Yoshi P's Stance on Pld

The only weakness is SE fault to make Tank and Healer DPS necessary for Enrage Timer.
That should be a No-Go. Enrage should be handled 100% through DPS of the DDs, that is their job. Our job is to tank and position the fight, not to deal max. DPS.

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Originally Posted by Cheraa

The only weakness is SE fault to make Tank and Healer DPS necessary for Enrage Timers.
That should be a No-Go. Enrage should be handled 100% through DPS of the DDs, that is their job. Our job is to tank and position the fight, not to deal max DPS.

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Well, changing encounter design isn't the only thing that'll fix this. You'd need to adjust the three tanks to play within certain parameters and deal equal DPS to remove that factor out of the equation.

That's true. Even more if we see that a Raid has only space for 8 player.
If our Raids would be around 16 player, with 2 Tanks, than 200dps difference of tank jobs matters way less than with 8 players.

I think the concept of Tanks with good DPS and okay Defence (WAR / DRK) and with good Defence and okay DPS (PLD) can acually work, but only if the size of raids is big enough. As smaler as the Raids are and FF XIV raids are super small (8 man was back in DaoC a small group), DPS matters a lot, sadly.

I'll just toss this quote from another thread (the one called "Let's nerf WAR :D") here because I think this guy is super right about how Paladin has been designed compared to the other two tanks.

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Originally Posted by Brannigan

With Warrior it's clear the devs actually had some design goals: build stacks, switch stances, (nearly) all abilities should be useful as MT or OT. Even their "you-can't-kill-me" move has a second function of preventing knockback. It even gets good cross class abilities. The only problem warrior has is a UI issue with FC and Inner Beast not occupying the same button. Even still, it's easy to think of natural extensions to its ability set for the next expansion (your next move doesn't consume wrath, this move's crits generate extra wrath, etc).

Dark Knight has similar design goals but is implemented a bit worse: build MP, use dark arts, maintain darkside. DRK can't use its defensive abilities to build MP as off tank, but it does have some pretty good synergy within its ability set (blood weapon + physical off GCDs, Dark Dance + Reprisal + Low Blow, Dark Dance + Dark Passenger). Dark Knight has issues, such as Grit's high MP cost, but the only real hole in its gameplay is that it can't mitigate physical attacks as frequently as a warrior or paladin.

Paladin has no thought put into it. Stuff like Cover was tossed in there because "of course FF paladins have cover" without any reason to actually use it in a fight. They started to actually develop some gameplay in 3.0 but the cast time and cooldown of Clemency and Divine Veil respectively are way off. Goring/RA don't add to the capabilities of the class but were obviously needed. Sheltron is the only ability we got that I think is 100% fine, but it doesn't cover the gaping holes in the class.

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We can't use enough the Gloring/RA where as they said we will be able to do it, just because PLD doesn"t generate enough threat compared to the 2 others.

More damage to deal more threat of adjust multiplicators of threat. They are too bad.

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Originally Posted by Wolfas

We can't use enough the Gloring/RA where as they said we will be able to do it, just because PLD doesn"t generate enough threat compared to the 2 others.

More damage to deal more threat of adjust multiplicators of threat. They are too bad.

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I suspect the reason they've not just upped the multipliers (which, admittedly, would fix the problem at level 60) is due to level 50 sync. If PLD modifiers were brought in line with DRK and WAR, the latter would both have issues with threat with a PLD off tanking if they used their other abilities. To effectively manage this they would need to work either a scaling threat dependent on level (add a 50+ trait) or rework the abilities to give PLD its dps combos earlier.

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Originally Posted by Seku

The chances of PLD getting major buffs are very slim. I'm betting their probably going to increase hate generation from weapon skills on the RoH combo string. and maybe a bump to shield swipe.

I could be wrong. But that's my bet.

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If shield swipe was off my global cooldowns I would use it more often as extra enmity gain. But in most cases, I need to do my roh Enmity combo again just to maintain aggro on me. Coming from a full VIT PLD I don't have room to do goring blade unless I want to lose aggro. A Full VIT WAR/DRK would have no problem keeping aggro.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

I'll just toss this quote from another thread (the one called "Let's nerf WAR :D") here because I think this guy is super right about how Paladin has been designed compared to the other two tanks.

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Stuff like Cover was, sadly, an answer to the people in 1.0 who complained that they wanted iconic abilities and jobs in the game. This said, I did suggest a long time ago that Cover could be implemented like Vigilance from WoW.

As I've repeatedly said, Clemency is an off-tanking skill. It's hybrid off-healing with the appropriate trade-offs. Of course it's not going to be a sure thing while getting hit in the face by the boss; that's an intentional part of the design. It's also eerily similar to how I'd expect RDM off-healing to be implemented.

