Shield Bash GCD Removal

I would like to see shield bash taken off of the global cooldown in PvE content. It isn't very fun having it attached to the same cooldown as our basic attack combo. If there was a better in-game threat meter which would show my threat value relative to every other party member (similar to KTM), then I could understand asking the player to decide between attacking or waiting for an upcoming attack.

They could remove the ability from PvP or simply attach a GCD on it in PvP scenarios. This is a poor reason to not remove the GCD from Shield Bash in PvE. Also, if they are worried that this might then be "spammed" in combat, then they could just attach a higher energy cost to the ability.

Some will argue that it isn't too difficult to time each ability and just be ready for it. While this is a valid point, it just makes things needlessly stressful in group scenarios. Players are already quick to nit-pick at any mistakes you might make. It does not make things "less skillful", it just puts the power in the players hands without making said player work around a clunky system that is counter-intuitive to their role.

I tried to send this feedback directly to the company. However, the official website said to post on the forums and they review all feedback posted there. The actual "feedback" section of the forum seems to be website specific, so I just decided to post my feedback here.

If you don't agree with me on this change then I respectfully ask you to be kind with your responses.

Bash, not Swipe.

I feel like this was an intentional design between WAR and PLD actually.

Brutal swing is off the global cooldown, but can't be spammed.
Spirits within is also off the global cooldown, but can't be spammed.

Because many bosses require either stun or silence, this makes both of the classes useful as an MT or OT depending upon the situation, or simply bringing the both of them.

Ifrit HM can be stunned. While it may be difficult to stun as PLD while running as the main tank in this fight, WAR has it a bit easier since brutal swing is off the global cooldown. On the flip side, a PLD can off-tank and only worry about stuns so that the MT can focus on keeping threat.

In ADS-type bosses, a silence is necessary. WAR doesn't have a silence ability, so it is useful to bring a PLD. Silence was not mentioned in the OP, but I think it is the balancing factor to consider.

I myself am pretty happy with this balance because it gives a reason to use one tank or another in each situation.

It's been said many times before, but if you compare Shield Bash to all the other stuns in the game, it's evident that it using your GCD is the tradeoff/balancing factor for it having no cooldown (your GCD is its effective cooldown). Personally, I think it's good; it makes Shield Bash different, instead of just clearly better.

If anything should be done to Shield Bash, I would like to see it not interrupt your combo.

Hmm...

Shield Bash (110) > Fast Blade (150) > Shield Bash(110) > Savage Blade (200) > Shield Bash (110) > Rage of Halone (260) > Shield Bash (Repeat) = 1050 Potency about every 3 GCD. (unbuffed)

I dont think any other class in the game is able to do 1000+ Potency every 3 GCD consistently unbuffed, and thats not including Spirits Within and Scorn. PLD DPS would Skyrocket. Removing Shield Bash off GCD would be severly overpowered.

Shield Bash being on GCD is its balancing factor. Warrior Brutal swing is off GCD but it is only 50potency with a 20sec CD.

If Shield Bash was removed off GCD 1 of 2 things would have to happen to keep it balanced.

1. Its cooldown would have to be increase to about 30+ Secs which would eliminate PLD Stun on Demand capabilities (Counter Productive).

2. It would have to be extremely weak (10potency) or possibly removing its potency completely.


Like Dark heart said, I prefer Shield Bash the way it is now. Only thing that would make it better without breaking the game would be if it didnt interupt combo's

If you're going to argue about removing Shield Bash from the GCD, it might end up forcing teams to readjust tactics. For example, almost every T5 team relies on the spammable Shield Bash, for up to 10 seconds of stuns on the Dreadknight.

Yoshi-P looks like he would not want players to change their strats. Evidence is how he brought Warriors up to Paladin levels for 2.1, instead of bringing down the effectiveness of Paladins, because there are groups that ran 2 Paladins to clear T4 (which he then said he was not expecting people to easily clear T4 at the time). Or how he reverted the last T5 change where Twintania targeted the second highest in the aggro list, if the main tank went inside a Conflagration during Phase 2, because there are groups which rely on the tank going in the Conflagration any time it is up.

I can live with it not interrupting your combo. I also once thought it was dumb it was on the GCD (back when I was Level 20 or so), but since then I've now grown to appreciate what I can do with it.

I've said it before. I'll say it again.

