Paladin idea for expansion

Sword Oath is changed so that it is a new stance where the sword is used with two hands, and the shield stays on your back.

It now increases the damage you receive (compared to the baseline with no oath active) but also greatly increases the damage you output.

In this stance certain actions are unavailable (shield lob, shield bash, shield swipe) but some new sword arts/techniques become available that can only be used during sword oath.

New move examples could be a ranged attack like Cloud's blame beam where you bash your sword on the ground and a shockwave travels in a straight line; a new circle slash type move to hit enemies around you like a whirlwind; a new combo starting with fast blade but ending with two new attacks; a new evasive maneuver perhaps. Anyone got ideas?

I'd be happy with getting our 1.0 abilities back at the very least.

Paladin deserves an update at the very least though, especially after Warriors got such a MASSIVE buff before. Paladin is currently one of the weakest jobs out there. It has some uses in endgame raids, but for simple dungeons or anything else it's actually rubbish.

Wouldn't this just basically mean that a paladin's stances can be used to either DPS or tank? It'd make things just a -little- OP for tank swap fights, you'd essentially have an extra DPS half the time...

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Originally Posted by Brine_Gildchaff

Wouldn't this just basically mean that a paladin's stances can be used to either DPS or tank? It'd make things just a -little- OP for tank swap fights, you'd essentially have an extra DPS half the time...

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How is that different than a WAR disabling Defiance when not tanking. This would just bring PLD on par when not tanking.

+1.

Cool Idea and a lot more "Gladiator".

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Originally Posted by Parz3val

How is that different than a WAR disabling Defiance when not tanking. This would just bring PLD on par when not tanking.

+1.

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Disabling Defiance takes away the Wrath mechanic and a lot of the associated moves, and it doesn't do anything to your damage. The OP is talking about making Sword Oath buff your baseline damage output. Disabling Defiance is more equivalent to just turning off Shield Oath.

Just add a healer stance. Something like this;

Reduce attack damage and damage taken by 10%, Increase healing potency of spells cast on you and by you by 25%, Raise can be cast in battle when under stance.

Also, a war off-defiance is going much better regardless of the benefits of wrath stacks. A 10% crit increase is useless when you deal 25% less dmg

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Originally Posted by Marxam

JAlso, a war off-defiance is going much better regardless of the benefits of wrath stacks. A 10% crit increase is useless when you deal 25% less dmg

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I won't dispute this, but if you're not in Defiance you lose access to a LOT of your warrior attacks, like Inner Beast. I admit I don't play WAR, but is that really an insignificant loss?

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Originally Posted by Brine_Gildchaff

I won't dispute this, but if you're not in Defiance you lose access to a LOT of your warrior attacks, like Inner Beast. I admit I don't play WAR, but is that really an insignificant loss?

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I played war since 2.0 launch and its generally seen that if you see a war in full parties (2 tanks) with only str accessories on and off-defiance then he is most likely to dps. Moves like Inner Beast and Steel Cyclone don't matter since you're not tanking, hence, you don't need the damage mitigation of Inner Beast and don't need to be taking hate from your mt. I'm the off tank, full str, in t9 and I'm constantly avg 255-270 (depends on how luck I get with crits). The only times I go into defiance is for ghosts n golems.

The trouble with this is SE would have to go back and create whole new sword animations for GLA/PLD to do this, as well as having to recode the shield to remain on the player's back while the sword is drawn (as at the moment it's coded to be used mutually with the shield), a lot of time and effort that quite frankly could be better spent designing new classes.

Besides, this would conflict with the very description of GLA, where the class is specifically mentioned as being one-handed, and that some GLAs' 'like to keep their off hand free to focus on their sword arm', thus making two-handing swords contradictory.

Instead I think SE would be more likely to create a whole new 2-handed weapon type, either for GLA/PLD itself (as in, great swords), or else have it as a whole new class, which seems to be the popular choice.

Instead of changing pld i would rather see a new class/job that specialize in 2-handed weapons.

