There are already two dps-tank jobs, please don't make Paladin the third.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

Oh this I know, I'm not talking about using PIE as any of your stat allocation points or your gear, but I'm talking about raw base stats. DRK has higher base PIE and thus more MP than the other two tanks because they have to in order to use their moves. They also have lower VIT and thus HP because of their ability to syphon off HP from enemies. Similarly WAR gains more HP through activating a stance rather than raw base stats before any equipment is considered. This is what I'm referring to with PLD having more VIT and thus having the potential for a larger DPS boost before any other changes are considered with this new patch.

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It's more a difference in base mp than it is in piety.

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Originally Posted by Violette

It's more a difference in base mp than it is in piety.

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And max MP is determined by your PIE stat.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

And max MP is determined by your PIE stat.

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Paladin, 185 PIE - 5198 MP
Dark Knight, 185 PIE - 6930 PIE

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Originally Posted by Violette

Paladin, 185 PIE - 5198 MP
Dark Knight, 185 PIE - 6930 PIE

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That makes no sense. Not saying your wrong, but why would the stat not change to reflect your stats? Shows why I was wrong about my earlier assumptions.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

That makes no sense. Not saying your wrong, but why would the stat not change to reflect your stats? Shows why I was wrong about my earlier assumptions.

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Because the classes have different BASE values for HP/MP. Piety is trash on non-healers, you need a lot of extra piety to get enough out of it for DRK to be useful, and even then because DRK has no % based mp recovery, it's still only increasing your total amount, stored, not your ability to regenerate it. Same reason it's trash on AST.

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Originally Posted by Brianmj

It's the job that espouses the "brick wall" design. Rampart, Sentinel, Sheltron, and Bulwark - abilities that spell UNPRECEDENTED MITIGATION. I haven't done any Alexander Savage but I do read, and my understanding of the situation is that the later turns are filled with a ridiculous amount of dps checks, and since the line is "Paladins are the weakest of the three tank dps wise," the job has become undesirable. I haven't read anywhere that you couldn't complete Alex with a Paladin, only that it was harder. The UNPRECEDENTED MITIGATION is superfluous, *We need more dps, more dps now* is the end game meta and so Paladin suffers like Summoner and Dragoon did before it. And with that Paladin is on the verge of receiving some buffs. It's offensive capabilities will be enhanced, which is fine, I guess. It's the "overall adjustments" I'm apprehensive about. I really really really hope the job's defensive capability isn't sacrificed to appease DPSers that want to tank. WAR is good for that and DRK was created exactly for people that wanted to dps but didn't want to tank. If Paladin *needs* adjustments, then fine, but please don't lose sight of what the job was and is.

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We cleared A4S with a PLD. I can tell you first hand, yes the PLD is a disadvantage vs DRK, yes there was a little less raid DPS, was it harder? not really, did it matter in the end? no because we had an experienced veteran PLD. I would much rather work with an experienced PLD than a grassroots DRK (that gritless style is brutal to learn).
PLD DPS is actually not that bad once they got reasonably geared. For some reason, people like putting their PLDs as MT and yet expect top tier DPS, just one look at their stances will tell you this is folly. We simply got our WAR to MT as much as possible and let the PLD OT more to fully utilize Sword Oath.
At the moment, the PLD is clunky, I would welcome the changes that would improve their MT DPS because right now, its borderline impossible to effectively hold emnity without some decent damage being output. Though with that being said, we treated our PLD very much like BLM + MNK, they need the strat to be somewhat catered to them to allow full potential.

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Originally Posted by CookieMonsta

We cleared A4S with a PLD. I can tell you first hand, yes the PLD is a disadvantage vs DRK, yes there was a little less raid DPS, was it harder? not really, did it matter in the end? no because we had an experienced veteran PLD. I would much rather work with an experienced PLD than a grassroots DRK (that gritless style is brutal to learn).
PLD DPS is actually not that bad once they got reasonably geared. For some reason, people like putting their PLDs as MT and yet expect top tier DPS, just one look at their stances will tell you this is folly. We simply got our WAR to MT as much as possible and let the PLD OT more to fully utilize Sword Oath.

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'Cause Paladin's all have a MT complex.

Go PF A1S this week for tanks you'll see it. "Hurr durr we have a shield we have hallowed ground we must be da mt". (No shit I had that excuse one week and they were promptly sent to a corner because the dps were holding back due to pld enmity). (And gritless is easy. Turn off grit, go ham, use bloodbath).

