How to Get Players to Love PLD Again.

Hey Guys,
Cupcakes here. That guy who got bored and made a Tonberry fight. To everybody on Sargantas and to the wonderful Dev Team, hiya! Now just a glance at these forums tells me this road has been taveled many times, but I'd like to touch on what made PLD my favorite class in the early stages, whereas I never touch it anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I still believe it's a good class, and I still like it, but I believe in order to "fix" PLD correctly, we have to highlight it's unique identity by going back to its roots.

For those of you that remember Beta both closed and open, and even the early stages of the game, can you pinpoint what made PLD unique and tank-worthy? That's right, the use of a shield, and manual blocking. Now I'm not saying we need to go back to mashing a button to block again, although holding one down to block wouldn't be a bad idea. I'm offering a simple versatility option choice that would be fun and easy to implement. I'm talking about stances.

In this game's infancy, if you started the game as Gladiator, it was nothing special. You did about the same damage as everyone else, you took a little less. But as soon as you acquired your first shield, now that was something special. Suddenly you would push a button and become an iron wall. Mobs would hit for 1 or 0, and you could take anything thrown at you. You chose what to block and when, and when you did, you blocked like you were holding a real piece of steel and not a paper fan.

Everyone seems to be concerned about PLD's "damage" for hate control. But you can't have DPS and tanking ability, if you did you'd just be a WAR. And as we can see, that just leads to a constant stream of overbuffing and nerfing. But what about choosing which you are and when?

Getting to the point: In my opinion, the best option is to offer 2 distinct stances for PLD to utilize.

• Stances would be toggled with a single skill, and only one could be active at one time. Example? Berserk and Rampage. Niether stance is required to be on, and without the stance PLD functions the same as it does now.

1. The first would be a Melee DPS oriented stance, where the PLD "dual wields" his sword and shield, alternating attacks between the sword and shield. The original Roman Gladiators relied on their shields just as much as their swords for offense, and isn't the base job of PLD a Gladiator? This stance would decrease attack speed by 25% and be a dual wield based stance, filling that gap of dual wield people have been craving since they saw secondary weapons first pop up in the offhand window. Shield damage would be matched to 50% of mainhand weapon damage, and each "attack phase" would be Sword swing > Shield Bash (2 hits like PUG/MNK). Example: Ifrit's Blade has 102 DMG and 2.7 DELAY with a DPS of 37.77. Using this stance would offer a DPS comparable to (102x1.5=153DMG) / (2.7x1.25=3.37DELAY) = 45.4DPS, not much more than comparable DPS classes. It would give PLD a chance to put out the DPS that makes it unsuitable for certain fights and scenarios currently in the game and now make it a viable option. Blocking would NOT ACTIVATE AT ALL in this stance, your shield is a weapon only.
2. The second stance is the tanking stance. Again drawing inspiration from Roman Gladiators and the highly effective Phalanx formation after which we love to name GLA's skill, this stance would plant your feet and root you down, throw up your shield and cause a 100% block rate. That's right, I said 100%. On top of this, blocks in this stance offer a 40% general damage reduction and you are immune to knockback. Now you're saying, "wait wait wait Cupcakes, that's OP!" Wrong. Want to know why? You're rooted. when using this stance, you cannot move. You also no longer auto attack. Blocks still generate TP and skills are still usable, but auto-attack is gone. This creates the effect of "Hide behind shield, leap out to attack, return to behind shield."

I've played a lot of MMOs. Even recent Betas, to be honest, even games that are in Beta right now. But I always come back to FFXIV. Final Fantasy offers a unique experience among MMOs in that it is community driven and requires unity to accomplish great things. The current Dev Team seems to have a firm grasp on this and are considered by the majority of us as members of our own community and not segregated as "those guys in Japan collecting the money." I love the communication between the Devs and the players, and really hope to see a response to this.

Happy Adventuring Eorzea!

Update 05/24:
After reading Eagleheart's topic and views on PLD here - >>>>http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...9-with-Paladin<<<< , it reminded me of a very important problem I had forgotten and made me question revising my defensive stance idea.

