Shield Wall: A Dual-Paladin Static

There's some ridiculous synergy about to happen between double Paladins. We are now under oath to run dual-shield comps. My body is ready.

- Two Paladins can Cover each other for 20% mitigation

- Divine Veil each other (and Party) for 10% shield

- Intervention each other (or Party) for 10% mitigation (20% if Rampart is up or 30% if Sentinel is up) Plus, one Paladin gets to stay in Sword Oath and spam Intervention (/drool)

- Passage of Arms each other (and Party) for 15% mitigation plus 20-25% Shield Block mitigation

- Clemency can be cast 2x more often per Paladin and is affected by Convalescence + Requiscat. Crazy self-sustain if needed

- Four Hallowed Grounds in one fight

Nobody wanted us from 3.0 to 4.0. They carried "lolPld Bibles" in their pockets. They laughed and laughed; but now our shields are united. Those War's and Drk's can keep their "No Pld's allowed" statics. Who needs em! Mwahahaha /Clemency. (Hope War's get fixed quickly though.)

Except none of that is made better for having two PLD.

All of this is awesome, my main is drg but my off roll is pld. I'm so excited for pld now I think I might change my main roll now.

As a career Paladin since 1.21 I'm really liking all the salty tears from Warrior and Dark Knight camps. But seriously, I do hope all 3 are perfectly viable and balanced. Making Warriors identity nothing but DPS has always been dangerous in a setting where DPS is most important. Bringing all 3 tanks to similar DPS and making mitigation and utility matter more in raid settings is my best case scenario.

Say bye to your LB fill rate.

While in DF sure 2 PLDs actually work well together now. But in a static, it's still better to bring a DRK or WAR. WAR provides the slashing debuff, though that now can be covered by a NIN or SAM, DRK brings a 10% damage up with sole survivor, PLD still doesn't bring any offensive party utility and while that's fine because it has loads of defensive utility, we'll probably still see DRKs and WARs bringing things to the table we don't.

It all depends on how the fights work, but PLD + DRK/WAR will likely still get stuck in the progression tank setup for its high defensive utility, while DRK + WAR will be favourable for farming for higher dps utility.

Personally, nothing really changes for my group, we already have a PLD + DRK + NIN combo. So unless someone changes in stormblood we already have an ideal setup in that area.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

Say bye to your LB fill rate.

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Acceptable losses.

The "static party" idea is bs by itself! I play only with randoms!

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Originally Posted by Galactimus

Acceptable losses.

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This but unironically. With current numbers, you actually come out ahead of the lb penalty and any utility the other tanks bring (like drk trick attack from sole survivor). Pld is that strong, and double pld is being strongly considered by heavy prog groups like Xenosys Vex.

With the current numbers yes, but they are coming from an old build dating from april, Yoshida himself said they have touched a lot of things since.

We can only hope pld's dps is not unbalanced, while we're at it, I also hope they changed Tempered Will and Bulwark cooldowns, 3 minutes for what this abilities do is way too much.

I feel like all this talk about OP PLD is just going to jinx it. Let's just cross our fingers, keep our mouth shut and enjoy it if and when it happens. Until release, this is all just speculation

Love the since of humor man, PLD needed this for a long time.

If paladins really do like 20% more dps above war/drk, just like some spreadsheet that's floating around says (which I've looked into, and had some mistakes but it might have been corrected by now), it's probably going to get nerfed, since 20% would be way bigger than any dps disparity in the same role we have now (pld is like 5-10% lower than war/drk in single target dps, mnk is like at most 5-10% above drg/nin in similar comp, etc).

In fact Monk is around 2% more than Dragoon, thats why Dragoon dps + battle lethany> Monk :p

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Originally Posted by AlexSag

I feel like all this talk about OP PLD is just going to jinx it. Let's just cross our fingers, keep our mouth shut and enjoy it if and when it happens. Until release, this is all just speculation

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I hope it does. a one tank meta is a boring meta.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

If paladins really do like 20% more dps above war/drk, just like some spreadsheet that's floating around says (which I've looked into, and had some mistakes but it might have been corrected by now), it's probably going to get nerfed

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Even as a longtime PLD lover, I really hope it will. For me it's totally fine that PLD has lower personal DPS than WAR and DRK, and that it should contribute differently.

My wish was for PLD to act as a protector of the main tank, allowing it to stay less time in tank stance, increasing the overall raid DPS...and that's what they did with Intervention, Passage Of Arms and the change to Cover.