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Originally Posted by Myrhn

Instead of changing pld i would rather see a new class/job that specialize in 2-handed weapons.

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Why not both? :D

I always suspected paladin to have some healing ability at least like the paladin job master did, something along the lines of convalescence but self healing.
Sword oath doesn't really help that much for dps, but better damage to be on par with war.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

It now increases the damage you receive (compared to the baseline with no oath active) but also greatly increases the damage you output.

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No.

Look, I get the idea of wanting to be able to deal a bit of damage when you're not the main tank, but Sword Oath as is does that already without crippling your ability to tank. Sure, you can't tank as well as a Paladin in Shield Oath, but at least you're not gonna be turned into paste in the emergency situation you might need to. If you want the Gladiator to be able to be a DPS, it needs to be a new job entirely with ability tweaks made at the class level, instead of trying to hap-hazardly bolt a DPS mechanic onto a dedicated tank.

This would be a severe unbalance, particularly to the tanking classes.

As things stand now, here's how they tend to rank in situations where an 8 person party has both a PLD and a WAR.

Defense

In general, a PLD is best for fights where there is a high level of consistent damage. This is due to longer, more powerful cooldowns and the Shield providing free mitigation irrespective of the Parry stat.
In general, a WAR is best for fights where there is spike damage at predictable intervals. This is due to Inner Beast, which can be saved for every spike provided there's a sufficient length of time between them.

Conclusion: Throw a WAR at Twintania and other similar fights. Throw PLDs at tough fights where no tank swapping is necessary(except for T8, where WAR MT damage helps). Throw both at everything anyway :)

Offense

In general, a WAR will do more damage than a PLD while they are main tanking something. This is mostly because of Unchained giving the ability to negate Defiance's damage penalty at pretty good intervals.
In general, a PLD will do more damage than a WAR while they are off tanking something. This is pretty much guaranteed if an MT WAR is keeping Storm's Eye up. This is because a Sword Oath increases a PLD's DPS beyond removing the penalty from Shield Oath and their possession of two of the most powerful off GCD attacks(potency wise) in the entire game on such short cooldowns.

Conclusion: If damage matters so much that you need even your Tanks to optimize for it, it's best to go WAR MT and PLD OT.

Hate Generation

In general, a PLD has a higher consistent level of hate generation than a WAR in long battles, but lower burst generation.
In general, a WAR has better burst threat than PLD, but somewhat lower levels otherwise due to the expectation that Maim and at least one Storm is to be kept up at all times.

Conclusion: An equally geared pair of tanks both trying to produce maximum threat will likely switch off at semi-regular intervals throughout a longer battle.

AOE Tanking

A WAR is better at holding hate against multiple enemies than a PLD.
A PLD is better at holding hate against a single target than a WAR.

Conclusion: It's best to send a WAR after large groups of adds while the PLD keeps the main boss busy.

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So, the main thing here is to note that each of the jobs has their things that they're best at. The significant detail to note, however, is that despite the "PLD is best at this" and "WAR is best at that", both jobs can run off and do pretty much anything the other job is considered to be better at and still succeed. What does this mean? It means that there's a good level of balance between them. This is a good thing.

This proposal to make Sword Oath even more powerful breaks the balance in the Offense section. Whereas most parties of 8 would like there to be both a PLD and WAR present, the following would occur instead of a PLD OT became even more powerful. If we imagine fights where the following is true:

A WAR is the better MT: No change.
A PLD is the better MT: Drop the WAR and get another PLD.
It doesn't matter what Tanks we have: Get two PLD's.

In short, this may recreate the 2.0 situation in which people wanted PLD's far more than they wanted WAR's, and that is bad.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Gibberish

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In no situation will a good paladin ever do more damage or generate more hate than a good warrior. I hope that was a joke (albeit a bad one). Warrior does more damage (uh... due to maim... which should be up 100% of the time) and certainly does higher single target and multiple target enmity generation. And this was before taking into account the 2.1 buffs. This was the same situation at launch.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

a lot of time and effort that quite frankly could be better spent designing new classes.

