Pal is not a DPS tank

In playing through all the content I have which was mostly at 50 and leveling everyone cries about DPS but they don't see all the other things a paladin brings with the kit. Their DPS rotation is mind numbing but that's because to max their potential you would support too. What do a DRK and WAR bring to the table when all the mid primal fights or ultimate abilities when the paladin can be lining up divine veil or casting stone skin to help the healers or saving someone's life. Unless your a world first raid group it doesn't make sense to me.

Yeah, PLD can cast a slighty stronger succor every 120 second, after another 2.5 second middle man healing, absolutely amazing. Stoneskin? Guess WHM will have to find new job soon then.

So basically what you are trying to say that whenever someone take PLD into the content it means they didn't trust that the healers would be able to perform their job decently?

Good to know.


At least you didn't say something laughable like how "PLD is a mitigation tank" so I will assume that you actually know what you're talking about.

You're right.

Just wanted to say that before everyone else jumped down your throat.

The only measure of success is if you and your group can clear content. Some will say mastery comes with optimizing your damage output, but your group needs to kill the boss to win.

People will also say that encounters aren't designed to really need all of those extra tools that PLD has, and for the most part, they're right--especially in current Savage content, where some of those tools can actually get in healers' way (remember that next time you're racing a WHM's Cure II to cast Clemency on that DRG). But PLD can still be incredibly handy, especially in large DF instances where player capability is not a guarantee.

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Originally Posted by xabyssopelagicx

In playing through all the content I have which was mostly at 50 and leveling everyone cries about DPS but they don't see all the other things a paladin brings with the kit. Their DPS rotation is mind numbing but that's because to max their potential you would support too. What do a DRK and WAR bring to the table when all the mid primal fights or ultimate abilities when the paladin can be lining up divine veil or casting stone skin to help the healers or saving someone's life. Unless your a world first raid group it doesn't make sense to me.

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Everyone needs to optimize everything they do in a duty group. Since everyone does DPS, everyone needs to optimize DPS. PLD does have less DPS potential than other tanks, but it can still put out respectable numbers. If you're getting flak, it's not because you're on PLD. It's because your numbers aren't up to snuff.

If we were on the subreddit, I would tell you to install a parser and take a look at the actual numbers you and other tanks put out. Since we're on the official forums, I will 100% tell you not to install a parser that Reddit can help you find info on really easily, and compare your numbers to see what the problem is. Nope. Definitely don't do that.

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Originally Posted by dragonseth07

PLD does have less DPS potential than other tanks, but it can still put out respectable numbers. If you're getting flak, it's not because you're on PLD. It's because your numbers aren't up to snuff.

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While I agree that PLD DPS is lower than other tanks (since it IS), quite a lot of players bash on PLD for playing PLD over "a real tank". I mained PLD from 2.1 to 3.1. I've got something like 2000 hours on that class. I would know that it's not always about numbers - people just like to bash on it.

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Originally Posted by hakurou46

While I agree that PLD DPS is lower than other tanks (since it IS), quite a lot of players bash on PLD for playing PLD over "a real tank". I mained PLD from 2.1 to 3.1. I've got something like 2000 hours on that class. I would know that it's not always about numbers - people just like to bash on it.

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Fair enough. I haven't experienced that personally, but I believe you that it happens.

Yeah I guess I figured given the community someone would say it's laughable but a goring into two Rabcombos makes it pretty easy to maximize DPS with that class, you still have weaving of ogcd abilities but it's by far the easiest tank wise. People can't complain that paladin is useless when they have some stuff that can really save a wipe. If a DRK and a WAR in the same group were left they couldn't do anything but pray they killed the boss before it killed them. The utility a paladin can bring in that aspect makes the class stand out to me. Just cause you can cast stoneskin doesn't mean you don't need a healer but everyone makes mistakes and being able to save a healer can save a wipe

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Originally Posted by xabyssopelagicx

What do a DRK and WAR bring to the table when all the mid primal fights or ultimate abilities when the paladin can be lining up divine veil or casting stone skin to help the healers or saving someone's life.

