The Core of Paladin Mechanical Mundaneness

So I realized something about Paladins the other day while I was leveling my Warrior, and thought I'd bring it up for discussion.

To preface, this thread is not about needing more DPS, or needing more ways to generate enmity. This is a thread aimed at the core mechanics of Paladin gameplay, and the general boringness of the gameplay. Because even if our DPS is buffed, and even if our mitigation is fixed in 3.1 to put us "back at the top," the core mechanics of the class will likely remain unchanged, and those themselves are a big part of the problem.

Paladins are simple, sturdy tanks. The challenge in playing a Paladin comes in keeping enmity, especially on large groups, because of our comparatively low DPS. There is some complexity that can be found in managing your cooldowns, but so long as you keep one or two up at all times and save your big CDs for points where you need them, you'll be able to stay alive.

But...that's it. We have our Rage of Halone combo, we have our Goring Blade combo, and we have our Royal Authority combo, all of which are DPS boosters. Only Rage of Halone offers any kind of help to our mitigation, which is a -10% Str debuff. On one enemy. Against casting mobs and magic bosses, it's useless.

But both of the other tanking jobs' rotations have a very active role in their mitigation. For Warriors, you have Storm's Path, and every action that you take while in your defensive stance directly contributes to your mitigation, and leads up to Inner Beast, which is a huge part of your self healing. Dark Knights, too, have a very active role in mitigation, with Dark Arts empowering cooldowns and defensive abilities to very great effect.

In both of the other tanking jobs, the player has a very active role in their ability to mitigate incoming damage.

Paladins...don't.

Paladin mitigation comes, mostly, from passive absorption of white damage, and from our cooldown abilities--which are mostly shared with other classes. And when coupled with the fact that our rotational abilities are extremely generic and lackluster, we have a perfect recipe for what Paladins have been complaining about since before I started playing: mundaneness.

There isn't anything distinctive or special about Paladin gameplay. Paladins are the generic tank. We're "the tank with a shield." We're "approachable." We're "sturdy." And because of this, we are completely unremarkable.

But we can be "the tank without a shield" and also remarkable.

We can be "approachable" and also compelling.

We can be "sturdy" and also interactive.

There is a way for Paladins to be distinctive, and there is a way for Paladins to be special, and I think a lot of it relies on Square Enix realizing Paladin identity, and building the job out from that. But I think that is best saved for another thread, which is best saved for another night.

What are your thoughts on the matter? Do you agree with my assessment of why Paladins feel mundane, especially in light of other tanks? Am I completely missing the mark?

You're right, but isn't Paladin supposed to play this way? Easy and accessible.

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Originally Posted by Pots_Talos

You're right, but isn't Paladin supposed to play this way? Easy and accessible.

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Well that's well and good, but you can do easy and accessible without boring and mundane. There are ways to have compelling mechanics that are easy to understand. Every other tank has some action sequence that affects their mitigation, while Paladins just have three DPS combos and a bunch of Defensive CDs. I've got another thread stewing on this, but I really feel like the design of Paladins is halfhearted due to a lack of vision on the part of the designers. They don't know what they want Paladins to be, and so in gameplay, Paladins turn out to be nothing special.

I also think that having a compelling, relevant storyline would do wonders to make the class compelling, even with its existing mechanics, but there's no way to say for sure.

Honestly and I've played all tanks i'm even about to hit 60 on my DRK. Paladin is my favorite tank and is actually the funnest to play for me. A good part of it comes from them having my favorite set of weapons the sword and shield. I like the idea of being the person who is supposed to be protector of the party. I don't think they are mundane they are just a more basic class. This can be changed through more active abilities in combat. But maybe while damage might be an issue if we are supposed to be a more support tank why not give us more support tools? Divine Veil was a good start but why not give us a party wide damage mitigation? Something that could be applied maybe after you take enough hits gives the party members a 5% dmg reduction.

Maybe have it so you have to keep it up through aggro combos and it doesn't have to be party wide. I could be an aura I saw people talking about an aura in the threads already. These auras could again be based on combos or usage of pre-existing abilities. We could tie them in with the oaths you have shield oath on? 5% damage reduction around you or party wide. Sword oath? give that 50 potency to the party or as an aura again. Cover could be better too if it allows you to take physical damage in place of an ally why not give it a 15% magic damage reduction too?

These are all Ideas, it's up to SE to figure out what works best. You have some valid points but some I do not agree on. We should be more unique but I do not think our class is mundane. Anyways hope that made sense.

One thing that is often forgotten is that the Paladin is the King of Interruption: Paladins have 3 different interrupts, one of which (Pacification) no other class/job has access to. This is actually supposed to be the active part of their mitigation.

