queue for a 24-man or dungeon run. I did thousands of dungeon runs on PLD, did all but Savage SCoB of 2.X on PLD, and still play PLD a considerable amount to this day. It's laughable how much better WAR is in content in general.

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

Well, if you want to compare compositions, DRK/NIN/DRG against PLD/MNK/DRG, you're basically trading Reprisal/Trick Attack for RoH/Mantra. The PLD setup is also more friendly to AST instead of a WHM so there's the cards too. At that point, in my humble opinion, the differences are more of wash than "way more impactful."

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If you think Reprisal / Trick Attack / Shade Walker / Smoke Screen is an even trade against RoH / traited Mantra in a general sense, I really don't know what to say. If someone wants to dig their head that deep into the sand, I guess there isn't much you can say.

It's basically your opinion vs. the established opinion of the entire end-game raiding community.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

If you think Reprisal / Trick Attack / Shade Walker / Smoke Screen is an even trade against RoH / traited Mantra in a general sense, I really don't know what to say. If someone wants to dig their head that deep into the sand, I guess there isn't much you can say.

It's basically your opinion vs. the established opinion of the entire end-game raiding community.

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I agree that Reprisal / Trick Attack are a little better in general, but how much better are they really? In what kind of borderline case would that difference actually come to play? My guess is it's only the 2-3%(?) dps increase from Trick Attack that might actually make or break an enrage timer. As far as mitigating tank busters goes, RoH works on the same stuff as Reprisal does (A5S-A7S, not sure about A8S), and for heavy raidwide damage you have a combination of Divine Veil and traited Mantra instead of Reprisal. Not to mention Reprisal doesn't work against bosses/phases that have no physical attacks, PLD and MNK retain their utility. Yes, Reprisal is available more often but not in all the same situations.

That's why I think it's more of a wash, but then again I don't clear raids on the first week below minimum ilvl. I don't like the idea of taking the established opinion as granted but I wouldn't call it burying my head in sand. I'd rather you explain it more in-depth why the opinion is what it is. If it's just because of a slight dps increase, yeah I get it. But if you're saying DRK/NIN utility is always better than PLD/MNK in every situation, then that's not really accurate, is it?

So let me get this straight, you want me to argue the merit of DRK utility? Strange because...

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

DRK has utility? They have a lot of ways for dealing damage and do it well but you can't really argue they have better utility by any measure.

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...I thought you said there is no argument by any measure.

Now, I'm more than willing to have this discussion but don't wonder why I said you had your head buried in the sand when you start the conversation by saying that there is no argument. And, if you're looking to learn, maybe a question is a better starting point if you want an actual explanation rather than some self-sure statement.

Trick attack is 10s per 60s. That's a ~17% uptime for a 10% party-wide damage buff. Generally, because of buff syncing and DoT snap shotting, that's roughly a ~2-3% increase in raid DPS. But, more importantly, it is controlled burst. Many damage-centric mechanics in this game are focused on controlled burst. For a detailed example, in A8S's p2, you have ~40s to kill Blaster before Vortexer drops. 10s of 10% more damage in a 40s DPS window that aligns with everyone's full opener is way more impactful than just an on-paper ~2-3% raid DPS increase. There are multiple examples of short burst DPS windows -- A1S Faust, A3S equal concentration, gaols, A4S legs, Sephirot EX wind-add, A5S hummel faust, A5S first prey skip + boost skip, A6S second charge-mirage skip, third chakram skip, double bio-arithmeticks skip, A7S hearts, etc.

And, NIN's other utility like Shade Walker and Smoke Screen are also incredibly useful. Outside of the obvious benefit on the initial pull, Shade Walker is also great for smoothing out pick-ups like Hummel Faust, A5S adds, A6S bosses in general, A7S dolls (especially useful to guarantee your DPS will be safe when transitioning to the padlock), A8S p2 pick-ups, etc. Smoke Screen is great in similar way -- smoke-screening on add-spawns or during huge AoE healing phases to cover your healers.

The big difference with DV vs. Reprisal is DV is a one and done on a 120s CD. Reprisal actually has multiple hit coverage with at most 60% up-time. So, in a fight like A7S or A8S where you get sequenced and multiple hard hitting raid-wide damage mechanics, it is much better than DV.

