All this talk about Paladin needing buffs. Let's Royal Authority Brainstorm.

What COULD the dev team put on Royal Authority specifically to help Paladin's out?

A short Damage increase?

A Slashing debuff?

A NEW debuff?

Flat out more potency?

Lets keep it reasonable people.

Keep Royal Authority as is.

Buff Savage Blade enmity multiplier to 3.5 to match the other tanks.

Buff Rage of Halone enmity multiplier to 5.5 to match the other tanks.

Now PLD can build enough hate to:

1- Alternate Goring Blade > RoH > RA.
2- When enough enmity is built up: Goring Blade > RA > RA.

PLD's DPS "issues" fixed. No further buffs are required for PLD without giving Hallowed Ground to the other tanks.

How about adding effects to royal authority. Make it so if rage of halone strength debuff has been applied (by you) increase emnity on royal authority, and if the goring blade DoT has been applied (by you) increases potency by something like 50-100 or adds a DoT effect of its own? Both would be applicable if you had both debuffs up.

Rather than changing Royal Authority, I think
-Savage mod to 3.5
-Halone mod to 5.5
-Sheltron: 30s cd, 10s duration. Blocks the next physical attack. Restores MP and activates Shield Swipe upon blocking or taking magic damage. (does not mitigate magic damage)
-Shield Swipe: 240 potency (slightly better than RA combo), Can only be used immediately after blocking an attack or after using Sheltron. Increases enmity generated for 20s. Add effect: Lolpacify

There, now paladin TP is slightly better while tanking, enmity generation gets boosted like with WAR's maim and DRK's dark side, and Shield Swipe isn't a DPS loss.

RA is used as a OT combo, I think the potency can be buffed slightly. Increase ROH enmity modifier, there is clear indication that the PLD is trailing behind when the DPS are pushing hard. Your Clemency spell can have maybe two types of abilities, when in shield oath gives a heal what it currently does, but when in sword oath it gives you TP, when cast on another player can do the same thing really 50% comes back to you etc.

Make Clemency an instant cast with a CD timer

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Originally Posted by IskarJarak

Make Clemency an instant cast with a CD timer

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No! ... /10char

Paladin is fine. People choosing to not wear slaying accessories are the problem. If you want to do more DPS, and use Halone less, then get rid of your fending garbage. I have never once had any issues holding hate with Paladin, and it's no longer my primary geared class since I switched to Dark Knight, yet I STILL hold hate just fine in A2s when I use Paladin against my perfectly geared raid DPS. THe problem is the players, not the class.

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Originally Posted by ZDamned

Paladin is fine. People choosing to not wear slaying accessories are the problem. If you want to do more DPS, and use Halone less, then get rid of your fending garbage. I have never once had any issues holding hate with Paladin, and it's no longer my primary geared class since I switched to Dark Knight, yet I STILL hold hate just fine in A2s when I use Paladin against my perfectly geared raid DPS. THe problem is the players, not the class.

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You can say that about every class/job in the game.

Sorry, while I agree with the point that paladin is mostly fine. I don't agree with the gear assessment. The pld class is meant to be main tank. It is supposed to be for mitigation and progression in raids. That is why pld should stick with high Vit. In the dungeons swapping to dps accessories is a good idea it will move things along a little quicker but not much. Pld was never and is still not meant to be for DPS. Not that your opinion is bad but it just really irks me when people have to use gear not intended to be used just so you can do more dps. A good way to fix this is to adjust enmity generated by DPS classes based on the numbers. It doesn't have to be a big adjustment just a slight adjustment. The other things I would like to see for PLD is bringing back the block mechanic based on strength for damage reduction. The other one is to fix parry so that it actually means something and isn't so random. Take shield swipe off of the global cool down

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Originally Posted by blackhawk

Snip.

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Sorry to break it to you mate, but PLD is not "meant to be main tank" any more than the other two. In ANY encounter that a PLD can MT, a WAR can do just as good a job, while dishing out more DPS. And in any encounter with heavy magic damage, a DRK will do a better job than PLD while still dishing out more damage.

PLD superiority isn't its mitigation, it's its safety net.

Now that is cleared, let's move on to gearing choice:

Tanking in this game is about having enough survivability to survive the biggest hit long enough to receive the next heal, anything more is "wasted". From there, you should invest in DPS/aggro.

You shouldn't underestimate PLD DPS, even if it is lower than the other tanks.