The biggest problem is that post-2.0 interruption needs have been decreased to avoid requiring that Paladins/Bards be in parties for content.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

one of which (Pacification) no other class/job has access to

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This is why pacification will never be useful in hard content.

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I really feel like the design of Paladins is halfhearted due to a lack of vision on the part of the designers

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I think this is accurate. The paladin design meeting probably took 10 minutes.

"Well, a tank needs mitigation and aggro; FF paladins have Cover and I guess Invincible and Spirits Within. Oh, we should probably give provoke to them."

Then you get

"well let's see how we can make [war/drk] different from paladin"

For what it's worth, the devs did actually try to push paladin into more of a support specialization with bringing back Holy Succor/Clemency and Divine Veil, butttttt we're gonna need a bit more of a revamp than that.

They gave pld a lot of interesting support abilities and 3 full combo rotations now. I think they need some tuning but honestly I find it a lot more enjoyable than drk, which just feels like an edgey pld reskin with an mp management mechanic slathered over it and sprinkled with hints of warrior to make it look different.

It's nowhere near as fun as warrior, but after I've been bashing my face against Savage for hours it's fun to play not-warrior, and most of my fc doesn't have tanks leveled so pld is my preferred not-warrior but still a tank. It's fine that it's more accessible than the other two and doesn't have active mitigation. and tbh, you could argue that shelltron, which everyone hates, IS supposed to be their active mitigation skill. Everyone is too busy complaining that it doesn't help against magic to notice that though)

Yes pld needs tweaks and (small) buffs. No it does not need to be restructured with ogcd stance dancing, stack mechanics, or more active mitigation. Not that you said all of that, but the stacks and ogcd stances are extremely popular and terrible ideas that are being clamored for.

There is nothing wrong with PLD being so mundane. Not everyone plays on the same field in terms of skill, attention span, time to play, and other various factors. Yes, PLD is mundane. It fits perfectly for a lot of other players. I rather enjoy it for learning how to main tank and leading my raids. I can spend most of the time focusing on the fight itself and mechanics to learn wtf is going on and not worry about "omg am i on the side, did my bloodletter proc, do i need to use swaftcast to hit it with holmgang..." err... yea. I do have some attention span issues and PLD works great for me.

TL;DR = Maybe the job it to mundane for you, but maybe it works great for having some diversity for other people. Don't like mundane? Try something else.

The class could definitely use some more depth to it and while I don't want to have the same mp management system that drk's get, in boss fights there are few reasons to ever use your mp, if my healers are good I never need to use my mp at all outside of a flash or two at the beginning. Maybe an oGCD attack utilizes MP or one that provides more utility on the gcd?

Random idea as an example: Holy themed smite attack, 15-20% of base mp, single target, potency 200-250, increases damage taken by the target by 5%, cooldown 18 seconds, duration 20 seconds. Maybe make it not stack with disembowel/storm's eye/ballad? A utility move that makes pld have to use their MP but it's not about MP management it's about maintaining your debuffs while making sure you have the ability to hit that debuff when you have to reapply it, a well timed riot blade/sheltron takes care of that in most cases. There, a way to keep pld approachable while adding something to it's utility while also making it use it's largely underutilized MP without making it the same as drk.

As someone who doesn't enjoy WAR and was meh about DRK, I like PLD's straightforward design. What the OP chooses to call mundaneness. It's the closest we have to a traditional MMO tank without the arbitrary BS for the sake of being/looking different. You keep aggro with attacks. You have cooldowns for emergencies.

It may suffer on the utility end because the devs chose to make DPS and utility defining aspects of each tank job (a mistake in my book), but that just means tweaks are a possibility for PLD, not a change in design.

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Originally Posted by Jpec07

Paladins are simple, sturdy tanks. The challenge in playing a Paladin comes in keeping enmity, especially on large groups, because of our comparatively low DPS.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

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Maybe I'm lucky, but unless a DPS pop all CDs at start AND pull before I do, I generally have no issue keeping hate on mobs. I'm Level 54, and did an unsync'd Titan and Ramuh, and those Primals stayed at me at all times (unless we tank swapped when fighting Ramuh). Not saying I'm an expert at the job, but I do what my job requires.

On Ramuh, there was even a point when the OT died (he was Lv60 DRK), and I needed to Overcharge. While collecting Orbs, the DPS were still attacking Ramuh. While one of the DPS got extremely close to being "A", all it took was for me to use Scorn to stay on top.