It doesn't matter if Shield Bash has no cooldown. Paladins cannot actually "Stun on demand" specifically because the ability is on GCD.

If a Paladin is the MT, he has to go into auto-attack mode in order to be able to use Shield Bash effectively. If he does his normal Halone combo to maintain threat and the boss starts casting, the Paladin will never get his Shield Bash to execute because GCD is longer than end-game boss cast times. Ifrit HM is an excellent example of what I'm talking about.

And going into auto-attack mode gives an opportunity for the tank to lose the boss to the DPS classes that are still doing their high damage rotations.

Not having a cooldown is also over-rated. Diminishing returns reduces the value of being able to use Shield Bash often as an interrupt. You get three stuns and then for the next 2-3 minutes the boss cannot be interrupted again. So in fights like Ifrit HM where he just keeps using Eruption, it doesn't even matter if you stun him or not. There will always be a long period where he is free to do as he pleases.

In the fights where Stun really does matter, Warriors cooldown is fine because the boss isn't spamming those abilities. And they can execute their interrupt without concern for whether their threat building rotation will prevent them from stunning in time.

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Originally Posted by OmegaSinX

Hmm...

Shield Bash (110) > Fast Blade (150) > Shield Bash(110) > Savage Blade (200) > Shield Bash (110) > Rage of Halone (260) > Shield Bash (Repeat) = 1050 Potency about every 3 GCD. (unbuffed)

I dont think any other class in the game is able to do 1000+ Potency every 3 GCD consistently unbuffed, and thats not including Spirits Within and Scorn. PLD DPS would Skyrocket. Removing Shield Bash off GCD would be severly overpowered.

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You're joking, right? The potency of our attacks is irrelevant when true DPS classes receive significant damage boost abilities that we don't have; that's why Paladins do 1/3 of the damage Dragoons, Monks, Bards, Summoners and Black Mages do.

We could spam Shield Bash all day long with it off the GCD, and we'd never beat other classes in damage.

And why would we? We can't maintain aggro by spamming Shield Bash. All we'd achieve is ensuring the boss is always immune to Stun.



I agree with the OP. Remove Shield Bash from GCD. Add a 5 second cooldown or something. The way it currently works is impractical.

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Originally Posted by PaladinTasq

If there was a better in-game threat meter which would show my threat value relative to every other party member (similar to KTM), then I could understand asking the player to decide between attacking or waiting for an upcoming attack.

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Look at your party list (not the encounter list) when you have a monster targeted and are fighting it. The bars show enmity relative to #1.

Also I prefer Shield Bash as-is. The benefit of being able to do it so often outweighs the penalty of having it on the GCD in my opinion. Tank enmity is so far beyond everyone else that you can kind of just stop attacking if you need to after a certain point.

I not understand why you say PLD "can't stun on demand"

PLD can stun anytime he want to

Losing combo from using shield bash is not main issue at all, you still have high hate/enmity as long as you not lazy to build up hate

With patch 2.1, Tank hate/enmity pretty much dominate threat meter, almost no one can steal hate unless that PLD not do good, low gears, wrong rotation or others factor (what-you-know)

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Originally Posted by Altimis

I not understand why you say PLD "can't stun on demand"

PLD can stun anytime he want to

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Umm, no. Like the rest of the post you're referring to explains, Shield Bash being on GCD prevents it from being used if you've done any of your main attacks other than auto-attack. Using proper rotations to maintain hate, means your GCD will be running most of the time. If the boss's cast time is shorter than GCD, as it apparently is in end-game fights, you will not get Shield Bash off in time to stop it unless you happen to be lucky enough that he starts casting moments before your GCD is over.

If you want to be sure to have Shield Bash available to be able to stun on demand, you will need to use mainly auto-attacks, which probably won't be enough to keep the boss's attention on you.

So in effect, you're saying that PLD should stick to mainly auto-attacks to be able to stun on demand, but it's the PLD's fault for using wrong rotation if the boss goes after someone else. You can't both have the cake and eat it, you know =/

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Originally Posted by Lemon8or

1. At endgame, most bosses are immune to stun anyway so it doesn't matter if it's boss you're concern about. 2. You don't have Rage of Halone/Shield Oath yet so it's understandable why you think that is a problem. Once you get both, your enmity sky-rocket and you can even switch to sword oath for a while. 3. Bosses have intervals of when they will use stunnable skills. Just watch out for those intervals. This adds a bit of depth into a job that is almost just 1 2 3 combo. You're asking for too much here.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

He's not even a PLD yet so he has no idea what he's talking about

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On this character, you're absolutely right that I haven't come that far. However, my main is lvl 45 GLA/PLD (Lodestone profile), so I do have those skills. But even there you're right that I'm not too familiar with end-game stuff, and thus I based that particular statement from the post mentioned in what I quoted (about Ifrit HM). Since I speed-leveled for the FFXIII event, I've only come as far as just beyond Titan NM story-wise.

