The Bottom Feeders: Moves You Never Use and Why.

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Originally Posted by Februs

This is pretty well exactly how I translated it in Pld terms lol. Like I said, figuring out which moves are good together and how to use them isn't the problem... my actual problem is fitting them all into easily accessible spaces on my hotbar, while keeping up all of the OGCD moves so that I can use them on CD. I know there will be people out there who disagree with me, but compared to the other 2 Tanks Drk has been by far the most challenging for me to set up efficiently on my Ps4 hotbar because of all the damn OGCD moves. I find there are so many things that I want to keep an eye on at all times that I don't have enough space to work with as I would like.

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Look at it as an opportunity to get better. I am on PS4 as well and I am a fucking hotbar ninja now, thanks to maining DRK.

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Originally Posted by Jpec07

Three fights at cap that don't reward it don't mean it somehow suddenly isn't viable or preferable for the vast majority of content in the game.

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Except that none of the fights below cap benefit from having a turtle tank either...o.ô
It's always been either "far from dangerous so leave it to the healer" or "so deadly that it can't be survived no matter how tank-y you are unless you use LD/HG/the WAR's one who's English name I forgot".
What's the benefit of being a turtling tank if your survivability is not higher than one who is solely focused on dealing dmg? All you'd do is slow the fight down.

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Originally Posted by Syzygian

Look at it as an opportunity to get better. I am on PS4 as well and I am a fucking hotbar ninja now, thanks to maining DRK.

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Always do. War and Drg, actually, were the first jobs that really taught me how to work a hotbar well, and I've been pretty good at it so far (I found duplicate positioning on the hotbar for moves I want to keep an eye on at all times is the key, in most cases), but Drk has been a bit more challenging because of the sheer number of OGCD's I want to make sure I can see all the time. I think I've got it pretty well nailed down so far (I'm pretty smooth at using it now), but I'm still not 100%. Kind of feels like it needs a bit more tweaking to really get it to shine...

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Originally Posted by Atoli

Except that none of the fights below cap benefit from having a turtle tank either...o.ô

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I think the only reason PLD was believed to be THE main tank only came from the 2.0 WAR stigma. A persistant "hunch" that WAR was squisher.
Exactly like lolDRG which origin is even not in this game.
WAR was able to tank anything as good as PLD, and always offered more damage.

People only realize that now.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

I think the only reason PLD was believed to be THE main tank only came from the 2.0 WAR stigma. A persistant "hunch" that WAR was squisher.
Exactly like lolDRG which origin is even not in this game.
WAR was able to tank anything as good as PLD, and always offered more damage.

People only realize that now.

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I think it also had to do with the nature of their CD's.

Because Warriors typically take bigger hits and then heal back the difference, a lot of healers felt more comfortable healing the one and done CD's of Pld. This is an attitude that I still see today. I actually had a run of A1 S a while back where the healer specifically requested the other tank to run as Drk or Pld instead of War because healing War was "scary" by comparison. To be fair, I kind of see where they are coming from, because I always felt squishier as a War than I did as a Pld way back when I was leveling it. It wasn't until I got more comfortable with the job that I felt less vulnerable. Though, that still did not prevent Pld from being the preferred choice for the MT back in the coil days, because they could time their CD's down to the second for Tank Buster mitigation, whereas War's had to manage Wrath stacks and be more more on the ball with their rotation... I guess it was more of a lazy, QoL, thing that just kind of got picked up and run with.

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Originally Posted by Februs

Always do. War and Drg, actually, were the first jobs that really taught me how to work a hotbar well, and I've been pretty good at it so far (I found duplicate positioning on the hotbar for moves I want to keep an eye on at all times is the key, in most cases), but Drk has been a bit more challenging because of the sheer number of OGCD's I want to make sure I can see all the time. I think I've got it pretty well nailed down so far (I'm pretty smooth at using it now), but I'm still not 100%. Kind of feels like it needs a bit more tweaking to really get it to shine...

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The vertical/horizontal hotbars are almost a necessity for DRK. They really help.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Ay...w1280-h1024-rw

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/tQ...w1280-h1024-rw



Yes I took these on my phone. Don't you judge me.

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Originally Posted by Februs

Though, that still did not prevent Pld from being the preferred choice for the MT back in the coil days, because they could time their CD's down to the second for Tank Buster mitigation, whereas War's had to manage Wrath stacks and be more more on the ball with their rotation

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Point approved !
Bad WARs are squisher than bad PLD.

Not really the job's fault, though :p

Point is, it would be much more interesting if we could have really different kind of tanks. This way, those who want to play "turtle" could chose PLD and those who want to play agressively would chose WAR...and we need a third type for DRK.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

I think the only reason PLD was believed to be THE main tank only came from the 2.0 WAR stigma. A persistant "hunch" that WAR was squisher.
Exactly like lolDRG which origin is even not in this game.
WAR was able to tank anything as good as PLD, and always offered more damage.

People only realize that now.

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Naw Amigo, Hood Swipe was Un-survivable without the i90 chest as a 2.0 Warrior, so you either had to wait 4 weeks to get your myth helm/chest or you were lucky enough to have friends craft you Hippogryph leather gear and take you as a dps(like myself and my team) into T1 and get you the chest. 2.1 brought the change to Inner Beast and Defiance needed.

LolDRG originated from Penta thrust crutch DRGs in FFXI; but is relatable to FFXIV(Youtube any Titan ex wipes, and you'll definitely see a DRG diving backwards off the platform)

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Originally Posted by Februs

because I always felt squishier as a War than I did as a Pld way back when I was leveling it.

