Paladin Suggestion

A heated debate is still on-going it seems as to whether the paladin needs a buff. I haven't experienced enough of the 3.0 endgame to really add to the debate as I've only just reached ilvl170. I do, however have one suggestion that would really improve the paladin's battle style (is that a term?), that wouldn't mess up the current balance (or lack of balance).

My suggestion is to add more shield skills for the paladin, or change the animations of some of the paladins skills to incorporate the shield a little more. One example could be that when using sheltron, the paladin could hold the shield directly in front of him until the effect ends.

Just simple things like that would really improve the visuals on the paladin in my opinion. What are your thoughts?

Well, the way SE is operating with this game is that they have a set of 18 class actions, 13 class traits, and 10 job actions. DRK, MCH and AST being an exception where they have 28 job actions and 13 job traits but that's because they have no base class. Point is, SE wouldn't just add actions.

Changing animations? I'm indifferent. I think PLD animations look cool. Specially Rage of Halone, Royal Authority (this one is my favorite) and Sheltron looks bad-ass. Shield Bash has a lot of "oomf" into it so it looks satisfying. Shield Swipe is kinda ridiculous but this is a game with talking dragons and flying cats and whales, I wouldn't argue efficiency from a martial arts PoV. lol

I have posted else where what I think the PLD needs, but I'll list them here:

- Give PLD more enmity generation. It'll fix a lot of their issues (aggro and DPS wise).

- Remove the clunk tied to their enormous utility. Clemency doesn't have to be a 3s cast. Make it 2.5 to be inline with the other heals. Give the PLD a cast interruption prevention trait.

- Fix PLD's TP issues. Either via direct TP regain, Shield Swipe "buff" or the above point of removed clunk from utility encouraging Non-TP GCD usage. Why not all three?

That is what I have in mind that I think would fix all of PLD's issues.

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

- Remove the clunk tied to their enormous utility. Clemency doesn't have to be a 3s cast. Make it 2.5 to be inline with the other heals. Give the PLD a cast interruption prevention trait.

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I'd say a bit faster than 2.5s...primarily because skill speed doesn't lower it like how spell speed will lower things for the healers...

So either a bit faster than 2.5s, or make it so the ability is quickened from skill speed instead of spell speed.

This is also why I'm such a big fan of making Royal Authorities "Thing" be that it quickens spell casts. We're the only class currently that has to deal with both physical actions and non-instant spells.

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Originally Posted by Arannon

Snip.

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Yeah, but as a melee and tank, casting shouldn't be your "thing". Even if you have "casts", you shouldn't be as good or fast as the actual casters. Still I see no reason for it to be a 3s cast. 2.5s is more reasonable. Getting a trait to prevent interruption should be more than enough too.

Also remember, this isn't supposed to be like Equilibrium. WAR "needs" self heals to function since it receives less effective healing (5% less from spells, 25% from abilities). WAR's Equilibrium is there to help them survive. Your Clemency is there to allow you to help healers alleviate some of the healing stress. It is more of an OT utility rather than MT surviving thing.

The one thing that I want to see from PLD is a single target attack that uses MP (enmity generation would be a bonus). I say this because my go to for when I run out of TP is flash spam until my TP is back to a sufficient place. obviously this is useless for an OT, and for an MT that has sufficient hate, extra damage would be much more beneficial.

Minor tweaks to clemency and other skills to make them more useful would be nice, but this is the big thing that I want

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

Point is, SE wouldn't just add actions.

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Stoneskin II

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

Yeah, but as a melee and tank, casting shouldn't be your "thing". Even if you have "casts", you shouldn't be as good or fast as the actual casters. Still I see no reason for it to be a 3s cast. 2.5s is more reasonable. Getting a trait to prevent interruption should be more than enough too.

Also remember, this isn't supposed to be like Equilibrium. WAR "needs" self heals to function since it receives less effective healing (5% less from spells, 25% from abilities). WAR's Equilibrium is there to help them survive. Your Clemency is there to allow you to help healers alleviate some of the healing stress. It is more of an OT utility rather than MT surviving thing.

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And the restrictive MP cost is enough of a limitation don't you think? I mean, we don't have a huge MP pool, and none our gear is going to make it any better, and making our pool larger by melding for it isn't really all that effective is it?

Theres also the fact that at best we're currently looking at "two" (One cross class) spells we can cast. So its not like we've got a huge array of them to begin with. Casting "ISNT" our thing, but not because of how fast we could cast...or how strong our spells are...its because of the lack of things we CAN cast.

As for Warriors...they don't really need all that DPS to tank either...but they've still got it...our Utility should be strong, and like you said, less clunky.

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

Stoneskin II

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The single exception. Also if you read my comment, I had "just" there somewhere. SE takes things into consideration but they try to stick to their formula of 18+13+10. They wouldn't add 2 or 3 random shield skills just to add them.

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

They wouldn't add 2 or 3 random shield skills just to add them.

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I'm not asking for 2 or 3 random new skills, I asked for one, and it doesn't even need to be one if skills can be tweaked to fix the problem. I was simply pointing out that SE can and have added new skills when they feel they need to

Stoneskin 2 is an exception...something to fill a convenience gap, not something added because they couldn't think of some other way to handle it...

Everyone wants Stoneskin before a pull, but in 8 mans its tedious having to go through each person to put it up, takes most of a minute...and thats a minute everyones sitting there anxious to get started. It was added because nobody likes just sitting there waiting. Especially on fights where you wipe, and wipe, and wipe some more.

Theres nothing Paladins need like that...I figure those are more likely gonna be saved for whenever the level cap would be raised again...(I'd like to see more shield-bashy style abilities too)

Things I would like to see for pld:

1) Help with their TP problems. Mayhaps something that drains a certain amount of your mana and converts it to TP(this would help Sword stance, probably should only be available in that stance). Or put our blocking to good use and make it so that when you block you get a certain amount of TP back(this should be a shield stance kind of thing).

2) Give another ogcd damage ability. We have storm and spirit's within, we've had those and only those for the longest now.

3) The transition between shield and sword and vice versa could be better.

4) Agreed with the clemency casting issue.