What I have noticed, however, is that I rarely have time to stun tougher enemies, and that many of the really tough FATE monsters are immune to stun/pacify to begin with (and extrapolating from that, I've surmised that a high percentage of bosses over all are immune, which slightly defeats the purpose of interrupts IMO). So perhaps there wouldn't be that much point in setting it on its own GCD (like Brutal Swing), but it would certainly help us to utilize the skill better. Even if it gets a longer CD (to have no CD is nothing that I've seen anyone ask for in this thread), it would mean that it would be available for use (as long as you haven't used it in a while) even if you just used one of your GCD skills.

Yes, RoH (especially in combination with Shield Oath, and used within combo) maximizes enmity output, but that sort of requires you to use them in the first place :p And in order to always be ready to stun ("on demand", so to speak) you can't use other GCD skills. Sure, later battles are mainly scripted and you learn the patterns (or so I've heard), so calculating when to hold back might be easier. But even that is not something I would call "stun on demand". Semantics, maybe, but even so...

For me personally, it doesn't matter that much if things remain as they are, so I'm not asking for anything really. Sure, it would be nice to be able to throw in a stun (or pacify) to interrupt AoE attacks on a moment's notice, but except for the full-circle attacks they're fairly easily avoidable. And there's also the resistance build-up to keep in mind. I also see the potential problems with removing it off the GCD. The reason why I responded to the post as I did was because it seemed to me that the person didn't even read the entire post they were reacting to. And for reading a post (and wishing others would as well), I hope end-game experience isn't required :p

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Originally Posted by Noxifer

If you want to be sure to have Shield Bash available to be able to stun on demand, you will need to use mainly auto-attacks, which probably won't be enough to keep the boss's attention on you.

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1. At endgame, most bosses are immune to stun anyway so it doesn't matter if it's boss you're concern about. 2. You don't have Rage of Halone/Shield Oath yet so it's understandable why you think that is a problem. Once you get both, your enmity sky-rocket and you can even switch to sword oath for a while. 3. Bosses have intervals of when they will use stunnable skills. Just watch out for those intervals. This adds a bit of depth into a job that is almost just 1 2 3 combo. You're asking for too much here.

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Originally Posted by Lemon8or

2. You don't have Rage of Halone/Shield Oath yet so it's understandable why you think that is a problem. Once you get both, your enmity sky-rocket and you can even switch to sword oath for a while.

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He's not even a PLD yet so he has no idea what he's talking about especially since he's oblivious of the value in being able to chainstun a target even at low level (when you don't even need to interrupt). Shield Bash is on the GCD because it doesn't have a CD; if it's taken off of the GCD expect its damage to plummet (it only has the comparatively high potency it currently has because it's on the GCD) and for it to get a CD (and the duration reduced as well).

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Originally Posted by Brannigan

Also I prefer Shield Bash as-is. The benefit of being able to do it so often outweighs the penalty of having it on the GCD in my opinion.

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I feel the same way, I like having the ability to use it when it need too. It's also the most potent stun available to any job so if it was ever taken off the GCD they'd probably force a trade-off by adding a long cooldown or cutting down the Stun duration, either way it would require people to change their Stun tactics greatly.

Now if they want to change something to a shield ability, they should take Shield Swipe off the GCD. I don't care if they put it on a long cooldown or change the effects, because it almost never get's used because it's on the GCD and most relevant mobs are immune to Pacification anyways.

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Originally Posted by SwordCoheir

Now if they want to change something to a shield ability, they should take Shield Swipe off the GCD. I don't care if they put it on a long cooldown or change the effects, because it almost never get's used because it's on the GCD and most relevant mobs are immune to Pacification anyways.