One of the easiest ways to help increase MT damage is make SwO a buff like Darkside/Maim. Also reduces the clunk in stance dancing.

But as I've said over 4-5 different threads, paladins are bad for progression as they are.

PLD dps is not bad, yes, but (MT+OT) WAR+PLD is worse than WAR+DRK, which is worse than DRK+WAR. Sure we're taking baby steps each time, but by doing so we create larger and larger gaps until there is both a sizeable and (in progression raiding), unforgiveable gap. Groups that had Summoners met a massive wall in A3S with HoP, until everyone was over geared for the fight. But when you have to clarify "when geared", it means that the class is unsuitable without near BiS. Sure, for softcore/midcore groups ehh this is ok, the gear level will slowly increase from previous rounds until you can brute force things due to superior numbers. Until then, we are faced with the fact that while gearing, taking several classes presents enough of a lack in many ways (pld in enmity/damage, ast in dps, smn in single target dps), that they may end up holding back a group if they wish to play on their class.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

I might be wrong in this, but I get the feeling it'd affect the flow of battle on some level.

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It definitely would. Without adjustment, it would diminish TBs my more than even the upcoming Vitality changes (on a pure-Strength tank), because there's never a chance of a TB dealing an extra 3-6k damage by way of a simultaneous auto-attack. On the other hand, tank busters could easily enough be intensified slightly in compensation to create the same intensity but simply without that RNG element. ("Sorry, guys, Bahamut AAed during Plummet. Skin+Adlo+Rampart+Sentinel wasn't quite enough.") You heal hard as closely timed to the boss attack as possible, before the AA guaranteed to come within .6 seconds thereafter, that would otherwise finish off the tank unless typically unnecessary shielding or boss debuffing was used prior to the TB. Basically same as now. Just without the potential shit luck.

If tank busters weren't quite one-shotting dps in their current state, I might reconsider this preference, to have at least a chance at the accidental DRG tank surviving... but even Titan HM, in min ilvl, will one-shot non-tanks, so there's really nothing to lose by normalizing the gap between TBs and AAs so that they at least aren't muting boss animations or otherwise doing the physically impossible.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

A lot of the suggestions here miss the point almost entirely. Altering SwO to a straight damage boost equal to the current SwO's AA boost does not fix anything.

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It does actually fix a few things. A straight damage increase increases the effect of enmity-enhanced abilities, oGCDs (by extension--AoE), and potentially DoTs, all areas in which PLD is known to feel somewhat weak, while also normalizing SwO's effectiveness across multiple weapon speeds. I'm not saying it's the best solution, but there's plenty that a straight %dmg increase does that auto-attacks alone cannot.

Personally, I prefer the idea of a straight up +direct potency on all abilities and weaponskills, if only because that would slightly reduce the relative potency gap of Rage of Halone and Royal Authority, increase the relative effectiveness of Savage Blade, and slightly smooth enmity dynamics, all while increasing enmity, AoE burst, and reactive damage, without overbuffing our multi-DoTing via GB. And I certainly wouldn't mind this mimicking Grit-drop (no GCD cost or combo loss when going Sword Oath), or having some alternate, unique benefit to help decrease the window necessary to balance the loss so that it's worth stance-dancing to more frequently. Of course, at that point Clemency and/or TP issues would only seem an even larger concern, once our GCD losses are halved.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Personally, I prefer the idea of a straight up +direct potency on all abilities and weaponskills, if only because that would slightly reduce the relative potency gap of Rage of Halone and Royal Authority, increase the relative effectiveness of Savage Blade, and slightly smooth enmity dynamics, all while increasing enmity, AoE burst, and reactive damage, without overbuffing our multi-DoTing via GB. And I certainly wouldn't mind this mimicking Grit-drop (no GCD cost or combo loss when going Sword Oath), or having some alternate, unique benefit to help decrease the window necessary to balance the loss so that it's worth stance-dancing to more frequently. Of course, at that point Clemency and/or TP issues would only seem an even larger concern, once our GCD losses are halved.

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I think you have the right idea of it, in regards to +potency up. (And I'm fairly sure this will comprise the majority of the Paladin changes). Sword Oath being on the GCD is more and more a problem (and SwO going off the gcd is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too good), compared to DS and Deli. That being said, I would like to see the Paladin get Potency buffs in the forms of RoH+CoS+SW getting buffed, along with Flash getting it's enmity tuned up a bit further. Also like to see Parry and Block both proc'able on the same hit but like hell we'll ever get to see that happen q.q
Given SwO is the 2nd? best crit scaling ability in the game (gdi bloodletter), as the ilvl goes up it will become better. Just, not as good as 15/20% damage up.