Tanks using slaying accessories is not "using gear they're not supposed to use". It's not like tanks are deliberately wearing lower item levels or, God forbid, Disciple of War (leather) gear for added DPS stats, now THAT would hurt.

I do not understand the logic behind this one: you say it irks you when PLD uses STR gear then you say something like "The other things I would like to see for PLD is bringing back the block mechanic based on strength for damage reduction." Where is the logic in this one?

Parry AND block are random, it's not just parry. And to fix it, SE gave you Sheltron and you already had Bulwark.

I do not care what they do with Shield Swipe, it is floating in a very iffy spot atm.

Royal Authority is already a very high potency combo finisher. It is so high up there actually. It doesn't need any buffs or debuffs added.

Only change PLD really needs is the enmity multipliers on its main combo. Yes they do not have Maim/Darkside, but PLD is the only class that has enmity generators in 2 of its 3 combos. It is also the only class that has a reactive ability with an enmity multiplier (Shield Swipe). And they are the only class that includes an AoE attack that has a triple enmity multiplier (CoS) in their single target rotation.

Fight or Flight is also one of the strongest Damage increasing cooldowns in the game, so you can add 30% more enmity to the first 3 Rage of Halone combos you do. Shield Oath already doubles your enmity, and if you use a full suite of Slaying accessories, You in 1 single rage of Halone combo will hold more enmity on a single enemy than it would take for another DPS to kill it by itself. There is nothing wrong with Paladin, people are just not tab targeting.

If we keep begging SE to balance the game on the worst players, then the best players will get way too bored with it. I don't want another repeat of when I could flash 3 times, and go AFK....

well I can see why you wouldn't understand the logic behind the block mechanic. Two things in regards to that. We have a skill that guarantees a block which then reduces damage by the % and we have a skill that increases block rate by 60% so it's not as unpredictable and random as parry. You don't need extra strength to boost that % by stacking str acc. the main body pieces and weapons are enough and the amount of strength originally needed for each extra 1% reduction was too high. They adjusted it for 3.0 to do nothing. As for the safety net that is from the from the skills given to pld as opposed to the other 2 tanks which comes down to mitigating more damage. As for the pld dps it was clearly designed to be less than the other tanks war was giving built in additional crit which is for pure extra damage. while drk magic reduction is nice there are few groups that run MT as war and the majority still run pld so yeah even if you think it isn't meant to be mt the player base says otherwise

im shocked people still can't play such a simple class. Incase its been missed, all the new tank busters far exceed even a WAR's max hp atm, in my opinion making VIT redundant to an extent. You get so much more ehp while using cd's its naive to assume vit is the only stat us tanks need. You can go on youtube and watch hundreds (already) of Alex savage videoes and i don't see any of those PLD's having any issues holding threat, and they seem to be quite happy in their groups. if you want to do more dps, switch class. If you want to be "old reliable" stay pld. Really don't wana hear Yoshida tell all PLD players to "get good".... get good at 1-2-3... my days

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@ blackhawk

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I think the playerbase run with what they know, and from what they deem as the safest tank to take with. And that is usually a PLD, this also comes from people who run DF mostly. They prefer from my experience healing PLD in DF more than a WAR or DRK, since they feel the other two take way more DMG than a PLD. When I run with my FC they don't care either way tbh! But back on topic.

I think SE will probably buff the enmity modifier for RoH, after they have sorted the data from AlexSav, shield swipe I am not sure what they are going to-do about that since its like well ya "Phoenicia" said it best. I think using slaying and fending is a personal preference per say. I have both and swap between the two, though on DF I do find; lets say doing A4N, fending wins on the tank busters, I have noticed.

I think could be mistaken too, but the question is the DPS drop off going from Sword to Shield Oath and vice versa, that could be improved slightly better, what you think? or RA ignores the shield oath penalty when used with FoF maybe just throwing it out there. But I do think that all tanks have a place, I just see that everyone wants to just follow how the big FC's done it. which is sad really.

Actually i'm pretty sure that SE is working on the enmity of PLD. Found some reddit page last night saying their looking into increased enmity on tanks from gamescon.

edit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/3gmu49/full_translation_of_naoki_yoshidas_interview_with/

What about the other jobs?
Y: There are suspicions that tanks may be having a harder time holding threat than before, and we are looking into that. Level 60 DPS have largely increased attack power and we're worried that this might impose a heavier burden on tanks. In addition to that, other jobs may be adjusted as well. We are currently reviewing them based on what we see in Alexander (savage).