I'm not a big fan of nerfing. I don't believe other classes should suffer and be made unfun just because another class needs improvement and people refuse to play the "OMG ITS OP NERF NOWZ" class. So I'm all for making ALL classes "feel like" it's OP by disguising the balance behind it (BLM does too much dmg! = increase everyone's damage, increase mob HP, now everyone feels badass, mob is pretty much the same difficulty.) In any case I'm getting off-topic. I'm keeping the original stance idea up for review and revision, however this is my revision idea listing options for this stance below at this time to address MP Generation with changes in red:

• The second stance is the tanking stance. Again drawing inspiration from Roman Gladiators and the highly effective Phalanx formation after which we love to name GLA's skill, this stance would plant your feet and root you down, throw up your shield and cause a 100% block rate. That's right, I said 100%. On top of this, blocks in this stance offer a 40% general damage reduction and you are immune to knockback. Now you're saying, "wait wait wait Cupcakes, that's OP!" Wrong. Want to know why? You're rooted. when using this stance, you cannot move. You also no longer auto attack. Blocks still generate TP and skills are still usable, but auto-attack is gone. This creates the effect of "Hide behind shield, leap out to attack, return to behind shield." Blocks restore MP = 50% of damage taken.
  
• The second stance is the tanking stance. Again drawing inspiration from Roman Gladiators and the highly effective Phalanx formation after which we love to name GLA's skill, this stance would plant your feet and root you down, throw up your shield and cause a 100% block rate. That's right, I said 100%. On top of this, blocks in this stance offer a 40% general damage reduction and you are immune to knockback. Now you're saying, "wait wait wait Cupcakes, that's OP!" Wrong. Want to know why? You're rooted. when using this stance, you cannot move. You also no longer auto attack . Blocks do not generate TP and instead restore MP = 100% damage taken. TP regens naturally in this stance at a rate of 25TP/sec (approx 1500TP/MIN, or 1 WS every 40sec) Skills are still usable.

Or a variation or balance between these 3 variations of the stance, but either way I see potential in these combinations.

This reminds me alot like Aion. The tank had shield stances that mitigated alot of damage and prevented stuns, but they could only auto attack in this stance. I think this is a really good idea.

I'm all for utilizing my shield more.

http://jedifilmmaker.files.wordpress...rvcno1_500.gif

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Originally Posted by Denmo

I'm all for utilizing my shield more.

http://jedifilmmaker.files.wordpress...rvcno1_500.gif

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I would play pld again.

I like where your goin with these ideas Cupcakes, but one thing that does concern me is Enmity generation with the second stance. Auto-attacks make up a decent chunk of Enmity and the tp returns on blocked attacks are much smaller in comparison to an attack round (Unless your talking about Outmaneuver's TP bonus effect) so I don't think we'd be able to spam combo's nearly as reliably, letting us lose hate much more quickly. Of course if we got a hefty Enmity boost equal too or a major percentage of the damage taken from the blocked attack it might settle out the Enmity differences from loss of auto-attack.

The first ability I love altogether just because I've been trying to find some way to make PLD into a semi-decent DD outside of tank situations or in more offensively required situations, and since we still have a shield we don't lose out on half our abilities like if we went to using a 2h weapon like a G.Sword. I can deal with the sacrifice of losing some of our defensive capabilities for offensive boosts, if WAR has proven anything defense isn't always needed for tanking content, and it would allow PLD at least some of the flexibility WAR's have.

Thanks for the support guys, and thanks for pointing that out Sword Coheir. It was pretty late when this idea popped into my head last night and after thinking it over a bit more, there shouldn't be any TP reduction from the defensive stance in order to keep DPS for Enmity generation at an acceptable level. I also added an immunity to knockback.

I picture tanking with these stances going something like this: Engage DPS stance, run in and grab hate on the mob. Build up enough TP for a combo very quickly with the dual wield, find your spot and BAM, just as Coincounter uses 100-tonze swing, or say Ifrit uses Incinerate, switch to shield stance and hold your ground. At this point, you maintain enmity through Enmity+ skills (Rampage, Provoke, Taunt), weaponskills, and healing. If a party member starts to build high enmity or the enemy enters a less destructive phase, switch back to DPS stance and start swinging.

