3.1 PLD changes look good

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

Exactly - you take the current optimal 9gcd rotation that doesnt include the "old" shield swipe and add in the new one off GCD. People were implying that somehow they needed to fill out a 10th GCD to stop goring blade from clipping, and with shield swipe now OFF gcd, you'll have to use fracture.

But no, just stick to the 9GCD Goring/Royal/Royal combo, ignore fracture, and weave in the new Shield Swipe similar to how you use Spirits/Circle.

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Well.. I did extrapolate the rotations and this is what I've got.
https://goo.gl/1ZmwU4

Do note that:
1. This is done in a full 30-sec rotation.
2. It is on a Potency-based calc.
3. The total pot is at the bottom-most part of the page.


Feel free to criticize.


Edit.. I will continue extrapolating to 60-secs. I will edit this post of my findings.

Edit2... From what I found out, the rotation with Fracture starts to fall off by the 1-minute mark by 40 potency. I guess it's safe to say that it is just good to use 1 Fracture and only for your burst stage.... or unless FoF is off cooldown. :)

It's not good to use any fractures on a single target with normal up time. It's a DPS loss to CC fracture on anything but monk and even then it hemorages TP in long fights for only minimal returns.

It was really good before every job got their first combo finisher. RoH for PLD's first combo finisher is so low that fracture actually beats its combo potency, but you have RA and GB now and their average combo potency are both over 220 even if you clip GB with it only ticking 3 times.

So long as your GB combo isnt followed up by another GB combo, you beat fracture on PLD.

They'd have to design content that jumped or went invincible less than every 15 seconds so you couldnt finish your 2nd combo for fracture to be useful consistently.

Can you still use fracture for extra DPS before jumps? I guess if the fight is scripted enough.

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Originally Posted by rawker

Edit2... From what I found out, the rotation with Fracture starts to fall off by the 1-minute mark by 40 potency. I guess it's safe to say that it is just good to use 1 Fracture and only for your burst stage.... or unless FoF is off cooldown. :)

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It's a little more complex than that - if you add two more gcds onto your 30 second one you'll see you the non-fracture rotation pulls ahead again, as you stopped it just after the Fast Blade which is the lowest potency hit. If you made it 35 seconds the non fracture rotation would be ahead as it would have added 200+340 (savage/royal) compared to 150+200 (fast+savage), so would be ahead by 120 potency.

Comparing a Fracture to non-Fracture rotation like that will result in both rotations being pretty equal in DPS at any point - if one is ahead at a particular stop point, the other will probably be ahead 2 gcds later.

Fracture is actually a dps-neutral move when you don't have Slashing Down debuff. Average potency of the 9GCDs of Goring/Royal/Royal is 220 if you ignore the Goring Blade DoT, so doing 9 gcds without fracture is identical DPS to doing 10 gcds with fracture, with the caveat that the fracture rotation a.) costs a lot more TP, b.) sometimes has little gaps in the goring blade ticks which might result in the occasional 40 potency loss and c.) actually is a DPS loss if you have Slashing Down because only the 100 damage hit gets +10%, not the 120 DoT.

There's also the fact that in your 30 second extrapolation at the 30 second mark you have Goring Blade and the Goring Blade Tick happening in the same time - this is potentially a tick which might be lost based on various factors. Sometimes it'll happen, sometimes it wont. Every time you have a rotation with a DoT where the DoT isnt applied 100% of the time and occasionally falls off, there's a chance due to the server ticks that you'll lose a tick over a rotation that clips the DoT and ensures 100% uptime. You just can't really easily model it via that kind of extrapolation.

But yes, as you've seen from your extrapolation, over short times the two rotations are like two interweaving sin waves that peak at different points - on average the non-fracture one will do more dps but it can be a bit random where the fight ends.

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Originally Posted by ManaKing

Can you still use fracture for extra DPS before jumps? I guess if the fight is scripted enough.

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Sadly not, because a lot of fights now have the bosses go invulnerable on jumping away - it's actually better to stop applying DoTs to the Oppressors in A1 shortly before they leap away rather than put them up as they wont tick when they're airborne. This varies from fight to fight.

And yes, Fracture was awesome at 50 because it was a 17 potency gain in your rotation every 18 seconds over just spamming Rage of Halone combos. Sadly now it's at -best- a DPS neutral move and at worst a flat DPS and TP loss. Shame, it looks/sounds awesome for the PLD.

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Originally Posted by ManaKing

If you are still stuck on the idea that you should play PLD or any job for that matter 100% of the time when doing raid progression then you're completely missing the point of the game.

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The point of the game is that you CAN play the job you want, not that you HAVE to play the favored job of the month. Again, the fun thing is that, when WAR was "supposed to be" inferior, you didn't see PLDs come and slap you for wanting to be better...

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Originally Posted by ManaKing

I understand that you feel like 'PLD is bad and will never be good again because those mean short sighted employees at SE wont make it good!' but they design content and you dont.