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Storm's Path and Reprisal+Delirium are better than anything PLD brings.

I've never personally got "flack" just for being PLD before but do believe it can happen (I've gotting it for f'n up on mechanics as PLD thou) & personally I find PLD fun as the "sound" from 1 of WAR's main used moves gives me a headache & I couldn't figure out DRK before I f'd up then got chewed out by some rude ppl & gave up on it

the "Utility" of PLD has be helpful & saved my runs many times (Clemency'd the healer from dying to AoE's while they were stunned due to "Jackass boss" choosing them to much, cover+hallowed to cheese mechanics with co-tank in "crunch-time", etc.) just using said "Utility" at proper times & having ppl notice or apreciate it is the hard part (like that 1 time heal's was like "Oh I'm gona die & we'll wipe best give up & eat this sandwitch... wait WTF I ant dead damn u tank I'm eating!"... thou DPS did chew them out for complaining cause it was last boss of Dungeon & they could have just waited till they "Acutually" were dead, even thou 1 was SMN)

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Originally Posted by The_NPC

cover+hallowed

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damage packets from cover are not mitigatable by hallowed. but i understand what you mean

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Originally Posted by Launched

Storm's Path and Reprisal+Delirium are better than anything PLD brings.

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covering the healer in A9S while they kite mobs is kinda good, and I'm going to argue that Divine Veil would negate about 2,5k damage from an aoe blast these days, and those are most often around 12k at most (so Divine Veil does twice what Path or Reprisal does... but only once every two minutes.)

And that's their main problem. Not that their support kit is missing some vital piece, but that it's just... underpowered by virtue of the other tank classes being able to do similar tricks. And that's hard to balance around without making PLD essential for content.

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Originally Posted by hakurou46

covering the healer in A9S while they kite mobs is kinda good, and I'm going to argue that Divine Veil would negate about 2,5k damage from an aoe blast these days, and those are most often around 12k at most (so Divine Veil does twice what Path or Reprisal does... but only once every two minutes.)

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Divine Veil is a 3k+ shield on a 90 sec timer at i260.

It is already agreed upon that DRK is just way better to bring instead of PLD, this game just doesn't need a 'tanky' tank and PLD isn't even any tankier than their counterparts. Every damage on tank is on a timer and let's say PLD is way tankier, SE still can't balance contents that you require PLD to survive. A good amount of raiders didn't even think of bringing PLD/MNK on world progression which is mostly because DRK being the better version of PLD, should they require a PLD they can do it as well.

The only way I can see happening is either PLD being adjusted to match at least the DRK's level or the job remains to be a lesser version of DRK or worse, the least desired tank by far and it's already happening with more DRK and WAR count from the recent census.

Drk and War combo is just too strong you have Reprisal/Storms Path/Storms Eye, Drk is the best main tank and brings the most damage in it's main tank position because of Blood Price and Reprisal. Paladin has Shield Swipe which isn't very good in Savage, less potency too, Divine Veil while nice is nothing compared to other healers tools. Not to mention (while it's still small) Paladin has less attack power then both Drk and War which I hope SE addresses as it is another thing that holds back Paladins potential, as well as the TP issues Paladin suffers from compared to Drk and War who have 0.

All in all Paladin is just undesired and lacks what the other 2 tanks have which is synergy with each other as you can't pass up Drks MT damage, Reprisal, Delirium and Wars strong offensive abilities, strong defensive CDs, infinite TP, Path/Eye. 4.0 needs some tank balance as Paladin is the least played tank class in this xpac and it plummeted at the start of Gordias and hasn't recovered as the other 2 tanks are just way too strong.

With all this being said you can clear Paladin in any of the current raid content it's just not as optimal as bringing Drk/War and that's why Paladin is left in the dust it's honestly sad to see how much people disregard Paladin, I myself used to be a Paladin main till 3.0 and rerolled Drk

If your a Tank who just spams emnity combos over and over you are a bad tank. Tanking is Dishing out Damage and Taking Damage while covering your Healers and Your Damage dealers (not saying Dps cuz healers can Damage). Use what is in your toolkit then experiment on your own path if you think your not doing correctly took for outside help. It improve yourself and your allies. Also a really good pld can wipe the floor with War and drk if there not doing what they should be doing. Always take a step above.

