Do you find the PLD rotation enjoyable?

Paladin is fun until it's not.

Like ShB Samurai, the inflexible loop makes you feel clever as long as you're being served encounters that don't disrupt your GCD cycle, but it all goes to spaghetti even with slight unavoidable disturbances in uptime, and then becomes more of a chore to realign than a lot of dedicated DPS Jobs.

It may be that some players who prefer a more demanding and precise rotational style see Paladin as a last refuge amongst the Tank rotations, and that's fine, but it's also objectively inconsistent with the other Tanks's styles and feels more like it wants to be a DPS than a Tank in terms of how fussy and sensitive its GCD loop is.

Your opinion may be that you don't care and you still like it that way, and again, that's fine — and I'm not trying to lobby to change it, either, because I personally don't care either way. Instead, I'm just trying to frame why Paladin can feel both jarring and frustrating to people coming from other Tanks once they begin trying to play it "correctly" in complex content.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

Why is the lack of the homogenized buff window a failure? It really doesn't matter when Paladin only buffs their own damage and its DPS is balanced with that in mind. It's perfectly fine for a tank (or even a selfish DPS) to not be chained to the same buff windows as long as they are balanced - if you love the 60s burst you can play literally anything else.

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The problem is PLD always does less DPS because it doesn't line up with the buff window. The world first DSR clear had their rDPS data showing the PLD way outperformed the DRK, but the DRK still did more DPS (which is what actually matters for clearing) because their rotation aligns with party buffs.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

It may be that some players who prefer a more demanding and precise rotational style see Paladin as a last refuge amongst the Tank rotations, and that's fine, but it's also objectively inconsistent with the other Tanks's styles and feels more like it wants to be a DPS than a Tank in terms of how fussy and sensitive its GCD loop is.

Your opinion may be that you don't care and you still like it that way, and again, that's fine — and I'm not trying to lobby to change it, either, because I personally don't care either way. Instead, I'm just trying to frame why Paladin can feel both jarring and frustrating to people coming from other Tanks once they begin trying to play it "correctly" in complex content.

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That's exactly the positive thing about PLD's rotation, and what makes it unique among other tanks.

If you don't like it, just play it on a basic level (it will deal enough damage to clear the content) or if you really want to optimize your damage, you have 3 more tanks to play with a more static rotation.

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

The problem is PLD always does less DPS because it doesn't line up with the buff window. The world first DSR clear had their rDPS data showing the PLD way outperformed the DRK, but the DRK still did more DPS (which is what actually matters for clearing) because their rotation aligns with party buffs.

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PLD doing less damage isn't a bug in the balancing, it's completely intentional in exchange of the utility. If they reworked the rotation to line up better with the party buffs then the damage would be taxed elsewhere. You are asking for completely arbitrary homogenization when PLD performs perfectly fine (or its damage could be brought up just by potency adjustments if you feel it's too low). It might work fine, yes, but the track record for these type of reworks isn't great and whatever alleged huge issues the buff windows bring are vastly preferable to yet another job butchery.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

PLD doing less damage isn't a bug in the balancing, it's completely intentional in exchange of the utility. If they reworked the rotation to line up better with the party buffs then the damage would be taxed elsewhere. You are asking for completely arbitrary homogenization when PLD performs perfectly fine (or its damage could be brought up just by potency adjustments if you feel it's too low). It might work fine, yes, but the track record for these type of reworks isn't great and whatever alleged huge issues the buff windows bring are vastly preferable to yet another job butchery.

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The problem with this logic, which has been proven every single patch since 3.0, is there are only two outcomes:

Can you survive without PLD? Then take the higher DPS, the utility is useless.

Can you not survive without PLD? The other tanks need to be buffed if content is literally impossible with them.

There is no option where it's not a design flaw. It has never worked no matter how many times SE has tried, they end up always buffing PLD (or WAR in SB).

You are arguing that tanks should have no DPS differences, this has nothing to do with PLD rotation any more.

Okay sure, buff PLD and WAR damage. Don't need to rework them to do that.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

PLD doing less damage isn't a bug in the balancing, it's completely intentional in exchange of the utility. If they reworked the rotation to line up better with the party buffs then the damage would be taxed elsewhere.

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I'm not sure if the devs actually think this way, and if they do, they don't control it very well. Wasn't Paladin consistently 2nd in rankings for most of Stormblood (displacing Dark Knight until, I think, the last tier) and all of Shadowbringers (right behind Gunbreaker)?

I mean, the fact that you have to hold a single charge of sword oath because alignments are too spread speaks for itself that paladin is not functioning in its current form.

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

The world first DSR clear had their rDPS data showing the PLD way outperformed the DRK, but the DRK still did more DPS (which is what actually matters for clearing) because their rotation aligns with party buffs.

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Huge contradiction there. Pld is in world first. PLD does more rDPS. Drk does more personal DPS. Drk DPS is what saved the day and mattered and won them the world first. K.

The rotation is fine in normal play.

Boring rotation with the most cursed opener in the game, and even using said cursed opener won't keep your stuff from sliding out of alignment. The whole being quasi-immortal thing is fun and all, but it doesn't make up for the fact that performing the rotation for prolonged periods makes me want to go hurl myself face first into Ascalon.