Paladin Change(s)

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Sword Oath
Increased potency has changed from 50 to 75.
Weapon delay will now affect damage output.

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Seems alright, imo, though makes any ShO uptime even worse. Kinda curious what "Weapon delay will now affect damage output" means exactly...

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

Kinda curious what "Weapon delay will now affect damage output" means exactly...

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I've searched for auto-attack calculation and found this reddit thread (Not really new).

Judging from this, it seems like Sword AA potency are always somehow around 70, but SwO additionnal attack deals much lower than normal AA.
If this is still true, maybe it means SwO will basically double our AA damage.

In the end, I'm still confused that all they do to improve PLD is increasing its damage output.

Maybe "Weapon Delay" is referring to the "Delay" stats on the weapon will affect SwO auto attack. Like for example, fewer delay value means more damage, similar to skill/spell speed affecting DOTs.

Just a guess, but I think the plan is to have longer weapon delays be offset by increased auto attack damage, so that variations in delay don't influence damage output. Otherwise, you might run into needlessly complicated situations in which your weapon choice depends on the amount of SwO uptime you have in a fight. I seem to remember there being a similar issue with the Dreadwyrm Blade and the Excalibur Zeta in late ARR. Of late, they've been controlling for this by simply keeping delay as a constant.

The SwO change is essentially free dps. I think it's a pretty good deal.

Auto attack potency is calculated based on the delay of your weapon.
At a delay of 3.0 seconds your auto attack would have exactly 100 potency.
As most paladin weapons have a delay of 2.08 to 2.24 they where at ~70 potency.
This is just a guess but the "Weapon delay will now affect damage output" COULD
mean that sword oath will now deal 75p / 3.00 * weapon delay.

If this was to be the case, it means that there will hardly be any difference
noticeable. Which would quite upset me, as I a had read somewhere, that they
are finally thinking about bringing PLD and DRK to comparable DPS levels with WAR.

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Originally Posted by YokeM

If this was to be the case, it means that there will hardly be any difference
noticeable. Which would quite upset me, as I a had read somewhere, that they
are finally thinking about bringing PLD and DRK to comparable DPS levels with WAR.

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they never said they want to increase the dps of the other tanks. they basically said that WAR is too op, and they don't want to nerf them but want to bring the other tanks to the same lvl. buuut the dps is not the main reason WAR is so op. and DRK already is on a compareable dps lvl with WAR (DRK has highest dps in tank stance and second highest in dps stance). PLD still has the shield and i don't think that he should make the same damage as the other tanks who don't have a shield.
i think dps wise the tanks are almost perfectly balanced. only thing i can agree with is that PLD needs an aoe attack wich makes damage.

Maybe I misread something then (or had some sort of wishful thinking).

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

In the end, I'm still confused that all they do to improve PLD is increasing its damage output.

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The problem we face with PLD at present, was the emphasis on DPS that came with HW and how it become the new meta, over ARR favored defensive meta. Whilst raiding, any OT PLD will run into a numeral problems of untold proportions, such as, why does one of their highest dps combos(Royal Authority) enforce enmity, whilst WAR/DRK have the "privilege" of having a dps combo that does not?

Why does clemency get interrupted by a boss auto attack? Why can't pld/dark duo be a thing without a ninja? A ninja in this scenario, will want to commit harakiri, at the levels of stress he will be under, at keeping the slashing debuff at 100% uptime and the amount of dps he will be losing by keeping it up at 100% uptime in his rotation. Thats just a handful of things that comes to mind. Why does SE think increasing PLD's potency in every major patch is the way to go?

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Originally Posted by AegisKiddo

why does one of their highest dps combos(Royal Authority) enforce enmity, whilst WAR/DRK have the "privilege" of having a dps combo that does not?

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Once enmity is secured (Fairly easy with CoS and Shield Swipe), a PLD in ShO will have no issue keeping enmity without doing any RoH combo. This is exactly a case of not touching the potency but still greatly improving PLD's damage output on the field.

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Originally Posted by AegisKiddo

Why does clemency get interrupted by a boss auto attack?

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Because it follows the same rules as any spell. Clemency is more easy to use as an OT, I think it was supposed to reduce the "PLD = MT" idea.

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Originally Posted by AegisKiddo

A ninja in this scenario, will want to commit harakiri, at the levels of stress he will be under, at keeping the slashing debuff at 100% uptime and the amount of dps he will be losing by keeping it up at 100% uptime in his rotation.

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I think this is an issue with Ninja. The slashing debuff should be part of their optimal rotation.
They should have a combo "Spinning Edge > Dancing Edge > Shadow Fang", like DRG and Chaos Thrust.

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Originally Posted by AegisKiddo

Why does SE think increasing PLD's potency in every major patch is the way to go?

