Returning to Paladin my 7.0 Wish List

I'm returning from a long year plus break from the game to find my favorite class that I've been playing since the beginning of time got a slight make over and I wanna talk about what I like and what I think needs more of a pruning.TLDR I want less button bloat plz.

Divine Veil -All praise Halone I cant believe after 20 years its finally happened! We too get our group shield feels good!

Goring Blade-Dot is gone I'm fine with that I would rather have the up front burst than watch a boss float away and the tics being wasted.

Bulwark- Instead of this being a separate button I would rather this be baked into Rampart as a trait of Paladins because your almost always gonna pair the two together on CDs.

Requiescat-This button I HATE the most It should just be baked into the Confiteor Combo button, its taking up a whole slot just to start the magic rotation.

Cover- I haven't used this is years Intervention works better, let it die already lol.

Shield Bash- Remove this and combine Low Blow with Interject for a one stop button to disable the enemy for 5 secs.

Fast,Riot,Rage- Make all the tank 1 2 3 combos on a button like Confiteor it would make some much needed space on controllers. Currently I MAKE it work but I don't like it , it doesn't feel good , but I love the job and never wanna stop playin Paladin.

Hi Hammerhorn, glad you enjoy some of the Paladin changes though I have to give some feedback to your suggestions to deal with button bloat, frankly Im not impressed.

Bulwark - I'd prefer to keep it separate. Paladin's issue since Shadowbringers axing Bulwark was Paladin lacking an ability in the Unique Defensive slot (equivalent to Thrill of Battle, Dark Mind and Camouflage). The core of this category is a cooldown with non-standard effects that have situational up- or downsides, Bulwark's upside being extremely responsive due to how damage calculation works with Block/Parry and downside being unable to mitigate dot/poison damage due to the Unique damage type.

The lack of Bulwark along with Hallowed Ground's extremely long 7min CD caused PLD to have a hole in their mitigation lineup which in highend fights like ultimate has proven to become a problem. Bulwark should stay.

Requiescat - Requiescat is only the Confiteor combo starter at Lv90, below it is supposed to interact with Holy Spirit and Holy Circle besides Confiteor. The stacks can also be used on Clemency from my knowledge, although only for instantcasts. No point removing this.

Cover - it is only worse than Intervention because it shares a resource with Intervention. Remove the gauge cost instead of removing unique Paladin abilities and you will see Paladins experimenting properly with it.

Shieldbash, Low Blow, Interject - in the current state, yeah Shield Bash deserves removal however id prefer a rework of the ability to become part of your rotation in some capacity. Other games utilise the Shield as a weapon too, why not FFXIV?

Merging Low Blow and Interject is extremely bad. While scarce, there are fights where you stun and interrupt at different times within their cooldown range. These are tank fundamentals.

Merging combos - great suggestion, at minimum Id want a toggle for that option. this would free up three keys (Riot Blade, Royal Authority, Prominence). PvP has this since 4.0 and 3rd Party Plugins can implement it as well (I suggest to not use it to stay TOS conform) so the tech is there and usable.

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Originally Posted by Hammerhorn

Goring Blade-Dot is gone I'm fine with that I would rather have the up front burst than watch a boss float away and the tics being wasted.

Requiescat-This button I HATE the most It should just be baked into the Confiteor Combo button, its taking up a whole slot just to start the magic rotation.

Shield Bash- Remove this and combine Low Blow with Interject for a one stop button to disable the enemy for 5 secs.

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I'm just going to comment on these;

I just wish Goring Blade was an AoE. It just feels wrong to miss this GCD.

I don't think it should be baked into Confiteor, however, it should probably be merged with FoF. At 68, upgrade FoF to Requiescat and just have Requiescat also apply the FoF buff.

Shield bash can go yes. I haven't had it on my bar in years, however, Low Blow and Interject should stay separate, there are a few cases where it helps. What I would like though is more interactivity with the stuns/interjects in bigger boss fights and not have them be relegated to trash. The last boss of Ktisis having an interrupt was a nice change. Alternatively, Shield Bash could be low level Goring Blade, potency of either ~280 potency (average potency of PLD's 123 combo below 60) or make it 330 potency (potency of Rage of Halone). It'll be a small boost to PLD's damage below 54 but it would also break up the 123 spam PLD has.