Maybe with the upcoming changes to GLA I can rebuild my DD GLA spec.

Protip: Rage of Halone was overpowered @ 500 damage every 15 seconds.

Now I'm lucky if it breaks 280. Damn accuracy rework.

Cupcakes, you deserve a prize.
*emails you a cupcake made of awesome*

Also, I remember on XI where I could out DD some lesser equipped MNKs and WARs and junk with my PLD DD gearset lol. For merit pts and junk, not actual tanking situations :P. Unless we were farming waters or ulli i'd whip out a 1500~ retribution once in awhile too

I love the stance idea. A few people mentioned that the defensive stance may create an emity problem; however, your description of the additional stance sounds as though it's a temporary life-saver that must be used strategically. All I could add to this stance is possibly a reduced chance for magic cast interruption or perhaps an increased cure hate generation while in defensive stance. I believe these to be fair additions since the PLD is incapable of auto-attacking according to your description.

I like the idea of a defensive stance, but I'm not too keen on locking you out of your abilities. As stated by Hoshikogi, it would be an "Oh snap!" skill, which we already have in the form of Hallowed Ground.

Rather, I'd like to see them bring back the "Block" ability, where you raised your shield and could still use abilities. The trade off would be disabling auto-attack and hindering your TP generation.

In this block stance, we could have increased Phalanx damage, maybe a more potent shield bash, but a reduction in sword based WS potency.

There are plenty of options to go about something like this, but locking us out of our skills isn't a good idea I think, especially with trigger happy mages lingering around.

If I could throw my shield, it would be time to revive my level 22 Glad.

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Originally Posted by AlaulaTheGreat

If I could throw my shield, it would be time to revive my level 22 Glad.

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I rather be able to punch with my shield then throw, plus the fact in history the shield was deadly just as much as the sword. so including "buckler punch" if you could call it that, add it to auto attack would be great and the extra dmg that comes from it is good for enimty+ and the looks also.

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Originally Posted by Alerith

I like the idea of a defensive stance, but I'm not too keen on locking you out of your abilities. As stated by Hoshikogi, it would be an "Oh snap!" skill, which we already have in the form of Hallowed Ground.

Rather, I'd like to see them bring back the "Block" ability, where you raised your shield and could still use abilities. The trade off would be disabling auto-attack and hindering your TP generation.

In this block stance, we could have increased Phalanx damage, maybe a more potent shield bash, but a reduction in sword based WS potency.

There are plenty of options to go about something like this, but locking us out of our skills isn't a good idea I think, especially with trigger happy mages lingering around.

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I never said anything about locking you out of your skills, I said you would have all of your skills and lose auto-attack.

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Originally Posted by Alerith

I like the idea of a defensive stance, but I'm not too keen on locking you out of your abilities. As stated by Hoshikogi, it would be an "Oh snap!" skill, which we already have in the form of Hallowed Ground.

Rather, I'd like to see them bring back the "Block" ability, where you raised your shield and could still use abilities. The trade off would be disabling auto-attack and hindering your TP generation.

In this block stance, we could have increased Phalanx damage, maybe a more potent shield bash, but a reduction in sword based WS potency.

There are plenty of options to go about something like this, but locking us out of our skills isn't a good idea I think, especially with trigger happy mages lingering around.

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It was more along the lines that losing our auto-attacks would hinder our TP generation so much it would greatly reduce our ability to gain Enmity without the damage contributed from constant WS moves and auto-attacks themselves, which make up roughly half of our overall Enmity generation. Which is why I made the suggestion of an Enmity bonus based on damage taken (possibly getting the bonus before damage is reduced by block in the calculation.)

Hoshi brought up a good point however, I can see with the current trends people might favor the offensive stance over the defensive one, adding a bit more dynamic into the works. Like using the Offensive stance for initial TP and hate generation, and falling back on the defensive stance later in the fight for Astral Flow or low HP or something.

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Originally Posted by Alerith

I like the idea of a defensive stance, but I'm not too keen on locking you out of your abilities. As stated by Hoshikogi, it would be an "Oh snap!" skill, which we already have in the form of Hallowed Ground.

