Minor tank balancing ideas. (WAR & PLD)

In my opinion, Paladin is mostly balanced except for Awareness and Cover.

My suggestion is a little bit more... radical. Awareness remake suggestion:

Zeal
Grants 10s Zeal buff. 60s CD

Holy Zeal (trait)
Lower Zeal cooldown to 30s.

Zeal buff effect
Improves the effect on a certain next skill used by Paladin:
Rage of Halone: Increases attack potency to 400, regardless of combo state. Animation change: larger slashes.
Riot Blade: Added effect: restores XX% of TP. Animation change: sparks coming out from the enemy will get absorbed by the Paladin?
Sentinel: Increases duration by 10s, reduces next recast time by 20s. Animation change: Paladin body will glow white during the buff duration.
Shield Bash: Can be executed with off-GCD, cancels current skill animation instantly. Animation change: Bash will generate large amount of white electricity / spark.
Circle of Scorn: Second AoE slash with 200 potency will be executed after initial attack.

Cover remake:
Magic circle emits around the Paladin. Other players standing on the magic circle will gain 20% damage reduction buff. The Paladin does NOT get the buff.

That way, Paladin can have more utility (single-target nuke, TP regeneration, extra defense, emergency stun, increased AoE capability) without making all of them available at the same time. The skill can only be activated every 30s, hence should be used as tactical decision rather than something that being spammed.

As for the Cover, activating Cover at the moment during end-game dungeons means suicide. This ought to change that.

Remove Awareness from Paladin cross-skill, allow the new Cover being used by Warrior.

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Originally Posted by Lemon8or

It's hard to count.... Overpower drains 130 TP without means to get it back besides sitting there and wait. Steel Cyclone takes wrath stacks that interfere with our ability to mitigate damage. PLD's damage mitigation is off GCD and can be used without any sort of drawbacks sans animation lock but every jobs have to deal with that too. Flash, lol, we have enough MP to flash three times and no Riot Blade to gain back MP. See the balance there?
Surian, if you still believe warrior does far more damage, self-heals and that 25% more HP actually not balanced with Shield Oath 20% Damage Reduction, I have nothing to tell you except go play a warrior then judge for yourself.

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In a purely crowd control situation

WAR can use 10 OP before running out of TP and 4 Flash and 1-2 Steel Cyclone
PLD can use 8 Flash

WAR has 25% more max HP and the ability to self heal via Thrill of Battle + Blood Bath and chaining AoE attack skills.
In a situation where you need to have crowd control, mitigation isn't the deciding factor as trash mobs don't deal high enough damage to play to damage mitigation's strengths

WAR also has approximately 50 higher DPS over PLD's average of 145, this is verified via parsing the DPS output of both my WAR (i90) and PLD (i90) that is around 35% more DPS output.

In situation where you'll need to take large hits e.g T5, a WAR is still the better choice due to the ability to almost perpetually keep a 30% damage reduction on for DS and this is on top of WAR's 25% greater max HP and its ability to self heal through Inner Beast, Storm's Path, Thrill of Battle and in the event additional mitigation is needed, Vengeance is an available option with Holmgang as an oh shit skill.

In this situation, if a player plays a WAR well, he can take both hard hitting content and crowd control content plus the ability to deal more DPS, this is perhaps why WARs are currently the preferred tank.

Only thing i would add for PLD would be...

Cover should give MP back when blocked.

Shield Swipe does something useful.


If WAR needs adjustment.. i would say a damage mitigation ability. nothing else.

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Originally Posted by ReiszRie

stuff

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Comparing Warrior using 16 GCDs worth of AOE and PLD using 8 is not exactly fair. Sure you can blow all that and be left with 0 TP while the PLD still has 1000 TP and some mana gained back from Riot Blade.
25% more HP and self-heal via Bloodbath(not counting Thrill of Battle since it IS a Cooldown and if warrior can use a Cooldown, who's stopping the Paladin from popping his) is balanced by 20% Damage Reduction from Shield Oath. Defiance alone is slightly worse than Shield Oath and Bloodbath is supposed to make up for that.
True that for Death Sentence, WAR has a slight edge in that he can have 30% damage reduction for every DS but who's stopping you from bringing a WAR to the fight as OT, put Storm's Path up and as PLD MT, you'll still benefit from that debuff. Again, you're comparing warrior using their Cooldowns with Paladins not using theirs. Inner Beast and Storm's Path heal are minimal compared to the damage being dealt in that turn. You don't think a Paladin should tank Twintania with just Shield Oath and never pop Rampart (same DR as Inner Beast), Sentinel (which is better DR than Vengeance), Hallowed Ground (inarguably better than Holmgang by far) and Bulwark do you? Do I need to remind you that Paladin can cross-class Bloodbath (albeit 30 seconds shorter but the heal is minimal) and Foresight while Warrior can't cross-class Rampart?
If a warrior plays well, they'll be on par with a well played Paladin. There is NO difference like you're trying to make it out to be.

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Originally Posted by Synapse

Cover should give MP back when blocked.

Shield Swipe does something useful.