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That's funny because it has always been the contrary to me. I always felt tankier as WAR than PLD, especially when levelling (tanking stance 10 levels earlier than PLD, incredible self-healing on AoE, Inner Beast and Storm's Path both before level 40 too). I levelled WAR in 2.1 tho. Didn't experience the 2.0 WAR myself, was originally PLD even if my starting class was MRD. Then, when I hit 50 with my WAR back in the 2.1 days, I didn't want to play PLD anymore. Even for MTing stuff, I always wanted to go on WAR because I was always feeling much much tankier in every single situation (while having a blast playing it). I have MTed every single 2.X fights as both WAR and PLD, and in every single one of them I was feeling tankier on WAR, even on T13 (IB for every Flare Breath, IB + big CD for every Flatten, PLD couldn't achieve anything near that level of mitigation). In 3.0, I feel even tankier than before on WAR with the addition of Equilibrium and Raw Intuition, but on PLD it feels like it didn't change at all except on fights like Thordan EX or A2S. On DRK I feel as tanky as on WAR, just a little bit less when taking heavy physical damage. WAR has always felt like the tankiest for me. It's not a new thing at all. People are just starting to realize this now because a third tank has been added to the game and literally kicked out PLD, WAR remaining because of tools he already had from two years before the expac.

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Originally Posted by Februs

I'm pretty sure Dark passenger has actually been proved to be an inefficient use of Dark Arts. So that's another good example. The Hp gain on DA-Soul Eater is better for mitigation than the blind, especially since you are multiplying your Mp destruction by using DA and DP at the same time. It's better to pop DP on CD and use Soul Eater for mitigation. DP is still a dps gain, mind you, so I wouldn't say the move itself is a bottom feeder... but the additional effect caused by Dark Arts certainly fits the bill.

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Inside dungeons when pulling a group:

Blood Price + whatever mitigation cooldown is ready (usually shadowskin) > at ~5s left on blood price hit dark arts and don't use any dark arts related moves > ~4s ish later dark arts boosted dark dance for 20% dodge > dark arts + dark passenger to blind the whole group > focus on MP regen (C&S, siphon combos, sole survivor, whatever).

While the group is blinded and you have a buffed dark dance active, your healer can go nuts on damage because you won't be hit much.


I mean, I still think it's a real waste that both of these dark arts boosted abilities are pretty much useless outside of dungeon trash, but they're good for what they are.

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Originally Posted by Iagainsti

Naw Amigo, Hood Swipe was Un-survivable without the i90 chest as a 2.0 Warrior

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Yes, a 2.0 WAR.
But the idea that WAR was squisher than PLD remained even after 2.1.

Speaking of 2.0, Steel Cyclone was extremely useless then (trade all your +healing for equal enmity to OP with no TP cost). I'd say Unchained as well but it still had the same use as is it does now and there were a lot of tricks you could incorporate back then, like the OT opener where you got a free 1-2 IBs. Path was largely useless, Eye -> BB/Eye -> Eye was more damage and the heal was too minimal to care about. Vengeance was surprisingly pretty useful - it didn't have the damage reduction it does now, but it had the reflect which made it strong on trash packs and good for +DPS during Unchained + Berserk on bosses.

But from 2.1 on and in 3.0 now, WAR has no useless abilities outside of cross class choices.

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Originally Posted by Syzygian

The vertical/horizontal hotbars are almost a necessity for DRK. They really help.
Yes I took these on my phone. Don't you judge me.

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LOL... err... I mean. I'm not judging... lol (seriously, though. Not judging. Taking screenshots on Ps4 is easy, but getting them off to your laptop is a pain... )

Back on point: I had never even considered the use of vertical/horizontal hotbars... I actually re-arranged my Drk hotbar just tonight and I think I finally got it in a place that I like it, but there are still some moves that I think would benefit from me keeping an eye on them. This might do the trick... If i can figure out how to do it, that is.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

That's funny because it has always been the contrary to me. I always felt tankier as WAR than PLD, especially when levelling

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I'm not surprsied lol. You're not the first to have said this to me, but for me it was precisely the opposite.

I think the difference was that Pld felt incredibly controlled and precise to me. Everything was scripted. There is a strict formula that you can use for pretty much every single pull in the game (with minor tweaks here and there), and every single boss fight can be planned down to the very second for CD usage. If you rotated the Pld CD's accurately, there is literally never a time a Pld's doesn't have some kind of decent-strong mitigation up, and that's excluding their strongest CD's of Sentinel and Hallowed Ground which are easily saved for Tank busters. On top of that, the ability to borrow Stoneskin from Whm meant that extra mitigation was never an issue if it was needed. Dps checks weren't as obnoxious back then, so it was really no skin (see what I did there?) off of anyone's nuts for a Pld to take a couple seconds to buff themselves with SS mid fight in preparation for incoming Tankbusters/AoEs/Cleaves.

By comparison, War's needed a much keener eye to detail. Given that Wrath (outside of the use of Infuriate) was not an immediate "at the ready" use for Defense, and IB has a substantially smaller (and thus much tighter) timer, a small mistake in War's defensive line up could leave the Warrior in a world of hurt. Mismanaging your wrath stacks meant risking additional dmg during Tank busters. There was also the nature of War's mitigation. War spent a lot of time making back hp that they lost... meaning you had to take the hit first. In that regard, Tank busters were far more alarming to see on a War than on a Pld, because the Dip in Hp was greater (even though your hp bar itself was much larger). You still survived and made back your Hp fairly easily, but if you were used to completely mitigating dmg(Pld) over soaking it(War) and making it back, you felt decidedly squishier as War than you did as Pld (keep in mind that with certain Pld Cd combinations could essentially turn any Tank buster pre-3.0 into a tiny boss fart, especially if coupled with Stone Skin. Even Figths like T9 were no big deal for a Pld, because you could time your SS cast to go off right after Raven's beak and almost completely nullify the dmg caused by Raven's ascent, which most people considered notorious because it was magic). War was fun, obviously, but by comparison, Pld felt safer and more adaptable regardless of the situation.