Instead I think SE would be more likely to create a whole new 2-handed weapon type, either for GLA/PLD itself (as in, great swords), or else have it as a whole new class, which seems to be the popular choice.

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Why design a new class when the current one is in need of fixing? While I see your point, I hope you won't deny that PLD is in need of an update, specifically in the areas of play style and damage.

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Originally Posted by UBERHAXED

In no situation will a good paladin ever do more damage or generate more hate than a good warrior. I hope that was a joke (albeit a bad one). Warrior does more damage (uh... due to maim... which should be up 100% of the time) and certainly does higher single target and multiple target enmity generation. And this was before taking into account the 2.1 buffs. This was the same situation at launch.

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This has been proven false. Stop living in 2.0.

I think all jobs will get huge changes. We currently have a class -> job system. It does not work. The one class that can branch out in two jobs already has problems: shared attributes.

If SE is smart, they will dump this 1.0 remnant system and just make jobs with job specific abilities which are much more easy to add/balance.

I have good hopes since Yoshi himself said that he acknowledges the problems with the current system and might even change the whole system.

Btw OP, WARs did not get a "massive" buff, they were just broken. Just one example: IB would heal you for 200hp on a lvl 10 mob, but also for 200hp in Coil. Long story short: rather than fix the content (way more work), they fixed WAR.

this should be in the tank role forums

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Originally Posted by Renault

Why design a new class when the current one is in need of fixing? While I see your point, I hope you won't deny that PLD is in need of an update, specifically in the areas of play style and damage.

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As a level 50 GLA/PLD who has played from version 1.0 into ARR and who is quite happy with how GLA/PLD is currently set up, I'm curious as to how you consider PLD 'in need of an update.'

Is it because they don't play like FFXI's PLDs who have to spend half their time slinging Cure spells just to hold hate (and the other half spamming Provoke, which locked the job into subbing WAR just to do so)? Is it because there's no great swords to live out Cloud Strife fantasies? Exactly how are they such a 'broken' class/Job? Please enlighten me.

Please no more for paladin, I already think the job is perfect the way it is.

Unless you replace moves with better ones that's the only way, I don't feel like stacking moves on a macro bar, replace current moves with upgraded ones other than that don't mess with it.

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Originally Posted by UBERHAXED

In no situation will a good paladin ever do more damage or generate more hate than a good warrior. I hope that was a joke (albeit a bad one). Warrior does more damage (uh... due to maim... which should be up 100% of the time) and certainly does higher single target and multiple target enmity generation. And this was before taking into account the 2.1 buffs. This was the same situation at launch.

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Stop spouting off and actually read!

Did I ever say that "X will always do Y better?". No!

First of all, the 2.1 buffs did absolutely nothing to increase the damage of WAR's. The only enmity increase was the one granted to Overpower. So, whether it's 2.0 or 2.1 doesn't matter. WAR Damage and Hate when compared to PLD is absolutely unchanged.

To put things in better perspectives:

A WAR will, if they pop Berserk, Unchained, and all the stops at the beginning of a fight, establish a large hate lead on a PLD. Meanwhile, A PLD pops Fight or Flight and generally proceeds to slowly catch up to the WAR's hate. By the time a WAR is ready to burst again, the PLD has probably either reached their level of hate or even passed them. Keep in mind that this is in situations in which both Tanks are equally geared, and I mean equal. They're both wearing all Fending accessories, wearing all DPS accessories, or wearing equally melded alternate accessories. They also have identical bonus attribute distributions. I have observed the WAR's reliance on an initial burst in several situations where I, as PLD, have to switch off with a WAR. Even if I switch to Sword Oath, I can steal hate right back if I don't give the WAR a second. This is albeit temporary as the WAR burst happens eventually to really establish hate, but the ebb and flow I describe here shows a balance in their Hate generation. I'm talking "through the entire fight" here, not "the first 1-2 minutes of the fight". The shorter the fight is, the higher the WAR's hate lead will be. If a WAR is dumb enough to try and keep both Storm's up, I've stolen hate as a PLD in Sword Oath on Twintania even though I had no threat on Twin herself while taking the 3 dragons at the start of the fight.