I can't wait to test a compo with Deliverance-WAR MT + SwO-PLD OT :D

Considering that pala should have the most tankyness out of the 3 (iron wall job) , plus is basically confirmed that he has the most utility as well, Pala should have the lowest damaget of the 3 tanks, but not low enough so people neglect him again as they didn on HW

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Originally Posted by Bhearil

Considering that pala should have the most tankyness out of the 3 (iron wall job) , plus is basically confirmed that he has the most utility as well, Pala should have the lowest damaget of the 3 tanks, but not low enough so people neglect him again as they didn on HW

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I guess this is the big issue atm. while war and drk basically just got a bit tuning and boost to their tankiness (especially skill synergy for drk, while war was almsot perfect to begin with), PLD also got a ridiculous damage boost on top of being more tanky than ever.
Guess we know soon if this still remains when SB goes live.

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Originally Posted by Bhearil

Considering that pala should have the most tankyness out of the 3 (iron wall job) , plus is basically confirmed that he has the most utility as well, Pala should have the lowest damaget of the 3 tanks, but not low enough so people neglect him again as they didn on HW

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Agreed 100%, but that's also the problem. no matter how much lower pld's dps is, to 1% top elist a loss is a loss, they will make us mortals to think that lower dps is trash.

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Originally Posted by aqskerorokero

Agreed 100%, but that's also the problem. no matter how much lower pld's dps is, to 1% top elist a loss is a loss, they will make us mortals to think that lower dps is trash.

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It's not that simple. Mitigation (both personal and raid) plays a big part in determining how much healers have to heal. In a9s-a11s even though the tank dmg are mostly physical, they're mostly auto attacks with a few tank busters spread decently far apart. In a11s the cleaves are all avoidable, in a10s many of the busters and cleaves are skippable with high dps. Meanwhile a9s is such a short fight that even with less physical mitigation drk wouldn't put more strain on the healers, and a bonus is that plunge can let you dodge a scrapline, for post-faust kills.

Let's say for the sake of argument, in a12s pld does more dps than drk, now that will be a lot more stuffs to consider, even for speedkills, since the mitigation tools of pld is just terrible for a12s unless you're killing very fast (before 2nd inception for example). You need to weigh the extra dps they bring vs the less dps the healers do to cater for the less mitigation. The min-maxing game is about group dps, not personal dps, so if your extra dps comes at the cost of others', you may not be optimal.

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Originally Posted by aqskerorokero

Agreed 100%, but that's also the problem. no matter how much lower pld's dps is, to 1% top elist a loss is a loss, they will make us mortals to think that lower dps is trash.

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What matters is the raid DPS. PLD's personal DPS is not that important if he has the utility to increase the DPS of someone else. Like I said earlier, what if having a PLD as an OT allow your MT to do the full fight in DPS stance ?

I'm not convinced that you can balance mitigation against dps, though. Every tank needs access to mitigation, self-sustain, utility, dps, and enmity generation abilities. If there is a significant enough discrepancy between the tanks in any area, you're setting yourself up for balance problems. DPS isn't the most important parameter either; if you give one tank a significant enough mitigation advantage, it can just as easily become unbalanced.

Mitigation and dps are not tank "identities". I think part of the problem is that we've tried to distil PLD down to "best at (physical) mitigation" instead of themes like "protects allies with a shield" or "casts holy magic and bleeds opponents dry with dots". It doesn't matter whether you shield your allies, buff their health, or debuff the boss. It doesn't matter if you cast curative magic on yourself, shrug off accumulated damage, or steal life force from your enemies. Different aesthetics can result in similar functionality, as long as they're balanced within the same category.

I've heard the argument about healer dps and mitigation before, but how do you design for that? Does your defensive tank become a liability when paired with a healer with weaker dps? Do you switch tanks when you get a more aggressive healer? There are a lot of different possibilities to account for. You can't really predict how % mitigation translates into healer dps increases, even when it does make a difference.

I think if you want balance, you have to do it independently across each category. If you're aiming to simultaneously balance all three tanks, that is. I feel that a lot of MMO devs eventually give up on this sort of balance and opt for flavour of the month "balance", which, while easier, doesn't make for a very good play experience.