To be fair though, I had some bad experiences with MRD back in 2.0 (during the Beta phase), and it felt incredibly broken. It left a bit of a stigma with me, so it took me a long time to come back to War when I got full copy of the game. I don't think I finally gave it another chance and finished leveling it until Leviathan came out in the "through the Maelstrom" patch. Since then, War has undergone even more improvements, which have made it into the seemingly flawless tank that it is today. By comparison, SE has given Pld almost no love at all, and that's kind of sad since Pld was an amazing asset once upon a time.

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

But from 2.1 on and in 3.0 now, WAR has no useless abilities outside of cross class choices.

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Very true. In the history of Tanking in FFxiv, Warrior has, by far, been the tank that has seen the most adjustments and ability tweaks. Pld had a few here and there (mostly enmity scale adjustments which always fell short), but none of them were nearly as substantial as War's. The result is that War has been finely polished to the point of being near infallible (save for pilot error). By comparison, Pld has been almost completely ignored, and the result is that it has essentially been eliminated from the Tanking Meta (not quite, but it's definitely taking a back seat to Drk and War). Yet, sadly, SE seems to think that "everything's fine." Truly is a shame.

As a SMN: Tri-Bind, except for PvP.

Blizzard 2 has

• more potency (50 instead of 30)
• a shorter cast (2,5s instead of 3s)
• is an 5y area-effect (instead of only 3y tri-bind) and
• costs less mana (707mp to 884mp)

"Downsides" are only that it binds for 8s (instead of 20s) and that it's not a ranged attack.
But since your close anyway on big pulls for miasma 2, so... yeah.
I think the only time I use this skill is, when everyone died except me in a dungeon and i start running towards the new spawned tank.. swiftcast+tri-bind+sprint and go.

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Originally Posted by Februs

A lot of people echo that sentiment, but I find most people who get interrupted using Clemency are using it spur of the moment rather than for planned executions. I have almost never been interrupted in a Clemency cast, but that's because I time my casts for Tank busters and Boss AoE's. Between the two, the AoE's are more difficult to time Clemency for because the boss often continues their auto attacks or there is some other form of incoming dmg, and can interrupt your cast if your timing is off, but you can still get the cast off for most of them. Tank busters are typically easy to Clemency your way through (A4 being an exception, given that the Tank Buster is actually multiple smaller hits in rapid succession). Short of canceling the cast or not casting it early enough, I have never been interrupted on a Clemency cast during a Tank Buster.


The issue with the long cast timer (which is a little long) is the heal potency. A well timed Clemency that hits right after a tank buster can outdo the potential self-heal of a War in a single burst, especially if used when under the effect of Convalescence. If you get a Crit, the healer can outright just ignore you and heal the party. I don't think they wanted Pld throwing around that kind of power at the drop of a hat. If they shortened the cast timer for Clemency, they'd probably have to reduce the potency as well to compensate for Pld's who use it in ways that it was not intended for.

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I have said this before on other threads. You have said this before on other threads. I have commented on you (and me) saying this on old threads, while on other threads.
You bring this up in this thread, because of another blanket clemency is awful statement on this thread.

I am repeating the cycle for one specific reason. Clemency has a specific design and use for the class and the present content, IF YOU KNOW WHEN TO APPLY IT. Yes, it requires the tank buster to be on a visible cast time. The majority of raid content presently has this. There are several dungeons that come to mind as well. When you time Clemency correctly, it is actually a really potent skill. I would argue that it is one of the few skills for “active” mitigation in the game, because, if timed correctly, your health, in essence dropped 5-8k less than it should have dropped on the gcd just after the tank buster landed.

As for the topic and “least useful” button, I have to lean to Tempered Will, aka knockback mechanic cheese. If there is no knock back, it’s only benefit is to build LB. woohoo.

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Originally Posted by AlexiIvaniskavich

Clemency has a specific design and use for the class and the present content, IF YOU KNOW WHEN TO APPLY IT. Yes, it requires the tank buster to be on a visible cast time. The majority of raid content presently has this. There are several dungeons that come to mind as well. When you time Clemency correctly, it is actually a really potent skill. I would argue that it is one of the few skills for “active” mitigation in the game, because, if timed correctly, your health, in essence dropped 5-8k less than it should have dropped on the gcd just after the tank buster landed.

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Agreed. I find Clemency to be one of the most amazing abilities in a Pld's roster for the simple fact that it's active mitigation on both you and your party can almost nullify the dmg caused by Tank Busters and Raid wide AoE's.

If there's a single one "problem" with the move itself, I would say that the problem isn't even with Clemency, but the current meta design of most HW fights. The high Dps checks and the already abysmally low Dps output of Pld's means that each and every cast of Clemency lowers the overall raid dmg and ability to meet those Dps checks, even if it does save someone's ass. This means that Pld's become even more dependent on finding a Dps team that is absolutely amazing at their jobs in order to clear end-game content whilst taking full advantage of their kit in the fight ... which we all know is about as likely as winning 4 lotteries at the same time. Basically, SE has designed fights that encourage the Pld's to play their jobs badly just to keep up with an obnoxious Dps check. Not cool.