Divine Veil's cooldown is fair for what it does: mitigate raid damage. That said, this is also a 1.0 relic since it used to provide a HoT on people near you when you received heals, and I'm guessing they thought it was a good mechanic to use. The only issue I have is the cooldown, but knowing that the shielded amount is based on the PLD's, it would probably be too much to reduce the cooldown to something like 90 seconds.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Stuff like Cover was, sadly, an answer to the people in 1.0 who complained that they wanted iconic abilities and jobs in the game. This said, I did suggest a long time ago that Cover could be implemented like Vigilance from WoW.

As I've repeatedly said, Clemency is an off-tanking skill. It's hybrid off-healing with the appropriate trade-offs. Of course it's not going to be a sure thing while getting hit in the face by the boss; that's an intentional part of the design. It's also eerily similar to how I'd expect RDM off-healing to be implemented.

Divine Veil's cooldown is fair for what it does: mitigate raid damage. That said, this is also a 1.0 relic since it used to provide a HoT on people near you when you received heals, and I'm guessing they thought it was a good mechanic to use. The only issue I have is the cooldown, but knowing that the shielded amount is based on the PLD's, it would probably be too much to reduce the cooldown to something like 90 seconds.

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I can agree to a upgrade to cover like that.

Even while OTing Clemency is still pretty bad. Your healers should have people healed up unless their new, new to the fight, horrible, or SE makes a fight revolving around PLD curing people, they won't.

DV's mitigation is nice, but is largely not needed more so since both WAR and DRK can reduce damage on a boss and from what I'm remembering a lot of raid damage is magical based which falls under DRK's int down.

The above points I just pointed is why I'm actually praying that SE actually gives PLD more utility. As a damage and hate buff wouldn't really get us very far and would just really make it to where PLD = physical fights and DRK = Magical fights.

But in conclusion, I get a gut feeling SE isn't going to do anything with PLD really for a long time and we'll be seeing DRK MT a majority of fights in top tier groups until 4.0....or basically PLD is the new DRG. No good raid utilitah.

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Originally Posted by Seku

But in conclusion, I get a gut feeling SE isn't going to do anything with PLD really for a long time and we'll be seeing DRK MT a majority of fights in top tier groups until 4.0....or basically PLD is the new DRG. No good raid utilitah.

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and then in 4.0 PLDs will get battle litany and everyone will want em, the cycle never ends it's like FFI with Chaos and Garland bro

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Originally Posted by Kydi

I suspect the reason they've not just upped the multipliers (which, admittedly, would fix the problem at level 60) is due to level 50 sync. If PLD modifiers were brought in line with DRK and WAR, the latter would both have issues with threat with a PLD off tanking if they used their other abilities. To effectively manage this they would need to work either a scaling threat dependent on level (add a 50+ trait) or rework the abilities to give PLD its dps combos earlier.

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This wouldn't be an issue if they hadn't refused to make new traits for the post-50 skills, alas.

I think a first re-look would be at Shield Swipe. They improved that WS in patch 3.0, but now that PLD has 3 combos, despite Swipe being buffed, it's actually less relevant to PLDs now than it was 2.x

I assume SE buffed Swipe at 3.0 launch as their way of compensating for this predicament, they foresaw this problem. But IMO the buff wasn't enough, because Swipe is still less relevant now than it was in 2.x. I could imagine it providing a medium duration buff on the PLD when hitting a target with it - like Heavy Thrust or Maim. But unlike Maim/Darkside helping pull DRK/WAR out from under their tank stances' Damage Reduction penalty, let the Swipe buff do the inverse, increasing WS enmity. Would make both stances more effective.

I can't really imagine FFXIV ever releasing a 2nd tank that has also has shield. So let shield be the sell.

But then again Captain America isn't usually people's favorite Avenger.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

and then in 4.0 PLDs will get battle litany and everyone will want em, the cycle never ends it's like FFI with Chaos and Garland bro

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6qPh1iBpYk

now if only they gave drk berserk so I could be a wanna be guts from berserk.........

Divine Veil's CD is not "fair" for what it does. It's the PLD equivalent of Path and Deliriuim / Reprisal except it's usually just worse. Path and Delirium require a full combo and a target to be applied. Reprisal requires a proc. But, if those conditions are met, they have incredibly high up-time. DV in comparison doesn't require a target but still requires a trigger and is only sometimes a stronger shield. The biggest difference is DV has horrendous up-time and that's the direct result of its CD. The CD should be short enough to be used on each jump of AS1, each Splash / Cascade of AS3. Then, it might be utility that makes a consistent difference.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

Divine Veil's CD is not "fair" for what it does. It's the PLD equivalent of Path and Deliriuim / Reprisal except it's usually just worse. Path and Delirium require a full combo and a target to be applied. Reprisal requires a proc. But, if those conditions are met, they have incredibly high up-time. DV in comparison doesn't require a target but still requires a trigger and is only sometimes a stronger shield. The biggest difference is DV has horrendous up-time and that's the direct result of its CD. The CD should be short enough to be used on each jump of AS1, each Splash / Cascade of AS3. Then, it might be utility that makes a consistent difference.