@Faeon
I agree that all tanks have a place. I think your best bet might be seeing the RoH combo enmity increased like earlier posts have stated. Something that would be nice to see is the strength debuff from RoH combo get refreshed by RA. This would allow for the RA combo to keep being used without having to swap back now and again to refresh that debuff. The enmity should never be an issue. opening with FoF and doing a few RoH combos before starting the dps centered rotation with RA should be more than enough to hold aggro until the next FoF. I have not had an aggro issue in 3.0 as pld yet. It really comes down to how pld is managing their rotation of RoH and RA+GB.

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Originally Posted by blackhawk

@Faeon
I agree that all tanks have a place. I think your best bet might be seeing the RoH combo enmity increased like earlier posts have stated. Something that would be nice to see is the strength debuff from RoH combo get refreshed by RA. This would allow for the RA combo to keep being used without having to swap back now and again to refresh that debuff. The enmity should never be an issue. opening with FoF and doing a few RoH combos before starting the dps centered rotation with RA should be more than enough to hold aggro until the next FoF. I have not had an aggro issue in 3.0 as pld yet. It really comes down to how pld is managing their rotation of RoH and RA+GB.

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Maintaining enmity while pure DPSing(not using RoH all that much after establishing hate) is a issue for PLD in long fights with good DPS. The hate fix, depending on how well it's put in should allow PLD to spam RA for a good deal more if damage isn't a problem to warrant the STR debuff from RoH.

The refreshing of RoH's debuff through RA would also be nice though...

Now they just need to make it so where PLD can block while casting.

A few simple things would go a long way.

-Shield Swipe needs to be off gcd and given a cd.

This simple move would increase mt pld dps regardless of oath and devs adjust cd to adjust dps.

-Clemency needs shorter cast time.

Clemency shouldn't be instant as that feels too much like warrior already has. It is already gated by the large mp cost, but a smart pld should have the option to assist in between AA with a quick heal ot two.

I don't know I use Fast->Savage->Authority without ever touching Rage of Halone and still have a safe enmity margin over a 6.5k-7.3k Raid DPS. That said - flat out in Shield Oath I can only run at 600-620DPS - 700 on Faust - but I'm running a few melded accessories that bump me up above 16k HP while only sacrificing 8~10STR from a full i190 Slaying setup.

Honestly the bigger issues for Paladin are; base damage in Shield Oath is penalized too heavily, TP consumption - and Clemency needs a shorter cast time.

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

Sorry to break it to you mate, but PLD is not "meant to be main tank" any more than the other two. In ANY encounter that a PLD can MT, a WAR can do just as good a job, while dishing out more DPS. And in any encounter with heavy magic damage, a DRK will do a better job than PLD while still dishing out more damage.

PLD superiority isn't its mitigation, it's its safety net.

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Had to log in, to give your post "thumbs up"

While I do agree with paladin enmity buffs increasing, potency shouldn't. As an MT, pally should just be dropping shield oath for bloodbath/FoF then popping it back on. When the pally is OT, pop on sword oath. It's like the old War trick to drop defiance for xtra dps. If they were to change pally, sword oath drops the 50 potency to auto attacks and gains a 5% damage increase to everything like the wars deliverance stance.

I could see Royal Authority giving a Huton-esque buff, but for Spell Speed. Would be nice for Clemency & Stoneskin cast time to be fit within or exactly at 1 GCD instead of sucking 1GCD+some with the current 3 second cast time.

Tempered Will also preventing spell cast interruption in addition to knockbacks.

It won't happen, but Phalanx & War Drum for a DPS boost/abilities somehow tied into Shield Swipe. Using CoS after a Swipe for War Drum added effect, or using Spirits after a Swipe for the Phalanx added effect. Chaining WSs off Swipe would be fun

Not related to DPS, but Sheltron working more like it's original and be able to block a magical or physical. The change from a HP Restore to MP though seems appropriate since they want to push the Clemency/Stoneskin utility thing.

Clemency's secondary heal on the PLD being a barrier of that amount instead of a heal.. honestly Clemency's secondary heal could be a 10sec Hallowed Ground buff and most people would still avoid using it cuz moar deeps

We could definitely use Brand of the Sultana that is a very wide and high potency action. The Level 60 Paladin Fight uses it.

I don't really feel like Royal Authority needs any adjusting (though damn are its visuals gaudy...)