I guess a second "problem" (more of an inconvenience, really) would be that some Tank busters can interrupt the cast bar. Thor Ex's Heavenly Heel, for example, can and will interrupt Clemency, which is a little annoying. It's not a deal breaker though, because Pld's can still cast Clemency post Sacred Cross without any risk (allowing the healers to completely ignore them), as well as through all of the AoE casts in that fight. Given a Pld's Tp consumption issues, it's actually preferable for Pld's to use Clemency in such instances in order to conserve Tp... or rather, it would be if they manage to find 4 Dps that know how to meet the checks.

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

Speaking of 2.0, Steel Cyclone was extremely useless then (trade all your +healing for equal enmity to OP with no TP cost).

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Back 2 Back Steel Cyclones with IR+Berserk+BloodBath was pretty potent in WP speed runs, and any other speed run I guess where you pull the whole place to the boss room(Keep in mind it negated the Defiance penalty where OP does not)Wrath stacks used to give % to crit b4 3.0, so you could just rip 20%increased crit chance OPs till you were ootp, then follow up with 2 SC right before the pacify. Now Decimate nullified that, so imo SC is less useful now than it used to be previously.

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Originally Posted by Iagainsti

Back 2 Back Steel Cyclones with IR+Berserk+BloodBath was pretty potent in WP speed runs, and any other speed run I guess where you pull the whole place to the boss room(Keep in mind it negated the Defiance penalty where OP does not)Wrath stacks used to give % to crit b4 3.0, so you could just rip 20%increased crit chance OPs till you were ootp, then follow up with 2 SC right before the pacify.

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If you do 2 Steel Cyclone, it means you use Infuriate. Thus, you can use Unchained to negate Defiance damage penalty, and you spam OP during Unchained for a lot more damage than 2 SC.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

If you do 2 Steel Cyclone, it means you use Infuriate. Thus, you can use Unchained to negate Defiance damage penalty, and you spam OP during Unchained for a lot more damage than 2 SC.

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Sorta; you waste 5 secs of Unchained building up maim, and waste a 10%crit bonus for your OP spam seeing how your tp lasts longer than Unchained's 20 secs, plus you can sustain the 10%crit then 20% for the full duration of your tp by timing your Maim/Berserk/IR properly, then following up with B2B SC Bomb for major Hp return and damage. Unchained is better for single targets. Unchained+IB was the wrecking Ball; B2B SC was the TNT. If you disagree, test it out.

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Originally Posted by Iagainsti

Back 2 Back Steel Cyclones with IR+Berserk+BloodBath was pretty potent in WP speed runs, and any other speed run I guess where you pull the whole place to the boss room(Keep in mind it negated the Defiance penalty where OP does not)Wrath stacks used to give % to crit b4 3.0, so you could just rip 20%increased crit chance OPs till you were ootp, then follow up with 2 SC right before the pacify. Now Decimate nullified that, so imo SC is less useful now than it used to be previously.

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Spooky Ghost was referring to pre-2.1 patch, during which time your method would have been inefficient and far less effective.

Before 2.1, Steel Cyclone had greatly reduced enmity gen. Even if you spammed it (which you couldn't, at the time) you would be lucky to hold enmity on the entire mob. Also, Warrior's ability to self-heal was horrendously nerfed before 2.1, so it was near impossible to do Speed pulls and stay alive as a Warrior. Speed pulls weren't even really a thing back then, to be honest, but even if it was, Tp costs for almost all of War's moves were much higher, and the cooldown times of all of War's abilities were much longer. They were dramatically under-powered at the time.

SE ignored the problem for a long time, but finally decided to do something about it when the first set of the Binding Coil of Bahamut was implemented. War under-preformed in there spectacularly, leading to people using the job in ways that SE had "not intended" (which meant as a trash magnet or not at all). Pld was not much better off, but their CD's were much preferable for boss tanking. In the end, SE made changes to 12 different aspects of War's skill set (more if you include multiple changes to single moves, like Holmgang which got 4 changes alone). It was one of the biggest single patch changes to a job class this game has ever seen, and is the ground work for all of the lovely perfection that Warrior enjoys today. Without those fundamental changes, War would be the least used tank in the game, not the most used one.

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Originally Posted by Februs

SE ignored the problem for a long time

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Long time ?! They fixed WAR right at 2.1.
That's a pretty short time to make the job wonderful.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Long time ?! They fixed WAR right at 2.1.
That's a pretty short time to make the job wonderful.

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Well, not a long time lol. I just meant that they kept claiming that the job was fine and had no problems ("working as intended") for a while before they made the changes. Every time someone asked about it, they had the same response. They only even bothered to make changes because they were forced to acknowledge that there was a problem when the First Binding Coil of Bahamut pretty much eliminated Warriors from the MT position (or really any position) in end-game content.

By comparison, though, Pld's cries for help have been ignored for far longer. Even if you consider the "start" point of the Pld issues being 3.0 (arguably, they started long before), SE has already passed the point in which the found an acceptable fix by almost double the amount of time.

• Alex is released = No change to Pld.
  
• Savage comes out = Pld falls even further behind meta, and there is still no change.
  
• 3.1 releases = Minor changes implemented to Pld that literally didn't fix anything. Some changes actually act as a nerf to the job in many cases.

SE's response to all of this? They haven't really said anything, leaving us all to fall back to their original comment a while back which was: "Pld is working as intended..." So... You intended to completely destroy that job and remove it from the end-game content... Okay then. All according to plan.