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Pretty sure Rage of Halone is the PLD equivalent, and DV is closer to a better AOE stoneskin.

No. You have to look at their effective usage in raid content. You apply Path to reduce large raid-wide AoE. You try to proc Reprisal ahead of large raid-wide AoE. You apply Delirium before raid-wide AoE because it's almost entirely magic damage. Outside of a few rare situations, you don't use RoH like that. Path, Delirium, and Reprisal reduce incoming raid-wide damage by a % and effectively increases the eHP of your party. Divine Veil increases your party's eHP by giving them a shield.

In the end, they all fill the same utility. They help your party survive huge AoEs.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Stuff like Cover was, sadly, an answer to the people in 1.0 who complained that they wanted iconic abilities and jobs in the game.

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Cover was on the original gladiator. http://www.final-fantasy-14.org/abilities/cover (iirc it had 100% uptime, lol) It's a skill that doesn't actually need its core function changed, it just needs to be stronger. If, for example
1) Shield Swipe was better and a core part of gameplay and
2) Cover provided 100% block rate against covered attacks OR Cover provided damage reduction against covered attacks


then Cover would be a great OT skill to use to reduce damage on the tank duo (essentially functioning as another defensive CD) and let the OT paladin get swipe procs. If covered damage ignored the paladin's debuffs that'd be even better, but that probably wouldn't happen.

Clemency should be more reliably castable as main tank. You give up less damage than as OT and gain more control over your own health bar. Spot healing is good utility and shouldn't be restricted by your stance. Even if it were just intended to be an OT skill, then, as Seku has said, paladin's ability to use clemency in Sword Oath is also too weak. The spell is too slow and breaks combos. Opportunity cost is too high. 2.0-2.5s cast with no combo breakage (didn't break combos in 1.23 wo ho ho) would be a significant increase in usefulness.

Divine Veil's cd is garbage for its effect. If it were like 1.0 Divine Veil then it would be worth the long cooldown - in 1.x, the buff was not consumed when you were healed and the regen would re-apply on every heal until the duration was over. It also affected the paladin. Also they cut Divine Veil's cooldown in half the next patch and added 100% block rate to it. A reapplying stoneskin to the whole party with the paladin included would certainly warrant a 2.5 minute cooldown. This one doesn't, and basically just serves to make the paladin jump through a bunch of hoops for what ends up being worse (or slightly better but far less frequent) party mitigation than the other two tanks.

There is one advantage to DV - it's a buff. That means you don't have to actually have a target (getting Reprisal onto Manipulator is a little rough). Still, not that great. Cool animation though.

Sorry for the longpost guys it's late.

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Originally Posted by Seku

Even while OTing Clemency is still pretty bad. Your healers should have people healed up unless their new, new to the fight, horrible, or SE makes a fight revolving around PLD curing people, they won't.

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I've had plenty of opportunities while off-tanking stuff like A4. Yes, it's normal mode since I don't have time nor the desire to raid savage, but the opportunities are there.

Think of this more along the lines of having to give up something to do something else. As a ret paladin in WoW I was spending Art of War procs on off-heals when needed (since said procs made Flash of Light instant cast). Here, instead of spending procs that could go to DPS spells (Exorcism) to off-heal, I'm giving up 3 seconds of DPS uptime and a chunk of MP. It's a trade that makes sense if you've played a hybrid before (hence my RDM comment).

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DV's mitigation is nice, but is largely not needed more so since both WAR and DRK can reduce damage on a boss and from what I'm remembering a lot of raid damage is magical based which falls under DRK's int down.

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I can think of several scenarios where Divine Veil's mitigation is a boon, and comparing it to a permanent damage reduction of boss damage is comparing apples to oranges. PLD's answer to Delirium and Storms Path is Rage of Halone. It's not a completely equal analogue (hence the issues we've been seeing as of late), but is one nevertheless.

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Originally Posted by Violette

Pretty sure Rage of Halone is the PLD equivalent, and DV is closer to a better AOE stoneskin.

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This. Divine Veil only costs you time. Succor costs MP and Stoneskin II can't be used in combat. That's sort of where the balance is.

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Originally Posted by Brannigan

2) Cover provided 100% block rate against covered attacks OR Cover provided damage reduction against covered attacks

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All you'd be doing at that point is turning it into another defensive cooldown.

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Clemency should be more reliably castable as main tank. You give up less damage than as OT and gain more control over your own health bar. Spot healing is good utility and shouldn't be restricted by your stance. Even if it were just intended to be an OT skill, then, as Seku has said, paladin's ability to use clemency in Sword Oath is also too weak. The spell is too slow and breaks combos. Opportunity cost is too high. 2.0-2.5s cast with no combo breakage (didn't break combos in 1.23 wo ho ho) would be a significant increase in usefulness.

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Read my comment on hybrid gameplay. Also the tank is too busy staying alive to be watching the HP pools of other people. This is taking me back to the idiocy in 1.0 where people were expecting the PLD tanking the boss to do part of the healing instead of the actual healers...

