Reintroduce Goring blade it as a combo

As the title says, PLD needs another Combo and i think Goring blade can be reintroduced to fill that need, it will work as follows:

Combo 1: Royal Authority Combo:
FB -> RB -> RA: grants Divine Might + ATN ready

Combo 2: Goring Blade Combo:
FB -> RB -> GB : grants Sword Oath + ATN ready

Sword Oath:
Duration: 60 Seconds
Deals additional "Ranged" damage of 65 Potency with each Auto Attack
( for added visual effect, when Sword Oath is active Light "or Spirit" swords appears and fly to the target with each Auto Attack)

Other changes:

FoF combo action: instead of Goring blade we can have another action, i wish if it can be a faster or shorter version of Rage of Halone, if done then we can have another new attack as a prior version to Royal Authority.

Divine Might: healing from magic attacks is active only with Divine might spells, and to solve the odd Divine Might in the rotation, let Divine Might be consumed by Confiteor, adding additional 200 potency and grants a heal of 400 potency, the healing will be only on Confi. And not the follow up blade works.

Let me know what you think?

So this is a combo I press every 60 seconds then, right?

I already have two 60s combos though:

* FoF -> Goring Blade
* Imperator -> Swordgasm combo

Like, all you're doing is replacing the former, right? And I don't exactly see why. The effect isn't even really neat, as FoF is a damage increase, and Sword Oath is a damage increase, and while temporarily making our autoattack ranged is "neat", the actual gain from that is marginal. And if you want to replace Goring Blade with something else, then you're effectively advocating for 3 combos every 60s instead of 2, and that's it.

That is to say, you start with stating "Paladin needs another Combo" as a given, and, no it doesn't? We have way too many buttons already. xD And you want to add more!

That being said, Goring Blade should, well, gore. Cause a long DoT, maybe even 60s, instead of so much instant damage. No functional change, same overall damage if it's on me, just fit the name better.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

So this is a combo I press every 60 seconds then, right?

I already have two 60s combos though:

* FoF -> Goring Blade
* Imperator -> Swordgasm combo

Like, all you're doing is replacing the former, right? And I don't exactly see why. The effect isn't even really neat, as FoF is a damage increase, and Sword Oath is a damage increase, and while temporarily making our autoattack ranged is "neat", the actual gain from that is marginal. And if you want to replace Goring Blade with something else, then you're effectively advocating for 3 combos every 60s instead of 2, and that's it.

That is to say, you start with stating "Paladin needs another Combo" as a given, and, no it doesn't? We have way too many buttons already. xD And you want to add more!

That being said, Goring Blade should, well, gore. Cause a long DoT, maybe even 60s, instead of so much instant damage. No functional change, same overall damage if it's on me, just fit the name better.

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Yeah i see you point, i was thinking of making the PLD rotation reminiscent of the pre-rework PLD (GB into FoF+Req into 2 RA and repeat), my suggestion basically will make the PLD rotation flows as follows:

GB combo -> FoF Combo-> imperator bladeworks -> ATON Combo (FoF end) -> RA+ATON Combo -> HS -> RA+ATON Combo -> repeat.

As for the button bloat i think they can remove at least 2:

-Let Sheltron be targetable on self or others, and remove Intervention.

- let Divine Might upgrades Holy Spirit to Holy Circle, attacking target and surrounding enemies with fall-off damage.

I do agree that we need two combos.

I personally don't see the purpose of current flight or fight as the point was to have a separate burst button from requiescat, theirs no point in having a cooldown like FOF especially if we move goring blade outside of it again.

Here's my changes

• Goring Blade combo reintroduced, now grants a buff "Blessed Blade" which will grant your next royal Authority its stacks of sword oath and divine might. (Not using goring blade combo will result in no stacks or divine might)

• Shield Bash reworked as a cone stun, that is a off global cooldown that also deals damage, it would be on a 20s cooldown, gives plds more to weave.

• Fight or flight now becomes a early version of requiescat, imperator deals a 200 potency strike, also buffing your next 4 attacks by 25%, upgraded versions will still have the buffed 25% in addition to buffing the potency of spells

• Holy spirit & goring blade introduced at lvl30 (Spirits within moved to 45) Blessed blade will grant the effects of "blessed blade"

• Holy Sheltron/Sheltron now can target allies, Regular Sheltron grants a regen effect of 100 Potency, Intervention removed.