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I believe there's some misunderstanding. I really REALLY love the defensive stance. I think using stances should be more interactive based on situation, and thus an act in which keeping one of them on at all times is a faux pas (bad/lacking structure).

If SE added two stances, we would have the offensive stance for trash mobs or bosses which are in a more passive phase, the basic stance (what we have now --> without any stance) which is used for basic defensive tanking, and finally the defensive stance which allows the paladin to enter turtle tank mode. I beleive this defensive stance described would be highly efficent if blocks greatly reduced the chance for spell interruption; Then the paladin could focus on healing himself back to full hp when "it" hits the fan or allow them to focus on healing others in the party with holy succor. Successful heals could easily compensate for a lack of hitting the mob with auto attacks (~20-100 damage/hit vs. a ~1,600 holy succor or 580 cure).

Also I'd add that the defensive stance should probably be PLD only.

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Originally Posted by SwordCoheir

It was more along the lines that losing our auto-attacks would hinder our TP generation so much it would greatly reduce our ability to gain Enmity without the damage contributed from constant WS moves and auto-attacks themselves, which make up roughly half of our overall Enmity generation. Which is why I made the suggestion of an Enmity bonus based on damage taken (possibly getting the bonus before damage is reduced by block in the calculation.)

Hoshi brought up a good point however, I can see with the current trends people might favor the offensive stance over the defensive one, adding a bit more dynamic into the works. Like using the Offensive stance for initial TP and hate generation, and falling back on the defensive stance later in the fight for Astral Flow or low HP or something.

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S.Coheir, I would totally rip on you for saying that dmg output is half the enmity generation that PLD can accrue, but I know you're smarter than that. You're not the typical person I've seen so far ranting on about how PLD tanking is so weak and SE needs to overhaul the whole idea. I've agreed with you on most of your posts, so I'll just take a slight jab to the ribs for this one in saying: (bear in mind, I know XIV is nothing like XI, nor do I want it to be, I'm just bringing it up as a point)
Remember when PLD got that spiffy new Nyzule WS, the enmity based one. Can't remember the name of it, I quit like 3 years ago. Anyhow, people generally started trying to DD tank on PLD, and failed uber hard at it. It was a massive influx of "hey let's use Joyeuse and HASTE/ACC gear and not worry about enmity at all. omg this WS owns so much I can hold hate and do DMG now!" .....no. In some cases, it worked, because you had 4 /thf's pounding 1500's on you all day long. But the general rule of thumb in XI was that a PLD did not have it's enmity generation through damage output. It was minor, if even a factor. I usually did Flat Blade for the chance to stun and pop a Cure IV if I needed it. Dropping Cure IV's always was an epic way to generate some enmity if it got pulled.

But, I don't want to get out of line here. Generally, damage output has never been a strong point of PLD in the terms of tanking. You need to buff Enmity, HP and defense too much to stack offensive stats for it to be effective. If that's the route SE wants to take.. well then they just made a weak warrior with the ability to cure. That's about it.

Love the idea of stances, if MNK, WAR, WHM, and BRD all get some form of stance that alters their abilities I don't see why the other jobs can't also have them, actually I think it was a mistake to "NOT" give the other jobs a stance.

I don't know that an offensive stance is really a very PLDey kind of thing, but for GLA it would make sense so why not. I might go more toward a lowered shield bash recast and increased dmg from it rather than a shield auto-attack. As well as increased dmg from standard attacks, maybe increased crit rate, considering that really criting 50% of the time would more than make up your normally low as hell dmg. Of course the downside needs to balance it or you'll get people Offense tanking everything turtling for 1 hit then switching right back to finish the fight we do already have WAR doing just that and it'd still be better at it then a PLD.

The defensive stance makes damn good sense for both, Gladiators used shields in very defensive ways while closing ranks with an enemy and even in close quarters combat very much the way you described not swinging constantly but only after deflecting an attack when an opening presents itself, currently our Phalanx does that splendidly except for it's super low dmg maybe it should have a crit rate+ modifier w/ the enmity bump. If the blocked hits simply generated enmity proportional to the dmg blocked it would more than make up for the lack of auto-attack too.