When I was talking about mitigation vs personal dps it was from the pov of optimizing and speedkilling, not from the developing. Of course ideally we don't want such thing to even happen. All tanks should provide similar overall raid dps and enough mitigation to tank every content in the game. It's just that as players we can't really change what we have, so we just pick the best of the options and while min-maxing dps, everything from personal to raid mitigation and utilities are weighed based on how much extra dps they could afford us.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

All tanks should provide similar overall raid dps and enough mitigation to tank every content in the game.

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That's why, for me, tanks should be separated on how they perform as OT, and not MT. The first concern of the MT is to survive, so, you give every tank the (approximative) same MT personal mitigation and damage output. And thus, dungeons are never a problem nor are fights designed to be single-tanked.

But in 8-man content, suddently, the OT changes the game. Suddently, the gameplay could vary with the DPS stance (Or the lack of tank stance), and there, you can be creative on how you balance them.
Give PLD significantly less damage than DRK and WAR, but give him covering buffs so that the MT need its tank stance less and can do more DPS to compensate...
Or make DRK do less damage than WAR, but put vulnerability debuffs here and there so that all other jobs do slightly more during raids..
And give WAR the highest personal DPS of all tanks as an OT but less damage increasing utility...

I main PLD, while only leveling NIN so I can step foot in Gordias since no one wanted me. I only now fear that I will have to compete for a spot in groups due to the many PLDs we will see.

*EDIT*
With the coming of Stormblood and PLD vs WAR/DRK, my wish is as follows:

When someone examines you while you're on a job, there should be an indicator that shows how many hours you have actively participated in content as that job, so it's not a "Jump Potion" thing where someone all of a sudden become a PLD main due to changes.

I know some people might go into, say, Sastasha undersized and go afk to get free log time, but the time should track how often you are engaged with an enemy and are attacking/being attacked (pulling all the adds and standing there will not count).

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

That's why, for me, tanks should be separated on how they perform as OT, and not MT. The first concern of the MT is to survive, so, you give every tank the (approximative) same MT personal mitigation and damage output. And thus, dungeons are never a problem nor are fights designed to be single-tanked.

But in 8-man content, suddently, the OT changes the game. Suddently, the gameplay could vary with the DPS stance (Or the lack of tank stance), and there, you can be creative on how you balance them.
Give PLD significantly less damage than DRK and WAR, but give him covering buffs so that the MT need its tank stance less and can do more DPS to compensate...
Or make DRK do less damage than WAR, but put vulnerability debuffs here and there so that all other jobs do slightly more during raids..
And give WAR the highest personal DPS of all tanks as an OT but less damage increasing utility...

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In FFXI, the tank, PLD, spend the most time as a meat shield compared to NIN and WAR tanks. We need that back.

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Originally Posted by Jim_Berry

In FFXI, the tank, PLD, spend the most time as a meat shield compared to NIN and WAR tanks. We need that back.

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This wouldn't work in the realm of FFXIV though due to jobs having set roles.
NIN was never meant to be a tank at all in XI but the community made it one. My BRD was never supposed to be able to tank but once we found that Mazukra gave made enmity and BRD could equip the most -% damage gear around I did it for the fun of it and rocked.
However, roles are defined in FF14 and the community already hated the idea of WAR being always turned to as the OT due to DPS output and debuffs it could do. It is just a different style with forced roles.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

That's why, for me, tanks should be separated on how they perform as OT, and not MT. The first concern of the MT is to survive, so, you give every tank the (approximative) same MT personal mitigation and damage output. And thus, dungeons are never a problem nor are fights designed to be single-tanked.

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I disagree if everyone has the same parameters why play class A or class B? This is what destroys games main life isnt fair games shouldn't be either nothing is really fair people are supposed to have the niche. If you have no niche i'd rather just play a shooter.

But even shooters have niches lol so yeah im sure you get my point,

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Originally Posted by Mnemosynia

But even shooters have niches lol so yeah im sure you get my point,

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I get yours...but surely you didn't get mine. Tank will have their niche, when performing as OT.
You can have the OT that deals damage, the OT that protect other, the OT that put debuffs, etc...MT is too rigid as a purpose to really make tanks work differently.

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Originally Posted by Jim_Berry

In FFXI, the tank, PLD, spend the most time as a meat shield compared to NIN and WAR tanks. We need that back.

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FFXIV isn't FFXI. There's a lot of things in FFXI I wish that XIV would copy, but class balance and mechanics aren't on that list.