A WAR does more damage while Main Tanking because of Maim, Wrath, Unchained, etc. However, the use of things like Maim and Storms and such necessitate that not every combo can be the Butcher's Block combo, which is the only one with enmity multipliers. This means that in completely normal situations where the "good" warrior is keeping Maim and a Storm up and waiting for berserk and unchained to go off cooldown, a PLD is actually generating hate more quickly because all they have to do is spam their hate combo. The thing about PLD Hate Generation is that it's very consistent, and that's their strength. It's not a magical balance breaking situation because the WAR's burst makes up for the loss they suffered during the interim phases and Fight or Flight is not as powerful as the Berserk/Unchained combo. When the fight is all said and done, the WAR and the PLD will have generated approximately an equal amount of hate on a single target. If one is actually winning, it's not by a significant margin because it's obvious that both can keep hate on a single target.

When off tanking, a PLD switches to Sword Oath, nullifies the 20% penalty from Shield Oath, and gains 50 potency on every auto attack. This is a constant and underestimated gain in DPS that only changes when Fight or Flight is up. An OT Paladin will also always have the full 300 potency of Spirits Within in addition to the 250 Total Potency of Circle of Scorn. When off tanking, a WAR will remove Defiance. This nullifies the 20% penalty on damage, but also removes the ability to gain and use Wrath, which is a significant part of WAR hate generation and damage generation while tanking. A WAR can compensate for the lack of these moves by applying Storm's Eye, but this also helps the PLD. Alone, an OT WAR will probably beat a PLD, but when they're together Storms Eye will make the PLD win. I'm only talking about 8 man content in which both are present in the same fight.

When we're talking AOE hate, the WAR wins. No contest. Overpower and Steel Cyclone scale on STR, which is much more beneficial for Hate Generation than Weapon Damage or whatever in the world Flash actually scales off of.

So, let me make this perfectly clear. I'd first like to reiterate again that these are based on fights where both a PLD and WAR are in the same party.

I never said that "PLD generates more hate than WAR". I said that they generate an approximately equal amount of threat and the way a WAR's generation ebbs and flows will enable a PLD to steal hate for a time before the WAR's next burst. Maybe my post was unclear, but the idea was that (high consistent + low burst) == (low consistent + high burst). Think of it as 1 + 0 = 0 + 1, if you want.

I never said that "PLD does more damage than a WAR". I said that an MT WAR does more damage than an MT PLD and an OT PLD does more damage than an OT WAR. When both are fighting the same enemy. I honestly cannot see what you got out my post to think that I was saying that PLD always does more damage no matter what.

There are reasons that people like having PLD and WAR together. It's because they are completely awesome and complement each other when they're in the same battle. When they're both beating on the same enemy and switching the tank job once in a while, they're pretty much equal. That's the point.

if they every do the dual specility thing heres the DPS pld.

sword of oath - turns all defensive cool downs to offensive, WS bonus to damage bonus. swaps VIT with STR

more tanking junk.

we need to remove the 20% damage gimp from shield of oath, theres no point for it not like were gonna be OP but it will help with hate control a bit. thats the biggest issue we have make it a bit hard at the start of a fight when you have BLM's spamming flare.

Enough Said .....


http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/e...etic009/t9.png

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Originally Posted by KinSlayer009

Enough Said .....
*Picture of awesome Inner Beast*

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Yup, that's one reason why a WAR in Defiance wins against a PLD in Shield Oath when it comes to raw damage. In fact, a DPS MRD is also really dumb. An FC member claimed to have crit for about 2.1k as a MRD by popping every cross class buff ever at the same time.

Spike != Sustain

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

The trouble with this is SE would have to go back and create whole new sword animations for GLA/PLD to do this, as well as having to recode the shield to remain on the player's back while the sword is drawn (as at the moment it's coded to be used mutually with the shield), a lot of time and effort that quite frankly could be better spent designing new classes.

