Paladin Redesign Theorycraft by Miyoru Utadaeshi

I am Miyoru Utadaeshi from Leviathan, a Paladin main who has been playing the job since the Alphascape raids in Stormblood.

Why Redesign?

In light of developer comments about Paladin buffs in patch 6.21, I thought it would be fun to come up with a concept for a new Paladin rotation that keeps the core identity of Paladin intact, while better aligning it with the standard 2 minute raid buff burst windows. For me, the core identity of Paladin is having a mix of GCD actions throughout a roughly 1minute loop. A job like Dark Knight mostly uses a stable 123 combo with occasional burst GCDs, Paladin has a combo with 2 finishers, Atonement, Holy Spirit, and Confiteor+blades combo.

Redesign Goals

In designing this new rotation, I had a few high level goals in mind that I wanted the rotation to follow:

• Fixed 60s rotation loop at 2.5s GCD.
• This is to better make PLD gear work with other jobs, and to avoid having weird rotation hiccups due to some actions being spells and therefore locked to 2.5s regardless of skillspeed. This results in a 60s loop of 24 actions
• Universal damage buff Fight or Flight.
• Right now, Paladin essentially has two burst phases, a strong one about 20s long in the form of Requiescat spell phase, and a 25s long physical burst phase from Fight or Flight. Because Paladin’s burst is spread out over 45s, it is unable to fit all of its high potency actions within the shorter raid buff windows of 15-30s. As a result, its overall damage is reduced compared to jobs which are able to fit most of their potency in the shorter raid buff window. By making FoF a universal damage buff, PLD could fit both its strong spells and physical oGCDs into the same buff window, concentrating more of its potency into one window, similar to many other jobs.
• More oGCDs in burst.
• A large source of Dark Knight and Gunbreaker being so effective in raid buffs is their higher number of oGCDs that they can pool and use under raid buffs. I believe shifting potency onto oGCDs is necessary for Paladin to have more concentrated burst windows without making their sustained damage too high and being overtuned.
• Maintain Damage over Time management.
• Although it’s true that dots do not work as well in fights where the boss becomes untargetable for a period, managing dots has been one of the core aspects of Paladin's identity since at least Stormblood. For this reason, I want to keep Goring Blade in the rotation in some way.

I've created a Google doc with the full write up, including images of the rotation and potency values that you can find here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

I am open to any feedback. I'm pretty proud of this redesign concept, and would be happy if the Developers implemented some of these ideas.

Thanks for reading!

I don't really like this rotation. Merging physical and magical phase feels so wrong. You might as well remove FoF completely and adjust potencies, no point in layering 2 buffs on top of each other. I get what you're getting at, this makes PLD viable for current 2min burst meta, but I would prefer if rotation was more or less same, just make it possible to use requiescat in burst window (other than 18s prepull, that is pretty cursed).

But my biggest gripe is all the double weaving. If you look at your example rotation, you weave oGCD attunements and intervene in between spells, which is obviously nonsense, you can't utilize spell's range when oGCDs are melee. So solution would be to cram all the oGCDs (2x intervene + expla + scorn + 3x attunement = 7 oGCDs + 1 more to active requiescat) into 3 melee GCDs. Even if you double weaved it all, you would end up using first holy spirit in melee. And honestly, all this oGCD spam starts feeling like mindless DRK button mash.

Problem could be solved without all these drastic changes. Just finally merge SkS with SpS to somewhat fix alignment and remove 1 GCD from loop (just remove 1 holy spirit). But I like the idea of making goring blade like GNBs sonic break. Without combo requirement and if it was not affected FoF, you could get opener with DoT as your first GCD and go straight into magic phase.

Merging of magic phase with melee oGCDs was done with current fight design in mind. The developers have shown that they are designing encounters with full melee uptime in mind. The most amount of time that disengages are ever required is about 1 GCD. My proposed rotation has 7 oGCDs for 10 GCD windows in the opener, and 9 oGCDs for 10 GCD windows from 1m onwards. These can easily be weaved earlier on, leaving up to 5 GCDs of ranged attacks on the high end. This would be more than enough ranged attacks for full uptime on every modern encounter. As for overlapping FoF and Requiescat, a large reason why PLD underperforms right now is that its burst is too spread out. 45s of burst (25s of FoF, 20s of magic actions) is too long for the raid buffs in this game. The only way to make PLD work with current burst design is to shorten it's burst duration. "Overlapping" FoF with requiescat is the way I went about doing this. In addition, many jobs overlap their damage buffs. Dragoon comes to mind as a job which does this.

