In Light of the WAR 2.1 Adjustments, Can We Expect Tweaks to PLD as Well? My Thoughts

[Steeled]

I want to see more fun in the PLD rotation but SE has set each class to have the same number of abilties, and given paladin so many cooldowns. Warrior has a ton of options and I always liked that.

I really like your shield swipe idea, but I'm afraid it's trying to be too much like Maim. Still, if they could also make sure it blocks the next hit (Imagine it, you've hit the target with your shield, dazing it, and its next attack is easily brushed aside. Another good reason for the change is that shield swipe is useless while offtanking, because it's not going to proc (an aoe might, but lol).

I like most of your ideas, but I feel like it comes off as a copy of warrior. Two main skill rotations, similar short term mitigation. I like playing warrior but I want them to find a unique path for paladin.

Seriously! Id give you one week of what we had to swallow for three months.

No but really i think its a bit too early to ask for a PLD buff, isnt it?

Not sure if you are understimating PLD or overstimating a buff that has yet to be implemented, but you are overthinking and PLD will most probably be the tankier tank of the two, just not by an enormous amount.

Largely, I think he's asking for paladin to be more fun. Warrior is currently way more fun than paladin.

I won't deny there's a lot of talk about mitigation abilities, but some of that is because they're disinteresting and weak (Like Awareness and Tempered Will.)

I have good hate!
I shall increase my damage done!
I shall now increase how much damage the target takes from my attacks.
5 Wrath! Soft phase in the fight, I'm gonna increase my damage more!
Oh, what's this, berserk is off cooldown? MORE damage.

It's not all about more damage, obviously, but it's fun to be able to do that. It's fun to be able to do better DPS as a tank. I can't say whether PLD or WAR does better DPS, but warrior is so much more active. There's no doubt, enmity rotation against enmity rotation, paladin does better dps (in shield oath).

This version of paladin is more bland than any I've played before (WoW, FFXI, 1.0's).

[Gilthas]

This version of paladin is more bland than any I've played before (WoW, FFXI, 1.0's).

What the?

/10 char

[Steeled]

What the?

/10 char

What? FFXI, you could make choices. I don't know if you've looked at the gear here but it's all very very bland. Yeah, the recent years with supertanking (hold adds) got really really dumb, but not the old days. The enmity system in ffxi also was a complex beauty (besides the frickin caps) and a tank who really knew how to use it shined and everyone knew it.

Here, it's just rage of halone, flash, and cooldowns.

[Marleytiva]

What? FFXI, you could make choices. I don't know if you've looked at the gear here but it's all very very bland. Yeah, the recent years with supertanking (hold adds) got really really dumb, but not the old days. The enmity system in ffxi also was a complex beauty (besides the frickin caps) and a tank who really knew how to use it shined and everyone knew it.

Here, it's just rage of halone, flash, and cooldowns.

Eh, it was a bit more flexible. The enmity system wasn't a "complex beauty" though, lol.

@ OP: I'd wait to ask for buffs for PLD when Warrior's severely needed buffs aren't even released yet. There are a few QOL issues that could be addressed for them, but these buffs are laughable considering the job is already incredibly strong.

[Gilthas]

What? FFXI, you could make choices.

The game must have changed a lot after I left midway through the WotG expansion, because I don't really remember all these choices you're talking about.

The issue I take with the "wait until it's all implemented" approach is that we end up in the situation we're in now where the exiled job warms the bench for 3+ months until the next major patch rolls around. Ideally what should have happened in this particular case is that proposed adjustments for every job should have been presented at the same time to be considered as a whole. Surely WAR adjustments aren't the only adjustments that deserve to be evaluated by the player base before implementation.

I seriously doubt that SE announced these changes because they wanted our feedback. They announced them so we know they care.

The reason why "wait until it's all implemented" is a good approach is because its very possible that even with these changes Warrior will still be a subpar tank. Remember, not only are these changes not final, but they also haven't given us exact details on how these changes will be implemented.

It also doesn't help that your initial post makes some pretty questionable assumptions that I can only imagine were made to put Warrior's on a pedestal to justify why Paladin's need a buff. You have no reason to believe the Storm's Path debuff will be more potent than the Rage of Halone debuff. You call the changes to Holmgang balanced when compared to Hallowed Ground, which is beyond ridiculous. And you completely ignore that Paladins will still have better mitigation than a Warrior after patch 2.1.

Ran out of posts so this will probably not be seen but:

I'm not sure why these assumptions are "questionable," so if you could enlighten me it would be appreciated.