I'm not sure what the increase to RO would do, besides moar deeps. Thoughts?

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Originally Posted by Violette

I think you have the right idea of it, in regards to +potency up. (And I'm fairly sure this will comprise the majority of the Paladin changes). Sword Oath being on the GCD is more and more a problem (and SwO going off the gcd is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too good), compared to DS and Deli. That being said, I would like to see the Paladin get Potency buffs in the forms of RoH+CoS+SW getting buffed, along with Flash getting it's enmity tuned up a bit further. Also like to see Parry and Block both proc'able on the same hit but like hell we'll ever get to see that happen q.q
Given SwO is the 2nd? best crit scaling ability in the game (gdi bloodletter), as the ilvl goes up it will become better. Just, not as good as 15/20% damage up.

I'm not sure what the increase to RO would do, besides moar deeps. Thoughts?

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RO? --> RA / RoH? Forgive me if I'm getting a case of massive stupidity, but I don't recall that acronym.

I still have some old stuff in my sig, for other ideas (far too many to be quite balanced without WAR MT and DRK OT getting slight buffs), if you're hungry for thought-food, but Sword Oath is pretty much the biggest issue imo, or at least the easiest to make large QoL improvements via a simple change thereto. That slight change could allow it to scale with skill-speed, along with the other auxiliary benefits I mentioned above. The only things that come close in importance are a slight potency or enmity-mod buff to Rage of Halone (270-280), and allowing Flash to scale with Fight or Flight (preferably also auto-crit, but with only a 67% of original potency, so that it scales with Crit as well). I realize Rage of Halone already does 20 more potency than WAR's debuffing combo, while having enmity to boot, but PLD has no Maim to compensate (which puts it 68 potency over RoH if both unstanced, or 58 if both in tank stance), and the debuff portion affects only half the sources of damage that Path does. (Compare also to Delirium combo at 207 potency over RoH.)

Warning: the thread's pretty out of date, and I left some ideas haphazardly up there that even I dislike.

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Tank adjustments will involve making stance-switching equally convenient for all tank jobs

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This is from their most recent Famitsu interview.

So while the details aren't out yet, it seems they are going in the direction I detailed -- and it's the logical direction.

Why potency buffs do not make sense is because outside of abilities with enmity modifiers, potency is universal. It doesn't matter where it comes from. It's a sum that is viewed as potency per second. Even if they change SwO to buff weapon skill / ability potencies, the cumulative potency per second would need to be the same as the current SwO. If they don't make it the same, then outside of changing SwO, you are also just asking them to straight up buff the damage component. In that case, you could also just buff the added potency to auto attacks with the current SwO and achieve the same result.

Are you being an idiot? The reason we suggest potency buffs is BECAUSE of enmity. Because PLD has less generation than drk/war. Because the sword oath as it is is a failure. If they want to keep SwO as it is, it has to be potency buffs, at least to RoH so it generates competitive enmity with drk and war, in and out of tank stance.

Yes, they can make SwO a % multiplication of all damage. But that doesn't fix paladin being trash in ShO.

PLD having less enmity generation than DRK and WAR has nothing to do with SwO. So, why are you trying to change SwO to deal with that issue? Are you being an idiot?

When you change SwO, you should be addressing the problems with Oaths. Buffing potencies doesn't fix the inherent clunkiness with Oaths.

If you want to fix enmity, maybe you should target the obvious issues with PLD enmity instead like the potency / enmity modifier of RoH and the general undesirability of using RoH, the potency / enmity modifier of shield swipe, the crippling damage penalty of ShO, etc.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

PLD having less enmity generation that DRK and WAR has nothing to do with SwO. So, why are you trying to change SwO to deal with that issue? Are you being an idiot?

When you change SwO, you should be addressing the problems with Oaths. Buffing potencies doesn't fix the inherent clunkiness with Oaths.

If you want to fix enmity, maybe you should target the obvious issues with PLD enmity instead like the potency / enmity modifier of RoH and the general undesirability of using RoH, the potency / enmity modifier of shield swipe, the crippling damage penalty of ShO, etc.

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No one's asking for increased potencies as an alternative to fixing the clunkiness of Oaths. We're asking that in addition to the fix, SwO's contribution be moved into a more flexible area.