• Extra space - Holy spirit upgrades into Holy circle a cleave AOE version, Low blow & Interject merged into a skill that will apply a stun, if target cannot be stunned you will Interrupt target, 25s with two charges.

Fully agreed, we already have a 60s burst selfbuff, and that even enables a whole new combo, so it's strictly sperior to FoF and that effect can be fully merged.

I'd not do the Shield Bash thing though. For one, weaving is just finger busywork with no gameplay depth, and second it'd mess with one of the few cool situations, chain-stun in M6S. It'd be cool to have more gameplay in it, but I'd do that via adding some sort of defensive gameplay to it: Every X seconds, the next Shield Bash becomes "Concussive Shield Bash", applying a "concussion" debuff that reduces damage dealt to the Paladin who used it for a few seconds. Heck I could see that as our short-CD tbh, so every 20-30 seconds it has that effect. Quite fitting for a shield-bearing class to frequently bash enemies with it.

I'd totally be on board with a few more changes though. The level changes are a good idea. The HS/Intervention removal too, though I hope they get the cycle-CD faster than it is, or double weaving HS on us + HS on the other tank in the same weaving slot would probably clip the GCD but eh, minor issue.

I'd also:

* Remove Bulwark. Balance a self-defense-usable Shield Bash like I said above so it effectively replaces it.
* Re-work Holy Sheltron so the effective damage reductions are the same, but it's done via forced blocking + buff to blocked percentage. The blocking is moved here, more for lore/visual purposes. Ideally with an animation where we hold the shield higher/front in the initial 4s.
* If impossible to keep it functionally identical, maybe 100% block rate for 8s + 20% extra block percentage for 4s? Stronger in those 4s, weaker in the other 4s?

All I'm going to say is you have to be careful with how it will interact with the burst phase.

For example, in the past I have done rotations with Goring Blade being a 20 second DoT and 30 second DoT, neither works and I highly doubt a 60 second buff will work either.

For fun, I'll work it out;

Essentially, we are looking at 60 seconds worth of time between Goring Blade uses. At a base of 2.5 seconds, you have 24 GCDs to fill, minus 1 for Goring Blade, 4 for the magic swords then another 5 that accounts for the rest of the Goring Blade combo, we are at 10 GCDs so far, so 14 remaining, which does conveniently fit 2 full Royal Authority combos in.

So, how does it look in practice?

Fast > Riot > Goring > Con(1) > BoF(2) > BoT(3) > BoV(4) > Atone(5) > Sup(6) > Sep(7) > Fast(8) > Riot(9) > RA(10) > Atone(11) > Fast(12) > Riot(13) > Sup(14) > HS(15) > Sep(16) > RA(17) > Atone(18) > Fast(19) > Riot(20) > Sup(21) > HS(22) > Sep(23) > Goring (24) >>>

Your burst is now fixed every minute compared to now where it is based on your buffs that change every minute, even with 100% uptime. Now, whether you prefer that or the current one is down to the individual, however, for me, I would prefer the more flexible option we have now, makes it more interesting.

No thx, it is good as it is now, dont need more skill bloat.

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Originally Posted by Arohk

No thx, it is good as it is now, dont need more skill bloat.

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Go play gunbreaker or drk then, if you really enjoy 1, 2, 3. It's also not "skill bloat" to rework a existing skill.

Sorry but I don't want goring blade to remain a 60s burst button that doesn't interact with PLD's kit in anyway, we already have 4 60s burst buttons why do we even need goring blade? :)

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Go play gunbreaker or drk then, if you really enjoy 1, 2, 3. It's also not "skill bloat" to rework a existing skill.

Sorry but I don't want goring blade to remain a 60s burst button that doesn't interact with PLD's kit in anyway, we already have 4 60s burst buttons why do we even need goring blade? :)

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they can add more skills, but not more bloat to the hotbar, reduce the button bloat, then we can talk about adding more stuff.

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Originally Posted by Arohk

they can add more skills, but not more bloat to the hotbar, reduce the button bloat, then we can talk about adding more stuff.

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Bloat removed is easy on Paladin.