And a quick comment on combining combos, like Reinhardt, I would be fine as long as it is an option.

Shield Bash - Useful in PotD/HoH/EO solo runs and against some enemies in Eureka/Bozja. I think the better solution is to give the button some hotbar economy. E.g. "When under the effect of Fight or Flight, Shield Bash is upgraded to Goring Blade (which has the Stun effect now) for one use". Can do this with some Job gauge thing or some self-buff like Holy Might. Other Jobs like RDM and SMN do this "ability X becomes ability Y under this condition where you'd never use X instead of Y anyway" and (whether you love or hate them as Jobs) they have extremely good hotbar economy as a result. Of course, there are some other alternatives, too, like replace the Atonement effect (and Atonement entirely) with 3x Shield Bashes after Royal Authority. Make it where a complete Royal combo grants three stacks that increase the damage of Shield Bash by 300 (to 400, which is Atonement's current potency) and restores MP. I think that's the worse option since you'd hit the stun diminishing return instantly, but it would also let you smack enemies with your shield more often, so there's that.

Requiescat - I think my issues with Requiescat are (1) Why is this a melee range ability? (2) When will you ever use this without Fight or Flight? Since you always use them together, it would make more sense to have FoF upgrade into Requiescat. Otherwise it's a double weave for reasons that you always do together, only do once per minute, yet takes up two hotbar slots (three if we include Goring Blade in this parade of stupidity; hence the suggestion above). Like...why are these two separate buttons? "Because Requiescat does damage?" You could still have FoF do damage. "But then FoF can't be used at range anymore!" And? You don't use it at range right now since doing so would have it drift from Requiescat. And if the damage is the problem (e.g. some cursed opener where you'd want to use it before the pull), just slap the damage it WOULD do on Goring or Confetior or "the first spell cast after using it", which will be Holy Spirit until you get Confetior, and Holy Spirit until you get to 90 anyway (at which point you open the magic phase with Confetior + friendswords). I've scratched my head over this one for a while, but I can't think of a reason for these to be two separate buttons given there's a solution to every counter argument other than "I want it to be clunky for no good reason!"

Goring Blade - There's legitimately no reason for this to exist other than it has a cool animation. And we could solve that by just having Royal (or hell, Fast or Riot Blade) upgrade to Goring at some point. Preferably Royal, because it has such a stupid (imo) animation. (I like Halone's better, but I get Halone's takes longer for the damage to register on the enemy; Goring doesn't have that issue and is faster than even Royal, I think). Having a 60 sec GCD that you hit when you hit FoF "just because" is stupid. And I'd legitimately rather have it than Royal for my combo finisher anyway, personally. Alternatively, could have it be low level Atonement that upgrades to Atonement at some point (though I feel that'd be more of a downgrade, but whatever).

Bulwark - I agree with Reinhardt, for the reasons he listed.

Cover - I also agree with Reinhardt, same thing. Remove the gauge cost, there's no good reason for it. What are you going to do, Cover someone and use Intervention on them at the same time for...reasons? You could use Shelltron on yourself...but it wouldn't matter since it doesn't block Cover damage. Hell, you can do either of those things NOW. Cover has a CD, it doesn't need a gauge cost. (I said the same thing in ShB about Fey Blessing on SCH. Instead of removing the CD, SE removed the gauge cost...I'd have done it the other way so it'd be an AOE gauge spender, but whatever). It lets PLD be a bit unique, I've saved healers and stuff with it before, and there's no reason to remove it since it's actually a more interesting ability than most "protect allies" buttons.

Merging Combos - Like Mikey said, it's probably fine if it's an option. I do think combining FoF/Req and Goring with LITERALLY ANYTHING AT THIS POINT are better options to free up a couple buttons, though. But taking lessons from PvP isn't a bad approach, either, I'd rather that be in addition to the above, not absent it.