I can understand disliking oGCD spam, but I think that is the only way to allow for pooling potency for burst windows without making the rest of the rotation overpowered. It also reduces reliance upon crit RNG by having potency spread out over more actions.

I believe merging sks and sps would be a good change to make, but I don't expect the developers would make that change mid-expansion, and I think they would consider the merging/removal of a substat a more drastic change than changing the rotation of one job. That is why I ultimately didn't make use of that in my theorycraft, although I did consider it.

Thanks for your feedback!

I like this direction quite a bit. It's a shame we lose RoH in favor of RA.

I do have one thing that bothers me: Goring Blade and the RA combo are a bit too similar to GNB. I understand Goring Blade being on a 20 second CD would change it up a bit, but RA-combo being on a 30 second CD is a little too similar to GNB's Gnashing Fang. DRK already has too much of WAR's ideas, it would blow if PLD got some of GNB's ideas too leaving no tank truly unique.

I do like the ideas in here though! I would love to see Savage Blade make a come back, and seeing Shield Bash in there is pretty cool.

It is pretty similar to GNB you're right. It's a consequence of atonements being made into oGCDs. I needed a way to make atonements not come up all the time, and the way i came up with that was putting the combo that generates the stack on a CD. If they were generated another way, the CD on the combo could be removed. The shield bash combo would also be removed as a consequence though.

Looked at the documents and stuff, thinking about it this seems like a pretty decent rework if Paladin has to be reworked.

Not sure how I'd feel about PLD becoming more like Gunbreaker, I mean it's better then Paladin becoming a warrior. It's something I'd actually have to play through but I already enjoy gunbreaker so this would seem better then any sort of rework I can imagine happen, I would likely prefer current Paladin to this version, I don't really have any complaints with how current Paladin plays, but I understand it's struggling to output a strong burst as it's a sustained job, as my main complaints with PLD is actually it's defensives/utility isn't really currently that great, I do hope they make changes to that as well

I think I might enjoy this hypothetical version of PLD but I don't think it will be as good as current Paladins general rotational loop, It's a pretty good job compared to what a lot of people have thought up of, at least I know if "pld" is ruined I'd move to gunbreaker, so this kind of the 2nd best thing unless the SE rework generally somehow is more interesting then current PLD, but this still has a decent chunk of magic and melee which is what i really enjoy about PLD ascetically being a magic swordsman.

I think it has enough to feel different from gunbreaker but also at the same time you can clearly tell they'd play somewhat similar.

We have DRK and GNB as OGCD spammers already, and do not need a third while there are only four tanks. If you want to redesign things, adhere to what PLD currently is, or devise novel ideas. Each job should feel unique, even within a role. GNB works well, and it's great that people enjoy it, but other job concepts should exist for those who enjoy other types of game play. The game is better for it.

While it would be mildly amusing if PLD got a Scourge knock-off, Goring Blade being a combo finisher means you have to commit to it. There is a simple but engaging dichotomy between reapplying Goring, or going for more Atonements (e.g. boss is invulnerable/dead soon). Minor things like this raise the skill ceiling of a job without making it more difficult to achieve basic competency. Your version is just a button you press whenever it lights up. The 20 second cooldown means you could not even multi-DoT with it, unlike previous iterations of this type of skill. This idea succeeds in keeping DoT maintenance on PLD, but fails to be fun. The fun of DoTs is in their applications, not their maintenance. If you rolled all the potency of this DoT into flat damage on the skill, it would be almost exactly the same. If you feel DoT game play is a central aspect of PLD, then design something that is more than just flavor.

More subjectively, I quite like that PLD does not have a 1-2-3 filler combo. Filler of this sort is the antithesis of fun to me. When broken into groups of three (or four for magic), PLD never does the same thing twice in a basic rotation. I also enjoy DRG for this reason. Here's hoping we do get a proper shield attack in the future though.