• Low Blow / Interject - merged so it does a stun, but if target cannot be stunned it will instead interrupt them (this applies to all tanks)
• Holy spirit - Now upgrades into Holy circle, holy circle is a cleave AOE attack like confiteor that does less on the rest of the enemies.
• Shield Bash - Removed (Unless they do something interesting with this skill)
• Intervention removed - Paladin can now target a player with holy sheltron (small recast like oblation so you can double target still)
• Fight or flight - upgrades into req, that upgrades into Imperator we don't need two burst buff skills.

5 Skills removed without changing the core of Paladin, I could likely go over more, but I'd love to see 5 skills gone for rotational and cool gameplay abilities paladin can get instead, the job is being held down by abilities that aren't even needed.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Bloat removed is easy on Paladin.

• Low Blow / Interject - merged so it does a stun, but if target cannot be stunned it will instead interrupt them (this applies to all tanks)
• Holy spirit - Now upgrades into Holy circle, holy circle is a cleave AOE attack like confiteor that does less on the rest of the enemies.
• Shield Bash - Removed (Unless they do something interesting with this skill)
• Intervention removed - Paladin can now target a player with holy sheltron (small recast like oblation so you can double target still)
• Fight or flight - upgrades into req, that upgrades into Imperator we don't need two burst buff skills.

5 Skills removed without changing the core of Paladin, I could likely go over more, but I'd love to see 5 skills gone for rotational and cool gameplay abilities paladin can get instead, the job is being held down by abilities that aren't even needed.

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hey, you seem to undestand my point pretty well.

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Originally Posted by Arohk

hey, you seem to undestand my point pretty well.

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Don't know if that was sarcastic or not but either way it's just my opinion on what should be changed, though I still want a alternative combo path as I enjoyed having one in older versions of paladin. (though it doesn't need to be a strict DOT)

I want jobs to feel important and fun, we have many ways of reducing hotbar bloat though, theirs so much skills that are redundant if that is what you mean by removing bloat then yes I agree I think skills that don't necessarily serve a proper purpose or can easily be put into another skill (like cleave holy circle or sheltron being able to target allies so we don't need intervention) now we got rooms for things to actually make the rotation feel more fun and ways to actually add abilities through expansions.

Honestly I'll be happy with just about any change to Goring Blade to take it off a 60s timer. As it stands it makes PLD and GNB feel far too similar outside of burst windows.
My dream is to just get the old DoT back...

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Originally Posted by Misdes

Honestly I'll be happy with just about any change to Goring Blade to take it off a 60s timer. As it stands it makes PLD and GNB feel far too similar outside of burst windows.
My dream is to just get the old DoT back...

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Eh it's not like Paladin has too few buttons, quite the opposite. Hence having Goring Blade be able to be pressed more often isn't really helpful, although it wouldn't be a problem either I suppose. The biggest question is whether it shouldn't just be removed without replacement. Because again, plenty buttons already, see the commenter above who recommends a lot of folding/removing skills, and I fully agree with that!

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Eh it's not like Paladin has too few buttons, quite the opposite. Hence having Goring Blade be able to be pressed more often isn't really helpful, although it wouldn't be a problem either I suppose. The biggest question is whether it shouldn't just be removed without replacement. Because again, plenty buttons already, see the commenter above who recommends a lot of folding/removing skills, and I fully agree with that!

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Paladins issue is that it has few too actual buttons, along with other tanks, compared to DPS rotations are slower, theirs way less buttons and because every tank is a Super Tank they don't really have to manage defensives that well outside of anything that isn't Savage+ So you have the gameplay loop of a DPS who's slow.

Goring blade and more combo actions (like a melee DPS) is exactly what tanks need to have rotational varity, PLD is slower then DRK/GNB but had more actual GCD buttons and complexity for this reason, now Paladin is a super slow bland job with a bland rotation.

Why can't we remove Actual Bloat skills Like Shield Bash, having magic AOE/single targets not be separate, Having both intervention and holy sheltron, Having a bunch of defensives that all do the same thing, Theirs so many examples of actual bloat, a GCD skill to manage is not "bloat" it's actual gameplay.

Tanks (and healers) as I see it need to be reworked from the ground up, but Lets not pretend we have damage button bloat, the actual issue is those serval skills that all serve the same purpose or outdated mess skills like shield bash, that only get justified because some guy will cry about deep dungeon paladins.