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Right, they design content, and it's obvious they have a perfectly accurate view of the game, and that no player can ever point some flaws...apart from all the time when they did and jobs were adjusted...you know...like WAR in 2.1...
It's probably a wonderful design to give DRK abilities and traits that activate when he parries or when he's hit and then 1) don't give them the parry buff as a cross-class skill, 2) give them the ability to boost their own parry buff...by adding Evasion bonus to it, and 3) give them a blind line AoE so that they won't be hit as often...

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Originally Posted by ManaKing

So when they make content that you really want a shield for, you can go back to thinking they've validated your main job.

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Strange, I'm pretty sure I've said that designing content specifically for PLD is also a problem, because it would reduce the viability of DRK. See ? See ? I'm thinking about other jobs, not just my own...

By the way, I play all three tanks. But my PLD is just accumulating dust, because, whatever the content, my WAR or my DRK always offer something better.

As a paladin main in my opinion this does not fix the main problems with pld.

1. We still have no aoe moves besides CoS which has a long cooldown that actually does damage. War and Drk do way more aoe damage that they can constantly spam. This means aoe packs die much faster with the other 2 tanks. IE A2S.
2. Still have lower single target damage vs War and Dark
3. Clemency and Divine Vale are still fairly useless.
4. We still take more damage then drk on A4S due to not being able to block its mostly magic attacks.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

1. We still have no aoe moves besides CoS which has a long cooldown that actually does damage. War and Drk do way more aoe damage that they can constantly spam. This means aoe packs die much faster with the other 2 tanks. IE A2S.

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PLD also provides better mitigation in place of high AOE damage, which is why it was used over DRK for early A2S progression (even though it was very obvious to everyone that DRK provided more AOE damage). There's a trade off, you can't be the best at mitigating multiple mobs and also have damage on par with the other tanks.

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2. Still have lower single target damage vs War and Dark

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This is true, I won't contest this, however I will say that considering loot is being handed out like candy on Halloween in 3.1 you really don't need that extra damage until 3.2. Apparently sweeping adjustments are being made to tank damage as a whole to bring everyone in line with eachother, so making changes now would be like putting a bandage on a cut when you're going to saw the whole leg off next week.

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3. Clemency and Divine Vale are still fairly useless.

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It's very weird they didn't touch Clemency this patch, but they did recognize that Clemency and DV need adjusting so... I guess it might be coming in 3.15 or something? I dunno. DV is pretty good, though the long CD on it for what it provides kinda hurts it.

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4. We still take more damage then drk on A4S due to not being able to block its mostly magic attacks.

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Maybe I'm still wrong here, but I could swear that A4S is specifically designed to cater to DRKs strengths, what with it being the new tank they want to showcase. I don't think we'll see encounter design like A4S again in the future, personally.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

As a paladin main in my opinion this does not fix the main problems with pld.

1. We still have no aoe moves besides CoS which has a long cooldown that actually does damage. War and Drk do way more aoe damage that they can constantly spam. This means aoe packs die much faster with the other 2 tanks. IE A2S.
2. Still have lower single target damage vs War and Dark
3. Clemency and Divine Vale are still fairly useless.
4. We still take more damage then drk on A4S due to not being able to block its mostly magic attacks.

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I don't see Divine Veil being 'useless' just not a game changers. However I wish Clemency was lower cast time for sure.

For PLD utility I look to Ifrit Extreme. I think that trial would be the best example of where PLD's Healer support utility could be demonstrated:


Reverse DPS check (too much DPS done wipes the raid)
Heal Intensive fight (DPS players being DPS players - never avoiding the avoidable damage. Moar DPS on nails == dangerous bursty incoming raid damage)
Healer mechanic making Healers overwhelmed - especially if one of them is new or unfamiliar with the Healer debuff mechanic
No cast bar for the tank buster. Need to know the timing

I try to imagine if PLD had access to Clemency and Divine Veil in that Trial, and how much they would help. I feel that Clemency.. I'd sooner cast Stoneskin since I'd guess the manic'd healers would more likely Lustrate/Cure than refresh a Stoneskin. (and I did Stoneskin a lot as PLD when PUG ifrit, pretty much was OOMP most of the fight, whenever enough MP regen'd it'd go straight to a stoneskin for myself or other tank)

Divine Veil.. Save a DPS from getting killed by a Plum? With the CD's recast.. it's be once every 3 plum sets? That's assuming the heal trigger was activated, and post-buff healers don't medica2 or other AoE heal the raid (which would dispel the barrier), and they were stacked close enough to get the shield in the first place /clap.

That's where I'd look to DV/Clem adjustments though, yes yes PLD doesn't have these abilities for lvl50, but helps as an example for future raids that may have a similar design (reverse dps check, healer mechanics, etc) where a healer support utility kit may be desirable.

but even if raids were designed like Ifrit again their support as is it's still a long way from being significant imo

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Originally Posted by Xenosan

For PLD utility I look to Ifrit Extreme.

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Otherwise known as the worst fight in the game.