Opinions on WAR and PLD

After a T6 run that failed at .01% the other day, a thought occurred to me.

WAR is a pretty decent tank now after it's fixes and updates, and a godsend once I became bored with the ol' one two punch that is PLD.

But Holmgang still sucks terribly. Do we know if anything is going to be done to make it a more usable skill? The two really useful thing it's done for me by now is A) keep me in place on Leviathan EX so that I can DPS a Spume without being moved. And B) Stay in place on Titan EX and safely eat Landslides without getting knocked off by adds(if timed well.)

Do any other abilities need to be tweaked besides this one? I've entertained thoughts that Holmgang could be a sort of perservering/leeching cooldown because of the chain the WAR throws at the target. During the connection to something, a longer duration, something close to 9 seconds would do, then a small regen effect that drains HP from the target based on how low our HP is(but with an effective cap on how much can be drained so it's not overpowered), and then the original "HP cannot go below 1 in most cases."

Just something that makes it feel like more of a helpful cooldown instead of a "god I can't believe I have to try and use this right now." Most often, whether through my inexperience or not, Holmgang often hurts me more than it helps when I've used it. I'm not a crap tank by this point from the practice I've gotten, but Holmgang is usually the one cooldown I never use often because of what could happen to me if I pop it.

PLD I feel could use a little more variety, it only having one straightforward combo feels ineffective. When OT, spamming Riot Blade doesn't have the potential to do much damage, when you aren't doing one Rage of Halone when you can to keep up the Strength Down debuff, and no one is denying that WAR beats PLD in the DPS race. PLD makes up for it in reliable safety and further damage reduction through Block and Parry together, but still feels lacking when Spirits Within and CoS are all else that's left. And since Fracture is seen as useless, it's not a very helpful cross-class trait.

Awareness is still that ability that I've been told on here, isn't useful because of the math behind an enemy actually landing a crit, and that only when stacking it with something else, does it feel mandated.

Any thoughts?

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Originally Posted by Huntington

Holmgang still sucks terribly. Do we know if anything is going to be done to make it a more usable skill? The two really useful thing it's done for me by now is A) keep me in place on Leviathan EX so that I can DPS a Spume without being moved. And B) Stay in place on Titan EX and safely eat Landslides without getting knocked off by adds(if timed well.)

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It kind of sucks that this one skill is trying to do too much all on its own. It would be nice for them to split the invincibility and surefooted functionality on to something else. Maybe in 3.0. Rest of the WAR lineup is pretty solid. Except fracture, with the duration of SE it's often of questionable use @ 50 and just drains TP.

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Originally Posted by Huntington

PLD I feel could use a little more variety, it only having one straightforward combo feels ineffective. When OT, spamming Riot Blade doesn't have the potential to do much damage, when you aren't doing one Rage of Halone when you can to keep up the Strength Down debuff

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it's not that bad. Riot combo is average 190 potency per strike, halone is average of 203 potency per strike. It's not great but you aren't losing that much. However the riot combo bleeds TP, so that can be a problem.

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Originally Posted by Huntington

and no one is denying that WAR beats PLD in the DPS race.

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MT or OT? MT, War can be better DPS as a tank, but they give stuff up to do this (100% up time on SP debuff or threat generation). OT, PLD is slightly better DPS when they have a WAR to provide SE for them, otherwise they're a little lower (WAR has to give up SP debuff to do this though). Spirits & CoS may not be terribly exciting, but they're very powerful off GCD abilities with short cooldowns and shouldn't be underestimated.

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Originally Posted by Huntington

Any thoughts?

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Biggest imbalance is that PLD AoE threat generation and damage is crushed by the WAR. Some people don't have a problem with this, but I don't think it's acceptable after the WAR's mitigation was brought up to par with the PLD.

I think Warrior is pretty good in the fun and functional department since its update (with the exception of Fracture and maybe Holmgang). The one area where I think they could use some real improvement is OT DPS, where Sword Oath kind of smacks them down. They could maybe have Improved Fracture give the warrior an attack power buff every time Fracture ticks, and have it fade upon taking damage. That way their OT DPS goes up but MT DPS stays (roughly) the same.

Paladin is a ton of fun in 4 man dungeons and is a very effective tank, but it can be a little lacking in the cool abilities department. A lot of its abilities overlap in function and it's got a lot of utility skills that don't have much use in a lot of fights. It also does significantly less damage than warrior while actually tanking, mostly due to the lack of Maim. The biggest problems with paladin in full party content IMO are:

-Shield Bash: Its TP cost and damage mean this is only used for the stun effect, which is ineffective on the majority of full party content.
-Shield Swipe: While it's a very slight DPS increase over the entire Halone combo, the pacify effect is grossly overpowered and doesn't function in most fights because of that. This skill is really lackluster for one of the few "reaction" type skills in the game (Haymaker sucks too though).
-Riot Blade: The MP restoration is nice, but the damage and TP cost make it unattractive. A few more ways to use up MP would be nice too, since Flash doesn't come into play a lot of the time and spamming Stoneskin only happens every so often.
-Shield Oath: Two of our five job abilities being eaten by stances sucks.
-Awareness: This skill is just bad. Not getting crit is great, but not as part of an active skill.