Dps will always be a criterion to judge a job, be it a tank or healer or an actual dps job. Once you have enough dps/mitigation/healing output to clear a fight, the most natural thing to optimize is raid dps, since that's the thing that makes your runs faster. You can be a hipster and optimize around other things, like maximizing mitigation and minimizing dmg taken, but let's be honest, most people care more about clearing faster. So in the end after you optimize your group to have the maximum dps output while still satisfying the mitigation/healing requirements of the fight. In this case all defensive utilities (DV, cover, halone str down, passive mitigation from shield, HG etc) are judged by how much more dps you or your healers can output if you used those utilities.

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Originally Posted by Jukebox12

Also a really good pld can wipe the floor with War and drk if there not doing what they should be doing. Always take a step above.

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Of course they can. A really good PLD can out-dps a bad DPS player. But that's saying nothing.
Looking at some actual numbers, let's take the ten best clears of A11S. DRK damage is around 6% higher than PLD average. WAR is around 9%. And if you expand it, look at the top 20 even, the gap widens even more.

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Originally Posted by hakurou46

Of course they can. A really good PLD can out-dps a bad DPS player. But that's saying nothing.
Looking at some actual numbers, let's take the ten best clears of A11S. DRK damage is around 6% higher than PLD average. WAR is around 9%. And if you expand it, look at the top 20 even, the gap widens even more.

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It's a bad metric to look at, you are seeing the padded runs with RNGs going on. Most of those runs don't have the exact same Balance cards (some are even deliberately on enhanced for padding runs to validate precise comparison, how the hell can you get DRK doing 2.1k++ damage in A10S? It's just full of bullshit runs like this). If you want to see the exact comparison at the same level, you should try all tanks with Storm's Eye applied on dummy to actually see the real difference, at least it has more credibility than comparing "top" parses because they actually aren't that fair to compare.

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Originally Posted by Sarcatica

It's a bad metric to look at, you are seeing the padded runs with RNGs going on. Most of those runs don't have the exact same Balance cards (some are even deliberately on enhanced for padding runs to validate precise comparison, how the hell can you get DRK doing 2.1k++ damage in A10S? It's just full of bullshit runs like this). If you want to see the exact comparison at the same level, you should try all tanks with Storm's Eye applied on dummy to actually see the real difference, at least it has more credibility than comparing "top" parses because they actually aren't that fair to compare.

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It's still real numbers compared to "hey PLD doesnt have problems because good PLD are better than bad WAR", which was what i was contesting. Of course some of the runs are padded, or with better RNG.

As someone who mains paladin...

Until there's some high-end content that requires bringing a paladin to survive, which there will never be because they have to balance fights around groups of every reasonable composition, there is currently no reason to bring a similarly competent pld over a drk. Because, at an equal skill level, drk does more damage, which lets you clear content faster, which therefore amounts to more mitigation.

And to be clear, I love paladin. I find it very useful for doing prog because I have like five millionty defensives which will keep me alive through a new mechanic while the healers learn what's coming. But I'm like, midcore at best if you're being really, really nice.

And I'm fairly certain in a12s having a paladin would just be a handicap. You can sheltron, what, the boss's autos? What I find most frustrating is that paladin has this great potential kit, then it's all nerfed and/or made useless by current content in the name of balance. Cover used to be better, so I've heard. You can't block magic damage so that's two cooldowns just trashed in magic-heavy fights (aka 90% of savage and like, everything in sophex except the tankbuster). Hallowed is amazing but there's no situation outside of learning a fight where it's any more useful than holmgang or LD. Which leaves us with two cooldowns that drk has the equivalent of, no ability to put damage down on anything outside of str-based mobs (and at the cost of dps, unlike for drk where reprisal is basically free and delirium is better than a non-DA PS), dps that makes WARs laugh and is almost certainly gonna be worse than a drk who knows what they're doing (especially if the drk is mt), and... divine veil. And when a fairy can solo heal a9s what use is that really?