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Also they cut Divine Veil's cooldown in half the next patch and added 100% block rate to it. A reapplying stoneskin to the whole party with the paladin included would certainly warrant a 2.5 minute cooldown.

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That would be so insanely overpowered it wouldn't be funny. A renewable 1700/2000 HP AoE stoneskin with no relative MP costs other than a Cure I/Physic is not balanced. I suspect it'd also have a hand in trivializing raid damage, which is there to challenge healers.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

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So basically, when I'm reading you I'm under the impression that you don't want your lackluster PLD job to be improved. Fine.

Divine Veil is, in my opinion, a great idea, but clunkily executed. It would be interesting to see what would happen if it were completely re-thought though.

I've toyed with the the ability becoming more like deployment tactics. What if it took whatever buff the paladin has applied to itself and spread it to the party at half strength? It would then have some interesting support aspects - raid wide damage? Apply stoneskin/rampart to yourself and spread. Need dps? Pop fight or flight and spread.

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Originally Posted by Kydi

Divine Veil is, in my opinion, a great idea, but clunkily executed. It would be interesting to see what would happen if it were completely re-thought though.

I've toyed with the the ability becoming more like deployment tactics. What if it took whatever buff the paladin has applied to itself and spread it to the party at half strength? It would then have some interesting support aspects - raid wide damage? Apply stoneskin/rampart to yourself and spread. Need dps? Pop fight or flight and spread.

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This would be incredibly OP even with half strength. FoF is 30% for 30 sec. Even if you cut in half both the power and the duration of it, it would be 15% for 15 sec for all party members. It would be twice as powerful as NIN's Trick Attack (50% more powerful and lasts 50% longer). Plus I think an ability called "Veil" should stay fully defensive. I think they should just increase the shield's potency (maybe to 15-20% of the Paladin's HP) and lower the CD to something along the lines of 90s.

As for raid DPS issues with a PLD, there is plenty of ways to fix that.

Hell, I hate suggestions. I always say that I prefer waiting for the dev team to show us what they got because they always do good things in terms of job balance (Look 2.0 WAR, MNK, DRG). But I also have some ideas that come in my head sometimes like "this thing should do this, why developpers didn't even think about it ?", so I'm gonna share a bit of that.

They could increase both threat multiplier and potency of RoH. Make it something like 280-290-300. Threat multiplier 5.5x like the other tanks. BAM. Now PLD doesn't lose as much DPS as now when doing his threat combo, and because he hits harder AND generates more threat with it, he can use Royal Authority a LOT more, thus increasing even more their MT DPS. Make Shield Swipe worth using (make it so that its potency is superior to the average potency-per-GCD of a PLD doing the optimal DPS GB-RA-RA-GB-RA-RA rotation). Do something to make Tempered Will useful for every fight in the game, something like, every spell casted during the duration of it can't be interrupted, and full immunity to all detrimental status effects, it would perfectly match the name AND fix the Clemency while MT issue. Make Clemency trigger Divine Veil but only in the case you're healing an ally and receiving the 50% portion for yourself. Reduce the cast time of Clemency to 2 or 2.5 sec to atleast match the GCD (like, seriously, why isn't it already the case ?). For the magical damage mitigation part, they could just make Bulwark give a 20% magical damage reduction on top of the already existing effect, because they said that shields will never be able to block magic (don't forget that Bulwark is 180sec CD, so this addition would be completely balanced and would never make PLD outperform DRK in the realm of magic mitigation). In the case of an only-magic enemy and OT-DPSing, make Sheltron do an additionnal effect in the case nothing has been blocked for the full duration, like, Shield Swipe proc when the debuff falls off naturally.

And because PLDs would get tools against magic, do something for DRK about physical too. Nothing too fancy, but just a little thingy to help. Like for example make Grit + DA only Souleater generate a barrier-type shield equal to the lifesteal we got with it (like an Adlo that shields for the amount of healing done) and make that shield work only on physical attacks. Active mitigation yo.


But all of that are just thoughts for myself, I'm confident that the developpers will bring balance to us and I don't care what way they'll chose, it may take more than 1 patch, but since 2.0 they always did a good work re-balancing jobs.

My one guess would be that SE is still afraid of PLD/PLD raid setups. They were offended years ago when the community cleared T5 before LoA, and that left PLDs in contempt. De facto solo tanking t8 probably didn't help either. Those are probably the things YoshiP first thinks of when asked about PLD and why he says what he said. Battle Team had to do a lot of creative Adds mechanics and such to trials/raids to get the encounters out of PLD's wheelhouse (and that worked, can see that starting b4 HW with FCOB)

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

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It would need tweaking, and like I say, it's just been rolling around, but remember fight or flight is only physical damage. Trick attack affects all damage. It would also be available far less frequently. Trick attack results in approximately 1.7% damage increase for all party members if used on cooldown (10% for 10s every 60). If fight or flight were possible to spread at half duration (30% for 15s every 210s) it would result in a 2.1% damage increase to physical damage, so probably pretty similar overall when taking into consideration the loss of bonus to your caster(s) and healers.