Auto-attack has no embedded enmity modifier. Buff it by 300 potency, and you get 300 potency more enmity out of it. Buff Savage Blade by 100 potency and you get the same enmity difference. (For point of comparison, Skull Sunder would only need 67...) Both are damage differences, but only auto-attack buffs are only a damage increase.

The only idea that's being tossed around is the idea of moving potency from something that in this game has zero added effects, let alone enmity multipliers, to one that can--from auto-attacks to weaponskills (two out of five of which have enmity mods), and possibly abilities (two out of three of which have enmity mods). Same dps. More enmity. Improved Sword Oath threat.

(If you have a decent Monk in the group, the PLDs still not going to be overtaking the MT's enmity any faster than him, but at least the PLD when tanking can hold onto his enmity while stance-danced into SwO without being more obliged to use enmity combos than a Warrior or Dark Knight would in their respective DPS stances. That still leaves a decent gap between PLD and others' tank stances, but at least this much helps.)

Edit: I'd still love to see RoH potency either increased to 280 and/or enmity modifer to 5.5 (or 6.0 if Savage Blade is left at 3.0). If Savage Blade is increased to 4.5 to 5.0, I wouldn't mind leaving RoH's enmity mod untouched. A nice improvement to ShO damage would be if it just didn't reduce ability damage (worth almost a 3% increase to ShO dps iirc, or a little over 9% if it only diminished weaponskills--too much).

SwO should only be a damage increase. That's the point. Do you not see how counter intuitive it is to add more enmity onto our DPS stance? When I raid on WAR, my MT already despises the way I creep on his enmity. Why people want PLD to do the same is bewildering. I'm having flash backs of 2.X and ripping hate due to RoH spam.

Like I said, if you want to increase enmity generation, just increase enmity generation. Bring RoH and SB in line with HS and BB or SS and PS. Buff the potency on RoH to properly account for PLD's lack of a maim or dark side to lessen the damage penalty of their tank stance (no, FoF is not enough). Give them a means of burst enmity on par with DA PS or unchained + berserked BB. There are countless more logical ways to fix PLD's enmity generation without encroaching on the realm of DPS.

I wanted to MT as DRK in Thordan EX the other day with a PLD in the group and was totally against being the OT PLD. In his words, "I can fake it, but it won't be great."

It made me cry a little on the inside to think that the majority of players see PLD only as a MT.

It's upsetting more than frustrating due to the fact that SwO doesn't even give a %dmg increase like Darkside. Only a 50 point potency increase to AAs. Not bad, but could be better (5-10% dmg increase maybe?). I don't blame him for having me OT, but there needs to a way to balance this form of damage.

Percents would be easier to work with instead of increasing potency points imo.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

SwO should only be a damage increase. That's the point. Do you not see how counter intuitive it is to add more enmity onto our DPS stance? When I raid on WAR, my MT already despises the way I creep on his enmity. Why people want PLD to do the same is bewildering. I'm having flash backs of 2.X and ripping hate due to RoH spam.

Like I said, if you want to increase enmity generation, just increase enmity generation. Bring RoH and SB in line with HS and BB or SS and PS. Buff the potency on RoH to properly account for PLD's lack of a maim or dark side to lessen the damage penalty of their tank stance (no, FoF is not enough). Give them a means of burst enmity on par with DA PS or unchained + berserked BB. There are countless more logical ways to fix PLD's enmity generation without encroaching on the realm of DPS.

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Once again, should we change to tank stance only tanking in 5.....? days, this discussion about OT enmity is moot.

BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT

Humour me for a moment (also while we're at it way to miss the point of everything I say. I'll make it simple this time).

Increasing SwO enmity is simply another thing to bring Paladin in line with WAR/DRK. When a DRK uses PS w/o Grit, they get that sweet 15% damage modifier helping their enmity. When a WAR uses BB in Deliverance, they get 5% damage + 20% from maim + up to 10% extra crit chance, that will increase the enmity modifier there as well. When a paladin does it, they get Sweet FA. Which hurts their ability to sustain DPS in SwO w/o losing enmity. SB>RA (not RO mb) was meant to help cover this gap, but due to RoH having sweet FA enmity as it is outside of FoF, they are not able to establish enough of a lead to capitalize on this ability to use an enmity combo as part of their highest dps combo to sustain enmity.

Because as you said, Paladin does not have burst enmity like DRK/WAR.