Ultimately, unless the developers decide to reevaluate their stance on the game, PLD will be deleted, and something new will wear its name tag. I hope the new job is fun, and has a reasonable skill ceiling for those who want to get the most out of this game. If we are lucky, it may even resemble PLD too.

I don't want a ocgd spam job. A reason I went pally is because i'm not spamming. I also don't want button bloat job which Paladin feel like it could be next expansion if nothing is done.
I will agree Pally need qol. I think Atonement is pretty unsatisfying. Gore dot I think should be 30s. Why is it 21s? Aoe feel niche. I forget magic circle most time then not. HShellton should help vs dots. Intervention needs more. Maybe Paladin get 5% damage reduce if place on a party member whom gets the 10%+ still.

I don't care if the job get easier. I'm all for it and if the job stays the same I'll get used to it but again, Paladin needs qol; Be it a rework or damage buff (and delete Atonement).

Edit: I'm not saying the job need be easy per say as much I like it to be but it shouldn't like as it is now.

Personally, Fight or Flight is no longer a skill but a buff you get from Royal Authority when combo is complete. Lasts for 20 seconds.

Also

Atonement is now oGCD with 1s recast. Atonement refreshes Fight or Flight buff to max 20 seconds. (Each atonement refreshing should help with uptime if you peal off to long and keep you from drifting really bad, even though it's over kill to keep refreshing...so is 5 Edges during DRK's opener overlapping your darkness buff)

Now you can weave Atonment during your burst between 4 Holy Spirits or during your Confiteor Combo. This way your burst will always be under FoF buff (much like WAR,DRK) but you must maintain it with weaving atonement. Why paladin can't or could never weave atonement is beyond me (which it should have been able to do that since get go)

This way you can hold onto your atonement and delay them if you wish. Or if you peel off the boss...your still range with Holy Spirit spam or Blade Spam...either way you have 20 seconds to get back and get in the atonement to refresh Fight or Flight.

Fight or Flight is essentially relegated to a Darkness or Surging Tempest buff. This way Paladin has to sustain FoF Buff rather then time it perfectly every single 60 seconds. If paladin wishes to stay the sustain job and with a constant Fight or Flight buff, adjust potencies accordingly.

Basically every other Req burst is under raid buffs like it is now, but Paladin isn't held to an extremely rigid rotation hand cuffed to your fight or flight, and you can now weave atonement which increases Paladin overall damage during raid buffs.

Simple Opener to reopener.

Holy Spirit + Intervene (Prepull)
Fast Blade
Riot Blade
Potion
Royal Authority (x3 atonement charges, lasts 30seconds) (granted FoF Buff 20sec) + (weave)Request a cat

Fast Blade + (double weave)Espacion +Circle of Scorn
Riot Blade (weave) Intervene
Goring Blade
Holy Spirit + (weave)Atonement
Holy Spirit + (weave)Atonement
Holy Spirit + (weave)Atonement
Holy Spirit
Confiteor
Blade of Faith
Blade of Truth
Blade of Valor
Re-opener

Alternate Opener to reopener. (prolly won't get atonement under raid buffs)

Holy Spirit + Intervene (Prepull)
Fast Blade
Riot Blade
Potion
Royal Authority (x3 atonement charges, lasts 30seconds) (granted FoF Buff 20sec) + (weave)Request a cat

Fast Blade + (double weave)Espacion +Circle of Scorn
Riot Blade (weave) Intervene
Goring Blade + (weave)Atonement
Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit
Confiteor
Blade of Faith + (weave)Atonement
Blade of Truth + (weave)Atonement
Blade of Valor + (weave)Atonement
Re-opener

Whatever is used...the fact is this is MUCH more flexible and no longer puts the Paladin at risk of drifting out of raid buffs or missing Fight or Flight by 1 GCD and just being screwed. And it doesn't change the opener THAT much. Plus you won't have to use a 20second timer prepull for Fight or Flight alignment.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sqwall

Personally, Fight or Flight is no longer a skill but a buff you get from Royal Authority when combo is complete. Lasts for 20 seconds.

Also

Atonement is now oGCD with 1s recast. Atonement refreshes Fight or Flight buff to max 20 seconds...

Now you can weave Atonment during your burst between 4 Holy Spirits or during your Confiteor Combo. This way your burst will always be under FoF buff (much like WAR,DRK) but you must maintain it with weaving atonement. Why paladin can't or could never weave atonement is beyond me (which it should have been able to do that since get go)

...