Instead:
Raise SB and RoH enmity mods.
Increase RoH duration to 24s. (Given that DRK affects often raid-wide, unparryable damage, and SP affects both magic and physical, a small duration buff would by no means be overpowered, and would allow it be kept up at every third combo (+ 1 GCD/cast).)
Give Shield Swipe a 12s CD that resets on block, to use as choiceful filler and slight average TP-cost reduction.

aaannndd ...turn Spell Speed and Skill Speed into a single stat - Speed.
(And while we're at it, move Speed's effect on DoT damage from... 72.5 per 1% iirc to something a bit more in line with Determination?)

Here is a fun idea. just swap the STR and VIT modifiers for PLD around. more HP, more damage. very tanky and hit little better.. we all know you can't lot Slaying so pointless to just say wear slaying.

Basically they should just move the enmity modifiers from Halone to Royal Authority (and use Halone as the debuff combo or just add enmity modifiers on it).

Royal Authority is not meant to be your enmity combo, and moving the modifiers from Halone to it would mean Paladins don't have an enmity combo until level 60. The reason Royal Authority is so hard to spam right now is because Savage and Halone only have x3 and x5 enmity modifiers instead of the standard x3.5 and x5.5 modifiers on other tanks. Royal Authority does suffer from being a bit boring though since its only function is "does a ton of damage", which is, well, also Goring Blade's function.

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PLD superiority isn't its mitigation, it's its safety net.

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VIT superiority isn't its damage, it's its safey net. Might as well add some parry for extra mitigation. Oh wait...

Royal Authority is fine. Agree they should bring the enmity mods in line with the other tanks for RoH combo. Personally, I think sheltron should allow the blocking of magic attacks (remember that cutscene where the PLD sheltron blocks that dragon's fireball?) and clemency cast time would be fine but I think it should resist interruption.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

aaannndd ...turn Spell Speed and Skill Speed into a single stat - Speed.
(And while we're at it, move Speed's effect on DoT damage from... 72.5 per 1% iirc to something a bit more in line with Determination?)

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I suspect SE will do this with gear before long. Already merging the two when it comes to buffs in the form of attack speed.

More PLDs should be willing to get slaying acc and/or spec str if they want more damage.

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Originally Posted by ZDamned

Paladin is fine. People choosing to not wear slaying accessories are the problem. If you want to do more DPS, and use Halone less, then get rid of your fending garbage.

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Gotta agree with this as i already skip RoH in AS1 and go full RA spammage, i might use RoH now and then but mostly its RA spam while keeping Goring DoT up and there has been no aggro issues at all.

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Originally Posted by Seku

Actually i'm pretty sure that SE is working on the enmity of PLD.

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If this is only thing they will adjust i will be extremely dissapointed, its the Clemency, Divine Veil and propably Shelltron that could use some love instead lolenmity :(

So, Seku brought it up in another thread, and I wanted to bring it here since the suggested involved the setup from this one...

Basically, letting Royal Authority provide the paladin with a way to speed up our casting. I really like this idea, for a number of reasons, but first I've gotta do a little armchair developer-ing and explain how I would see it working. Their initial suggestion was just a simple way to speed up casting, but that immediately set MY mind off on this idea...

Royal Authority would provide a buff thats a mix of Lightspeed from Astrologians and Dark Arts from Dark Knights...in that it would be a flat 1-1.5 second casting time reduction for the paladin (Thats the Lightspeed half), that is lost when a spell is cast (Thats the dark arts half).

So what does this provide? Well first off it makes Clemency a little more friendly for us to use on others. Right now 90% of the time Clemency is pure overhealing because the other healers get to people BEFORE mine can go off...even if I start casting first. A buff like this means once every 7-ish seconds or so (Global Cooldowns on the combo and all), I could toss out a 1.5 second Clemency. Nothing else changes, its MP cost is still about half of my bar, which, I feel is enough of a limiting factor on the ability.

Secondly, it gives us options. A fast casting heal is very useful, even with a large MP cost. We, however, have the option of using ours on others and still getting a moderate heal from doing so...we ALSO have stoneskin, a more moderate MP costing ability that provides some pre-emptive shielding...same cast time as Clemency before reduction. Technically also gives us cross class cure, that oft-maligned red-headed stepchild of our potential cross class abilities...now imagine weaving its half second cast time in via macro after a circle of scorn, or a spirits within, or a flash...if only it wasn't on the global cooldown...heh..just a little bit of self healing. (Very little bit...)

