Paladin feels miles ahead of the other tanks in terms of overall play in this game.

Paladin was already a popular / practical choice in StormBlood, and have been elevated insane heights in ShB.
-Party utility is still unmatched across all tanks, making them a de facto pick for high end content
-While their personal mitigation is among the lower end of tanks, they have an party utility option for almost any situation - making them a very reliable option for PUGs
-Their damage is second best for both bosses and packs, making their overall DPS capabilities the greatest of all tanks(Gunbreaker's AOE KIT is not great)
-Their burst window has the lowest CD, the highest duration(The only one that seems to account for high ping)is ranged, and can substitute attacks for massive heals(Instant +50% Clemency for a party member and %25 for yourself)
-They have one of, if not the most powerful clutch GCD skills in the game.
While the skill doesn't have much of a place for speed running, it can salvage a myriad of disadvanteous situations, and allow them to perform feats in the game that literally no other class can.
-They have the only invulnerability skill with no drawbacks or prerequisites.
Inferior to Holmang for high end content, but fantastic for PUGS.

Do you want engage high end content? Your group will want at least one Paladin.
Do you want to Solo Eureka efficiently? You'll want to go Paladin.
Do you want to Solo Heavenward Extreme Trials? You'll need to go Paladin.
Do you want to carry a Pug group that frankly aren:'t playing well? Paladin is possibly you're only option.

I love Paladin, but several months into ShadowBringers, it's clear one tank received more attention than the rest.

It's the reward for what paladins had to through in ARR rotation wise.

You didn't said anything new. And guess what? I see plenty of people playing other tanks too, not only paladin. Even I myself prefer playing GNB or sometimes DRK. And you know why? That's because not all players are robots caring only about efficiency. Sure, it might be objective truth that PLD is best, but that doesn't means it's the only choice for all the content.

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Originally Posted by fumofu

You didn't said anything new. And guess what? I see plenty of people playing other tanks too, not only paladin. Even I myself prefer playing GNB or sometimes DRK. And you know why? That's because not all players are robots caring only about efficiency. Sure, it might be objective truth that PLD is best, but that doesn't means it's the only choice for all the content.

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I still hear 'Tanks are balanced in SHB' parroted.
I wanted to make a point that - Tanks - are not - BALANCED.

It's not just balance concerns either - I enjoyed playing DRK as the undergog in StormBlood.
Shadowbringers removed a great deal of what made the class fun to me.
It's also hilarious that possibly the most criticised skill of DRK's entire kit was left completely untouched after it's rework.

Have you played other tanks?

PLD is best tank in the things that in the grand scheme of things does not matter, because the tools he has are often unreliable and simply put not needed all the time.

Intervention and Cover for example will make no to little difference when used frequently, using those will hinder your deffensive abilities because they cost gauge.
Passage of arms is only useful in transitions where you cant attack your target, if you use it anywhere else its going to cost your team a lot of dps
Divine veil needs a heal and does not give you a shield as a caster, so who really cares if dps has 10% shield or not, its not going to help healers all that much to be significant, Shake it off is a lot better, does not need target, 15% max hp, does not require anything else.
Clemency is a pure DPS loss and you should avoid using it.

All those 5 support abilities he has have their drawbacks which makes them more of annoyance to use instead of a real advantage over other tanks.
What PLD is lacking is sustain which does not cost him his DPS.

His DPS is not all that higher than the DRK or WAR, its not even a 1% difference in dps.

Where warrior could heal himself to full for free and DRK could tank everything left and right all what paladin has is his 20% dmg reduction sheltron which cost gauge and lasts only 6 seconds. He is interesting to play but far away from being the best.

PLD...feels like Bard to me.

Out of the 4, PLD is the most fun I've been having with tanks. I'd just like to say, given I do much complaining about jobs from a healer main perspective, but one thing I feel I should praise them for is how PLD has evolved. I originally levelled PLD in 2.0 and it was mostly a 1..2..3 rotation, which was not so bad at first as tanking was still new to me back then, but it lost its novelty and could get very dull. But its design has just improved and I think they found a good balance in how it plays in SB and seemed to have improved on what they built there with ShB.

Whereas so far WAR & DRK feel like shadows of their former selves, but I'm not quite 80 on them, so I'm gonna cut them some slack until then. I mean, I don't find them boring, but just the reason I loved them before has gone, particularly with DRK, where I loved HW's version the most, it was janky, sure, but janky is fine if its fun.