Fight or Flight is essentially relegated to a Darkness or Surging Tempest buff. This way Paladin has to sustain FoF Buff rather then time it perfectly every single 60 seconds. If paladin wishes to stay the sustain job and with a constant Fight or Flight buff, adjust potencies accordingly.

...

Whatever is used...the fact is this is MUCH more flexible and no longer puts the Paladin at risk of drifting out of raid buffs or missing Fight or Flight by 1 GCD and just being screwed. And it doesn't change the opener THAT much. Plus you won't have to use a 20second timer prepull for Fight or Flight alignment.

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But this doesn't actually address issues people has except the cursed opener, infact, it makes things worse. Away from the opener, you will have the usual Goring blade with 2 RA combos after. So, rather than dropping an atonement, as is done now to better line up raid buffs, you want to replace those 2 Atonements with a 3 GCD combo (because lets be honest, noone is going to pass up all that damage) which drifts the rotation further away than it already does. Further more, it is just alot of oGCD spam. Goring > Royal > Royal means that, after the first Royal, you have to use Atonement on every GCD before you use Royal again to not waste stacks and you have to do this twice every minute. You get some breathing room with Goring Blade and the magic phase, but it is still 12 oGCDs to use in the 60 seconds, which is on average, once every 5 seconds, or once every 2 GCDs. You will be more busy in the non magic phase than the actual burst phase itself. How does that make sense?

Add onto that the fact FoF basically becomes a non issue in upkeep. The only management you need to do is to make sure you use 1 Atonement just before Confiteor and it will never drop off (where you put it in your openers, FoF will drop off for at least 1 GCD), which is the only actual management you have, it might as well not exist at that point. At least DRK has to balance their MP usage so that they can keep Darkside going, or Warrior has to keep an eye out so that they can use a different combo, but this concept doesn't even have that.

On a separate note, if they merged SS and SS into one stat, PLD would still need a GCD of 2.3 seconds to fit everything in a 1 minute window (26 GCDs over 60 seconds). This would mean giving PLD a speed boost (would require an ~8% speed up) as well as a merging the 2 stats (or a trait that does the same thing), which I don't personally see them doing, but it would be interesting to have a quicker tank nonetheless.

Edit: With some thought, I can think of a way to make it work along with making PLD a speedy tank so that it can fit into the 1 minute burst windows. First, change FoF so that it is a damage and speed buff. If you then change Royal Authority so that it only gives 1 stack of Atonement, but allow it to stack up to 2 or 3 (undecided). With this simple change, every minute you will generate 4 Sword Oath stacks, 2 or 3 of which you can save for the burst phase, with the remaining one(s) being used whenever outside it. It is still a point to be made that FoF will basically never fall off except during the magic burst, however, with at least 2 Sword Oath stacks, you have a bit more flexibility in where you use them and you aren't tied to having it on a specific oGCD window, this is why I allowed stacking of the buff. Overall, I would suspect this is a nice balance between keeping the original idea intact but making it possibly feel better to play.

instead of like GnB i prefer if PLD are more like DRK. PLD are DRK twins IMHO. PLD excel in def and utility while DRK at dmg. PLD healing and magic phase should be there too, bcse i think that are PLD identity.

Skill Change

Holy Spirit

- oGCD
- Learned at lvl 30
- potency 420
- cast time 1s
- recast time 5s
- mana cost 2000
- effect : sacred claim = give 10% damage reduce for 30s. can be extended to 60s
- upgrade =

• Divine magic mastery I ( lvl 64 ) = prevent casting interuption via damage taken

• Divine magic mastery II ( lvl 84 ) = increase potency to 420

Holy circle

- oGCD
- Learned at lvl 40
- potency 150
- cast time 1s
- recast time 5s
- mana cost 2000
- effect : sacred claim = give 10% damage reduce for 30s. can be extended to 60s
- upgrade =

• Divine Magic Mastery I ( lvl 64 ) = prevent casting interuption via damage taken

• Divine magic mastery II ( lvl 84 ) = increase potency to 150

Shield Bash

- oGCD
- potency : 300
- cast : instant
- recast : 60s
- effect : reduce enemy def by 5% ( or raise damage by 5% ) for 10s