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Originally Posted by Februs

I'm starting to wonder if I should have posted a 2nd and 3rd version of this exact thread in the Dps / Healer Forums. I wasn't expecting to get discussions about moves outside of the Tanking sphere. It's interesting, for sure, but it's caught me off guard a little.

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Maybe you should. Stimulation conversation in the forums is always nice. And sorry, I can't really contribute to the thread much. I mostly come here (and the DPS forum) to educate myself about things I don't know. I'm finding the DRK stuff REALLY interesting in particular.

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Originally Posted by VanilleFang

Maybe you should. Stimulation conversation in the forums is always nice.

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I thought about it, but I'd be the one contributing least to those threads. I'm extremely fluent at Drg, but my experience with other Dps classes is very limited, and I almost never heal (only just got my Whm above 50 the other day). Not to mention that I have a feeling the thread wouldn't be quite as useful on the Dps forums in particular. Dps rotations tend to be extremely strict, so there's not often a lot of room for finding additional utility in moves you don't use frequently... All the same, I've been surprised in the responses I've gotten about other jobs so far, so I may go ahead and post the threads anyway, just to see what happens.

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Originally Posted by VanilleFang

And sorry, I can't really contribute to the thread much. I mostly come here (and the DPS forum) to educate myself about things I don't know. I'm finding the DRK stuff REALLY interesting in particular.

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No need to apologize. The whole point of this thread (besides my personal enjoyment) was for people to learn about moves they under-use. So, even if you're just reading then it's serving a purpose. If you do have questions about any particular moves you feel like you're not using enough (or even using frequently but are concerned you're not using them to the best of their utility) don't be afraid to pipe up and ask. Someone's bound to have some insight for you.

This is an interesting thread. The major devil's advocate question to ask is "just because you almost never use an ability, does that mean it's a bad ability if it does one rare thing well"?

Tempered Will is the standout here from the OP's original post. It's a skill you'll probably never use on your average dungeon run, and rarely use on bosses. However, for the few specific bosses that DO have some kind of knockback or slow it suddenly becomes a hugely important part of the Paladin's kit. Being able to avoid knockbacks is incredibly useful provided an encounter actually has them. Just because a boss fight might have no reason to use Tempered Will doesnt mean it isnt a fantastic ability. The convenience of things like being able to eat Shiva's bow pushback to the face, or eat a divebomb on T13 if you got out of position, or ignore a Titan Landslide is hard to quantify - you rarely "need" to avoid a knockback but if you CAN avoid it then you can make a certain part of an encounter a lot smoother.

I think that's the key with the Paladin's toolkit. The paladin has a small selection of attacking moves they use all the time, and a good base level of cooldowns that see use on just about every encounter. However, they have a HUGE toolkit of super specific moves that are never vital to an encounter's completion but CAN make the encounter a heck of a lot easier. Cover. Divine Veil. Stoneskin. Tempered Will. Even Clemency. You wont use them much, but when you find that awesome spot in an encounter where you CAN use them they feel anything but underpowered. It's remembering that these skills exist and using them at the key moments that separate the okay tanks from the great one.

Sure you can argue that these moves perhaps need some buffs or usage increases, but is it necessary for all moves to be consistantly used? I rather like having a handful of super specific move options that I might use in 10% of fights, as long as when I -do- use it I feel their impact keenly (Cover is a good example of this - it makes picking up the huge pack of snipers/soldiers/hardhelms super easy on Wave 8 of A2S. It's not vital but the use of the skill removes virtually all RNG risk of healer splat causing a wipe at this point).

The skills I consider bottom feeders arent the ones which have niche use, but the ones which have tiny impact when you DO use them. Awareness as a paladin is the one that stands out for me. It's... well it's not -terrible- and it's sort of free to use, but the fact that auto attack damage is so negligible means that whilst it COULD be an awesome tank cooldown, in practise popping it just equates to about 3% less damage taken for a bit. Maybe. It adds some stability but anything that's super damaging doesnt crit anyway. It's the kind of skill that I feel would be best served being an "always on passive", perhaps a trait on Shield Oath that makes you immune to crits.

Aside from maybe 2 encounters in the entire game where there's a "boss crits lots now" mechanic, Awareness is a button that has no real tangible impact when used and so feels underwhelming. I just find myself pressing it consistantly throughout most fights now so I just have high uptime on it rather than ever recalling a moment where I thought "uh oh, I'd better not be crit now" as those moments are usually the ones where you have other tank cooldowns running.

The other underwhelming skill Paladins have isnt really a skill, it's "the fifth crossclass slot". Foresight, Bloodbath, Stoneskin and Mercy Stroke are all must-haves. They're not super strong but they all have good use for a paladin tank and are worth taking. The fifth slot though... it's wasted. Fracture is now 100% a DPS and TP loss whenever you use it in ANY situation at level 60 and thus shouldn't even be on the bars as a paladin any more. Raise can't be used in combat. Protect is the only viable option and the healers take care of that.

I can't help wishing that the crossclass system either limited you to 3 slots so you had to make more meaningful choices, or allowed a selection of 5 skills from a bigger selection of classes. As a Paladin I'd LOVE to crossclass something like Invigorate, or Shadeshift and Goad from Ninja, or even Blood for Blood for doing better OT dps. That useless fourth crossclass slot just feels so annoying. Whitemages get the same issue I think - once they've crossclassed Virus, Eye for an Eye, Swiftcast and Surecast the only two skills for the final slot is Ruin (useless) or Blizzard 2 (which is pretty much worthless when you have Holy for AOE and Stone 1 for slows).

Unchained? I Use Unchained In Alexander (Fist - Normal) All The Time!