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This...I don't know. Besides, if they go that way to make PLD+DRK as an equivalent pairing than PLD+WAR or DRK+WAR, they'll eventually have to give DRK or PLD higher personal DPS than WAR to compensate for the lack of Eye...pretty bad idea.

They didn't change Flash. orz

At the moment, Sword Oath has higher contribution the lower your weapon delay is, because it hits for the same amount no matter how long your attack takes. This should make all swords have the same Sword Oath % contribution.

Paladin DPS already seemed fine aside from that one massive oversight though. Just standardizing it to 25*weapon_delay potency would have been fine (a 2-second delay sword then has the base number, decreased below and increased above for the same DPS).

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Once enmity is secured (Fairly easy with CoS and Shield Swipe), a PLD in ShO will have no issue keeping enmity without doing any RoH combo.

Clemency is more easy to use as an OT

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Whilst I applaud your reasoning in the defence of PLD's plethora of tools, I don't believe you have read my post thoroughly, please allow me to elaborate further. I was referring to a OT PLD using 'Royal authority', which gains increased 'enmity', against a lets say a MT DRK, who has turned Grit off.

Any tank watches the argo table, a PLD doing what he should be doing pushes it higher than the other two tanks in this scenario, thus more powerslashes/butchersblock need be required; this is a less dps party gain upon MTs enmity combo execution. Also using clemency as a ot is a waste of a gcd altogether, which is better spent on DPSing, if heals need required I'm sure that little portion that a pld clemency can produce can be covered by Eos

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Originally Posted by AegisKiddo

Whilst raiding, any OT PLD will run into a numeral problems of untold proportions, such as, why does one of their highest dps combos(Royal Authority) enforce enmity, whilst WAR/DRK have the "privilege" of having a dps combo that does not?

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This isn't really correct. The highest potency combo on WAR is BB, their enmity combo. It generates significantly more enmity than SB does in PLD's RA combo.

I don't see how you can design this both ways. When you're actively tanking, you want your dps moves to also generate enmity. When you're not, you want to generate less enmity using the same moves. PLD strikes the best balance between these two, without running into any significant issues generating or accidentally taking aggro.

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Originally Posted by AegisKiddo

Why does SE think increasing PLD's potency in every major patch is the way to go?

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PLD has some of the most powerful utility and mitigation moves in the game. The narrower the dps difference between the tanks, the more likely that your raid group will have incentive to take advantage of this. They're trying to strike a balance between PLD/WAR and DRK/WAR comps. It's a bit late in the expansion cycle for anything more complex.

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Originally Posted by AegisKiddo

I was referring to a OT PLD using 'Royal authority', which gains increased 'enmity', against a lets say a MT DRK, who has turned Grit off.

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Savage Blade was not changed with an OT perspective.
But, for the record, a WAR will have much stealing enmity issue, considering that their most powerful combo is BB with a far higher enmity multiplier. If you steal aggro with GB > RA > RA, it means your MT is doing somethin wrong...and will probably lose aggro to one of the DPS.

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Originally Posted by AegisKiddo

Any tank watches the agro table, a PLD doing what he should be doing pushes it higher than the other two tanks in this scenario, thus more powerslashes/butchersblock need be required; this is a less dps party gain upon MTs enmity combo execution.

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See above, WAR pushes it more with BB

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Originally Posted by AegisKiddo

Also using clemency as a ot is a waste of a gcd altogether, which is better spent on DPSing, if heals need required I'm sure that little portion that a pld clemency can produce can be covered by Eos

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No, it's not a "waste". DPS is not the only thing that matters in this game. A well timed Clemency can save someone.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

This isn't really correct. The highest potency combo on WAR is BB, their enmity combo. It generates significantly more enmity than SB does in PLD's RA combo.

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I've had many discussions and testing, storm's eye over and over is a dps gain over butchers, since you can keep up both fracture and eye without either falling off, I'm sure you know just because butchers has a higher potency than eye doesn't mean it's a gain this is pretty fundamental. But I believe this can be further debated elsewhere, not on a pld change thread

WAIT

So the sword delay change means it's just a measure to keep the new Sword Oath bonus balanced among different weapons?

I thought it would finally mean a lower weapon delay weapon would be more powerful :(, ala SpSpd and DoTs.

So I guess this change will be somewhat minimal, though it's still very welcome, in any case. I wonder what the amount of GCDs equalling a damage gain from SwO is after this change.

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Originally Posted by AegisKiddo

I've had many discussions and testing, storm's eye over and over is a dps gain over butchers, since you can keep up both fracture and eye without either falling off, I'm sure you know just because butchers has a higher potency than eye doesn't mean it's a gain this is pretty fundamental. But I believe this can be further debated elsewhere, not on a pld change thread

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I'd like to see real test numbers to back up this claim.
If it's a true, it's a nice bit of information.