So what are we proposing SHOULD happen, and why it helps:

Potency Increases to Combo Finishers (and maybe SW/CoS/Flash idk fuck flash).
-RoH to 280/300 in line with BB/PS (respectively):
Simply put, sustained MT enmity is too low as currently is and this is also hurting MT dps, so it gotta get fixed. Idk if anyone disagrees on this.

-SW/CoS potency up by little bits:
Helps with Paladin sustained Damage/AoE damage, two areas as mentioned, lacking.

-Flash (effective) Potency up by 20/30:
Better sustains AoE enmity, so Paladins can focus more on DPS.

All 3 changes here, are simply to help with MT paladin Enmity and slightly with DPS.

Sword Oath to a damage multiplier:
-Increases non-SwO enmity due to multiplicative effect on Enmity Modifiers, as opposed to straight up AA damage increase.

I.E.
100 potency AA + 50 potency AA + 260 potency RoH (410 potency total) as opposed to say, 115 Potency AA + 299 potency RoH (414 potency total, but that is more enmity).
Loss of extra crit chance hurts slightly, but gotta do what cha gotta do.

So changes are made because yes, in the END Paladin OT dps is not fucking horrid and Paladins have a lot of high potencies to play with.
So we change some numbers, roll potencies here or there to make up for the dps lost with the changes and end up with higher potency enmity modified moves outside of ShO, which brings it in line with the same luxury DRK and WAR currently has.

We will hopefully see higher ShO enmity gen/dps, which will then mean PLD can also swap to SwO sooner so they can dps harder and sustain their enmity lead BETTER than they currently can.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

SwO should only be a damage increase. That's the point. Do you not see how counter intuitive it is to add more enmity onto our DPS stance? When I raid on WAR, my MT already despises the way I creep on his enmity. Why people want PLD to do the same is bewildering. I'm having flash backs of 2.X and ripping hate due to RoH spam.

Like I said, if you want to increase enmity generation, just increase enmity generation. Bring RoH and SB in line with HS and BB or SS and PS. Buff the potency on RoH to properly account for PLD's lack of a maim or dark side to lessen the damage penalty of their tank stance (no, FoF is not enough). Give them a means of burst enmity on par with DA PS or unchained + berserked BB. There are countless more logical ways to fix PLD's enmity generation without encroaching on the realm of DPS.

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If SwO is going to do literally nothing but increased (ST) damage, then the solution to the Oath issue is simple. You remove SwO, and buff AA out of ShO. Unless it alters the dynamics or gameplay in some way (and we're pretty much all in agreement that sacrificing a GCD just to use a long-windowed stance, in its current state, is undesirable), there's just no reason to have it. It provides nix for gameplay. It's a trait. Why's it taking up an ability slot? To make sure I'm paying double mana, in two parts, for the next Shield Oath? Does that even seem a good thing for Grit?

Edit: though again, all this is irrelevant, as we'll all apparently be moved towards WAR style stance-swapping regardless. SwO will still be a ~13% increase to ST dps, making it generally the strongest but least flexible dps stance. And Grit... I wonder how it will be changed given only a single stance... I do hope it'll at least be changed to a %AA buff so its contribution isn't nerfed with every slow weapon. Still won't scale at all with Skill Speed though, sadly.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Edit: though again, all this is irrelevant, as we'll all apparently be moved towards WAR style stance-swapping regardless. SwO will still be a ~13% increase to ST dps, making it generally the strongest but least flexible dps stance. And Grit... I wonder how it will be changed given only a single stance... I do hope it'll at least be changed to a %AA buff so its contribution isn't nerfed with every slow weapon. Still won't scale at all with Skill Speed though, sadly.

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Grit could just become an ability.
So could the other stances, like with war.

SwO could become a buff like DS/MAIM/Deliverance, maybe upkept at cost of mana over time? Idk, it's hard to think outside of established norms.

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Originally Posted by Violette

Grit could just become an ability.
So could the other stances, like with war.

SwO could become a buff like DS/MAIM/Deliverance, maybe upkept at cost of mana over time?

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Do we have any abilities with a mana cost though? I'd rather it still have some mana cost attached than half to be locked into/out of Grit for 10s, if not more (given that at that point Deliverance/Defiance would be inferior to Grit/Oaths; swapping to Deliverance could waste HP and swapping to Defiance does not immediately increase eHP).

I'd also rather not have a mana drain on Oaths, especially Shield Oath. I like keeping our mana free for Flash and Clemency.