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Originally Posted by TheLastRaven

Honestly and I've played all tanks i'm even about to hit 60 on my DRK. Paladin is my favorite tank and is actually the funnest to play for me. A good part of it comes from them having my favorite set of weapons the sword and shield. I like the idea of being the person who is supposed to be protector of the party.

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I was a "bow and arrow" type of guy, but eventually fell for being a ninja in games that allow it. Since playing Skyrim and Elder Scrolls Online, I grew fond of Sword & Shield. That said, I went back to playing PLD here, and am enjoying it. My survival rate is extremely higher on my PLD than my WAR, and I am just overall more comfortable with PLD being a defensive tank.

Paladin isn't mundane.

It has 3 basic combos, yes. It has two basic stances that only offer flat passive bonuses, yes. This is all true. But it's anything but mundane.

The skill floor for Paladin is - far and away - the lowest of all three tanks. I define skill floors being the bare minimum you need to do to successfully play the class "properly." For tanks, the floor is literally just maintaining enmity. Warrior's is higher because to be playing properly you also need to manage Wrath. For Dark Knight, you're managing Dark Arts. With Paladin, you're managing Goring Blade. That's... a little simpler!

However, the skill ceiling for Paladin is EXTREMELY high. Higher than the other two tanks, I'd argue. And that's where the class loses its mundane aspect and becomes something really beautiful, complicated, and enjoyable to play. Note that I'm only going to be discussing playing Paladin as a Main Tank, because Off Tank Paladin's skill ceiling - while high as well - doesn't require most of what makes Paladin so enjoyable.

1. Stance Dancing. It's not about turning Sword Oath on or turning Shield Oath on. It's about doing it properly. Staying switched JUST long enough. Utilizing your mitigation properly for the fight you're in to maintain your health and longevity without compromising the upcoming tank busters or your healers' mana pools. It's more complicated than Warrior because it interrupts combos, generally. You CAN turn Shield Oath off (with a very slight GCD delay that's not noticeable) without interrupting, though, to pick up the full potency on a Goring Blade, follow it up with a quick RA combo, then hop back into Shield for the next cleave. If you do this at the end of your opening Fight or Flight, you can snapshot both Goring Blade and Circle of Scorn with no stance + Fight or Flight for a rather significant gain.

You have one free GCD between Goring Blades. (GB>RA>RA>repeat) Stance Dancing saves more TP than Shield Swipe and causes DPS gains, rather than losses.

2. Fight or Flight. The way the rotation functions causes - in standstill - Fight or Flight to come back at perfect times. Your rotation is around 30 seconds long, and you can *always* delay your GCDs by an extra 1 if Fight or Flight is gonna come back just AFTER a Goring Blade. If you use it before Fast Blade, Riot Blade, or Goring Blade in that combo, you will fit two hits of Goring Blade under one Fight or Flight. You can do this without ever delaying the use of the buff. This is not necessarily "easy" to do.
2a. Circle of Scorn. A lot of misinformation has Paladins thinking that you ideally want to hold your CoS so you get 2 under every FoF, simply because you can. The issue is that doing so loses you a LOT of Circles over the course of a fight - so unless it is literally going to be the very next GCD that FoF is back, you shouldn't hold Circle and should pop it. It's a minor thing but a dps gain nonetheless.

3. Maintaining Threat. When in Shield Oath, with an appropriate amount of Strength allocated to your character, you should rarely, if ever, need to use Rage of Halone for anything other than mitigation. You don't need to have the entire party's aggro meters down in the 0th percentile. It's okay if they're at 50%, 75%. You can slack a little on aggro generation. Also of note:

In Sword Oath, GB>RoH>RoH is more overall damage dealt in those 9 gcds than using GB>RA>RA in Shield Oath. Rage of Halone in Sword is approximately as strong as Royal Authority in Shield, regardless of your gear level or Strength stat. I haven't run the numbers to be sure on enmity generation, but I doubt those two combos are that far off on that front, either. All I know is when I'm tanking in Sword Oath, if a dps or healer starts to threaten me for hate, I just make my next Royal Authority a Rage of Halone instead and suddenly I'm golden.

Additionally, since you should always be opening with Fight or Flight, it's not a bad idea to turn one of your initial Royal Authority combos under FoF into a RoH combo to maximize threat early and give yourself a bigger lead to use less RoH and more Sword Oath later on.

4. Cooldown usage. You shouldn't only use them for tank busters. You need to learn a fight to maximize it - learn how long there is between certain mechanics and so find ways to squeeze Ramparts in in other places. Sword Oath + Rampart is the same amount of mitigation as Shield Oath. So if you pre-pop Rampart, drop Shield Oath, hit GB, turn on Sword Oath, use two full combos, hit Bulwark or Foresight to finish through your next GB, then turn Shield Oath back on, you just gained a SIGNIFICANT amount of damage you wouldn't otherwise have gotten without impacting your healers even a little bit. Maximizing.