Like I say, it's something which has bounced around in my head for a while to give the PLD a unique means of supporting the party. Naturally they could just increase damage and threat modifiers (although that would make level 50 content horrible for the other tanks with a PLD spamming RoH), but it would be nice to see some novel mechanics.

As you say, the devs will, I hope, come up with some nice changes to give PLD equal footing, but we'll just have to wait and see.

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Originally Posted by Kydi

It would need tweaking, and like I say, it's just been rolling around, but remember fight or flight is only physical damage.

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Granted. I completely forgot this. My bad.

PLD is too op SE please don't listen to what PLD players say they know nothing and leave as is or better yet nerf its op hallowed ground to 5 secs.

Says all DRK and WAR players cause why 3 tanks when only two slots if all tanks equal many tanks would miss out on duty's. so that's reason to leave PLD weakest.

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Originally Posted by Xenosan

My one guess would be that SE is still afraid of PLD/PLD raid setups. They were offended years ago when the community cleared T5 before LoA, and that left PLDs in contempt. De facto solo tanking t8 probably didn't help either. Those are probably the things YoshiP first thinks of when asked about PLD and why he says what he said. Battle Team had to do a lot of creative Adds mechanics and such to trials/raids to get the encounters out of PLD's wheelhouse (and that worked, can see that starting b4 HW with FCOB)

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Yeah but now we are in the relm of WAR/WAR content. Honestly if there wasnt a LB penalty, WAR/WAR would be the optimal setup. Even with the LB penalty I am willing to bet WAR/WAR is still the best set up.

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Originally Posted by Exodus_Kenpachi

Yeah but now we are in the relm of WAR/WAR content. Honestly if there wasnt a LB penalty, WAR/WAR would be the optimal setup. Even with the LB penalty I am willing to bet WAR/WAR is still the best set up.

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I don't think it would be. An mt drk can match an mt war's dps and another war's path will not stack with yours, whereas delirium and reprisal will.

They broke PLD in FFXI and pretended everything was fine.

Now a new development team is doing the same thing. What is with SE's hate of PLDs?

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Originally Posted by Syzygian

I don't think it would be. An mt drk can match an mt war's dps and another war's path will not stack with yours, whereas delirium and reprisal will.

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Such a well reasoned post from the guy who wants WAR nerfed...

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Originally Posted by Xenosan

My one guess would be that SE is still afraid of PLD/PLD raid setups. They were offended years ago when the community cleared T5 before LoA, and that left PLDs in contempt. De facto solo tanking t8 probably didn't help either. Those are probably the things YoshiP first thinks of when asked about PLD and why he says what he said.

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A lot of pld players seem to be of the mindset that this sort of favoritism was actually "balance", and that if pld can't solo tank everything then they need the damage output of warrior, and warriors ogcd stun, and warriors stance dancing, and warriors slashing debuff, and halone needs to apply path debuff on top of all pld's personal utilities buffed massively, on top of hallowed ground, and only then will their perception of "balance" be achieved.

Let's not even go into some of the really extreme theories that suggest pld also needs its own stack resource generation on top of all that.

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Originally Posted by ArdorGrey

A lot of pld players seem to be of the mindset that this sort of favoritism was actually "balance", and that if pld can't solo tank everything then they need the damage output of warrior, and warriors ogcd stun, and warriors stance dancing, and warriors slashing debuff, and halone needs to apply path debuff on top of all pld's personal utilities buffed massively, on top of hallowed ground, and only then will their perception of "balance" be achieved.

Let's not even go into some of the really extreme theories that suggest pld also needs its own stack resource generation on top of all that.

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You sir, seem to think that PLD is just fine. Please explain to me why this is the case. I will then direct you to anyone of the 20 posts I have made that point to the contrary.

PLD is a broken mess right now. Any thought to the contrary needs to be rethought.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

So basically, when I'm reading you I'm under the impression that you don't want your lackluster PLD job to be improved. Fine.

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Your definition of lackluster is different from mine. The metric you use is different from mine as well.

If you want, we can run down the list. Not that you'll care what I think.

Clemency: Off-tanking tool that is hybrid off-healing. The issue here is that some think that just because they get Clemency during the PLD questline it's something that should be usable while main tanking. This is obviously not the case because, as I've mentioned before, hybrid off-healing involves giving up something to do something else. If you want to make it easier to use while MT, you'd need to make it instant and give it a 20-30s cooldown. It'd remove concerns of getting interrupted, but it would also trivialize the MP cost attached to it and limit its use greatly.