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Originally Posted by Violette

Idk, it's hard to think outside of established norms.

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If only to throw out some ideas outside the norms... (Just, again, for irrelevant fun.)

The design here is far too complicated, but shows a different way of dealing with a time-spending swap and its respective window. These are still never optimal over time (worth dropping stance just to repop it).

Charged Oaths (abilities with anywhere from a 1s to 5s cast, off GCD):

• Invoke: Sword - charges your blade at mana cost over time for up to 5 seconds. Increases attack speed by 12% + 6% per second of charge, diminishing by 3% per second, starting upon your next weaponskill. Will charge at any enemy targeted at end of cast for 10 yalms + 3 yalms at 30 potency per second of charge. Applies Sword Oath, increasing your auto-attack damage by 67%.
  (67% is just .09% short of its value on a 2.24s blade, [3s blade = 50%, 1.5s blade = 100%)

  This attack speed bonus diminishes over time, starting at 12% +6% per second of charge and diminishing at 3% per second, starting on your first attack. Charges are all nearly as efficient as each other, but technically least efficient in mid-range. Minimum charge length of 1 second.

Efficiency given as [(buff time (1 + (attack speed bonus/2))) / buff time + charge time].

Charge Time-----Initial %----Avg %----Duration----Efficiency
1 second-----------18%---------9%---------6s--------(6*1.09)/6+1 = .93
2 seconds----------24%--------12%--------8s--------(8*1.12)/8+2 = .90
3 seconds----------30%--------15%-------10s--------(10*1.15)/10+3 = .8846
4 seconds--------- 36%--------18%-------12s--------(12*1.18)/12+4 = .885
5 seconds----------42%--------21%-------14s--------(14*1.21)/14+5 = .8916

Capable of dashing 10 yalms + 3 yalms per second of charge, and will deal 30 potency per second of charge, to maximum of 25 yalms and 150 potency.

• Invoke: Shield - charges your shield at mana cost over time for up to 5 seconds, granting additional block strength and rating for an amount an duration based on charge time while drawing in enemies within 6 yalms towards you. Applies Shield Oath at the end of your cast, decreasing damage taken and dealt by 20% and increasing enmity by 130% and hit chance by 5%. Ability damage is not affected by Shield Oath.

I haven't worked out the details for Shield at all, as this is mostly just for the point of Sword Oath perspectives. Once in Oath, these abilities would either turn into just a drop, or they'd allow you to use these effects again, on an internal cooldown (can always swap, but can't spam improved blocks or dashes). May change out Divine Veil for an Oath-dependent Inspire. May somewhat vary the effects of Cover with Oath. May have Oaths build a unique resource, etc. etc....

Background changes:

• Can now block while casting.
• Skill Speed and Spell Speed merged into a single stat, Speed.
• Shield Swipe now partly scales with Block Strength instead of Weapon Damage. While on cooldown, Shield Swipe has a 30% chance to refresh on block. Still requires a block to activate. Lighter shields don't hit quite as hard, but more frequently.
• Shelltron - blocks the next physical attack and all following physical attacks for 1.5 seconds thereafter. Cooldown varies with shield type. [Tower 30, Kite 24, Buckler 18]

Actually, one other thing Sword Oath could do, if potencies were already adjusted and GLD/PLD had a naturally much more powerful AA, is to simply be a cleave mode...
Deal 25% of weaponskill damage to each surrounding mob, for 20% greater TP cost per mob (to a maximum of double). Could limit that to weaponskills if you want it to be primarily an OT thing (esp. if still exclusive with Shield Oath), or reduce the % a bit and include abilities and/or auto-attacks. Could reduce main-target damage for a bit greater AoE (split the damage, but add a % to total per enemy struck) or keep that dual-ness (full ST, partial AoE) a PLD unique thing.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Do we have any abilities with a mana cost though?

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Dark Passenger and Darkside cost MP while being oGCD.

IIRC, they're the only abilities like that.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Dark Passenger and Darkside cost MP while being oGCD.

IIRC, they're the only abilities like that.

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Just wondering how that would work, CD-wise, though. Would it be a CD on entry, like Wanderer's Minuet or Cleric Stance, locking you into Grit (seems more likely / precedented), or would you be able to break out of it again even while the CD is on, and unable to get back in until the CD is done (probably a longer CD in that case), CD both ways?

But yeah, I definitely left my brain elsewhere when I asked that, apparently... If we can have the mana cost and basically Cleric Stance, we've got our new ability-based Grit.

