Paladin button consolidation for 6.0

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Originally Posted by Lyth

At the moment, excluding role actions, we have PLD at 26 actions, GNB at 28, DRK at 23, and WAR at 24. At least some of that difference is bloat. If you identify and get rid of the bloat, you'll have a more engaging job to play when new abilities get rolled in on top of them. It's time to declutter. If it doesn't spark joy for you, into the bin it goes.

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I gotta have to add that some of those actions are only available through certain other actions or buttons, i.e. GNB Continuation includes Jugular Rip etc., thus reducing its button count from 28 to 25, and WAR button count (because of IC and CC, and Zerk->IR) to 21.
If we are going to add in the role actions, PLD has the hightest button bloat of all tanks with a wooping 33 buttons! In my opinion the button number shouldn't exceed 30-32 with a few exceptions, i.e. situational Shield Bash or similar.

I heavily agree with the rest of your post!
I would rather have them keep old actions and upgrade them via trait. An easy example would be WHM Largesse (or Divine Seal) upgrade to Temperance.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

I mean, fair enough. You can put the "important" stuff on 2 hotbars but something has to be left off and other jobs don't seem to suffer with that problem.

That's an interesting point though. Perhaps the difference is because I can set up GNB hotbars similar to my WAR, whereas PLD has totally different flow of abilities and I can't at all work it out to be similar as those 2, and I'd like to level it at least, as I enjoyed having all my tanks at 50/60/70 just in case. But between these 2 issues I really just have no desire to even try.

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I'm a war tank main and yeah it's similar with me. I kind of expect that there will be some differences, but I don't expect a difference in the number of controls being so high. Personally, I find warrior the most playable tanking job in the entire game right now at 80 and have been using it as my main for savage the last two tiers. It flows well, has good sustain, and is easy to optimize on rotation so you can keep your mind on the fight and not get stuck with too many weird button operations.

Honestly, I don't think what we say here is going to matter because I'm pretty sure paladin is going to get the gun breaker treatment done to it next expansion. transformative skills really worked well with both warrior and gunbreaker, and paladin feels very unfinished by comparison. I'd say warrior is sort of like the poster child of what they are trying to do: Get everything down to exactly what is necessary to run, and make it easy to use all those abilities.

Alright. I tried a fresh start at setting up PLD hotbars and mostly got it worked out but just a few updated thoughts that I think could clean it up a bit.

Still no real spot for shield bash, and kind of redundant since tanks have low blow anyways. Don't really see the need for this.

Royal Authority should def upgrade to Atonement and free up a spot, for me at least a more comfy spot for Confiteor.

And, this is more along the lines of just a personal preference, I set up invulns on the expanded hotbars and I like to have one on each side to prevent mistakes, but also I have AoE stuff on one side and single target on the other so I can activate easily in either situation. This only leaves one spot open which I prefer to use as potion spot, so for the moment leaving off Cover. Could swap if needed I guess, but makes me wonder if something couldn't be done between Intervention and Cover. Just have Cover grant the reduction effects instead, drop duration to 6s and maybe bump up the range a bit and one more ability doesn't feel like bloat. I can see Intervention being used as a gauge dump but doesn't seem like this sort of change would break anything one way or the other. Hardly see Cover being used nowadays anyways. #MakeCoverGreatAgain

And I lied on GNB, as Camouflage does currently occupy my potion spot.

I did a quick rotation exercise for paladin assuming they went the pvp combo route, and honestly I like the fact they can do MORE with that setup than what they do now.

(BM = basic melee skill, BC = basic casting skill, A = Atonement, CON = Confiteor)

All BMs are on one button...


Basic rotation without weaving...

BM1->BM2->BM3->A1->A2->A3->Spell Mode Trigger (Requiscat)->BC1->BC2->BC3->BC4->CON

Weaving skills are Spirits Within, Circle of Scorn, and a new third ability that instantly restores MP for spell combo when we have to step out of melee due to some mechanic, like what we have to do in E10S with the big blade and can also increase the number of burst phases we get from that so it is a little more fast paced.

I also want a new shield gauge skill that does something like burn 50 shield gauge to give a healing over time effect to all players in the group, since they are supposed to have WHM like healing skills, not shields. I don't like the ability that grants shields upon being healed and also think they should have some kind of sustain. We keep Cover, Intervention, and Sheltron, so that puts us up to a total of 7 possible skills to weave with 3 of them being optional weaving skills to mitigate damage on targets or provide healing support. We still keep Clemency and I think shield bash should be an upgraded low blow that can be used more often.

Heck, you could fit even more stuff in now since you just have to remember that button 1 is hit three times in a row before using either Atonement or Requiscat. We'd also get to do more paladin like things such as group support as part of the rotation.