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

Aside from maybe 2 encounters in the entire game where there's a "boss crits lots now" mechanic, Awareness is a button that has no real tangible impact when used and so feels underwhelming.

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For me, Awareness has two to three uses. The first use is the more "niche" one, where you'll want it up when there is special mechanics that make the boss crit a lot (Shiva in bow mode, T11 square add), the second use is to couple it with a move that increases block or parry rate, like Bulwark, Dark Dance, and Raw Intuition. Using Awareness alongside those eliminates crit from the table, thus increasing your effective block/parry chance even more, since crit chance is calculated before them. The third usage is quite similar to the first one; it's when you're in a pretty damage-heavy phase and you and your healers don't want you to get a crit that could become too much damage for you to survive, or for them to handle on top of the other damages. It's true that you have other tank CDs for these moments, but Awareness does a good job here in addition to them I think. The first example that comes to my mind when I speak about that is in A3S, when the boss is in his giant hand form. His auto-attacks are incredibly powerful if they crit, it's literally a tank buster when it happens close to a cleave. The fact is that A3S is a very high DPS check, so you want to minimize the time spent in tanking stance. Using Living Dead on the first cleave, then Awareness + Dark Dance + Convo for the 2 next cleaves after the first Wash Away, made me able to tank the whole phases 1 and 2 entirely out of Grit. If I don't use Awareness there, I'm at the risk of dying from an auto-attack crit unless I put Grit on. Awareness makes me able to completely safely tank out of Grit in this particular situation, so it basically increases my DPS. Shadow Wall and Shadowskin are already used during phase 1 to compensate for Grit, then Shadowskin is re-used later in phase 2 when I'm at 3 stacks, and Shadow Wall becomes available again in phase 3 for one of the tethers. This way I get full benefit of all of my defensive CDs, and it makes me able to tank out of Grit for easily 80 to 90% of the fight. Without Awareness, I'd have to either burn something else for this specific time which may then not be up for another, thus forcing me into tanking stance, or just go Grit for this moment, which in both cases results in the same raid DPS loss.

This makes Awareness a much better ability than Tempered Will. Tempered Will is a pile of shit which should have another effect added to it and maybe its CD reduced depending on the said effect. Same goes for Cover, Clemency and Divine Veil. PLD's toolkit started from a good idea, but has been very poorly designed and makes the job very bad in most fights. Even in Thordan EX, I've done it with the 3 tanks as MT, and while PLD has its shining moments there, WAR does much better anyway, and DRK offers more raid-wide mitigation than Divine Veil (which is incredibly shitty because of its super long CD for what it gives compared to the loss of Reprisal + Delirium if you don't have a MNK like my group). The only really good thing that PLDs get is Sheltron, which is absolutely gorgeous.

Hell, even as an anti-knockback Tempered Will is shit compared to what DRKs can do with Plunge. Plunge is basically Tempered Will but with a 200 potency attack attached to it, and only 30sec CD. The only advantage that Tempered Will has is that it doesn't require an enemy target (like everything else from PLD, HG compared to Holmgang, Sheltron compared to IB, Divine Veil compared to other raid-wide mitigation tools like Path, Delirium, Reprisal, Virus, Disable, etc...). But it's a really small advantage that only takes place in rare specific cases, like if you wanna eat a T5/T13 divebomb in the face. I know you love your PLD job Sapphidia, and that you're always trying to find all the tiny little good things that can exist in his kit, but, the fact is that this job is currently very bad designed and needs help. Most of his kit is garbage compared to what other jobs have, that's it.

Well I can agree with that, but my point was a little different. I agree Paladin needs help of course, but I don't feel that looking at all the less used skills and comparing them to alternatives from other classes is the best way to do it. All skills don't have to be equal, and it's okay designwise if jobs have some skills that have very limited use as long as they're not -totally- useless.

Could Tempered Will be better? Of course it could. It could have a 60 second cooldown. It could give the paladin a heal when used. It could be another damage mitigation ability. It could even be a DPS cooldown that boosted Crit or something. However, as it stands it's still a skill that has some uses, and its existance doesnt really bear any connection to the overall usefulness of the paladin.

Boosting the power of a class is mostly done by increasing potencies, reducing cooldown amounts and generally just buffing numbers. You can do more creative things, sure, but if Paladins were doing 20% more DPS than they do right now you wouldnt have anyone really whining about Tempered Will and Divine Veil being niche abilities as the overall class is strong. But because the class is viewed as weak the eyes naturally fall on the weakest elements.

I think the only ability paladins have which I feel needs a big viability boost is Clemency. It -should- be class defining but its implementation makes it stupidly hard to use.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

if Paladins were doing 20% more DPS than they do right now you wouldnt have anyone really whining about Tempered Will and Divine Veil being niche abilities as the overall class is strong. But because the class is viewed as weak the eyes naturally fall on the weakest elements.

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There is also the fact that a lot of people want to see PLD improved in another way than just increased damage, by instead starting to look at their more support-like abilities. Look at BRD and MCH, they are the lowest DPS in the game, yet everyone wants at least one of them in their group for their incredible utility. PLDs could have comparable utility at a lesser extent (They shouldn't make PLD mandatory either, but at least as desirable as a DRK), while still dealing the same shit damage. It needs a better job design overall. They could get away by just increasing its damage, but IMO it's not the solution.

I'd certainly love to see them take a Group Utility view of the paladin to compensate. I think most paladin players aware of the dps issue would prefer keeping the lowish current DPS but being improved in other areas - the main issue is the ever present factor that if you give Paladins too much weird utility that can bypass mechanics or cheese things then they'll become too vital as the other tanks will only have damage/mitigation in their kit.