However, my raw testing doesn't point towards that way.

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Originally Posted by AegisKiddo

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You can keep 100% eye uptime with fracture and fell cleaves without skipping block combo. There are few things to watch out though, for example:

If the last combo before you use berserk for triple cleave is block combo, you should do 2x eye combo during berserk, otherwise you'll drop eye debuff due to pacification (unless you have a brd);

If you do a block combo and 2 cleaves then you should skip fracture until you reapply eye unless you have very high sks since you can at most insert 5 gcds between each eye combo with average sks. So doing "SE combo > BB combo > frac > 2x cleave > SE combo" is bad unless you have high sks or external boost (card/fairy), you should do "SE combo > BB combo > 2x cleave > SE combo > frac" instead.

tl;dr there are times when repeating eye combo is necessary to maintain eye debuff uptime but most of the time you can slip in block combo too for more dps.

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Originally Posted by AegisKiddo

I've had many discussions and testing, storm's eye over and over is a dps gain over butchers, since you can keep up both fracture and eye without either falling off, I'm sure you know just because butchers has a higher potency than eye doesn't mean it's a gain this is pretty fundamental. But I believe this can be further debated elsewhere, not on a pld change thread

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It is true that you should 2x Eye if you're going to 2x FC + Fracture after the first Eye (IE s/t like this http://ffxivrotations.com/adl) but if you're in a situation where you're just applying Fracture and doing 1x FC then Eye won't actually drop. It's certainly safer to just Eye on repeat (unless you're the MT in which case you might as well BB whenever you can actually do it), but that doesn't mean BB isn't literally a DPS gain as long as Eye doesn't fall off and you can apply Fracture (both of which you can @ 1 of each). So realistically the only places where you can't touch BB are in your Berserk window and with the 50s 3x FC opener you technically can BB by putting Fracture at the end, but that loses you IR crit buff and also would give you a lot of threat so not really worth it (unless you're MT).

There is the argument to be made that using BB enough will cause your PLD/DRK to need to use their threat combo and completely negate the potency you gained from BBing, but your BBs open up a bit with a NIN in the party. On top of this the optimal opener is to have WAR pull and get Vengeance ticks under Berserk which will probably result in you wanting to BB in your opener even if it isn't optimal for Fracture usage.

Basically you're really not losing a lot if you stick to just spamming SE to infinity and beyond, but there's certainly a time and place to use BB. Then again no real point in being this min/max when Savage is going to be below Midas in terms of DPS checks lol

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

doing "SE combo > BB combo > frac > 2x cleave > SE combo" is bad unless you have high sks or external boost (card/fairy), you should do "SE combo > BB combo > 2x cleave > SE combo > frac" instead.

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Say what? Using frac before 2x cleave means it gets to benefit from 5 stacks and IR.

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

I thought it would finally mean a lower weapon delay weapon would be more powerful :(, ala SpSpd and DoTs.

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Lower delay weapons were previously more powerful at the same ilevel in Sword Oath and have been that way since the start of 2.X. A 2.08 delay weapon was doing roughly ~173 potency every 3 seconds in Sword Oath versus the ~169 potency of 2.16 delay weapons and ~167 of 2.24 delay weapons.

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So I guess this change will be somewhat minimal, though it's still very welcome, in any case. I wonder what the amount of GCDs equalling a damage gain from SwO is after this change.

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Its a definite increase in Paladin Auto-attack damage even before being combined with the changes to auto-attacking (i.e, you no longer need to be facing the target to auto-attack so more auto attacks will be going out if you are close enough to your target). Now every sword should be doing 175 potency per 3 sec with auto attacks. 2.08 Delay weapons should be going to 52 potency per extra attack, 2.16 to 54 potency per extra attack and 2.24 to 56 potency per attack.

This should be a serious boost in Paladin PvP damage output.

This change is in line with their previous tank changes - basically, minimizing the effects of gear choice. Though, really, most same-ilvl swords they've released recently have had the same delay so it's not much of a change. I guess they can let the robot who makes items go crazy with weapon delay again or something.

I am really interested to see if your Sword Oath damage will go up if you get afflicted by auto attack Slow. That'd be funny.


Yeah just checked and every sword since 3.2 has been 2.24. I think the devs finally realized that low delay swords were flat out better than high delay ones lol.