I think that while PLD might be a bit stronger than the rest, mostly it's just that it's the only tank that has pretty solid design right now. It stayed consistent with SB while changing things that people who already enjoyed PLD mostly didn't like(casting phase). While I personally never liked the job, it does seem to actually cater to its dedicated playerbase, rather than trying to reinvent itself like DRK did for example.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

utility bad

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Most of this basically boils down to "I don't play savage" though. PLD utility is very useful, it just doesn't get much use in casual content because it requires a bit of planning. Even there though, it can often save runs, especially Clemency - just because it's not optimal, doesn't mean it's not useful. Deaths cost more dps than a couple gcds.

- You don't need to use Sheltron on cd and you get enough gauge that you can spend it on other things when needed. Intervention's not much different from using TBN/HoS on somebody else. It's especially good for double TBs, which we had a ton of during previous tier. Well timed Cover can save people from deaths when low on hp and can be used to cheese certain mechanics.
- Passage can be weaved at zero dps loss, you just need to cancel the animation and you'll still get the raid mitigation out.
- Veil is super useful. Raid-wides exist and those are more likely to kill your dps/heals than you most times, especially when you don't even have aggro at the time.
- Like stated above, well used Clemency can literally save runs.

I don't think that PLD is very overpowered, at best it is slightly ahead, tanks overall are balanced pretty well. That said, dismissing its utility like this shows a severe lack of knowledge.

I agree, the no-drawbacks invulnerability and self-healing makes them the best and most durable tank for the majority of purposes.

I was considering going Paladin myself, but the 1-2-3 combo is way too flashy, a similar problem that Machinist has. It looked better before. They seem to be abandoning the good, subdued attack animations and keeping the bad ones.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

Divine veil needs a heal and does not give you a shield as a caster, so who really cares if dps has 10% shield or not, its not going to help healers all that much to be significant, Shake it off is a lot better, does not need target, 15% max hp, does not require anything else.

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Divine Veil gives 10% of the Paladin's skyhigh health pool as a shield. Shake It Off at baseline gives 15% of the target's much lower HP, not the Warrior's. They're roughly equal if WAR burns no cooldowns, but Veil needs the heal requirement removed by now. If you think Veil isn't significant you've probably never gotten to attacks like Light of Judgement in O8S a group mitigation rotation to barely survive.

What Paladin's utility really excels at is double tankbusters, which were everywhere last patch and there's at least a few in E5S (Add and Ramuh often do tankbusters simultaneously). Otherwise it's okay at everything but not amazing in any aspect besides the one mentioned.

Listing niche situations that benefit PLD doesn't mean its the best tank in the game lol. Or are we judging all tanks by their ability to solo 4 year old primals now?

It's an excellent choice for progression and farming but let's not pretend the other tanks aren't just as good.

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Originally Posted by RadicalPesto

Divine Veil gives 10% of the Paladin's skyhigh health pool as a shield. Shake It Off at baseline gives 15% of the target's much lower HP, not the Warrior's. They're roughly equal if WAR burns no cooldowns, but Veil needs the heal requirement removed by now. If you think Veil isn't significant you've probably never gotten to attacks like Light of Judgement in O8S a group mitigation rotation to barely survive.

What Paladin's utility really excels at is double tankbusters, which were everywhere last patch and there's at least a few in E5S (Add and Ramuh often do tankbusters simultaneously). Otherwise it's okay at everything but not amazing in any aspect besides the one mentioned.

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Shake It Off does give 15% Warrior's Max HP. So already it's better then Veil and that number can be pushed significantly if just Thrill is used since that raises your max HP by 20% which then Thrill gets boosted by 17% of your new max hp. Hell Shake and Thrill share the same CD time pretty much for that reason since they're great in tandem.

Paladin does make life easier by generally having the normal heals proc Veil, but I wouldn't disregard or downplay WAR for that reason.

Really?

They have four skills that only effect other party members. Cover, Intervention, Divine Veil and Passage of Arms. (PoA has a built in Sheltron for you, but you don't get the actual shield)
While other tanks have skills that can be used on themselves or party members; Heart of Stone/Light, Aurora, TBN, Dark Missionary.
This causes loads of button bloat for PLD, and Cover and Intervention in particular make PLD a purely OT, otherwise these skills are useless.

Not to mention the clunkiness of PoA and DV, one requiring special positioning, the other requiring a heal.

It might have an innate reduction in block rate, but then it's 'tank buster shield' Sheltron, merely brings this up to 100%, which means it's either not technically as strong as a regular block, or it invalidates those innate blocks as reduction, either way it's not additional damage reduction, it's rng fixing. It doesn't compared to Heart of Stone's shield, let alone TBN.