That said there's plenty of things you could do. Tempered Will becoming a group buff instead of just the paladin would be amazing for things like A3S hand knockbacks (boosting overall DPS by skipping a KB or two). Clemency would be amazing if you could cast it more frequently when tanking - I hear regular suggestions of things like royal authority giving a "next clemency is instant cast" buff or similar. Or give paladins Rogue as a crossclass option so they can be another source of Goad.

I think the main reason is that buffing paladins in this way, to improve the outlying benefits of their utility, feels a risky proposition. They'd be so far apart from the other tanks in terms of high utility but low dps contribution that it might prove impossible to balance for encounters going forward. I'd like to see them try though.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

the main issue is the ever present factor that if you give Paladins too much weird utility that can bypass mechanics or cheese things then they'll become too vital as the other tanks will only have damage/mitigation in their kit.

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I don't understand why everybody reacts like that...a thing is either "useless" or "overpowered", there's no middle ground ?

You might have listen too much to Yoshi-P and his "If we make unique bonuses, people will automatically made them mandatory and reject those who don't have them"...

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Originally Posted by VanilleFang

Giving PLDS more support/utility option would be inte

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Dammit. I forgot you can't edit on mobile lol.

I'll have to edit my post when I get home. Ugh. Sorry.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

This is an interesting thread. The major devil's advocate question to ask is "just because you almost never use an ability, does that mean it's a bad ability if it does one rare thing well"?

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I actually ended up putting an Edit on my original post to address this. My original intent in posting this thread was not to imply that some skills are inherently "bad," I was just identifying which are underused and how players not maximizing specific move utility that they might be overlooking. The original examples I put into the OP were just that, examples. However, there are certain moves that you could play devil's advocate for and outright say are bad. Your Awareness vs. Tempered Will example is such a case.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

Being able to avoid knockbacks is incredibly useful provided an encounter actually has them. Just because a boss fight might have no reason to use Tempered Will doesnt mean it isnt a fantastic ability. The convenience of things like being able to eat Shiva's bow pushback to the face, or eat a divebomb on T13 if you got out of position, or ignore a Titan Landslide is hard to quantify - you rarely "need" to avoid a knockback but if you CAN avoid it then you can make a certain part of an encounter a lot smoother.

The skills I consider bottom feeders arent the ones which have niche use, but the ones which have tiny impact when you DO use them. Awareness as a paladin is the one that stands out for me.

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Here's the thing. Whereas Tempered Will does have a niche usage in which it can (and often is) extremely useful, it is important to note that the niche usage of Tempered Will often encourages a Pld to play badly to take advantage of it. Out of all of knockbacks in the game, there are very few that are unavoidable if you are just paying attention (Titan's LS vs A3's Wash Away for example). IF you can dodge a knockback without taking the hit, then you should never be taking that hit. It's that simple. Having a Pld pop Tempered will to avoid the knockback implies they are willfully taking additional dmg, and since Tempered Will does nothing to negate that dmg at all, it's actually a bad call to soak for the sake of positioning when you could simply dodge. So, in theory, any knockback that can be dodged is taken out of Tempered Will's utility.

That leaves us with the knockbacks that cannot be dodged. A3 and Nevverreap are the most commonly encountered ones at the moment. 2 Fights, and in Neverreap you can only use Tempered will for 1 out of 2-3 knockbacks, and even if you are using Tempered Will, you usually still have to position yourself accordingly for the sake of not dragging the boss through your knocked back teammates, which means stacking on the AoE until it is done and moving contrary to your team's knockback.... Even if we're calling it a niche, that's a pretty rare occurrence. Right now, A3 is the only fight that I can think of in the entire game where Tempered Will get's a reliable use. It's use can be improved upon, because people tend to forget that it dispels heavies, but those are rare as well, so again, not very useful.

Awareness, on the other hand, has a reliable usage. Niche uses (such as Shiva or T11) are nice, but a Pld can also save Awareness for every single use of Bulwark, thereby increasing the blockrate. That ~20-30% physical dmg mitigation per block (depending on shield type etc). Each successful proc out-mitigates Rampart, in that specific area of dmg. That's a pretty huge impact, especially for Mob tanking. I've even used it to a strong degree in boss fights. It's a bit of a gamble, but Thor Ex: Holy Blade Dance with Sword Oath (essentially a one-shot Tank killer) can be successfully mitigated without Hallowed ground by coupling Awareness/Bulwark/Foresight and a well timed stoneskin from my healer (I didn't have a choice. Shelltron/ HG were still on CD at the time). Even with that Stoneskin, I should have died. Increasing the proc rate of Bulwark saved my life by cutting the dmg of Blade Dance essentially in half. The only problem I have with Awareness on Pld is actually a problem with Bulwark. The CD timers don't line up for Bulwark and Awareness to be used in sync or even with every second usage. Terrible timing. Bulwark's CD timer should be adjusted to match.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

I think the only ability paladins have which I feel needs a big viability boost is Clemency. It -should- be class defining but its implementation makes it stupidly hard to use.

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Clemency is definitely one of the most difficult moves to use in a Pld's kit, but it is also arguably the best active mitigation in the entire game. The only one real problem with with the move itself, and that is figuring out which Tank Busters/AoE's/Cleaves can cancel the cast and which do not. Once you know that, though, your Dmg mitigation goes through the roof. It's takes some timing practice, but AoE dmg is practically a mute point on Pld now. Healers can safely ignore a Pld when they see that Clemency cast bar. Even some Tank Busters can be busted if you just manage to get that timing exact. I'm pretty sure a well timed Tempered Will can have a similar effect for knockback cancellations as well, but I haven't tried it yet (something I'll be sure to try out next time I take a stab at Thor Ex. If Tempered Will secures the cast Clemency during Sacred Cross, then that Dmg would be outright nullified on Pld... Interesting idea. I just have to try it and see if it works).