Possible solutions would be:

-Shield Bash + Shield Swipe: Keep Shield Bash by itself as-is, but add a combo chain that comes off of Shield Swipe for increased damage and TP restoration. If you set it at a very high combo potency (like 400+) and Additional Effect: Restores 100 TP over 15 seconds, the usage would be limited (as to not overlap the TP restoration buff and lose a bunch of TP), but you'd get some really powerful shield bashes while tanking. This also helps to increase paladin MT DPS while keeping OT DPS roughly the same.

-Riot Blade: This combo should probably have the same potency as Halone. 260 potency on Riot Blade would set it at 205/gcd, which is very slightly above Halone.

-Shield Oath: This should just be the default state you're in when you equip the Paladin soul crystal, and Sword Oath should remove the bonuses and penalties and give you the Sword Oath buff. Effectively, Sword Oath would read "Increases damage taken and dealt by 25%, and lowers enmity generation. Increases the potency of auto-attacks by 50." Also, it's really striking how much easier it is to use Defiance in battle than Shield/Sword Oath. Defiance toggling doesn't break combo and is off GCD. Shield and Sword Oath use the spell GCD, cost MP, and break combos.

Shield Oath being eliminated would also open up another job slot for something like a WS that comes off of Riot Blade. Awareness should probably just be a stat on armor that reduces chance to be crit. There's other bad/not amazing abilities that paladin has (like Bulwark), but these are really the biggest problems IMO. Just a better reason to use Shield Swipe than low TP cost would be good enough for me.

I don't think Holmgang is completly worthless, but I don't have a Paladin AND i'm slightly jealous of their "can't hurt me move". Sure holmgang is not as good, but it's saved me a good few times, not to mention the "you or I can't move" thing.

I think everyone's been complaining about Holmgang since launch. Squenix obviously likes it the way it is because they do nothing about it.

Asides from some of the stuff already mentioned, I think that the two most underused and fairly lacking abilities need to be addressed, Cover and Tempered Will.

The basic concept of them is okay, but as is their use is far too situational and rarely is useful.

I've personally been trying to utilize Cover more and I do like it but I find its CD way too long. If the CD for it was like dropped to 90 or maybe even 60 seconds and had a slightly longer range I feel people would use it more especially as an OT providing extra protection for their more easily killed party members.

As for Tempered Will, again what it does is sort of nice but it could maybe do a little more like maybe also affect paralysis and again its CD is way too long and should be dropped to at least 120 seconds if not less. Right now I only really use TW to remove heavy when I get hit with it while riding my chocobo.

An annoying thing about Tempered Will's removal component is that it only seems to work on the very specific effects of Bind and Heavy. Disease (like the one in Tam Tara Hard) won't be removed. I also kind of wish it just made you immune to being heavied or bound for the duration, so you could use it to do stuff like move through the Granite Gaoler puddles.

I really don't think there's a good way to fix Holmgang right now other than just removing the movement penalty from it. Like Hallowed Ground, the startup is a little too long to use it as an "Oh Crap!" button. Unfortunately the effect isn't really strong enough that you can plan around using it either, though. Removing the penalty at least makes it safer to experiment with.

Hallowed Ground, Benediction and Holmgang all suffer from server lag (honestly, everything does). On your screen, the enemy hits you and your HP goes into "uh oh! Time to pop hallowed ground" range. On the server side, your HP has already been there for a second(?) or so. So you pop hallowed ground while alive, but by the time HG reaches the server, the boss hit you again. And you are dead. So even though the text on the screen reads that you used Hallowed Ground (or Benediction or Holmgang) before the damage hits, the server sees it the other way.

Dead.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

snip.

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A lot of this is caused by the ridiculous fact that the effect is not being applied until after the animation has played. Popping HW or HG and then having to wait 1.5 - 2 seconds for the effect to be applied due to animations playing and server delay sucks and can be the difference between living and dying. As has been stated many times before, they need to have the effect be applied when the ability is activated not after the full animation has played, either that or change up and shorten the animation.

HG is just not designed to be an 'oh snap im in trouble' button. It's designed to be used as a major strategic relief in damage incoming.

Also, it's REALLY REALLY ambiguous on the damage it will mitigate. There's a lot that it will just simply not cover.

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Originally Posted by Warrlordd

HG is just not designed to be an 'oh snap im in trouble' button. It's designed to be used as a major strategic relief in damage incoming.

Also, it's REALLY REALLY ambiguous on the damage it will mitigate. There's a lot that it will just simply not cover.

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Yeah, exactly. You can plan around Hallowed Ground. You can't use Holmgang like that. It'd be cool if it could be buffed so that was still unique from HG but let you actually plan around using it.