Oh, and I think cover only works on physical damage, so gl with that.

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Originally Posted by Mirateski

As someone who mains paladin...

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EXCUSE me , but it clearly states you main FISHER in your profile. Liar.

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Originally Posted by hakurou46

EXCUSE me , but it clearly states you main FISHER in your profile. Liar.

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FSH is OP in a9s, fite me irl

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Originally Posted by Mirateski

FSH is OP in a9s, fite me irl

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Nah MIN is OP, look at all those metals to be mined.

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Originally Posted by hakurou46

EXCUSE me , but it clearly states you main FISHER in your profile. Liar.

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Originally Posted by Mirateski

FSH is OP in a9s, fite me irl

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And just when I was thinking this might head towards the eventual implosions typical of these threads... Thanks y'all for the laugh.

I think people are too stick with numbers, I always play with a PLD in guild, I'm DRK, and both healers do attack too, cause when PLD is like 0 TP (lol) it uses the stone skin magic and the other one to recover health points lol

To be honest I just like playing PLD in savage content cause it makes my WHM happy to see her dps numbers going up because she's gotta heal me alittle less than she would a DRK or a WAR simply cause I've got almost too much mitigation

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Originally Posted by LilLemay

To be honest I just like playing PLD in savage content cause it makes my WHM happy to see her dps numbers going up because she's gotta heal me alittle less than she would a DRK or a WAR simply cause I've got almost too much mitigation

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Why do people keep saying that Pld is the mitigation tank when they're not? Good tanks will use the right cds vs bad tanks, anyone could argue Inner Beast is the strongest CD since it can be up for every tank buster and eats both physical and magical. Pld is great for physical but gets outshined by drk and war due to their stronger CDs ( dark mind/ inner beast) combined with reprisal and storms path trumps Halone.

As a drk main I've gotten tons of people tell me "wow you take no dmg :o" during savage because I use my cds correctly. Pld being the defacto mitigation tank is just well..wrong I feel it's the most neglected tank and the other 2 tanks just have better skills but Hallowed Ground is still the best "oh shit" tank button outta the 3 so there's that.

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Originally Posted by Awful

Snipo.

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Not to mention Shelltron being up for every TB as well ;D and SS if you really wana go that far.

Thing about Reperials Vs ROH is that ROH be used any time Rep needs to be proc

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Originally Posted by Martin_Arcainess

Not to mention Shelltron being up for every TB as well ;D and SS if you really wana go that far.

Thing about Reperials Vs ROH is that ROH be used any time Rep needs to be proc

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Tell me how you're gonna Sheltron them magic TBs ;) like in A12s?

Path can be up 100% of the time, Delerium can also be up 100% of the time. Reprisal does require a proc but DD can actively have it up for when you need it.

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Originally Posted by Awful

snip

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Well any tank can use their defensive cooldowns right and take no damage. It's just that paladin has more of them, so I've got more to burn on things that aren't tankbusters. Which is why I said ''a little'' less, I didn't say ''alot'' less.

I'm not sure what you mean by Inner Beast eating both physical and magical given all cooldowns eat magical damage provided they aren't a block or parry of some sort.

Also It's a bit useless to say that you can have IB up for every tankbuster, because while that's true it's also true that as a paladin I've simply got more defensive cooldowns to use, so while a WAR can set up an IB for a tankbuster, I know I've got three of them to rotate through and use on tankbusters while still leaving some for basic damage mitigation. Not to mention as a Paladin I've got 20% damage reduction that's on the GcD and only costs about 500 mp which can stand in for any situation in which I don't have a CD ready. Yes I'm aware DRK's tank stance also gives them damage mitigation, but mine doesn't eat up a massive chunk of my mp. (Which wouldn't matter if it did because I don't plan on spam-flashing cruise chaser or clemency-spamming my loldrg)

I'm not trying to argue your point and say that PLD is better than DRK or WAR, I do agree with you that between the two DRK brings enough mitigation and more dps therefore making it ''better'' and well WAR is.. y'know.. WAR. However it is true that simply by design Paladins do mitigate alittle if not more damage than the other two, and you're not giving us nearly as much credit as we're due.