I do agree, though, that there should be a way of surecasting Clemency in the event of emergencies. It's been mentioned on the forums before that they would be increasing the value of Tempered Will substantially if it just added surecast to it's effect. I'm inclined to agree.

I would be willing to accept a buff to Unsurecast if it stopped knockback. Since it only stops interrupts from damage thanks to the in battle tooltip as opposed to the bad menu tooltip. And Tempered Will of course getting the won't be interrupted from damage.

Unsurecast in the menu says "Cast spells without interruption". Alright. In battle blurb. "Spells will not be interrupted from taking damage". Oh okay. Shouldn't ever take damage except for huge area wide damage anyway but okay.

So in favor of the Paladin skill yes it should get a Surecast effect as well. If you are stopping knockback then damage from attacks shouldn't faze you either.

Tempered Will and Cover don't do enough to justify their cooldowns and restrictions. Having like two fights in the game made more convenient doesn't justify a 3 minute cooldown. Compare Holmgang or Plunge to Tempered Will - even taking the entire class kits into account, it's imbalanced. It's easy to make them useful in *all* fights and cover some holes in the paladin job as well.

Tempered Will - 90s cooldown; Current effects + removes TP cost for the duration. TP issues solved and has synergy with Shield Bash.
Cover - All Covered attacks will be blocked. Lets paladin use Shield Swipe as OT, makes Cover into a decent mitigation tool for the MT when paladin is OT.

Clemency is an ability that has a ridiculous amount of penalties attached to it. They're not really similar abilities, but look at how Inner Beast is designed - why doesn't it have a TP cost? Well, the justification seems to be that you pay for it with Wrath stacks. In return, you gain damage (highest in warrior's kit at the time of release), mitigation, and healing while spending no TP. For Clemency, you don't spend TP, but you give up 3 seconds of auto attacks and weapon skills, break combos, pay a high MP cost, can't move, can't block, and risk interruption. To top it off, it doesn't even scale with skill speed. In order for an ability to cost that much the result has to be worth it, and I don't think Clemency really is in raid fights. The main issue is its slow cast time, but I also think it shouldn't break combos like in 1.0. Additionally, blocking should be available during casts. So, rather than improving its effect I think they should reduce the costs.

Awareness should be a stat on gear - as an active skill, it's terrible.

It's true that skills don't necessarily have to be useful in every fight to be good, however when some of your skills are not useful in almost every fight, I think that's a problem. Same thing with Haymaker, One Ilm Punch, Lethargy, and other skills. When it comes to War/Drk, all of their niche stuff has very useful secondary effects that can be put to use all over the place. If there's no knockback or heavy/bind in a fight (not an uncommon occurrence), you can take Tempered Will off your hotbar and it'll make no difference.

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Originally Posted by Brannigan

Tempered Will and Cover don't do enough to justify their cooldowns and restrictions.

Clemency is an ability that has a ridiculous amount of penalties attached to it.

Tempered Will - 90s cooldown; Current effects + removes TP cost for the duration. TP issues solved and has synergy with Shield Bash.
Cover - All Covered attacks will be blocked. Lets paladin use Shield Swipe as OT, makes Cover into a decent mitigation tool for the MT when paladin is OT.
Awareness should be a stat on gear - as an active skill, it's terrible.

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Agreed on all the issues, but not necessarily the solutions. That's especially the case with Awareness on gear, unless crit calculations were somehow modified, or if bosses crit far more than Awareness could make up for (without having a more typical or raid-tier-standard Awareness value be wasted against enemies who crit less frequently). I don't want to have to hit minimum anti-crit stat values to be accepted into raids, again. I really, really don't. That and I don't mind it as an active skill; I just think it ought to be a bit more useful, even if that means increasing enemy crit rates.

Also, that inability to block during casts, ugh... I remember starting into T7 back in the day and remembering that casting Stoneskin to go off at the tail end of a TB actually caused no extra mitigation at all, given that my 10% health was only worth about 24% of the damage, and I already had a Bulwark'ed buckler up that would have probably intercepted the attack otherwise...

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Agreed on all the issues, but not necessarily the solutions. That's especially the case with Awareness on gear

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Agreed. I'm not gonna lie, at first I had the same attitude as pretty much everyone that Awareness was a crummy Cd, but now that I know how to take advantage of it I have totally reversed my opinion. I do agree that it should have something that makes it useful as a stand alone ability, but I'm happy with proc'ing extra blocks with Bulwark with it, or extra dodge/Parry's on Drk. Truly fantastic utility, especially with Mob tanking.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Also, that inability to block during casts, ugh... I remember starting into T7 back in the day and remembering that casting Stoneskin to go off at the tail end of a TB actually caused no extra mitigation at all, given that my 10% health was only worth about 24% of the damage, and I already had a Bulwark'ed buckler up that would have probably intercepted the attack otherwise...

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I feel your pain... For all of the timing that I've heard people complain about regarding Clemency, that's nothing compared to the utter hell it was to try and self-buff with Stoneskin back in the Coil days. Getting the buffer of to your Hp was great, but not being able to block during the cast was monstrous and made timing the cast much harder than it should be. Honestly, looking back at it now, I'm kind of amazed I managed to use the ability as well as I did.