On the flip-side, RoH is really not that needed because none of the physical tank busters hit hard enough to really threaten a tank even in week 1 gear and it does nothing for raid-wide damage mitigation. And, traited Mantra is really only exceptionally useful for 1 activation in 1 fight (A8S). One pairing of utility is clearly much more situational than the other.

It's really funny to see people so enslaved by the meta that they're writing walls of text to try and discredit something as being useless when it's really only slightly worse than the alternative. The period of this tier where utility choice beyond "don't duplicate jobs!" actually matters is long gone. Best to just let it go.

A5s is the best example, paladins skill to get crit immunity helps a lot at the end of the fight to clear the mob there.

The skills might be situational but there is no class besides the paladin who has a skill for every situation there.

That makes him unique compared to other tank jobs, even when his dps is lower than the other ones.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

It's really funny to see people so enslaved by the meta that they're writing walls of text to try and discredit something as being useless when it's really only slightly worse than the alternative. The period of this tier where utility choice beyond "don't duplicate jobs!" actually matters is long gone. Best to just let it go.

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It's not "slightly worse". There's a big difference because any survivability more than what's needed is wasted, and there are plenty of other ways to survive mechanics that don't involve long cd skills like DV or Mantra, or the dps loss from losing NIN/DRK.

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Originally Posted by Cipher_Zaabiz

A5s is the best example, paladins skill to get crit immunity helps a lot at the end of the fight to clear the mob there.

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WAR and DRK can (and should) crossclass Awareness. You should also never see that add with any decent dps.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

So let me get this straight, you want me to argue the merit of DRK utility? Strange because...

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It was a snarky provocative remark, but what did you expect if you just say something is fact and offer no arguments for it? Especially when the bulk of the explanation is about NIN utility, not DRK/PLD. Snarky comments get similar responses, no matter of the factual value. Should've just posted your explanation back then.

Now, Trick Attack I understand, it's great for burst and DPS, but then again, if that's really the issue with any particular fight, you can have a NIN and PLD in the same party. Shadewalker and Smokescreen, while certainly helpful, don't really offer anything very substantial apart from saving a hate combo here and there. Maybe you don't agree with me, but I've never felt like having either of those has changed what I do as a tank, and if we're going to go ahead and say all PLD utility spells, RoH and cover are useless, I'd count Shadewalker and Smokescreen in the same category.

What comes to Reprisal vs DV, obviously Reprisal gets more uptime and can be planned for multiple AoEs like the Merry-Go-Round in A7S, but how often do you really rely on the more uptime aspect? You can't rely on parry for constant upkeep, and while it's great if you get a proc every now and then for more mitigation, isn't it in the same "not needed category" as parry/block are, in the sense that it doesn't really change how the healers spend their GCDs? If Reprisal isn't needed to survive any specific AoE moment, and overhealing from the AoE heals after said raid damage is over 10%, isn't Reprisal then essentially wasted? It does however come with the condition that you have to be able to parry, so it's not as often available with prevalent tank swaps or enemies with purely magical attacks. Also, I personally feel like the mitigation factor when not stacked with other mitigation for specific moments is not something that would change how healers would act. DV on the other hand has a long cooldown, but can be used whenever in all situations (unless everyone's silenced I guess).

For current Midas Savage, Reprisal is better due to the nature of multihit mechanics, for aoes and tank busters both. But that's a question of encounter design. Outside of the specific type of multihit raid damage situations, reprisal is still better on paper and mitigates more damage on the long run, but I'm skeptical how much of a difference it has on real situations and healer GCD usage. I don't play healers so I don't know, that's why I'm interested.

Midas introduces good shares of magical and physical damages, if you know you have the DPS to clear, i'd say you should opt for PLD/MNK combo since you gain access to RoH/DK stacking for A8S specifically which by any rights should be up 100% whenever you can hit the boss.

But other than that, for 100% DPS potential is indeed DRK/NIN/DRG only IF you would like to assume that your NIN/DRG can do their respective DPS numbers about equivalent to what you see in FFLogs (ofc no additional/deliberate padding because that's not the point). And most people don't have DRG/NIN able to do huge DPS like those in FFLogs. NIN in particular feels quite like the BRD is to MCH, I rarely see NIN able to do that much DPS.

Note: See under the category of Speed runs in FFLogs and DRK/NIN/DRG comp is almost by default included. http://www.fflogs.com/rankings/10#metric=speed