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I agree cover seem to be very limiting, either by range, by recast time, duration and/or effect (and the effect is very limiting as it doesn't cover everything).

As for shield swipe, it's has a great effect...if it actually worked on content other than trash mobs. "Fully resisted!" Why in the world would did SE add something that in all tense and purposes doesn't affect boss mobs? It already has a resist build component.

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Originally Posted by Lemon8or

-snip-

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Well, i was merely comparing their AoE crowd control abilities which it certainly is undeniable that WAR has a greater repertoire of crowd control skills

PLD's CDs reduces damage taken but does not replenish lost HP, more than often, I can recover the HP lost as a WAR by the use of ToB>Bb>SC>Infuriate>SC it is again undeniable that WARs are better for crowd control and being able to self-sustain in that situation

Even with a WAR as OT to apply Storm's Path, the PLD still does not enjoy 25% increase of max HP and does not have access to HP recovery skills and we all know that even 100 hp can mean the difference between a dead tank or a live one, therefore the obvious choice for WARs to MT in T5

PLD's CDs are far too long to be constantly kept up for damage mitigation, damage mitigation only works when it is used before the damage was dealt not after the fact. In the event that Twintania does a 6K DS followed by a 1.2k scratch after 1 second, a PLD that isn't at full health will most likely fall but a WAR will still remain standing as during that 1 second, a WAR can pop ToB to survive the scratch.

Rampart and Sentinel cannot be kept up perpetually but WAR's damage mitigation can be kept up perpetually, this is again undeniable and I'm sure you'd agree.

Hallowed Ground is great for that oh shit moment but the long cast animation makes it not very useful, Bulwark, increases block rate of shields but the fact that its not a guaranteed damage mitigation makes it risky to be used as primary damage mitigation.

Warrior can cross-class Internal Release, Second Wind, Convalescence, Feather Foot, Awareness.

There is a difference and this is from my personal experience playing both at i90 although admittedly PLDs are still a tad harder than WARs and easier to play but if a player knows what he is doing, a WAR can easily be the more capable tank

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Originally Posted by ReiszRie

but if a player knows what he is doing, a WAR can easily be the more capable tank

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That's because Wars destroy things with an ax while Paladin hides behind a shield :D

How about Bulwark? Are most Paladins OK with it right now? It doesn't really feel worth a 2 min CD to me.

Man, why don't you see that your 20% Damage reduction is effectively 25% extra HP AND 25% extra healing. Here's a simple example anyone can understand: Say PLD has 7k HP, WAR will have 8.75k HP. Something that does 6k damage to WAR will do 4.8k to PLD. That means PLD is now at 2.2k HP or 31.42% HP while WAR is at 2.75k HP or also (surprise!) 31.42% HP. So in essence, a WAR not popping CD with Storm's Path and just Defiance is THE SAME as a PLD not popping CD with Storm's Path and Shield Oath. Why can't you see that and keep blabbering about 25% extra HP???? I don't get it. PLD doesn't have access to HP recovery skills because they are the tank that mitigate BEFORE the damage is dealt. Sure WAR can do it now too but not to the extent that PLD can. Somewhere on the forum if you dig up, you'll find that overtime PLD's CD is still slightly better than WAR. PLD is just as capable to tank turn 5 as WAR. Many people have done so unless you're spewing this because your OT is also a PLD then well, it's your setup that is the problem.
Inner Beast cannot be kept up perpetually (never ending). It lasts only 6 seconds and takes 5 Wrath stacks to use. In the best case scenarios, it'll still be down a couple seconds. Storm's Path can be kept up 100% but again, a WAR off-tank can keep it up just as good AND Storm's Eye. If you're refusing to use WAR+PLD, well it's your problem since that is supposed to be better than WAR+WAR and PLD+PLD.
Don't tell me about the long casting animation of Hallowed Ground like Holmgang doesn't have it. I play both too and the animation last equally as long. If you can time Holmgang, you can time Hallowed Ground and come out very far ahead since you're taking no damage compared to be left at 1 HP. Sure Bulwark increase block rate and not guaranteed mitigation but it's just like Featherfoot, slightly better in fact considering Featherfoot for WAR only increase dodge by 15% compared to Bulwark increasing block by 60%.

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Originally Posted by Lemon8or

Sure Bulwark increase block rate and not guaranteed mitigation but it's just like Featherfoot, slightly better in fact considering Featherfoot for WAR only increase dodge by 15% compared to Bulwark increasing block by 60%.

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Yea I kinda made the comparison to featherfoot in my head, it's only 15% but can be used twice as often as bulwark.. The main thing I see in FF's favor is a one or two dodged attacks can outweigh most all of the mitigation CDs. I've dodged several mountain busters with FF up so I'm rather fond of it (biased maybe? lol).. But I understand it's not reliable.

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Originally Posted by Lemon8or

Man, why don't you see that your 20% Damage reduction is effectively 25% extra HP AND 25% extra healing.

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What part about of our mitigation cooldowns only lasting a few seconds, while Warriors always have 3k+ more HP than Paladins, do you not understand?