Sheltron

- upgrade :

• Enhanced Sheltron ( lvl 74 ) = Give knight resolve effect ( 10% reduc for 6s ) and extend duration to 6s

• Sheltron Mastery ( Lvl 82 ) = Give knight benediction ( regen with 250 potency for 12s ) and extend duration to 8s

Cover replaced with Intervention

- intervention learned at lvl 45
- cost : 50 oath gauge
- upgrade :

• Enhanced Intervention ( lvl 74 ) = give knight resolve ( 10 % damage reduce for 6s ) and extend duration to 8s

• Intervention Mastery ( Lvl 82 ) = give knight benediction ( regen with 250 potency for 12s )

Divine Veil

- recast : 90s
- still need to be healed by spell but now PLD will get barrier effect to
- barrier duration : 30s
- upgrade :

• Divine Veil Mastery ( Lvl 88 ) = cure 400 potency when barrier broken or time out, give knight benediction ( regen with 250 potency for 12s )

Clemency

- cast : instant
- recast : 25s
- MP cost : 4000
- cure potency : 1000 cure potency to target and 50% to other party member


Passage of Arm

- cast : instant
- recast : 120s
- chaneling for 18s
- effect : give all party in 30 yalm 15% damage reduction for 5s ( refresh if move to PLD wings )

FoF

- cast : instant
- recast : 60s
- potency : 250 potency
- effect : increase 8 weapon skill by25% physical damage for 30s

Requescat

- learned at Lvl 80
- cast : instant
- recast : 60s
- potency : 300 potency
- effect : enable blade of faith combo ( confiteor ( Lvl 80 ) > Blade combo ( Lvl 90 each cost 1500 MP ) )

burst opener will be consist of req phase ( 4 GCD ) > FoF phase ( 8 GCD ) using 12 GCD in total, i think this will inline more with nowadays 2mnt burst gameplay.

Why is everyone trying make pally into a ogcd tank. Stop. We have 2 ogcd tanks already. Don't need a third. Many pally don't want a speedy tank. We picked paladin because it doesn't have ogcd spam.

I feel like most of PLD's problems could be fixed if they merged SKS and SPS into one stat that affects both.

Too many of the rework suggestions here would just make PLD an oGCD spamfest, we've already got DRK and GNB to fulfil that during burst phases, I'd rather focus on smaller tweaks to the damage rotation to fit it in line with the 2 minute burst rather than completely changing it into an entirely new job. Although if I had my way I'd rather we not have the 2 minute burst and move back to the varied burst windows of previous expansions, at least then we wouldn't need any major changes to the job.

But if we're going to theorycraft changes, I may as well take a stab at what I wouldn't mind playing (or tolerating). The main things I'd personally want to see reworked on PLD is its mitigation kit rather than their damage kit, we lack a personal cooldown like Thrill of Battle, Dark Mind, and Camouflage, and blocks (and in turn Holy Sheltron) don't mitigate DoTs or are useless while stunned. As for the damage kit, as much as I'd like to keep it, FoF doesn't work with the 2 minute window. The way PLD is designed pretty much tells the player "use physical phase first" as the magic phase ends on a DoT that can't stack with Goring Blade, is as strong as a buffed Goring Blade, and since you want to start FoF just before Goring, this ends up delaying FoF in a magic first opener by a good 40 seconds unless used pre-pull. The solution I came to was to just scrap it in favour of buffing all physical attacks by about 15% and making sure Goring Blade had a DoT similar in power to Blade of Valor by default.

Fight or Flight - Removed
Fast Blade - Increased potency to 220
Riot Blade - Increased potency to 340
Royal Authority - Increased potency to 480
Atonement - Increased potency to 500
Goring Blade - Increased potency to 310, DoT potency increased to 90 (current FoF Goring DoT is around 82, this would be a slight buff)
Blade of Valor - DoT potency increased to 90 to be on par with my Goring Blade
Intervene - Increased potency to 200
Circle of Scorn - Increased potency to 120, DoT potency increased to 40
Expiacion - Increased potency to 500
Skill Speed and Spell Speed - Merged into a singular Agility attribute
Sheltron and Holy Sheltron - Now forces blocks while stunned

The biggest change I'd want is, and something that's far less likely for Square to do, would be to overhaul a lot of the defensive abilities. But since we're theorycrafting and having a bit of fun, I'll bring out my wishlist of changes.