Divine Veil: This is a raid mitigation ability. The mistake here is that people are comparing it to Delirium/Storm's Path/Halone when it's an ability of a completely different nature. And obviously it's not going to be up every time. It's there to help the healers in moments of high raid damage or to mitigate damaging phase transitions. Pretty useful for Bismarck EX and A4. The only real improvement that'd make sense would be to remove the need for a cure to activate the effect.

Sword Oath/Shield Oath: Some people call PLD clunky because switching from Shield Oath to Sword Oath costs MP and a GCD, forgetting that it's a conscious design decision since you're supposed to stay in one or the other unless the situation calls for switching (read: tank swaps and burn phases when you're no longer getting hit by the boss).

PLD obviously has room for improvement, but not in the way some people have been suggesting.

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Originally Posted by ArdorGrey

Such a well reasoned post from the guy who wants WAR nerfed...

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The amount of butthurt in that thread. Sorry world. D:

For the record, its no nevermind to me what they buff or nerf, I just wanted to discuss the idea and do a little bit of devil's-advocating in the process, and there was definitely some decent discussion in the first 20 pages of that thread before it devolved into whatever it is now.

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Originally Posted by Exodus_Kenpachi

You sir, seem to think that PLD is just fine. Please explain to me why this is the case. I will then direct you to anyone of the 20 posts I have made that point to the contrary.

PLD is a broken mess right now. Any thought to the contrary needs to be rethought.

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There's a world of difference between thinking pld is fine and thinking that it needs help but a lot of the people demanding buffs, and the sort of buffs they are demanding is ridiculous and founded of personal poor play habits or a stubborn adherence to the sacred cows of vit stance and full time tank stancing. I would heartily appreciate it if you could point out where I said that I am in the former of the two camps.


Warrior is great under the current meta. Pld isn't. But for every well reasoned pld post actually underscoring the issues I see a dozen saying that pld literally needs everything war has or more, or blaming their own personal poor dps on their class instead of coming to the forums and asking about pld dps rotations(which do exist and are a thing), or saying that they should be able to pull dps without giving up vit accs or stance dancing.

Here's a mind blowing news flash: I have all 3 tanks at 60, and actually play pld a lot outside of savage. Their aoe dps sucks. Their aggro gen is a bit lacking, the overemphasis on physcial mitigation is dumb if they're also dealing with the lowest personal dps, especially in tank stance. I totally agree most of their utility is busted to hell atm. I've completely taken shield swipe off my bar.

But if you even try to push SwO and use FoF intelligently you can still do good ST dps. All they need are a few tweaks, not massive overhauls or every single toy every other tank has (funny thought that no plds ever even talk about wanting Drk abilitities even though Drks are fine atm too, though I'm sure you wouldn't agree mr war/war). Stance dancing isn't clunky, it's the one single thing that actually requires any thought on the class, and people complain the class is too easy and simple and boring out one side of their mouth while saying they want stance dancing to be turned into an instant win button out the other side instead of acknowledging giving ogcd instant swapping to drk and pld would be far, far more powerful than what defiance currently does.

When mnk got its tweaks people at first called them so minor as to be consolation buffs. The way it's turned out monk is far enough ahead of nin in st dps that there's a lot of debate as to which one is better overall now, and most at least agree that the line is so blurred and people are so geared that nin isn't on lock anymore.

I do not think pld is fine. I have never said this. I've "+1'd" and posted positive responses to intelligent posts on the problem. What I don't think is fine is people who want the game to revolve and change around them rather than accept that metas change and currently vit stacking turtles aren't all the rage.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Your definition of lackluster is different from mine. The metric you use is different from mine as well.

If you want, we can run down the list. Not that you'll care what I think.

Clemency: Off-tanking tool that is hybrid off-healing. The issue here is that some think that just because they get Clemency during the PLD questline it's something that should be usable while main tanking. This is obviously not the case because, as I've mentioned before, hybrid off-healing involves giving up something to do something else. If you want to make it easier to use while MT, you'd need to make it instant and give it a 20-30s cooldown. It'd remove concerns of getting interrupted, but it would also trivialize the MP cost attached to it and limit its use greatly.

Divine Veil: This is a raid mitigation ability. The mistake here is that people are comparing it to Delirium/Storm's Path/Halone when it's an ability of a completely different nature. And obviously it's not going to be up every time. It's there to help the healers in moments of high raid damage or to mitigate damaging phase transitions. Pretty useful for Bismarck EX and A4. The only real improvement that'd make sense would be to remove the need for a cure to activate the effect.

Sword Oath/Shield Oath: Some people call PLD clunky because switching from Shield Oath to Sword Oath costs MP and a GCD, forgetting that it's a conscious design decision since you're supposed to stay in one or the other unless the situation calls for switching (read: tank swaps and burn phases when you're no longer getting hit by the boss).

PLD obviously has room for improvement, but not in the way some people have been suggesting.

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The metric Freyyy uses for the term lackluster is savage, the one you use to say that it isn't is nA4.....in savage, Oppressor hits you for over 3200 on an auto attack, 8500 for a cleave, and about 14,000 (if you have 60% mitigation) for a tank buster. This is only the first floor of savage. In A3s Living Liquid at times can crit you for 11,000 on an auto attack. This information alone renders any argument you have made moot.