Then it has sustaining ability tied up in Clemency. Sure, it has a pretty potent self heal, but you can't use it because it's on the GCD, and if you do, healers yell at you. Meanwhile the other tanks have innate self healing built into their rotations, or healing on the oGCD like Aurora.

So sure, PLD has some perks, but it also has all of the handicaps to make up for them too.

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Originally Posted by Noitems

Shake It Off does give 15% Warrior's Max HP.

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I believe this has been tested and its simply not true, even the tooltip is worded differently than Veil.

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Originally Posted by RadicalPesto

I believe this has been tested and its simply not true, even the tooltip is worded differently than Veil.

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https://i.imgur.com/dEwzica.png
https://i.imgur.com/Vn64qdl.png

The only difference is that Veil states the word "Your" which considering that tip is using Yalms was written long ago and never edited down. They should both should have the same meaning even if WAR's doesn't state it specifically since it doesn't imply a target for the Max HP.

Looking at Thrill's wording it also is done in a similar way to Shake implying it's your health as well.
https://i.imgur.com/Q1rZ65L.png

Divine Veil -> If no heal triggers it, NO veil, if you use Clemency on yourself to trigger it, your DPS will suffer.
Clemency -> You are losing DPS in exchange for healing.
Passage of Arms -> It does nothing if ppl are spread. You can't use GCDs or Auto attacks while channeling.
Sheltron -> While you block, you can't parry, so it's worst than flat 20% damage reduction like Raw Intuition. And you can't use it during first ~22s of the encounter.
DPS -> If you want to deal a good amount of Damage, you have to avoid Clemency and Passage of Arms.
Defensive CDs -> PLD has one CD less than other tanks (Camouflage, Thrill of Battle, Dark Mind).
Hallowed Ground -> 7 minutes CD. Still Great imo.
Cover -> Almost 100% useless on current End-Game.

So overall i think that PLD is balanced from a Group Content point of view. Game isn't balanced around solo play, it makes no sense since FFXIV is a MMORPG, you know, massive MULTIPLAYER online RPG.

It's not so much PLD, it's Clemency. A tank has a strong, semi-spammable heal in a game with low hps checks.

I main PLD, I like PLD, but have consistently taken the stance that clemency is too strong for a tanking class. What's wrong with balancing the game such that a dungeon party to wipes when the healer dies?

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Originally Posted by Greywolfamakir

Divine Veil -> If no heal triggers it, NO veil, if you use Clemency on yourself to trigger it, your DPS will suffer.
Clemency -> You are losing DPS in exchange for healing.
Passage of Arms -> It does nothing if ppl are spread. You can't use GCDs or Auto attacks while channeling.
Sheltron -> While you block, you can't parry, so it's worst than flat 20% damage reduction like Raw Intuition. And you can't use it during first ~22s of the encounter.
DPS -> If you want to deal a good amount of Damage, you have to avoid Clemency and Passage of Arms.
Defensive CDs -> PLD has one CD less than other tanks (Camouflage, Thrill of Battle, Dark Mind).
Hallowed Ground -> 7 minutes CD. Still Great imo.
Cover -> Almost 100% useless on current End-Game.

So overall i think that PLD is balanced from a Group Content point of view. Game isn't balanced around solo play, it makes no sense since FFXIV is a MMORPG, you know, massive MULTIPLAYER online RPG.

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You do realize that the bolded part is very much outdated thinking in modern day MMOs. Today the 'multiplayer' aspect means a massive amount of players playing the same game at the same time, it no long refers exclusively to 'group content'. This is why most newer MMOs offer tons of solo content, why, because they realized that there are a lot of players who want the OPTION to play with others, but are not forced to. Besides that, back when the original 'MMO' came out, there were few MMOs to choose from, and even fewer options for gaming. Today, with consoles and widespread availability of high speed internet, gaming companies realize that players who prefer to play solo are an untapped resource for large revenue... and with so many MMOs available today, and the 'group content' players spread out amongst them, being able to bring in solo players can help save and maintain an online game.

Tanks are not balanced right now. Especially when most PF groups are asking for GNB/PLD combo. I still feel bad for WAR mains.

PLD is great for progression though. We wont see any real tank changes until 6.0 so right now any tank complaints are really just a waste of concern, especially considering that healer is the job that needs the most work.

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Originally Posted by winsock

It's not so much PLD, it's Clemency. A tank has a strong, semi-spammable heal in a game with low hps checks.

I main PLD, I like PLD, but have consistently taken the stance that clemency is too strong for a tanking class. What's wrong with balancing the game such that a dungeon party to wipes when the healer dies?

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Using clemecy will put you on the bottom list of performance in exchange of something you dont need because healer are 100% capable of healing out from everything this game throws at you.