Holy Sheltron: 90s Recast, 50 Oath Gauge
-Blocks all incoming damage and increases block damage reduction to 30%, 20s
*Becomes a new action, Aegis Boon, upon activation
This new version of Holy Sheltron is our unique cooldown in similar vein to Thrill or Camouflage, albeit more powerful as it comes with a gauge cost

Aegis Boon:
-Restores health equivalent to 70% of the damage mitigated by Holy Sheltron
*Can't be placed on the hotbar*
*Only a single use with every cast of Holy Sheltron*
*Automatically used upon Holy Sheltron expiring if not used before*
A new (read: old from 1.0) healing action that I thought would be kinda neat, it rewards good use of my version of Holy Sheltron
A quick example of the health restored would be like this; a boss uses a tankbuster that deals 100k damage, Holy Sheltron reduces that to 70k (30k is mitigated), 70% of that 30k is 21k, so Aegis Boon would be a 21k heal. Think of it like a personal Macrocosmos, but for damage reduced rather than damage taken.

Intervention: 1s Recast, 50 Oath Gauge
-Reduces incoming damage by 20%, 8s
-Further reduces incoming damage by 15%, 4s
-Applies 250 potency HoT, 12s
Intervention now serves as both our co-tank mitigation and personal mitigation rather than having it split between Sheltron and Intervention, my version won't be boosted with Rampart or Sentinel.

Divine Veil: 90s Recast
-Create a barrier on yourself and all nearby allies equal to 10% of your maximum HP
-Applies a 150 potency HoT upon barrier breaking, 12s
Divine Veil no longer requires the heal to activate, at this point it mostly feels like busywork as our basic rotation will activate it most of the time anyway. The HoT may be a bit overkill though, but I think it's better than having healing be applied before damage goes out like it currently does

Cover: 120s Recast, 50 Oath Gauge
-Redirects incoming damage intended for targeted ally to yourself, also blocks all incoming damage, 12s
-Applies a 250 potency HoT, 12s
Cover at the moment is extremely niche and not worth the cost most of the time compared to Intervention, at least here it would still provide the defensive boons that other Oath abilities have.

Hallowed Ground: 360s Recast
-Become impervious to most incoming damage, 10s
Hallowed Ground's current cooldown is just too long in comparison to other tank cooldowns, ideally I'd rather have all the invulns brought closer together in their recast timers, with only 30-40 seconds between them rather than the 60s between them now.

Thoughts? Damage section is a little conservative on buffs, but I mostly wanted to keep changes there fairly realistic, the most drastic thing there was the removal of FoF.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

Too many of the rework suggestions here would just make PLD an oGCD spamfest, we've already got DRK and GNB to fulfil that during burst phases, I'd rather focus on smaller tweaks to the .

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Just gonna cutdown this read above for more context

Rotation/Damage changes:
I think FOF being removed is fine in general I don't want it to be but it's not a deal breaker and wouldn't ruin pld for me personally, Aslong as the Numbers fit PLD around Gnb/drk's level it doesn't matter too much

Utility/Defensives: (The stuff that I find more interesting ^^)

Holy Shelltron/Aegis Boon: In general I like this ability it feels certainly pretty powerful my main issue is the oath gauge cost I feel like it could be on 120 or something and not cost anything, Intervention servers pratically the same purpose Mitigating slightly more damage but not having the strong heal from the boon effect, I dunno I rather this ability be separate from oath I really like the idea I just think it's too similar to what intervention servers considering interventions heal is generally around 16-20k depending on stuff, so even I'm unsure if it would that strong.
Intervention: 100% Agree, just please change the intervention animation it looks underwhelming compared to holy shelltron xD.
Divine Veil: I love this feels powerful feels right for the Paladin, a job that is viewed as the utility tank, it's only like 600 total heal so i don't think it's over the top (current is 400)
Cover: I don't mind this seems alright seems like cover would be alright anything to make this skill better
HG: I think HG should be the longest that said I agree with reducing the invul, I believe all invuls should be 30 seconds apart from each other instead of a minute, But overall I agree

Overall I really like your utility changes, really makes Paladin feel more like the team support but also a strong tank.