Finally, it gives us something to build upon in future expansions...Think back to the level 60 paladin job quest, and the ability that was used, Sultan's Brand, a large cone for heavy damage. In the fight itself it was on a five second cast timer when used against you...imagine if we got something like that, a heavy hitting attack that had a cast time which we had to mitigate through the use of Royal Authority. Imagine a trait that lets us STACK this buff, and suddenly instant cast clemencies and stoneskins every 15 seconds or so, and taking something like a 6 second heavy cone AoE and turning it into a 3 second heavy cone aoe. Continue limiting factors to our MP or having recast times and it could be not only balanced, but an interesting mechanic for us to build on.

SO, yeah, thats the idea I had at like 5 am while reading the suggestion from Seku in another thread about having RA provide a casting speed buff...felt like I needed to elaborate on that thought a bit more than I did in that thread...and this seemed like the place to stick it...

Total armchair devwork, sure I'm missing a few things that would make it broke as heck, but it could be a starting point, and could be really interesting in my opinion.

I think RA combo need a raw dmg buff.
i'm not PLD LV 60 yet, but I was wondering... isnt Goring Blade more powerful than RA?

Doing some visual tests on dummy last night, doing GB combo over and over. First combo dot strike two times; second combo dot strike three times; third combo two times, and so on... [2,3,2,3... more or less, btw].
If it is 2 times, then GB combo have a 680 total potency***. If it is 3 times, 720 potency.
RA combo have a total 690.

So, whole RA combo is just 690 pot, while Gb can go from 680~720.

I dont know if I'm missing something, but... what you guys think about it?


*** It is not total potency, I know. But i'm talking about doing it over and over for a dps rotation.

@DSaint you're sort of correct in that spamming goring blade combo and constantly clipping the DoT is more DPS than just spamming Royal Authority, but you've missed the point that if you do Goring -> Royal -> Royal you still have ticks of Goring Blade ticking "for free" during the Royal Authority combos which sort of bumps up the potency happening during those GCDs. Total Potency of Goring Blade is 830 if you let it tick the full 8 ticks, so one of those and two 690 Royals is better than three 680-720s.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

@DSaint you're sort of correct in that spamming goring blade combo and constantly clipping the DoT is more DPS than just spamming Royal Authority, but you've missed the point that if you do Goring -> Royal -> Royal you still have ticks of Goring Blade ticking "for free" during the Royal Authority combos which sort of bumps up the potency happening during those GCDs. Total Potency of Goring Blade is 830 if you let it tick the full 8 ticks, so one of those and two 690 Royals is better than three 680-720s.

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Yeah, you right. I missed that point: GB ticks will still happen even if you go RA (after GB combo of course), so whole RA combo during that GCD with ticks will be 770-810 pot, while GB will still be 680-720 pot.

Thanks Sapphidia (: Main PLD whole game, so never worked with dots before (except some fractures).

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Originally Posted by Synestra

If this is only thing they will adjust i will be extremely dissapointed, its the Clemency, Divine Veil and propably Shelltron that could use some love instead lolenmity :(

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It's just what they noted on. But would also increase our damage some what by allowing us to stay in SwOath longer, possibly full time against good DPS.

I'd personally like to see our ability to self sustain ourselves go up. Makes us more flexible and beats in the ideal of healers not having to really focus on us as much as the other tanks, thus dps more in expert groups and for the inexperienced groups allows them to focus more on the DPS and themselves when mechanics roll through.

While one of my ideas was transferred over earlier. I'd personally like to see the following.

DV just activates (stupid that we need a cure to activate it.)
Blocking while casting needs to be implemented.
Cast times for Clemency and Stone skin need to be lowered to match GCD.
Shield Swipe's potency needs to be lowered, made into oGCD, and restore a small amount of TP.
And I'd like to see RA get something like a spell speed increase added onto it.



With the above suggestions it more or less allows PLD to further eat tank busters in both physical and magical fights and gives them more reliability as an OT there for support. The changes to shield swipe would up their MT damage slightly if the potency of swipe was lowered, but would aid what most PLD's have been using Shield swipe for in the first place in 2.0, Tp recovery and damage gain while MTing.

I don't really see these changes turning people away from their current mind sets of leaving pld for drk. As the reason behind that more or less has more to do with over all Raid set-up, which probably won't be fixed in this expansion since all tanks can do the encounters, just not all are "optimal". But would pave way for better moves later on in any future expansion and would make them really strong in their suited area of physical mitigation and slightly better at magical.