Meaningful GCD skills need to be added, goring blade should be reverted to a gcd rotational button as paladins rotation is very bland, Though a larger rework that adds depth and complexity is more or less needed for every tank, even some procs and RNG would be great.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Why can't we remove Actual Bloat skills Like Shield Bash, having magic AOE/single targets not be separate, Having both intervention and holy sheltron, Having a bunch of defensives that all do the same thing, Theirs so many examples of actual bloat, a GCD skill to manage is not "bloat" it's actual gameplay.

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I feel like the actual problem with a lot of those things is encounter design. Single and AoE target separation is necessary if you care about precision targeting. Shield Bash is a pretty unique defensive that can provide heavy mitigation in combination with Low Blow, but it's almost never warranted. Keeping Low Blow and Interject separate means a player has to interpret what is happening and respond correctly instead of smashing the universal "stop castbar" button. Defenses that work differently warrant having different defenses. Original Bulwark was terrible for TB but great for mob packs. Guardian having a shield gives it something that Rampart can't do, which is negate damage based status effects. I think all of these are interesting to some extent but they require content that is also interesting. Sheltron and Intervention are the only two that I can safely be consolidated though I personally don't mind having them on separate buttons.

We could go the route of giving tanks deeper DPS rotations, but then I feel like there would be no meaningful distinction between tanks and DPS.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

I feel like the actual problem with a lot of those things is encounter design. Single and AoE target separation is necessary if you care about precision targeting. Shield Bash is a pretty unique defensive that can provide heavy mitigation in combination with Low Blow, but it's almost never warranted. Keeping Low Blow and Interject separate means a player has to interpret what is happening and respond correctly instead of smashing the universal "stop castbar" button. Defenses that work differently warrant having different defenses. Original Bulwark was terrible for TB but great for mob packs. Guardian having a shield gives it something that Rampart can't do, which is negate damage based status effects. I think all of these are interesting to some extent but they require content that is also interesting. Sheltron and Intervention are the only two that I can safely be consolidated though I personally don't mind having them on separate buttons.

We could go the route of giving tanks deeper DPS rotations, but then I feel like there would be no meaningful distinction between tanks and DPS.

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Well lets break it down.

• Single target & Aoe are clearly not important to keep seperate because A lot of paladins rotation is already cleave, confiteor doesn't have a AOE Varation. Cleave AOE good for skills like Holy spirit imo.
• Shield bash is a skill that is never useful in 99.99% of content it's only usecase is deep dungeons, it's unique in the fact it's never used, it holds back space for abilities that could actually be useful/fun.
• I don't know what your even talking about with Low Blow and Interject honestly, both should be merged, both are very niche and should be merged for the sake of having actual room on tanks to put interesting skills.
• Rampart doesn't need to exist mostly because we already have bulwark, sheltron & Guardian Having so many defensives to the point they become useless is bad, I'm mostly in favour if making it so tank has one short defensive and one long + invul, we do not need a bunch of different defensives that just mitigations.

I'm not really convinced by much of what you've said

And just to add theirs already no meaningful difference between tanks and dps, Tanks are already boring slow DPS, they should at least be given fun rotations.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Paladins issue is that it has few too actual buttons, along with other tanks, compared to DPS rotations are slower, theirs way less buttons and because every tank is a Super Tank they don't really have to manage defensives that well outside of anything that isn't Savage+ So you have the gameplay loop of a DPS who's slow.

Goring blade and more combo actions (like a melee DPS) is exactly what tanks need to have rotational varity, PLD is slower then DRK/GNB but had more actual GCD buttons and complexity for this reason, now Paladin is a super slow bland job with a bland rotation.

Why can't we remove Actual Bloat skills Like Shield Bash, having magic AOE/single targets not be separate, Having both intervention and holy sheltron, Having a bunch of defensives that all do the same thing, Theirs so many examples of actual bloat, a GCD skill to manage is not "bloat" it's actual gameplay.

Tanks (and healers) as I see it need to be reworked from the ground up, but Lets not pretend we have damage button bloat, the actual issue is those serval skills that all serve the same purpose or outdated mess skills like shield bash, that only get justified because some guy will cry about deep dungeon paladins.

Meaningful GCD skills need to be added, goring blade should be reverted to a gcd rotational button as paladins rotation is very bland, Though a larger rework that adds depth and complexity is more or less needed for every tank, even some procs and RNG would be great.