I'd like to add personally Id wanna see some healing removed from holy spirit/blades combo, but put into PLDs actions, so they could make use of it more as a OT and have even more control as a MT.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Holy Shelltron/Aegis Boon: In general I like this ability it feels certainly pretty powerful my main issue is the oath gauge cost I feel like it could be on 120 or something and not cost anything, Intervention servers pratically the same purpose Mitigating slightly more damage but not having the strong heal from the boon effect, I dunno I rather this ability be separate from oath I really like the idea I just think it's too similar to what intervention servers considering interventions heal is generally around 16-20k depending on stuff, so even I'm unsure if it would that strong.

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The main reason I kept a gauge cost was because I felt like currently Oath gauge is just there to regulate Sheltron/Intervention, it could easily be replaced by making those skills a 20 second cooldown with 2 charges, with none of the drawbacks that downtime incurs. So I mostly just wanted something to make Oath feel more meaningful as a mechanic to PLD. Remember that it's effectively Sentinel with Ramparts cooldown and a heal that can be potentially stronger than Knight's Benediction, even if it was moved to 120s I think I'd still keep the gauge cost just to not make it seem so busted in comparison. But I think numbers could be tweaked there, I just liked the idea behind Aegis Boon and wanted to get it across somehow, kinda makes me happy that you like the idea too.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

I'd like to add personally Id wanna see some healing removed from holy spirit/blades combo, but put into PLDs actions, so they could make use of it more as a OT and have even more control as a MT.

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I agree as well, having heals tied to our rotation for sustain mostly comes across as lazy. We have about 3200 healing potency put inside our magic phase that I'd rather have more control over. One option I had also thought about was making Clemency an oGCD that we can spend Oath on. Only problem there is it has to be competitive with Sheltron/Intervention HoT + mitigation, so keeping it at 1000 potency may not be enough, or maybe it could be strong enough, so long as the burst heal saves someone it could still be useful.

Response to above (No quote due to limits)

I like the idea of PLD having more then 1 gauge cost right now, because cover is so rarely used (might be more used with your suggested changes) it does become a holy shelltron/Intervention gauge. I like the idea of strategy on when to use your gauge ability ect. You're right the new shelltron being 20 seconds and potentially a strong heal ontop of that gives is a big advantage in intervention, but it does seem generally a stronger INT on the same gauge, I think it would be fine staying on it likely even used a lot when it's up, it would be great for hard hitting autos, New Dot effect (if blocks were to be useful against Damage over times, which I'd like). Regardless it will be powerful, maybe boosting up the healing aspect might work well if it was found too weak would be better then removing it from gauge.

This becomes something I think of when thinking about PLD.
I think clemency is currently fine? (Situational but it has it's place on PLD's hot bar Imo, for solo, when your healer is floor tanking or even in certain progression situations).
I think having something similar to Gunbreakers Aurora, Drks Oblation or Warriors equilibrium (I guess cover would be our current one? which tied to gauge and being weird as it is on a 120 while other tanks have 60 second gnb 2 stacks drk 2 stacks) just a slot for self/party member utility, I think something like a 800-1200 potency heal that might get stronger the lower the target hp (Essential dignity on ast basically) having this heal on a minute with 2 stacks could work, In turn we should reduce Req/blades healing by a lot so it's down to the PLD how they use their healing instead of it being uncontrollable, I wouldn't mind it going down from a 400 > 200? req heal or something pretty major for more controllable healing for self, your MT or just helping out a party member, If the req heal is a bit harsh Im sure the boon/more healing on OCGDs you suggested would make it fine, But even buffing stuff like the Regen on intervention would be nice (considering war gets a big 1600 heal for self and target on Nflash)

Just what comes to mind personally when I think of Ideas for PLD, I love how your idea looks at PLD's utility and generally improves them, I don't mind PLD being generally pretty defensive and having strong utility in turn for being "low dps for a tank" obviously we would want PLD to still be viable in all content and not have any issues it had with clearing, but if I was to make a tank slightly behind it would be warrior right now so having PLD on this similar level of strong defensive utility in my opinion is fine, Right now PLD arguably even struggles defensive wise (funny for the shield tank lol).