My point is very simple.

Fixing SwO is easy. Fixing enmity while MTing in ShO and SwO are easy. Why the solution for certain posters involves an essay just shows how counter intuitive and unrealistic their proposals are. Why SwO needs to be completely changed to address another simple and unrelated issue is just stupid.

When people talked about Shield Swipe's issues in 3.0, we saw a similar situation. People would post essays about their fantasies about changes SE could do. What did we get? SS removed from the GCD -- the fall back solution for any realistic poster who understood the class.

And with their latest interview regarding tank changes in 3.2, we're in the same situation again. For months people have posted ridiculous and unrealistic changes to oaths. On the other side of the spectrum you had people saying that SwO and ShO cannot be brought in line with WAR for their own BS reasoning. Everyone in the middle (which is sadly a minority here when it desperately needs to be the majority) ended at the same conclusion -- remove SwO from the GCD at the very least. We don't know the details yet but what we do know points to a similar conclusion from SE.

SE has always opted for the simplest, cleanest, most straight-forward and efficient solution to any given problem. Why? Because that's the basics of game design. You don't make your game unnecessarily complex and counter intuitive -- especially in a genre that needs a low bar of entry. None of the solutions here will be what SE ends up doing.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

SS removed from the GCD -- the fall back solution for any realistic poster who understood the class.

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I still think Shield Swipe should have been kept on GCD but made a conal AoE (With potency and TP adjusted), fixing a much more important issue of PLD than a simple DPS loss.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

My point is very simple.

Fixing SwO is easy. Fixing enmity while MTing in ShO and SwO are easy. Why the solution for certain posters involves an essay just shows how counter intuitive and unrealistic their proposals are. Why SwO needs to be completely changed to address another simple and unrelated issue is just stupid.

When people talked about Shield Swipe's issues in 3.0, we saw a similar situation. People would post essays about their fantasies about changes SE could do. What did we get? SS removed from the GCD -- the fall back solution for any realistic poster who understood the class.

And with their latest interview regarding tank changes in 3.2, we're in the same situation again. For months people have posted ridiculous and unrealistic changes to oaths. On the other side of the spectrum you had people saying that SwO and ShO cannot be brought in line with WAR for their own BS reasoning. Everyone in the middle (which is sadly a minority here when it desperately needs to be the majority) ended at the same conclusion -- remove SwO from the GCD at the very least. We don't know the details yet but what we do know points to a similar conclusion from SE.

SE has always opted for the simplest, cleanest, most straight-forward and efficient solution to any given problem. Why? Because that's the basics of game design. You don't make your game unnecessarily complex and counter intuitive -- especially in a genre that needs a low bar of entry. None of the solutions here will be what SE ends up doing.

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Not disagreeing with your general statement but,

A shortened, slightly adjusted tooltip hardly qualifies as an essay. Which is all that these suggestions have actually been in terms of design.

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Sword Oath - Deals additional damage with a potency of 50 after each auto attack. Cannot be used with Shield Oath. Effect ends upon reuse.
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Sword Oath - Increases auto-attack damage by 67%. Cannot be used with Shield Oath. Effect ends upon reuse.
[Effectiveness normalized over multiple weapon speeds - dps untouched] [25-character tooltip]
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Sword Oath - Increases damage by 12%. Cannot be used with Shield Oath. Effect ends upon reuse.
[AoE improvement, Skill Speed contribution, indirect enmity contribution, burst contribution - ST dps untouched]
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Sword Oath - Increases the potency of your abilities and weaponskills by 30. Cannot be used with Shield Oath. Effect ends upon reuse.
[Same as above, with slightly larger effect on shorter oGCDs, indirectly reduces rotational potency gaps slightly]
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Sword Oath - Increases attack speed by 12% and reduces TP costs by 15%. Cannot be used with Shield Oath. Effect ends upon reuse.
[Mostly same as above. Makes GB-per 4 combos option viable. Reduces TP consumption by 2%.]
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Yes, some of these designs have tried to venture into PLDs other problems, but that's partly because they haven't been even faced in prior changes, such as Shield Swipe's move to oGCD (a minor dps increase, still unusable against magic enemies, now with even less use for Skill Speed, with even thought in rotations, and now with reduced PLD-unique crowd-control; PLD remains the least dps MT, least magic-mitigating, with 0 AoE apart from CoS).

When every other tank's dps buffs indirectly affect their enmity-modified abilities, sometimes letting that gap lie seems the more complex and counter-intuitive.