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Originally Posted by Noitems

Shake It Off does give 15% Warrior's Max HP. So already it's better then Veil and that number can be pushed significantly if just Thrill is used since that raises your max HP by 20% which then Thrill gets boosted by 17% of your new max hp. Hell Shake and Thrill share the same CD time pretty much for that reason since they're great in tandem.

Paladin does make life easier by generally having the normal heals proc Veil, but I wouldn't disregard or downplay WAR for that reason.

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You're wrong on several counts.

First: Warrior's Thrill does NOT get calculated in Shake's hp percentage value, that's because Shake goes off of the TARGET'S HP VALUE otherwise Shake would be pretty OP. Warrior's Shake, if you bothered to read the actual tooltip, shields the target based off of their OWN HP. That's why Shake was buffed, PLD's Veil gives MORE shielding for free, WAR needs to buff theirs to meet it in value.

Warrior can spend Thrill, Raw, and Vengeance for 2 percent more shield per CD consumed.

PLD's shield is based off of the PLD's hp, which is about 14k shielding right now, which is pretty good. Compare that to the 12 percent of like a BLM's 80k hp... not nearly as good, but, it's totally instant to cast so there's that.

Also to clear something up because these forums love to be in the dark about basic skills and tooltips and how things work on tanking, but love to give their "advice". Passage of Arms can be instantly weaved in between GCD's to give the 15 percent mitigation to all dmg, this persists on the server tick, so you get about 5 seconds worth of mitigation, more than enough if timed correctly to lose no dps, so no the "Raid" as someone pointed out, does NOT "lose a lot of dps".

Another thing: Intervention is OP as hell. It's a FREE 10 percent on your cotank at nearly all times when it's necessary. You can keep spamming it as long as you are not actively being auto'd as you will have your other CDs up for w/e you need them for. That, and if there is a double buster you can buff it by having Sentinel or Ramp up for even more OP mitigation. That's insane, no other tank can do nearly as much for their cotank as PLD can for free. TBN is great, but it costs resource and if the DRK already has their DA proc, they ain't using it again till raid buffs are up or they need to refresh DRKside/spend mana.

Cover kind of blows now, but hopefully they have dps/healer mechs where u can use that like in O7s with the missiles.

The real brokenness of Veil: You can pop it a FULL MINUTE before it is needed, yes, so long as your healers are going to put something up to proc it, you can pop it 30s before that, so it goes on CD, then, the shield lasts for a full 30s again, that's INSANE. No other tank can do that... at all. You can have so much uptime on veil it's outrageous. double the uses of it than the other tanks stuff.

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Originally Posted by winsock

It's not so much PLD, it's Clemency. A tank has a strong, semi-spammable heal in a game with low hps checks.

I main PLD, I like PLD, but have consistently taken the stance that clemency is too strong for a tanking class. What's wrong with balancing the game such that a dungeon party to wipes when the healer dies?

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Honestly, Clemency is ridiculously powerful for Solo play or carrying PUGs.

I don't see why DRK and WAR had their dungeon cheese mechanics(Abyssal Drain and Cyclone Heals for mnasive pulls) removed but Paladins get to keep Clemency.

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Originally Posted by Tranquilmelody7

Honestly, Clemency is ridiculously powerful for Solo play or carrying PUGs.

I don't see why DRK and WAR had their dungeon cheese mechanics(Abyssal Drain and Cyclone Heals for mnasive pulls) removed but Paladins get to keep Clemency.

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probably because abyssal drain and cyclone both do dmg AND heal you at the same time, while clemency makes your DPS suffer a lot.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

Using clemecy will put you on the bottom list of performance in exchange of something you dont need because healer are 100% capable of healing out from everything this game throws at you.

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I think their argument is that it shouldn't be the case that a tank has the ability to solo heal itself through most instanced content. They should have to rely on healer.

I think there may be some (older) dungeons with neglible healing needs that could be done more efficiently with 1 PLD and 3 dps.

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Originally Posted by Derio

Tanks are not balanced right now. Especially when most PF groups are asking for GNB/PLD combo. I still feel bad for WAR mains.

PLD is great for progression though. We wont see any real tank changes until 6.0 so right now any tank complaints are really just a waste of concern, especially considering that healer is the job that needs the most work.

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We're on the same data center and not once have I seen DRK or WAR locked out of new savage content or Ruby EX, I did ph1 and ph2 Ruby EX as a DRK and I plan on doing Eden Savage 5-8 on DRK like I did last raid tier. The tanks are the most balanced they've ever been it's mostly down to preference what you wanna play and some do have strengths over another but they're very minor vs the old days when WAR/DRK in HW was king and PLD was thrown in the scrap heap.