I wonder if this will be just enough for PLD to start to shine in feast? I'll let you know at the end of season 2. =P

I have never really paid attention to the weapon delay. Did anyone actually test it out if 2.24 weapon delay means that every 2.24s, you do an auto? WAR does take ages to hit, that I know. Either way if the calculation is right, I wouldn't call ~10% more DPS on a 2.24 weapon delay off SwO a huge boost. I legit thought the change is made to encourage SwO tanking more optimal for that ~+5% overall DPS. FeelsBadMan

Note: In fight like A5S, I did close to 30k on SwO. The change will add another 3k damage, which by far isn't anything huge. Good change but not anything huge to compete against DRK for that MT slot OR even OT slot if any tbh.

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Originally Posted by Sarcatica

I have never really paid attention to the weapon delay. Did anyone actually test it out if 2.24 weapon delay means that every 2.24s, you do an auto? WAR does take ages to hit, that I know. Either way if the calculation is right, I wouldn't call ~10% more DPS on a 2.24 weapon delay off SwO a huge boost. I legit thought the change is made to encourage SwO tanking more optimal for that ~+5% overall DPS. FeelsBadMan

Note: In fight like A5S, I did close to 30k on SwO. The change will add another 3k damage, which by far isn't anything huge. Good change but not anything huge to compete against DRK for that MT slot OR even OT slot if any tbh.

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The way SwO works currently is it does 50potency attack every autoattack you do meaning the lower delay on weapon the better it scales.

50pot / 3s delay = 16,67pot/s
50pot / 2s delay = 25pot/s
50pot / 1s delay = 50pot/s

If they just increased the potency to 75pot it wouldve been pretty big deal.

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Originally Posted by Brannigan

This change is in line with their previous tank changes - basically, minimizing the effects of gear choice. Though, really, most same-ilvl swords they've released recently have had the same delay so it's not much of a change. I guess they can let the robot who makes items go crazy with weapon delay again or something.

I am really interested to see if your Sword Oath damage will go up if you get afflicted by auto attack Slow. That'd be funny.


Yeah just checked and every sword since 3.2 has been 2.24. I think the devs finally realized that low delay swords were flat out better than high delay ones lol.

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Only been a well known fact since Garuda HM. Can't expect to be ahead of their time on oversight detection. >.>

I really hope it'll be counted according to BASE weapon delay, rather than ignoring the effects of Arrow, Fey Wind, etc.

That said, if they really wanted it to minimize gear choices, Sword Oath would also need to scale as periodic damage (e.g. with Skill Speed). Or, heck... merge Skill Speed and Spell Speed into (gasp) Attack Speed.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

Say what? Using frac before 2x cleave means it gets to benefit from 5 stacks and IR.

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Not worth it if you lose eye debuff on your next storm's eye, that's why I said you need high sks (over 700 but idk how much exactly) or external boost.

Apparently, early tests show that SwO potency calculation is now the same as AA potency.
So SwO is 75 potency at 3.00s delay...and...56 at 2.24s delay

wow...big deal...

Source

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Apparently, early tests show that SwO potency calculation is now the same as AA potency.
So SwO is 75 potency at 3.00s delay...and...56 at 2.24s delay

wow...big deal...

Source

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About what I expected. A tiny buff to current swords' contribution (12% SwO buff, or about 1.5% more single-target dps) while fixing the oversight. Don't think we had anyone hyping the change out of proportion (to now wallow in disappointment) at least.

Though they could have just written "increases auto-attack damage by 75%" to be entirely clear.

So... a 1.2% DPS increase. That's good. I guess...


I guess...

http://i.imgur.com/t9Kkt8h.jpg

All the swords this patch are also 2.24

and the shields are all kite shields again. So I guess that's reality now. Maybe they were worried the "optimize gear" button would get confused or something.

RIP Tower shields
RIP old school melded accessories
RIP fast swords
~**u will b missed**~

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

This should be a serious boost in Paladin PvP damage output.

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Definitely the case on paper. The variant settings for Face Target and melee range within the arena also contribute greatly to increase dps output, which is nice considering how abysmally low Pld dps is within the arena. It's also a testable feature on the dueling deck, however the results will be a bit skewed, as the net code on the deck still reflects the PvE range and face target settings instead of PvP settings. Another problem is that, within a match, Pld's often don't have 100% up time on their auto attacks as they could be forced to stop attacking in favour of party defense like Cover or Clemency. If we want an accurate test of how this will effect Pally dps in the arena, then we'd have to actually play a round of Feast. Though, that's not likely to happen until the majority of the community finishes up the new content. As with every new patch, queues are dead right now. In the worst case scenario, we might not see actual results on this until Season 3.

One thing that would be definite "bad news" for PvP'ers is that the changes will probably result in more homogenized gear styles, eliminating some options for min/maxing your PvP build. That said, the writing has been on the wall for a long time now. I don't think anyone is surprised to see curved swords and bucklers getting slowly phased out of the game, at this point. I was honestly shocked when they released a curved sword for the Nidhogg ex fight, though, so who knows what SE is planning.