Except your entire adjustment is unneeded.

They don't need to completely change the way SwO works. If they want to adjust skill potencies to help enmity generation or damage... they can just do that. Instead of needing to rework how a stance works while essentially turning it into a crappier copy of Dark-side without all the additional flavor, they can just change 1 number instead (RoH potency 260 --> 290). Which do you think is the more time efficient change?

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Originally Posted by Brian_

Except your entire adjustment is unneeded.

They don't need to completely change the way SwO works. If they want to adjust skill potencies to help enmity generation or damage... they can just do that. Instead of needing to rework how a stance works while essentially turning it into a crappier copy of Dark-side without all the additional flavor, they can just change 1 number instead (RoH potency 260 --> 290). Which do you think is the more time efficient change?

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I'd start with the RoH. Like I did with my suggestions. I have never stated that the two would be unusable together (the only way that would be the case is if SwO had excessive threat). Nor have I said that SwO was the primary concern.

I simply said that RoH changes alone would not fix everything, not even in regards to ST enmity, because while other jobs have both potency buffs and higher potencies, our one dps buff, and ours alone, has no appreciable effect on our enmity. That is an issue limited to our dps stance. And the simple fix for it... is in the dps stance. Only if we buffed PLD average enmity-generation beyond DRK or WAR enmity-generation levels would that not at all be an issue, and SwO having an indirect effect on enmity, and in turn causing excessive enmity, become one instead.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

When people talked about Shield Swipe's issues in 3.0, we saw a similar situation. People would post essays about their fantasies about changes SE could do. What did we get? SS removed from the GCD -- the fall back solution for any realistic poster who understood the class.

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I'm not disagreeing with you outright, but Shield Swipe is, perhaps, not the best example to use. Removing it was definitely the simplest solution SE could have gone for ... and it actually caused more harm than good. Dps for mob tanking was reduced. Enmity in mob tanking was reduced. TP consumption went through the roof in both boss and mob tanking environments. The only plus side was that single target dps on bosses went up a minuscule amount (and that's only in cases when the fight ends before the Pld bottoms out on TP. After that, it's a dps loss).

You're right that simple solutions are often the best solutions, but they're not always the best solutions. The fact is, SE has taken the "simplest" solution to fixing Pld several times in the past (not including their latest blunder with Shield Swipe, there were several enmity adjustments in the 2.x days as well an adjustment to CoS), and none of them actually fixed the job. They just threw a band-aid on it and let the problem fester.

As a paladin main id like to say things first. this is my first post on the forums but id like to clarify that there are good things to the paladin updates. first these extra potency does not make it a dps tank. The way i see these buffs are not when i main tank but for when im off tanking. Yes paladin is suppose to negate damage and is well suited for physical damage due to the block rates. These slight buffs are not breaking the basis of the paladin but are more improving on what it lacks in the current end game. Paladins are falling job because of the higher damage tank jobs and that was to be expected. All tanking with these jobs come down to a preference in play style and the advantages each one can bring.

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Originally Posted by Blazen765

As a paladin main id like to say things first. this is my first post on the forums but id like to clarify that there are good things to the paladin updates. first these extra potency does not make it a dps tank. The way i see these buffs are not when i main tank but for when im off tanking. Yes paladin is suppose to negate damage and is well suited for physical damage due to the block rates. These slight buffs are not breaking the basis of the paladin but are more improving on what it lacks in the current end game. Paladins are falling job because of the higher damage tank jobs and that was to be expected. All tanking with these jobs come down to a preference in play style and the advantages each one can bring.

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I would have preferred something more inventive to help paladins, like adding a capability to increase the dps for the rest of the raid etc, but I'm not surprised at all with the direction they went. At least SWO is off GCD now.

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Originally Posted by Bashum

At least SWO is off GCD now.

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They did not say that. They only said that casting it would not interrupt your current combo potency. As far as we know, it is still on the GCD.

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Originally Posted by Bashum

I would have preferred something more inventive to help paladins, like adding a capability to increase the dps for the rest of the raid etc, but I'm not surprised at all with the direction they went. At least SWO is off GCD now.

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They never said that.

As amazing at it would be that would go against the base concept of the paladin. i mean dont get me wrong theres multiple variations you can have with divine veil based on the stance your in. for example instead of a group shielding it could be a dps raise while in SWO but retain its original effect while in shield.

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Originally Posted by Violette

They never said that.

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It was late, that's what I meant to say.