Clemency is for the most part worthless as OT or MT since it can be interrupted and has a 3 second cast time. You CAN'T use it as off-tank because the healers will beat you every single time with their (1.9 second) cast times. You CAN'T use it as main-tank because of the 3 second cast time, it can be interrupted, the enmity and damage modifiers for Paladin being the lowest will not allow you the time to cast it, and the healers will still beat you to the cast.

In savage content there is never NOT high damage and raid wide AoE. At times people will survive raid wide AoE with only hundreds of points of life (2k life if everything went somewhat according to plan.) In content that doesn't hit like a pool noodle Paladin falls flat for every skill it brings with maybe the exception of Rage of Halone. A regen tick, I believe, should also activate Divine Veil but if used soon enough it doesn't really need changed for the activator. Cooldown is really this skills weakness.

Paladin stances punish you entirely too much in savage content. You lose a GCD, your combo, aggro, dps, and mp JUST for 20% better damage reduction or an extra auto attack each time you switch. At the end of an encounter you will have lost perhaps 5-7 GCD's if you switch twice for each tank buster....that WILL wipe the group. I can accept 3/4's of that punishment but not all of it. This isn't conscious design, it's flat out ignorance of combat flow at this point. To stay relevant in end-game content every job needs to do damage fast if given the opportunity. Savage content (especially world first/progression) is nothing but a burn phase where you only stay in tank stance just for the critical damage that would kill you otherwise.

Paladin has more than just some room for improvement. It's living in a two-room apartment when it needs a football stadium in terms of adjustments.


I ask you to please, before you speak on behalf of why and where Paladin needs improvement, do savage content. You're most certainly not seeing what you need to.


EDIT: Until a reasonable change is made, people have resorted to click-removing the oath they've chosen off the buff bar just to avoid the excessive punishment. At the very least it shouldn't drop your combo.

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Originally Posted by Shining_Tiger_Excalibur

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Holy crap. A wellthought out post. I am so glad you made that post and saved me the trouble. There are far too many people who do not understand tanking or understand the feasibility of certain moves posting here.

Like I love when a DPS main who uses PLD to grind tomes jumps in here and uses their runs of Neverreap as a baseline for their arguement.

Bravo man. Good post.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Also the tank is too busy staying alive to be watching the HP pools of other people. This is taking me back to the idiocy in 1.0 where people were expecting the PLD tanking the boss to do part of the healing instead of the actual healers...

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"Solid rock on which the party's defense is founded." You have 30 seconds between Sheltrons where you have no control over whether you stay alive or not other than Clemency. Most of your defensive CDs are already spoken for in boss fights. If you're not raiding, you literally do not have to try to stay alive - your defense and shield will do that for you. Really, the reason not to Clemency isn't because you're focusing on staying alive, it's because you potentially lose so much damage. But even with slow Clemency right now it is your DUTY to watch party HP and save the other players if your healer is occupied. It's just overly difficult and requires a lot of communication because Clemency is so slow.

I seriously do not get this unwillingness to take on a little bit of extra work in order to increase your value to your party. The most fun I have had in Heavensward has been when first learning a couple of fights on paladin while my healers and DPS still aren't used to it. I get to do EVERYTHING - heal, DPS, tank, and mechanics. I ended up having to switch to dark knight in A3S/A4S (mostly because drk is OP in 3 and pld is awful in 4) which is boring in comparison even with all of its off GCDs and stuff because you have no way to help your party members other than just doing mechanics for them.

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Originally Posted by ArdorGrey

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So Mr. Mind Blowing News Flash, I too have all 3 tanks a 60. The flaw in your reasoning is you think that the current CONTENT is the issue for PLD. This is wrong, it is the current META. These are two totally seperate issues. You could make a fight specifically taylored to PLDs tools and skill set and guess what, WAR would STILL preform in the encounter better. You failed to touch on the fact that PLD offers absolutely nothing to the raid group. Literally nothing that matters at all. This is the issue.

Sure you can put out decent tank DPS by taxing the ever loving shit out of your healers, sure you can preform decently in every encounter, but why? Why go through all that pain when you could literally take the same amount of skill applied to PLD and apply it to WAR and become infinity more valuable to the raid.

I will even go so far as to say that you could completely change the meta of FF14 tanking to be more like WoW where healer MP drought is your enrage and becuase of the uptime of WARs CDs it would STILL do better than PLD. This is a huge flaw... Like mind numbingly huge.

That is why you are seeing people asking for radical PLD changes and asking for things that resemble WAR. At the end of the day PLD not only needs potency buffs but it needs to be given a rework of its skills. A PLD with a DPS buff and a littlr bit more utility would be similar in appearance to a Drk.... Which brings me to my next point...