Clemency is a prog tool, like using TBN on CD for everything is a prog tool. To some degree, reprisal, addle, feint, etc... are the same things: To make prog smoother. You can also use these tools for optimizations such as stacking the big tank flare in Levi Savage, or the Smoker Tank flares up north, and so forth.

Value needs to be thought of in terms of both while proggin, and while farming.

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Originally Posted by Aurelius2625

Also to clear something up because these forums love to be in the dark about basic skills and tooltips and how things work on tanking, but love to give their "advice". Passage of Arms can be instantly weaved in between GCD's to give the 15 percent mitigation to all dmg, this persists on the server tick, so you get about 5 seconds worth of mitigation, more than enough if timed correctly to lose no dps, so no the "Raid" as someone pointed out, does NOT "lose a lot of dps".

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Can be instantly weaved, but GNB and DRK equivalent is still a lot better for party wide damage, you wont miss anyone with it and those have 90 sec cooldown instead of 120 sec.

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Originally Posted by Aurelius2625

Another thing: Intervention is OP as hell. It's a FREE 10 percent on your cotank at nearly all times when it's necessary. You can keep spamming it as long as you are not actively being auto'd as you will have your other CDs up for w/e you need them for. That, and if there is a double buster you can buff it by having Sentinel or Ramp up for even more OP mitigation. That's insane, no other tank can do nearly as much for their cotank as PLD can for free. TBN is great, but it costs resource and if the DRK already has their DA proc, they ain't using it again till raid buffs are up or they need to refresh DRKside/spend mana.

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Intervention comes in with dimishing returns spared with 20% damage reduction comes down to 8% effectively and 7% if the cotank used 30% mitigation.
Also warrior has 10% reduction on nascent flash AND heals on top of that, so ehm nope.
Gnb has 15% reduction you could use on party member as well, DRK could cast TBN which is the strongest mitigation skill in game.

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Originally Posted by Aurelius2625

Cover kind of blows now, but hopefully they have dps/healer mechs where u can use that like in O7s with the missiles.

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Cover is useful but you have to be careful when you use it, because you may receive too much damage with it when both you and target is getting damaged. In result this skill is not useful everywhere and could do more bad than good.

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Originally Posted by Aurelius2625

The real brokenness of Veil: You can pop it a FULL MINUTE before it is needed, yes, so long as your healers are going to put something up to proc it, you can pop it 30s before that, so it goes on CD, then, the shield lasts for a full 30s again, that's INSANE. No other tank can do that... at all. You can have so much uptime on veil it's outrageous. double the uses of it than the other tanks stuff.

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First, not full minute but 30 seconds.
Second, there is literally no chance that you as a tank wont be given some kind of party wide regen in the time and that you cannot guarantee it will proc in the needed moment. Activating this skill is a nightmare and could sometimes not proc the shield at all. Shake it of is still better.

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Originally Posted by SamRF

I think their argument is that it shouldn't be the case that a tank has the ability to solo heal itself through most instanced content. They should have to rely on healer.
I think there may be some (older) dungeons with neglible healing needs that could be done more efficiently with 1 PLD and 3 dps.

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This holds no value in the end game.

I hate these nerf threads tbh.
People whined about ast being op and look at it now: in a broken state and people whining for it to come back.

Does pld break the end game content? No. Then leave it, i agree it absolutely needs no more buffs, but it isn't op enough to deserve a debuff either; it has its own drawbacks. The other tanks play just as well in my experience.

Theres no total balance, it's what makes things unique.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

snip

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Funny how you mention diminishing returns on Intervention, but somehow "GNB and DRK equivalent is still a lot better" than Veil that suffers none of these. Also Veil has had 90 second cd ever since 5.0, on top of the fact that PLD has another raid mitigation skill - another mitigation skill which will not suffer diminishing returns when stacked together with Veil if you so choose. Have you played PLD?

It is also true that Veil can be used - and therefore put on cd to be reused earlier - almost 60 seconds in advance. You have 30 seconds to pop it and then another 30 of the shield itself. It might be a stretch that you could hold it that long realistically, but it still offers way more room than any other raidwide.
It's only "a nightmare" if you're playing in completely unorganized DF content - where honestly it's a miracle if tanks use any mitigation at all, be it raid or personal - so who cares anyways.

Suggesting PLD's utility is anywhere close to bad is as laughable as claiming that DRK has bad personal mitigation. Those are things these jobs specifically excel at - saying otherwise just shows the person is simply bad at utilizing their tool-kits.