These are just four main points to maximizing Paladin. There's a lot more. A good example is how I run A3 normal as the Off-Tank. I never - EVER - turn Shield Oath on for the entire fight. There is literally never a reason to.

Your Main Tank establishes hate on the start. You'll Provoke in when you have to, so no need to build more. In the hand phase, when you pull yours, you can pop Rampart right after it slaps you the first time and it will last long enough to see the phase transition. If it doesn't, you can even burn Sentinel here for the last couple hits (6 and 7 stacks). Add phase is easy. Man phase is easy. You can do the same thing again if dps is low in the next hand phase, but usually you should be pushing this far into gear.

Last phase, you provoke at 5 stacks. He'll immediately be using (I think?) Splash. Might be Cascade. Either way, don't bother mitigating it. Once the animation finishes, Bulwark>Convalescence. As Bulwark drops, Rampart. Then Sentinel. Then Hallowed Ground. By the time HG is falling off, your MT should be provoking and taking over again, because you have 5 stacks. Or it should die before HG even is needed. Either way.

I don't cause any additional stress on my healers. Bulwark is slightly worse than Shield Oath, yeah, but it's only the first 15 seconds, and I give them the bonus of Convalescence to make up for the damage I take.



tl;dr: If you find Paladin to be boring, you're probably just not playing it right. Look a little harder and you'll see that there is a LOT of depth to the class. It might not be as mechanically interesting as Warrior or look as cool as Dark Knight, sure, but that doesn't make it mundane. It's simple. But its simplicity breeds a LOT of room for some really beautiful gameplay that neither of the other tanks can emulate.

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Originally Posted by JackFross

Paladin isn't mundane.

It has 3 basic combos, yes. It has two basic stances that only offer flat passive bonuses, yes. This is all true. But it's anything but mundane.

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I disagree. Because that's all there is to the class.

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The skill floor for Paladin is - far and away - the lowest of all three tanks. I define skill floors being the bare minimum you need to do to successfully play the class "properly." For tanks, the floor is literally just maintaining enmity. Warrior's is higher because to be playing properly you also need to manage Wrath. For Dark Knight, you're managing Dark Arts. With Paladin, you're managing Goring Blade. That's... a little simpler!

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Or just...using Flash when someone gets close to your enmity.

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However, the skill ceiling for Paladin is EXTREMELY high. Higher than the other two tanks, I'd argue. And that's where the class loses its mundane aspect and becomes something really beautiful, complicated, and enjoyable to play. Note that I'm only going to be discussing playing Paladin as a Main Tank, because Off Tank Paladin's skill ceiling - while high as well - doesn't require most of what makes Paladin so enjoyable.

1. Stance Dancing. <snip>
2. Fight or Flight. <snip>
3. Maintaining Threat. <snip>
4. Cooldown usage. <snip>

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Of the four, only one is even slightly unique to Paladins. Every other class has all of those, with all the minutia that you've discussed and more. It's incredibly basic for an MMO tank. But both of the other tanking classes in the game have all of that. And more.

My point is that the basic nature of Paladin mechanics is what most players, myself included, find boring. Min-maxing in the way that you're suggesting is something that can be done on any of the classes. But my point is that aside from that, there isn't anything to the job. Warriors have Wrath to manage. Dark Knights have Dark Arts and mana to manage. You suggest Paladins have Goring Blade. But maintaining uptime on a DoT is not compelling tanking gameplay. Every tank - no, every job has a DoT to maintain.

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tl;dr: If you find Paladin to be boring, you're probably just not playing it right. Look a little harder and you'll see that there is a LOT of depth to the class. It might not be as mechanically interesting as Warrior or look as cool as Dark Knight, sure, but that doesn't make it mundane. It's simple. But its simplicity breeds a LOT of room for some really beautiful gameplay that neither of the other tanks can emulate.

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If min-maxing and precisely timing your CDs allows you to enjoy the class, then props to you. But that is something you can do on literally every other class in the game, and it isn't enough to allow most of us to enjoy Paladin gameplay. It is entirely unremarkable, because there isn't anything to separate it from the other classes. Both Warriors and Dark Knights do everything that Paladins do, more interestingly, and more efficiently.

Sure, PLD is meant to be simple and those saying it should be that way don't make much sense to me mainly because literally any other class in game is more complex than PLD.