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I agree with so much of what you've said in this thread but I think this is the most important bit. Paladin's button bloat is insane right now and so much of the kit serves little to no purpose ESPECIALLY outside of High-End. (I still wanna pull my hair out every time I use Bulwark)
I would love to see Shield Bash reworked, maybe into an OGCD (Perhaps Shield Smite from the PvP kit?), Bulwark put back on Sheltron and at the very least make Goring Blade a filler skill again. Keep preaching!

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Well lets break it down.

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All of that makes sense but it's not exactly addressing the point I was making. While there are a bunch of niche, useless, and redundant abilities this is because we don't have encounters in which to use them and not due to the abilities being inherently worthless. Shield Bash going from something to be avoided to having value in deep dungeon is an example of what I mean. We're not gaining anything just from having the skills, we also need the right environments in which to use them.

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And just to add theirs already no meaningful difference between tanks and dps, Tanks are already boring slow DPS, they should at least be given fun rotations.

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I would rather address this by differentiating tanks instead of giving up and accepting them as another flavor of DPS unless there is no way to improve encounter design at all.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

All of that makes sense but it's not exactly addressing the point I was making. While there are a bunch of niche, useless, and redundant abilities this is because we don't have encounters in which to use them and not due to the abilities being inherently worthless. Shield Bash going from something to be avoided to having value in deep dungeon is an example of what I mean. We're not gaining anything just from having the skills, we also need the right environments in which to use them.



I would rather address this by differentiating tanks instead of giving up and accepting them as another flavor of DPS unless there is no way to improve encounter design at all.

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1. Shield Bash being useful in content would mean other tanks would need a version of shield bash, I rather it become a generalist DPS Ogcd skill for that sake, Other abilities like bulwark (as I've pointed out) are already covered by skills like Sheltron, so I see no use of having multiple defensives that do bassically the same thing (mitigate damage). Their use case is "see tank buster and press button" but we already have buttons for that.

2. I agree but I also disagree, Tanks should get more interesting separate tank mechs, making use of skills like Cover unironically would make tanks pretty cool, but this doesn't mean tanks shouldn't also get to do more stuff DPS wise, I'm also in favour of Healers having more to heal but still having more dps buttons as both aren't mutually exclusive funnily enough. Giving tanks/Healers more fun DPS options is the safest bet to at least make these roles actually more fun in all types of content though.


As a side note, if you had any examples of how you would make tanks more interesting I'd be willing to hear you out, I think it's really hard to actually design meaningful tank mechanics that would justify keeping skills like Shield Bash.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Shield Bash being useful in content would mean other tanks would need a version of shield bash

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Why?

The idea would be that those other tanks have things Paladins don't have that is useful in various areas. Compare how each area in Unavowed has different solutions depending on which characters you bring along.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

1. Shield Bash being useful in content would mean other tanks would need a version of shield bash

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Turning Shield Bash into a required ability would be the quickest path to making it useful, but it would feel forced and creates balance problems like you mentioned. If it were made helpful but not strictly necessary, I think that's the better implementation.

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Other abilities like bulwark (as I've pointed out) are already covered by skills like Sheltron, so I see no use of having multiple defensives that do bassically the same thing (mitigate damage). Their use case is "see tank buster and press button" but we already have buttons for that.

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I also see current Bulwark as unremarkable. The original at least had a niche that set it apart from the other CD's slightly. It was a gamble on a heavy single hit, but strong against many smaller hits. Reverting it would make it a little less bland. If blocking had some kind of special effect that would be another distinguishing factor and be even better.

Though you make a good point in that defensives boil down to a TB reaction in most cases. If we had other more varied ways to mitigate I wouldn't mind losing the existing CD's in exchange.

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more dps buttons as both aren't mutually exclusive funnily enough. Giving tanks/Healers more fun DPS options is the safest bet to at least make these roles actually more fun in all types of content though.

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I'm not necessarily against more DPS buttons, and I agree that we're not dealing with mutually exclusive changes. It's just that I'd rather try to preserve some of the underutilized features we have instead of stripping them away. I don't want tanks to feel like DPS. Beyond having far too much survivability and being too similar, I wouldn't say that tanks aren't in a terrible spot. What I find boring is not having to utilize the defensive abilities or use them in only the simplest of ways. Tanks are like healers in that they are the most fun to play when the party is making mistakes because that's the only time you get to meaningfully use your abilities.