Besides, this would conflict with the very description of GLA, where the class is specifically mentioned as being one-handed, and that some GLAs' 'like to keep their off hand free to focus on their sword arm', thus making two-handing swords contradictory.

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Fixed by putting the shield on the back (thus removing it) and one handing your weapon, with the other hand free keeping the same animations it has had.

+ new skills
- no shield blocks and skills

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Originally Posted by Donjo

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I'm not sure much about an ebb and flow but generally speaking any tanks equally geared can steal hate from eachother if they try hard enough. ST/CT is the perfect example of this you can watch the bosses focus bounce from pld to war to war to war to pld and in a circle forever. It just comes down to whoever has the most buffs on.

Still, if you look at what job would be more deserving of an update, Paladin would have to be pretty on top of that list.

Warrior and Paladin are equal in mitigation now, up to the point of it being neglible. The only difference is that Warrior does FAR more damage, has a far greater arsenal of attacks, far more (and much better) self-heals and naturally has 25% more HP.

25% more HP and 20% more healing, combined with Inner Beast's 13% overal reduction (has 6s -20% on what is pretty much a 9 second recast) MORE than equals Shield Oath. I say equals since i dont want to step on anyone's toes, but between you and me it blows Shield Oath completely out of the water. Math-wise it means that warriors get hit for 87%, while paladins get hit for 80%, so you're exchanging 7% more damage taken for 25% more HP and 20% more healing. That's rediculous.

Which could have been more than enough to "fix" the not even slightly broken Warrior job before. But they didnt just stop there...

- It has all the abilities Paladin has now combined unto its own abilities, but those abilities themselves have their own Warrior Exclusive effects on top of that as well.
Storm Path = Rage of Halone + Absorb HP for 50% of the damage done
Inner Beast = Rampart + Absorb HP for 100% of damage done, also circumvents Defiance it's damage reduction.
Foresight = Convalescence (20% defense for 20% cured)
Vengeance = Sentinel
Holmgang = Hallowed Ground + draw in and bind to prevent people from running.
- Enchainment lets it circumvent the damage reduction from Defiance.
- The Potency on all of it's spammable attacks is rediculous. 280 to 300's potency on things they can throw out every 5 seconds if they so desired.
- 50% Absorbs from Storm's Path they basicly spam all the time regardless.
- Insane AoE attacks and potency. Which are spammable opposed to the 25 second wait on a Paladin's Circle of Scorn with a measely 100 potency :/
- A lot of self heals that arent rediculous like Paladin's 200 HP Cures costing 133 MP from Conjurer sub.
- They have Lower TP costs on all their abilities now.
- They have Shorter Recasts.
- Do not have Stun on the Global Cooldown, which is amazing for them.
- They have Higher Critical Hitrates, but ok, fair enough.
- They have Longer Duration Buffs.

What does Paladin have going for it?

- 10% more damage blocked on sentinel for 10 seconds, every 3 whole minutes. (opposed to warriors getting 30% for 15 seconds)
- Insignificant blocks from a shield that happen less than 10% of the time, blocking 20% at most when you're using a i100+ shield. Great, a whole 2% reduction overal. And that's asuming most attacks arent non-physical and thus unblockable, which most boss things are.

You can disagree, or even feel that Warriors "deserve" to be better somehow, but the simple fact of the matter is, they're way too strong. Right now they can keep up with any respectful DPS class in damage dealing, while also retaining all their insane tanking prowess. Just look around the boards for all the coil players bragging about how their Warriors are reaching the 300 DPS requirement as well.

If you're going to make changes and additions to a tank job, make additions and changes to the other job too. You cant just go "Oh, we fixed the enmity problem that Shield Oath was having despite displaying it on the Icon ever since 2.0" and call it equal. (Which, even funnier they broke on the last patch again where they made Shield Oath not go away on death but the enmity boost does).

There was nothing wrong with Warrior before, just people who didnt know how to play them or use them properly in a party, and people still more often than not dont have the faintest clue. Same as how there was no problem with Paladins before.