1.22b they are apparently doign something with PLD so lets hope for the best =)

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Originally Posted by Taggerung5

S.Coheir, I would totally rip on you for saying that dmg output is half the enmity generation that PLD can accrue, but I know you're smarter than that. You're not the typical person I've seen so far ranting on about how PLD tanking is so weak and SE needs to overhaul the whole idea. I've agreed with you on most of your posts, so I'll just take a slight jab to the ribs for this one in saying: (bear in mind, I know XIV is nothing like XI, nor do I want it to be, I'm just bringing it up as a point)

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Fair enough, I suppose I should have explained myself a little bit more on this point sense I know our damage output is pathetic. Basically with the defensive stance we would only have our spike hate abilities to generate hate with, they typically have a recast of 30 seconds or more, most wielding roughly 500-600 Enmity apiece. Keeping that in mind our DoT with auto-attacks provide maybe 10%-15% (maybe 20% in some cases) overall Enmity, with our Weaponskills making up another 20-30% Enmity from spamming Flatblade Combos every 10 seconds and Gorging/Spirits combos when the opportunity arises. Considering both Spirits and Flatblade combos have Enmity spikes attributed to them they make up a decent portion of our ability to control hate.

Now keeping that in mind, without our ability to reliably gain TP through auto-attacks there won't be as much WS spamming, even with our pathetic damage losing our ability to spam Flatblade/Spirits reliably takes out a good chunk of our threat generation, unless there was a good TP generation bonus outside of Outmaneuver on blocks to let us keep throwing WS's out, or at least a heavy Enmity bonus when you block damage with your shield to help make up for it.

I hope that clarifies what I was getting at a bit more reliably.

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Originally Posted by SwordCoheir

I hope that clarifies what I was getting at a bit more reliably.

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Yeah, totally. See I knew you had it in ya!

I love the idea even though it needs some tweaking to prevent it from being OP or making PLD a low skill pick up and play job. (not that it shouldn't but tanking needs some degree of skill to do, right?)

I can see the defensive stance kicking ass on bosses and such but in situations like Ifrit when he jumps and you need to move a few steps forward to prevent him from standing behind you or when Garuda's area does its "thing" and you have to keep moving, or needing to run to take cover behind a rock.

Maybe when you're in shield stance you're limited to slow walking? (why can't we walk in active mode anyway? this needs to be addressed!) or just out right being deactivated if you move? (in that case it needs a short recast)

The Gladiator stance on the other hand I have nothing to add to.


Lets hope a rep take a look at this thread.

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Originally Posted by Taggerung5

S.Coheir, I would totally rip on you for saying that dmg output is half the enmity generation that PLD can accrue, but I know you're smarter than that. You're not the typical person I've seen so far ranting on about how PLD tanking is so weak and SE needs to overhaul the whole idea. I've agreed with you on most of your posts, so I'll just take a slight jab to the ribs for this one in saying: (bear in mind, I know XIV is nothing like XI, nor do I want it to be, I'm just bringing it up as a point)
Remember when PLD got that spiffy new Nyzule WS, the enmity based one. Can't remember the name of it, I quit like 3 years ago. Anyhow, people generally started trying to DD tank on PLD, and failed uber hard at it. It was a massive influx of "hey let's use Joyeuse and HASTE/ACC gear and not worry about enmity at all. omg this WS owns so much I can hold hate and do DMG now!" .....no. In some cases, it worked, because you had 4 /thf's pounding 1500's on you all day long. But the general rule of thumb in XI was that a PLD did not have it's enmity generation through damage output. It was minor, if even a factor. I usually did Flat Blade for the chance to stun and pop a Cure IV if I needed it. Dropping Cure IV's always was an epic way to generate some enmity if it got pulled.

But, I don't want to get out of line here. Generally, damage output has never been a strong point of PLD in the terms of tanking. You need to buff Enmity, HP and defense too much to stack offensive stats for it to be effective. If that's the route SE wants to take.. well then they just made a weak warrior with the ability to cure. That's about it.