Also it's kind of funny to see what Hallowed Ground works on. It's pretty clear they don't want you using it to skip mechanics, but it's still a bit arbitrary. It'll make the Iceball in t9 hit for 0 even if you already have an ice stack, but it doesn't prevent landmine damage at all (even though Sentinel, etc will mitigate it). There's also at least one damage+knockback skill in the game where it prevents the damage but not the knockback, but on like Landslide you just take 0 and don't move.

I don't play Paladin very often but there are certain fights where I feel more comfortable, such as Ifrit XM, and this is purely for Hallowed Ground and Stoneskin spam. If as OT you're required to be doing damage, you need better DPS, so I just spend my time when not tanking spamming Stoneskin on the MT until we need to switch.

I also never use Hallowed Ground in a panic situation for the previously mentioned reasons. Server lag is a bitch. It's purely used at a strategic point in a fight when you know that you will take no damage, allowing the healers to concentrate on something else, or to mitigate a known massive incoming spike of damage. Again, on Ifrit XM, I pop it just before I switch in as MT when in the final Nail phase, which allows me eat five or six fire breaths before the other tank needs to switch in. If they also use their Hallowed Ground as they switch in, and it removes a lot of the annoying switches during that phase with the tether. My Static Paladin buddy also uses it for the Super Slug in Turn 6, for the Prosecutor in Turn 7 and for the second Dread in Turn 8, in order to premeditatively mitigate the known spike damage that is about to hit.

I also agree that Paladins need something other than just the 1, 2, 3 spam when tanking. An additional combo skill after Riot Blade would be nice, with maybe an additional debuff to magical attack power to go with the strength down debuff from Halone. Brannigan's suggestion of Paladins being in Shield Oath by default when they have the Paladin Soulstone equipped is a good one, I feel, as it would free up a Job Skill for that additional weapon skill as suggested. This would also be good for fights such as Ramuh XM, where Halone's debuff is completely useless because all of his attacks are magical.

Tempered Will is another one that I use more out of laziness or when I know there's potential for knockback. Titan XM PUGs are where it comes in handy, where the five-way landslide is sometimes not baited south, you can pop Tempered Will before you know it will happen, in case any DPS or healers get targeted that aren't currently stacked south. Using it on Levi XM when positioning the blue Spumes also lets you get into position earlier for when they burst as you don't need to avoid the tipping of the boat, but that's more just being lazy :P

When it comes to Warriors, Holmgang is the biggest problem for me, and is probably my least used skill. The idea in principle was interesting, but there are far too many things that are immune to the bind and it's trying to do too many things at once. Six seconds is also not a lot of time to use it for anything premeditated, with about the only one being the above mentioned five-way Landslide and being able to prevent the knockback if you have nowhere to go, or if you're feeling lazy, for the two Gaoler's Landslides.

But then who's to say that they won't go back to trying to make each class use more of their utility skills in the next Coil. Second Coil for me has felt way more about the whole team's cohesion together, as opposed to one or two key members in particular (silencing ADS, chain-stunning the Dreadknights, etc.). There's very little room for members of the teams to just tunnel vision and not have to worry about mechanics like there were in the Binding Coil.

I suggested the possibility of giving flash a DoT effect (with a 3x modifier on the DoT effect) when used after riot blade, which would also gain a 3x enmity modifier. A 40 potency DoT over 21 seconds (7 ticks) would mean that, assuming you kept it up permanently, you would get a dps increase of 4% and a threat reduction of 6% on a single target, over RoH spam, not an unreasonable trade off in my opinion. However, you would obviously see a significant increase with AoE threat generation.

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Originally Posted by Kydi

I suggested the possibility of giving flash a DoT effect (with a 3x modifier on the DoT effect) when used after riot blade, which would also gain a 3x enmity modifier. A 40 potency DoT over 21 seconds (7 ticks) would mean that, assuming you kept it up permanently, you would get a dps increase of 4% and a threat reduction of 6% on a single target, over RoH spam, not an unreasonable trade off in my opinion. However, you would obviously see a significant increase with AoE threat generation.

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That's an interesting suggestion, but Paladins do already have Circle of Scorn as an AOE DOT skill. My idea that I've suggested in multiple threads before now would be for the combo skill following Riot Blade to deal magical damage (based on Strength, not Int or anything daft), which consumes MP. You would have it cost more MP than Riot Blade replenishes, so that you would, over time, still run out of MP in the same way that you would TP. You could have it as an AOE attack which generates additional enmity in order to attempt to balance Warriors' Overpower and Steel Cyclone.

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Originally Posted by LukeyP666

That's an interesting suggestion, but Paladins do already have Circle of Scorn as an AOE DOT skill... Snip

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It could certainly work. The alternative is just have flash damage if combo'd with riot blade.

My main thought was to just keep the skills exactly the same so minimal effort required to change things (although I'm not a programmer, a combo could be hell to program), but also to set paladin aside a bit with extra dot and debuff effects rather than just a flat damage effect. I also wanted there to be a use for it in single target fights, as at present we only have 1,2,3 to work with.

A fixed damage would also work though. I think about 175 potency would make the combo slightly less powerful than a halone combo per GCD, but would add the area benefit.