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I'd rather they turned Shield Swipe into an AoE damage ability since PLDs and WARs are exceptionally well balanced with the exception of AoE functionality: WAR completely blows PLD out of the water with both damage and enmity. A PLD doesn't stand a chance of getting aggro from a WAR that cares remotely about getting AoE aggro and doesn't even get appreciable damage. Turning Shield Swipe into an AoE would beef up their functionality nicely. I'm not even sure it would need anything except for having the damage reduced since Pacification isn't really a particularly potent debuff.

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Originally Posted by Brannigan

Look at your party list (not the encounter list) when you have a monster targeted and are fighting it. The bars show enmity relative to #1.

Also I prefer Shield Bash as-is. The benefit of being able to do it so often outweighs the penalty of having it on the GCD in my opinion. Tank enmity is so far beyond everyone else that you can kind of just stop attacking if you need to after a certain point.

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This is the key, I think.

Once you have a lead on enmity there's little point in continuing to combo away with RoH. All you need to do is maintain the lead, not keep building on it. There's easily room for just standing by and waiting with AA only. Stunning those attacks (that can be stunned) will do better for your group than gaining more enmity and dealing small amounts of damage (in comparison to your DPS, especially). I try to use this "down time" to throw out a few stoneskins on DPS or the OT, and/or just stay idle to regenerate some more TP.

To the OP, there can be only 2 options for Shield Bach:
1) keep Shield bash as-is and keep it's identity and utility
2) change it to an OGC skills, put a 20 sec CD and reduce the potency to 50 and it become WAR's Brutal Swing. If it was any different than that, it would be completely unfair to WAR

PLD is the only class that can stun for a extensive period of time (all other class have it OGC but with a 20s minimum CD). I don't know why we'd want to remove that ability that PLD only has.
Also, every fight is a team effort and if the PLD can't afford to interrupt its enmity rotation without loosing aggro, the issue is definitely somewhere else... Only a PLD OT can come close to stealing aggro, no other class should pose a threat.
Heck, War is able to maintain aggro lead by only using 1 enmity combo for every 3 combos (to maintain SP and SE debuffs).

I'm pretty sure they intended the skill to be part of the GCD as a tradeoff for having no cooldown.

We have the most powerful on demand stun in the game. Yes it's on demand. It's consistent with the rest of the game design. None of our skills are truly instant. Everyone's experienced a missed benediction or seen hg animation go off before dying anyway. Same thing here. You aren't expected to use twitch skills to stun within .5 secs of seeing the boss skill, you're supposed to be anticipating that boss skill and interrupting it when it happens.

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Originally Posted by kayuwoody

You aren't expected to use twitch skills to stun within .5 secs of seeing the boss skill, you're supposed to be anticipating that boss skill and interrupting it when it happens.

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So basically you believe it is good game design for players to have to wipe numerous times on an encounter until the boss rotations have been figured out, OR need to watch a video or read a strategy guide in order to clear?

I mean, really . You need to re-examine your statement.

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

So basically you believe it is good game design for players to have to wipe numerous times on an encounter until the boss rotations have been figured out, OR need to watch a video or read a strategy guide in order to clear?

I mean, really . You need to re-examine your statement.

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Well then, let's let the stun rotation to other jobs and remove shield bash from PLD :)

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

So basically you believe it is good game design for players to have to wipe numerous times on an encounter until the boss rotations have been figured out, OR need to watch a video or read a strategy guide in order to clear?

I mean, really . You need to re-examine your statement.

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What's wrong with wiping multiple times before figuring out the pattern. :/ Seriously what's wrong with gamers these days. Back in the days, you have to play the whole game to get to the same part and wipe on the same boss multiple times.

For a boring one combo class. having to time shield bash (and even sacrifcing your combo in the process) puts what litle depth this class actually has.

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

So basically you believe it is good game design for players to have to wipe numerous times on an encounter until the boss rotations have been figured out, OR need to watch a video or read a strategy guide in order to clear?

I mean, really . You need to re-examine your statement.

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No, actually the boss designs could be handled better, but the player skills are built this way too. Hallowed Ground wasn't designed as an "Oh Shit" button. It would be a pretty big overhaul, so don't expect that to happen. I don't think boss encounters should have a preset rotation, but that's how they are in this game. On one hand it leads to not being able to wing it the way you would be able to if you truly had oh shit buttons. On the other hand I also like how the skills are actually, as it's quite different from other games, so requires some forethought before usage. How do you incorporate that into boss mechanics, I dunno. That's why I'm not a game designer :D

pld shield swipe is usless, it needs fixed