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Atonement.

The way it was used was not by entirely focusing on DDing, you played the same way. PLD's TP was used mostly for 2 things, Chivalry (Turn TP to MP) and Spirits within (@full TP you deal damage equal to 45% of your current HP), what Atonement did was take Spirit's place since it can be used at 100tp for 750 damage so used three times you did 2250 damage which is ALOT more than what spirits did and that much damage was a massive enmity boost and most optimizing anybody did to effectively use Atonement was use a Joyeuse (occ.atks twice) over the Mac+1 enmity sword and a haubergeon over AF2 body (+atk +10-12 acc) and accuracy food (sole sushi) over Tav tacos (DEF food) just so more attacks landed to speed up the TP building to use it more, however PLD/NIN relied on haste to keep shadows up and spam flash instead of stacking HP and blood tanking, and it worked great.

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Originally Posted by Arkine

Atonement.

The way it was used was not by entirely focusing on DDing, you played the same way. PLD's TP was used mostly for 2 things, Chivalry (Turn TP to MP) and Spirits within (@full TP you deal damage equal to 45% of your current HP), what Atonement did was take Spirit's place since it can be used at 100tp for 750 damage so used three times you did 2250 damage which is ALOT more than what spirits did and that much damage was a massive enmity boost and most optimizing anybody did to effectively use Atonement was use a Joyeuse (occ.atks twice) over the Mac+1 enmity sword and a haubergeon over AF2 body (+atk +10-12 acc) and accuracy food (sole sushi) over Tav tacos (DEF food) just so more attacks landed to speed up the TP building to use it more, however PLD/NIN relied on haste to keep shadows up and spam flash instead of stacking HP and blood tanking, and it worked great.

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My point was simply that when people realised that Atonement could do some nice dmg previously unseen by normal plds, that's all people were concerned with.

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Originally Posted by Taggerung5

My point was simply that when people realised that Atonement could do some nice dmg previously unseen by normal plds, that's all people were concerned with.

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When not tanking, I'm a greatsword paladin and I do decent damage. :D

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Originally Posted by Denmo

I'm all for utilizing my shield more.

http://jedifilmmaker.files.wordpress...rvcno1_500.gif

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That, my friend, has been done before, and worked like a charm. Good pulling tool, too...

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Originally Posted by Duelle

That, my friend, has been done before, and worked like a charm. Good pulling tool, too...

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Was annoying to get hit by it in PvP before they took Vengeance out of PvP. Man it hurt.


I think a 40% general damage reduction (I'm assuming this is magic, too) for block stance is too much, (Just think of Sentinel on Ifrit vs. Hellfire) I think SE is hesitant to buff PLD too much because they don't want to make the game too easy. Maybe 40% physical damage reduction, but lower for magic.

Maybe 10-20% for magic since block rate is already 100% in that stance and due to recent changes, this means according to the writeup, the stance will grant MP AND you can just sit there and cast cures on everyone without being interrupted at all.

I know this thread was started before the recent updates, but I would like to point out that we more or less got a defensive stance in divine veil. 100% block rate 1/3 of the time. So, as you said, you can use it to tell coincounter to get stuffed. It also made outmanouver useful cus it gave a steady supply of blocks to get our MP back. Perhaps a similar cool down, maybe also on 1min recast and up for 20 seconds, of your offensive variety would be enough to bring this into check. It would provide the slight single target threat increase we need (I know you aren't interested in hearing too much about increasing pld's emnity, but if you can do it without relyiing on warrior like damage, then it shoudl be done, because really that's why no one uses pld--they are great defensively, but they slow the runs down and make them more dangerous because threat is too low). Aesthetically, I LOVE the idea of our shield being part of the auto attack sequence, cus that just is how you fight with a shield. Maybe we could get a "Shield Assault" skill that is similar to spinning heel, it brings in shield (kick) attacks for a short time with all individual hits doing a little less. It would be a good TP charge cd, for when you don't need to worry too much about staying alive and just want more TP. This would aslo make a "dd pld" more potent... though lol at that idea almost entirely.


Still think we should just see wardrum doubled and riot blade made aoe!