If a large portion of the playerbase wants something simple without 'difficult' mechanics or rotations then why are any of the dps classes still more popular when they are all more complex than PLD by a landslide?

it depends on who you ask. I found the DRK to the most boring tank cause all it is is unleash...unleash....unleash (combos)

I love being the guy who protects the party, the person who survives major attacks that would kill a DPS and unlike the WAR and DRK their is very little risk. Players are glad to have a paladin in a trial to absorb all the big hits.

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Originally Posted by PogueX

it depends on who you ask. I found the DRK to the most boring tank cause all it is is unleash...unleash....unleash (combos)

I love being the guy who protects the party, the person who survives major attacks that would kill a DPS and unlike the WAR and DRK their is very little risk. Players are glad to have a paladin in a trial to absorb all the big hits.

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End-game vs Casual-game. In dungeons spamming unleash is the same as spamming flash to me. However, in endgame content, unleash is removed from my hotbar as i never use it. While doing any raid content on DRK, i'm typically trying to squeeze an oGCD or 2 and a defence buff between 1 GCD cooldown as the nature of the job is so busy. On pld, I am typically able to eat my dinner between an GCD as there is very few oGCDs for pld.

The fact that there is such a big contrast in both jobs is perfect. DRK feels like a good mix between PLD and WAR in some aspects, but does stand apart in many other aspects. If we had PLD changed to match and be as busy as them, than what would be the difference and even having more than 1 tank job?

Diversity is good. Please don't change it.

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Originally Posted by VargasVermillion

If a large portion of the playerbase wants something simple without 'difficult' mechanics or rotations then why are any of the dps classes still more popular when they are all more complex than PLD by a landslide?

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There are those who lead and those who follow. The followers will always outweigh the leaders.

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Originally Posted by MrTherm

Diversity is good. Please don't change it.

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This. Blizzard made the mistake of making the tanks similar when they made all tanks have active mitigation as part of their core gameplay. It basically killed tanking for me in WoW (prot warriors before the change were similar to how PLDs play here, except that instead of Circle of Scorn we had a frontal cone ability called Shockwave that stunned all enemies it hit), as I purposely stayed away from Death Knight tanking because I'm not into that style of gameplay only for them to force it down my throat.

Compared to war/drk paladin feels kinda "traditional" and that can get dull. Of course it is not just paladin's fault, other classes having interesting mechanics make it "shine".

I was pondering about oaths, cleric stance, dark arts and asked myself a question "what is the point of not being in oath" - there is no adventage. If auto attack was higher, it could have saved one keybind. This is also the place where developers could have done their magic. Imagine paladin would have skills that change based on the oath. Like doing more dmg/debuffs in sword oath, doing defensive/enmity/reflecting-hits stuff in shield oath, and something in the middle without the oaths. Something simple like potency boost, or faster cooldowns on defensive skills, would be a good start to raise morale. And if one could be a little bit greedy, different animations based on oaths would be golden. Putting shield aside while in sword oath, and holding it with both hands while in shield oath would be pure bliss.

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Originally Posted by MrTherm

End-game vs Casual-game. In dungeons spamming unleash is the same as spamming flash to me. However, in endgame content, unleash is removed from my hotbar as i never use it.

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I have difficulty taking this comment seriously, unless by end game you mean anything before A2S, because any DRK that doesn't use unleash there for DPS is not playing properly.

this threat describe how i've felt about pld since 2.0 the class is just so freaking boring, like....it really doesn't have anything interesting (in my opinion).

just feels like a lazy design, 3 combos and CD nothing special about it... for those who say otherwise, ok I can understand you like the easiness of pld, from someone who has been a old since 2.0 "that easiness get's dull and boring after 2 years" and if your opinion is otherwise I'll find it hard to believe you've really been MAINING a PLD for such a long time... every class has a complex interesting mechanic and unique characteristic that makes the class unique from one another, even MONK,DRG and NINJA that basically are the same are yet so different from one another... PLD is just a boring version of the TANKS. (MY OPINION)

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Originally Posted by JackFross

A good example is how I run A3 normal as the Off-Tank. I never - EVER - turn Shield Oath on for the entire fight. There is literally never a reason to.

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Actually you can do whole Alex NM in SwO even A2 because whole place is kinda joke tbh.

But anyway only reason why i presonally would like to see oaths being oGCD is to make PLD feel more fast paced(btw Swipe should be overpower/reprisal hybrid, proc based oGCD cone AoE with 30s cd imo)while adding new dynamic to whole job as you would need to keep eye on mana because you are now stance dancing more frequently than before. And oGCD's are actually only thing i like in DRK atm as it feels super fast due oGCD's and BW but when those run out it slows down to PLD level if you dont get lucky with CD reset procs and that kinda sucks imo