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As a side note, if you had any examples of how you would make tanks more interesting I'd be willing to hear you out, I think it's really hard to actually design meaningful tank mechanics that would justify keeping skills like Shield Bash.

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Since Shield Bash is tied to stun, that status would need to find some way to be incorporated into raids. Stopping a boss for 5 seconds is too strong (however if fights had more adds, keeping stun as is might work too) so I think changing the effect to slowing down a castbar or redirecting an AoE might be better. This also helps to differentiate stun from interrupts.

To give an example, a boss might have a proximity circle AoE that is larger than melee range. If Shield Bash could move AoEs, a tank could use it to push the AoE off center and provide a spot for melee to stand safely while in attack range.

Movement is another option. If Shield Bash had some limited ability to move enemies it would give PLD a slight edge in boss positioning. If moving the boss is too strong, the push could be limited to adds.

Circling back to the start of the post, these abilities would need to be balanced against the other tanks. If those tanks had their own unique traits and enemy behavior was randomized then on paper all the tanks would have value and there wouldn't be a situation where every party wants a specific tank for a given fight. There is also the issue of Bash being a 0 damage skill. This could be negated with a vuln up for the PLD's target, though I'm not the biggest fan of that idea. If there were more environment interactions in combat, like bashing a wall to make it collapse and aid the party in some way, the damage loss would be less of an issue.

This of course is all a lot more work than tweaking rotations. I admit that your idea is much more inline with what SE has done in the past.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Why?

The idea would be that those other tanks have things Paladins don't have that is useful in various areas. Compare how each area in Unavowed has different solutions depending on which characters you bring along.

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It's easy to say that you can just add things useful to tanks that would make them stand out in raids then actually implementing it, If you want to argue tanks can each have a unique importance then I would like to actually see examples rather then just hearing that it can be done, Shield bash being important would almost always require Paladin being mandatory in that fight because for shield bash to ever be useful it would have to be a situation where without it the raid wipes, wasting damage on a stun is not something FF14 is designed around.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

Snip

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Problem is Shield bash will never be helpful enough as a GCD action that is a damage loss, unlike clemency which can be flexible for prog situations (though is still a niche skill), a gcd stun action would require such specific fight design where it's either required or not that useful.

I think tanks are fun when you're juggling your DPS offensive abilities with party/group protection abilities, Most fun I've had was on PLD where Healers were struggling to stay alive, so I was able to spot heal and cover/use heavy self mit on raid wide stacks to keep a rezzer alive for lb3, That's a lot of fun, of course It's really difficult to design every fight like that because it would reach levels where people would complain about it being too difficult, Rotations are the easiest way of making sure a Job is fun in all types of content.

If fights were designed more around tank kits, protecting allies ect. It would be more fun that way but I don't really see SE moving towards that direction especially for casual content, I see adding more dps complexity as the next best thing, though I'd love to feel like a actual team protector as a tank.

It's also easy to say balance tanks around having unique traits but actually implementing fun and interesting utility (like shield bash) being useful in practice is very difficult task, How would you envision tanks having unique mechs? is my question what would all 4 tanks do that's unique and different but doesn't cause one tank to be a must pick.

Not to say i don't want some uniqueness and upsides added to tanks, but I don't really think you can implement a system where skills like Shield bash are standout abilities on a job like PLD that would get you to consider it over other tanks, without it being a must pick skill.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

an just add things useful to tanks that would make them stand out in raids then actually implementing it, If you want to argue tanks can each have a unique importance then I would like to actually see examples rather then just hearing that it can be done, Shield bash being important would almost always require Paladin being mandatory in that fight because for shield bash to ever be useful it would have to be a situation where without it the raid wipes, wasting damage on a stun is not something FF14 is designed around.

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I mean, it is useful in M6S to ensure that the tank can triple-stun the Jabberwocky, which especially when still progging the fight makes that part easier.

Did it result in no non-PLDs being assigned MT? No, of course not. But at the same time, it's not like it did not have a unique use that the other tanks could not replicate.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

I mean, it is useful in M6S to ensure that the tank can triple-stun the Jabberwocky, which especially when still progging the fight makes that part easier.

Did it result in no non-PLDs being assigned MT? No, of course not. But at the same time, it's not like it did not have a unique use that the other tanks could not replicate.