DrK does need a rework. One of the main draws of DrK was that it could bring INT down to the table so that way the group could bring a NIN... But as you pointed out now that MNK has gotten a pretty substantial buff some groups (mine included) are running DRG, MNK, and Double WAR. This is once again an issue. A class should NOT be defined by a singular ability and tanks should not have utility gated behind positions (Reprisal, Shield Swipe). DrK is nonwhere near the mess that PLD is but it has a lot of room for improvement.

People need to stop accepting mediocre design and then asking for nerfs of other, better designed classes, to match their mediocrity.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

I've had plenty of opportunities while off-tanking stuff like A4. Yes, it's normal mode since I don't have time nor the desire to raid savage, but the opportunities are there.

Think of this more along the lines of having to give up something to do something else. As a ret paladin in WoW I was spending Art of War procs on off-heals when needed (since said procs made Flash of Light instant cast). Here, instead of spending procs that could go to DPS spells (Exorcism) to off-heal, I'm giving up 3 seconds of DPS uptime and a chunk of MP. It's a trade that makes sense if you've played a hybrid before (hence my RDM comment).
I can think of several scenarios where Divine Veil's mitigation is a boon, and comparing it to a permanent damage reduction of boss damage is comparing apples to oranges. PLD's answer to Delirium and Storms Path is Rage of Halone. It's not a completely equal analogue (hence the issues we've been seeing as of late), but is one nevertheless.
This. Divine Veil only costs you time. Succor costs MP and Stoneskin II can't be used in combat. That's sort of where the balance is.
All you'd be doing at that point is turning it into another defensive cooldown.
Read my comment on hybrid gameplay. Also the tank is too busy staying alive to be watching the HP pools of other people. This is taking me back to the idiocy in 1.0 where people were expecting the PLD tanking the boss to do part of the healing instead of the actual healers

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There are opportunities for PLD's new heal spell, I listed them in my previous post. I'll say it again. Your healers sucked. Are new healers. Are new players to the fight. A4 doesn't require a PLD cures, No raid will. Other than that you just wasted time, lowered your DPS and probably rose the over all damage taken, marginal at first but increases each time you use it as each time you use it, you're wasting a GCD and a extra .5 seconds. The only exception is transition phases, in which case Stone skin is better as your healers are probably topping people off at this point.

All raid damage, as far as I can remember is magical. If SE changes this and throws in physical damage for raid damage, RoH effectiveness will go up a bit for that particular fight. Other wise the only thing it really lowers is outgoing Auto attacks, which no one cares about. So PLD's answer to Delierium and Storms Eye is not RoH as the other two also fill in the role of lowering Raid damage.

DV is PLD's personal boon and no, comparing it to War's -10% damage and DRK is not apple to oranges as all are applied when raid damage is going out, the only expectation in this case would be DRK's in which case they may save it for tank busters. The reason you may see it as that is because of PLD's natural lack of helpful utility that works in currently all or just about all meta. In either case I'd take the tanks that can put up the damage reduction at will, Dish out damage, and still live through the hits that PLD can live through.

DV doesn't personally cost you mp, but it does cost someone else MP due to the fact that you still need a cure to activate it. Less, but still it cost mp. Also I've never heard of a good SCH inside of a functional group really running dry on MP because of a AoE shield for a scripted AoE attack. So really it costs the following, time, someone elses mp, coordination that could possibly effect the entire group as the shielding is based off the positioning of the actual PLD. If said cure goes out too fast while the PLD is away from the group or people are still gathering it's a bust.

And lastly quite a few jobs at the moment can be considered Hybrid already as some DPS are outfitted with support attacks and abilities to aid other classes. Tanks are Hybrid as well as they've the ability to support the party, "Tank", and DPS. The classes that DON'T get utility are often the ones that get left out of top tier groups and normally are considered weak. This is one of the reasons why Nin and BRD/MCH are almost always a staple in a raid group, as they are currently the "support" classes of the game.

One thing I do not think should change about any of the tanks is the inherent GCD/oGCD-ness of their stances. Deliverance/Defiance being oGCD is literally a part of the playstyle and mechanics of the job. PLD isn't designed to be a stance-dancer, regardless of how do-able it is and the many ways you can make it more fluid (combo, pop Rampart or something while the GCD ticks, SwO, weave in FoF, back to combos). That is not to say PLDs DPS (or raid DPS utility) and/or enmity could/should not be raised in some fashion, but the stances are on the GCD for a reason. And when you look at DRK, they intentionally didn't give it a DPS stance (don't say Darkside. That's a buff not a stance, its no more a DPS stance than Maim was for WAR in 2.x) and made it so that you can disable Grit oGCD, just not turn it on, and instead gave it an out-of-tank-stance-only CD.

Anyhoo, regardless of what gets buffed or nerfed, I don't think any changes should literally make the jobs play different, as very little is wrong with the design of any job's playstyle at the moment. The flaws are in execution and in interaction with content, and in numerical shortcomings.