Also by definition PLD's kinda are the mitigation tank, our entire class is based around blocking damage with our shield and providing shields to our party, i.e mitigating damage. much like DRK's are the ''parry'' tank, despite having one ability on cooldown that increases parry

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Originally Posted by Awful

Tell me how you're gonna Sheltron them magic TBs ;) like in A12s?

Path can be up 100% of the time, Delerium can also be up 100% of the time. Reprisal does require a proc but DD can actively have it up for when you need it.

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again, not to say that DRK doesn't have other ways of dealing with this because I know they do. But it's hardly fair to bring up just the attacks in a12s for comparison. Especially given that most of 9s is physical (except the fire debuff and acid(?)), most of 10s is physical (the explosions and ice debuff (?)) the majority of the damage the MT will take in 11 is physical (I'm excluding limit cut and etc, cause that's not exclusive to the MT) and then 12 is mostly magical, which means we can only block his auto attacks and the add's attacks

Which if you look at it kinda puts delirium in a bad spot, given that a12s is really the only time delirium has any outstanding effects

The extra healer dps afforded by pld's extra mitigation is still less than the dps difference between skilled pld and skilled drk.

One thing that hugely improves tanks and healers' dps that the majority of players ignore is doing multiple tank swaps so both tanks' defensive cds are fully utilized, allowing them to stack multiple cds for every tank buster, which makes healing them much easier despite the little/nonexistent tank stance uptime. Everyone seems to be so stuck in the mindset that pld/drk are the main tanks and they should tank the boss as much as possible, and the war only takes the boss when there's a mechanic that requires that (chastening heat, gobslice). The same thing seems to be happening between ast/whm and sch, where people want the sch to dps as much as possible while the ast/whm does so much of the healing, instead of sharing the burden and coordinating buffs/cds to maximize both healers' dps.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

One thing that hugely improves tanks and healers' dps that the majority of players ignore is doing multiple tank swaps so both tanks' defensive cds are fully utilized, allowing them to stack multiple cds for every tank buster, which makes healing them much easier despite the little/nonexistent tank stance uptime. Everyone seems to be so stuck in the mindset that pld/drk are the main tanks and they should tank the boss as much as possible, and the war only takes the boss when there's a mechanic that requires that (chastening heat, gobslice). The same thing seems to be happening between ast/whm and sch, where people want the sch to dps as much as possible while the ast/whm does so much of the healing, instead of sharing the burden and coordinating buffs/cds to maximize both healers' dps.

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This guy gets it

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Originally Posted by LilLemay

This guy gets it

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Yeah, but good luck coordinating in a PUG. In my PUG's, I'm lucky if the other tank even has Provoke.

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Originally Posted by LilLemay

This guy gets it

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I agree with your other points said in the other page I was trying to convey this but 7am posting before work derp lol. He's right though everyone should be in that mind set and understand what kind of burden is placed on each individual person and adapt and push their limits.

And yes the extra mitigation vs skilled pld/drk dps doesn't compare with the extra healer dps was trying to say that but derped.

Tanks and healers DPS optimization only occurs heavily in top speedruns. You are talking about the micro stuff like the amount of heals needed for each tank buster. If you see a12s no1 speedrun, you will know how coordinated the tanks and healers need to be. Just 1 late healing gcd and it's normally a wipe.

An example of optimization is how groups handle aoe for a9s for adds. You are talking about the exact amount of damage needed and where they will come from. There are many individual top players around but speedruns also count great team coordination and planning. You are missing the little details like a12s stasis positioning where melees actually stand much closer to the boss during time stop instead of the usual 2way positioning, another one is how they handle the crystal mechanic and sending in 3 people instead of 4 for timegate.

In the server I am in, there are only 2 teams doing serious speedruns, 1 being my former team. Imagine, 2 out of so mant teams and pugs doing the current hardest content. Says a lot to on how exhausting it is.

This is also why there is no real guide on healers' optimization. Even tanks' optimization is hardly touched. Momo-kun (team disbanded) released his NIN optimization on reddit to touch on his thought process. Most guides so far is just a guideline, barely optimization.