So there's two ways this can go. Either Paladin gets a massive boost to bring it back up to Warrior Levels. Or Warrior gets a massive nerf to bring it back down to Paladin levels.

Warrior used to be the Damage Dealing Tank, while Paladin was the Mitigation tank.

Now Warrior is the Damage Dealing Tank who also has all the same Mitigation Paladin has and more. Way way way more.

Lets face it

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Right now, why would ANYONE want to use a tank that has 25% Less HP, deals Less Damage, Has a harder time holding Enmity on anything that has more than one opponent, while taking pretty much the exact same amount of damage?

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At the very least give Paladin another 25% HP as well. And that should be the minimal start.

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Originally Posted by Brine_Gildchaff

Disabling Defiance takes away the Wrath mechanic and a lot of the associated moves, and it doesn't do anything to your damage.

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Huh? you know Defiance reduces Damage delt by 25% right?

I'd like to see a bit more of the "holy knight" thing with paladin. Perhaps abilities where a pally can call on one or other of the twelve for healing or buffs. Failing that then Holy knight could be an idea for a third tanking job.

Instead of making WAR and PLD identical (at that point, just delete both and make a Palawar or Warridin), SE could make a couple changes.

WAR - Generalist. Can tank and do some dmg depending on their stance. Their DPS is higher than healers, but lower than dedicated, specialist DPS. Their Defense is much lower than PLD, but they can still tank, they just take more dmg, but much less than DPS or healers would.
PLD - Specialist. They can only tank. Their dmg output is the lowest of all jobs but their defense is 2-2.5x what it is currently.

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Originally Posted by Lucke

WAR - Generalist. Can tank and do some dmg depending on their stance. Their DPS is higher than healers, but lower than dedicated, specialist DPS. Their Defense is much lower than PLD, but they can still tank, they just take more dmg, but much less than DPS or healers would.
PLD - Specialist. They can only tank. Their dmg output is the lowest of all jobs but their defense is 2-2.5x what it is currently.

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We don't really want that, do we ?
If the endgame contents is easy enough, it will be WAR only.
On the contrary, if it's quite hard it will be PLD only.
I feel like it's currently almost nicely balanced. I keep AOE hate easier on my WAR but it is way squishier than my PLD.
The only really thing I would like for PLD is more diversity in the gameplay.
Being able to "switch role" like asked by the OP could be an answer but I'd rather have more diversity on the tanking part.
But hey, it's only me.

Give Pld more White Magic when the level cap is raised. I would love to see offensive skills but it would be mostly defensive abilities.

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Originally Posted by Surian

I'd be happy with getting our 1.0 abilities back at the very least.

Paladin deserves an update at the very least though, especially after Warriors got such a MASSIVE buff before. Paladin is currently one of the weakest jobs out there. It has some uses in endgame raids, but for simple dungeons or anything else it's actually rubbish.

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Try Dzemael Darkhold with Paladin and Warrior and say again that Warrior is superior in simple dungeons - the runs with Paladin there can be literally twice faster.

I think the op has a nice idea, but not for paladin. Make a new dark knight job for that.

Paladin as it stands is, in my limited experience, in quite a good place. Personally though I would like a little more variety. In the paladin rework thread I proposed adding extra enmity to riot blade and giving flash a DOT if used after riot blade and the target was already affected by the ROH strength down effect. It would be a fairly high potency DOT, but wouldn't have an enmity modifier. Based on my (very rudimentary) maths, the effect would be around 8% more damage (compared to just ROH spam) for an 8% enmity loss. It might make the role a little more interesting.

Surian...

Inner beast is nowhere near 13% overall mitigation. 5 wrath stacks take at least 15 seconds to generate(2 full combos and berserk or vengeance, heavy swing generates no wrath). Which would be about 8% overall. Considering PLD has rampart, sentinel, hallowed ground and bulwark to WARs vengeance and inner beast I think PLD takes it in terms of overall mitigation.