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i am genuinely doubting how much of a benefit it is to triplestun the Jabberwock with the Paladin using Shield Bash (6s, 3s, 1.5s -> 10.5s total, -0.25s if you use Low Blow as the last one) vs just using stronger GCD damage to help DPS down the Jabberwock & Mus and using the Melee DPS' Legsweeps instead. With 1x Low Blow and 2x Leg Sweep you'd have 7.25s total stun time (5s -> 1.5s -> 0.75s), which is still plenty if your DPS players aren't asleep, which they shouldnt be because it's a Savage fight.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

i am genuinely doubting how much of a benefit it is to triplestun the Jabberwock with the Paladin using Shield Bash (6s, 3s, 1.5s -> 10.5s total, -0.25s if you use Low Blow as the last one) vs just using stronger GCD damage to help DPS down the Jabberwock & Mus and using the Melee DPS' Legsweeps instead. With 1x Low Blow and 2x Leg Sweep you'd have 7.25s total stun time (5s -> 1.5s -> 0.75s), which is still plenty if your DPS players aren't asleep, which they shouldnt be because it's a Savage fight.

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Yeah of course. I didn't say it's very useful, but between being able to near-freely stop casts in dungeons and even something like M6S, it's not like it has no uses. That's also an important thing, anyways: People forget that large swathes of the population are not savage raiders. People cap out at roulette dungeons. Balancing and designing for savage/extreme/ultimate fights only (content designed in a way you could readily critique as being badly designed, anyways!) is not really a smart idea.

That is to say: Maybe fight design ought to change first, and only then classes should get looked at in contrast against this new - hopefully improved, though it'll be nearly impossible to not achieve that even if you did random changes - design.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Problem is Shield bash will never be helpful enough as a GCD action that is a damage loss, unlike clemency which can be flexible for prog situations (though is still a niche skill), a gcd stun action would require such specific fight design where it's either required or not that useful.

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In an all out DPS fight it's hard to make GCD utility appealing, but it's easier if there are elements outside of raw DPS. Interactions with the environment or enemies that gain additional status from stuns are an example. Making these elements random prevents the stun from being a necessity as you won't have anyway of knowing if you would need it over WAR knockback immunity or TBN shielding status effects, as examples.

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That's a lot of fun, of course It's really difficult to design every fight like that because it would reach levels where people would complain about it being too difficult

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My view is that the reliance on memorization gameplay is one of the biggest factors making difficulty balancing hard in FF14. Fights range from difficult to impossible when blind and become trivial to somewhat engaging after enough times. If combat was changed to be less predictable, the difficulty curve versus player experience could be flattened and there wouldn't be an optimal composition that you could work out and promote over all other combinations.

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If fights were designed more around tank kits, protecting allies ect. It would be more fun that way but I don't really see SE moving towards that direction especially for casual content, I see adding more dps complexity as the next best thing, though I'd love to feel like a actual team protector as a tank.

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This is where we're looking at this differently. It's easier for SE to keep gameplay as it is and tweak rotations, so you might call that the realistic option. A combat overhaul is more work and it raises the question of what happens to old content. While it's less likely to happen I think it's a much better solution so I want to push SE in that direction. There is no wrong answer but different ways of finding a solution.

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It's also easy to say balance tanks around having unique traits but actually implementing fun and interesting utility (like shield bash) being useful in practice is very difficult task, How would you envision tanks having unique mechs? is my question what would all 4 tanks do that's unique and different but doesn't cause one tank to be a must pick.

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We had less homogenization in the past, and there are a few underutilized gameplay elements in the game already. The balancing issue is due in part to scripted fights like I said before, so that shouldn't be unsolvable. A full list of tank traits/mechanics would need to be planned out carefully but some quick examples would be PLD cover, WAR immunity under IR, shields blocking status effects, physically placing your shield down as PLD for a defensive benefit, Holmgang's bind, GNB using aether cartridges to change enemy aspects and apply status to them. Most of those exist in the game already but aren't meaningfully used, and when they are used it's usually in a very specific situation that can be memorized ahead of time. Something that I'd like along with randomized encounters is variable burst windows, by which I mean situations where it's more beneficial to hold burst for a specific situation than to use it on a fixed timer. It would remove the pressure to use skills like IR as soon as possible and leave them available for more strategic use.