Actually this reminds me of this small optimization I did in Midas a6s. I was using PLD and I had to fetch the mine on Blaster. I used FoF at pull and applied Goring 1 combo earlier than standard. Note that you normally want to align Goring with Trick Attack at opener. However due to our overwhelming DPS, we pushed Blaster to jump even before mine came out. Applying Goring asap and using FoF on pull means that I get the most benefit out of Goring ticks. Mirages afterwards died so quickly that using Goring would be a waste.

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Originally Posted by Sarcatica

SNIP

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i honestly have to disagree with that statement.

Yes optimizing is more present in Speedruns but you also do that even if you are not doing speedrun Stuff, to make your life easier etc.

Alot of people use the same old strat they have used in progression becaus they never bothered changing it, which is fine idc if they dont want to do it , but some of the strats to kill a fight are insanely hectic and kind dumb, makign the fight ahrde then it actually is. Simply trying new stuff out to optimize a bit more helps alot in the long term, speedrunner or not.

OFC if u learn a fight "Defense First" so that u see more of the fight but while doing that you already try to optimize, sneaking in extra dps etc. ....

It is always good to try out new stuff / Pushing more DPS as Tank/ Heal, sayign that you are not a speedrunner and u should not do that, saying that is completely wrong imo.

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Originally Posted by RamothElggur

i honestly have to disagree with that statement.

Yes optimizing is more present in Speedruns but you also do that even if you are not doing speedrun Stuff, to make your life easier etc.

Alot of people use the same old strat they have used in progression becaus they never bothered changing it, which is fine idc if they dont want to do it , but some of the strats to kill a fight are insanely hectic and kind dumb, makign the fight ahrde then it actually is. Simply trying new stuff out to optimize a bit more helps alot in the long term, speedrunner or not.

OFC if u learn a fight "Defense First" so that u see more of the fight but while doing that you already try to optimize, sneaking in extra dps etc. ....

It is always good to try out new stuff / Pushing more DPS as Tank/ Heal, sayign that you are not a speedrunner and u should not do that, saying that is completely wrong imo.

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Progression and normal farm strats are vastly different from speedrun strats. Speedruns adjust their strats heavily to allow them skip undesirable phases for damage purposes. In a11s, you want to skip the Lapis Lazuli phase to shave time and still able to damage the boss. Now, compare that to normal strat and you find there are many things different. The focus is just different.

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Originally Posted by dragonseth07

Yeah, but good luck coordinating in a PUG. In my PUG's, I'm lucky if the other tank even has Provoke.

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I should have been more specific, but what I said was mostly about difficult contents (ex trials and savage raids) in which people should have prepared to git gud and optimize.

To be fair I used to be among those ppl who only know how to "off tank" and not care about anything else, it wasn't until a few months after I started playing that I began to look up other jobs' raid utilities (dps buffs, mitigation buffs, healing skills and cds, other tanks' cds). That's why I feel that telling people who raid that they should know about these and optimize their group's run is important.

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Originally Posted by Mirateski

Hallowed is amazing but there's no situation outside of learning a fight where it's any more useful than holmgang or LD. Which leaves us with two cooldowns that drk has the equivalent of, no ability to put damage down on anything outside of str-based mobs (and at the cost of dps, unlike for drk where reprisal is basically free and delirium is better than a non-DA PS)

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Hallowed for the solo Laser X Sword in as11 means the healers can ignore me, instead of healing a DRK/WAR at 1 hp. Any DRK that executes a DA/PS should be shot.

I dont really understand the need to try and justify PLD among the other tanks? Yes is does less dps than a DRK/WAR, but it should. Lets not forget that it is mechanically the simplest of the three to play. It does have tools to support that the other two tanks lack, but the meta revolves around dps at the moment. Also, it shouldn't be surprising that the the harder classes to play are rewarded by being favorable in content. It would be counter intuitive to have it the other way around. That being said, if you play PLD because you like playing PLD, no other reason is really needed. No reason trumps "I like this one the best" other than in competitive or professional play.