As far as I'm aware the impact enemy STR has on damage dealt is unknown at this point, and would only effect physical damage anyway. The buff to Storm's Path will affect all outgoing damage, so even if they end up being roughly the same potency, WAR will be decreasing damage overall more effectively than PLD by virtue of also inhibiting magic damage.

Yes, but that's if Storm's Path will have the same potency as Rage of Halone's debuff. We have no idea how strong it will be and we also have no idea how long the debuff will last (which is very relevant since this will affect if it can be kept up at all times), or god forbid, if enemies will start resisting it after a while.

Care to explain why you think Holmgang isn't balanced against Hallowed Ground? They're both "don't kill me" abilities. One is gained at 42 (and isn't even exclusive to WAR), the other at 50. One grants immunity to death for six seconds, the other for 10. You can use Holmgang 2.3 times per Hallowed Ground. Which of these screams unbalanced to you?

This one is so ridiculous that I don't even know how you need someone to explain it to you. Put simply:

- Paladin uses Hallowed Ground and becomes invincible for 10 seconds. As long as the Paladin has agro it receives 100% damage mitigation for the entire duration of the ability and when the ability ends has, in the worst case scenario, the same HP he started with.

- Warrior uses Holmgang and cannot drop below 1 HP for 6 seconds. Holmgang's "invincibility" only starts giving damage mitigation when the Warrior's HP reaches 1 (unlike Hallowed Ground where its always active). When Holmgang ends, in the worst case scenario, the Warrior is left with 1 HP.

Now you can argue that the Warrior should be healed so he isn't left with 1 HP at the end of Holmgang, but again, even if you consider that, Holmgang is still pretty bad when compared to Hallowed Ground because any HP healed during Holmgang can be lost before the effect ends. This is not the case with Hallowed Ground.

Now if Holmgang was something like "HP cannot drop below 20%" (or whatever number needed to not get instantly gipped after Holmgang ends) then we could start talking about how the ability is comparable to Hallowed Ground. The way the ability is currently described, more often than not, the "invincibility" effect will either never kick in or be completely worthless. There's a reason why these changes were made to a Marauder ability and not a Warrior ability.

[Obsidian]

The game must have changed a lot after I left midway through the WotG expansion, because I don't really remember all these choices you're talking about.



I seriously doubt that SE announced these changes because they wanted our feedback. They announced them so we know they care.

The reason why "wait until it's all implemented" is a good approach is because its very possible that even with these changes Warrior will still be a subpar tank. Remember, not only are these changes not final, but they also haven't given us exact details on how these changes will be implemented.It also doesn't help that your initial post makes some pretty questionable assumptions that I can only imagine were made to put Warrior's on a pedestal to justify why Paladin's need a buff. You have no reason to believe the Storm's Path debuff will be more potent than the Rage of Halone debuff. You call the changes to Holmgang balanced when compared to Hallowed Ground, which is beyond ridiculous. And you completely ignore that Paladins will still have better mitigation than a Warrior after patch 2.1.

I'm not sure why these assumptions are "questionable," so if you could enlighten me it would be appreciated.

As far as I'm aware the impact enemy STR has on damage dealt is unknown at this point, and would only effect physical damage anyway. The buff to Storm's Path will affect all outgoing damage, so even if they end up being roughly the same potency, WAR will be decreasing damage overall more effectively than PLD by virtue of also inhibiting magic damage.

Care to explain why you think Holmgang isn't balanced against Hallowed Ground? They're both "don't kill me" abilities. One is gained at 42 (and isn't even exclusive to WAR), the other at 50. One grants immunity to death for six seconds, the other for 10. You can use Holmgang 2.3 times per Hallowed Ground. Which of these screams unbalanced to you?

I didn't completely ignore that. In fact, the entire first half of the post discusses mitigation between the two. Defiance now effectively neutralizes Shield Oath. Inner Beast now completely neutralizes Rampart in terms of effective mitigation (IB is 6%, Rampart is 4.4%). Vengeance is ~1.53% more than Sentinel is, and if you add Bulwark on to that, the net difference is .55% in PLD's favor, until you remember that shield blocks don't process on magic so it still works out in WAR's favor.

Also consider that shield blocks artificially reduce Paladin's Parry rate (not particularly important), and shield blocks are ~4% more potent than a parry would be (28% to 24%), so assuming a block rate of 28% and a parry rate of 13% (I don't know the actual rate but DEX is non-existent on tank gear so it's probably almost floored), and that blocks process before parries:

1000 hits for 100 damage each

Shield: 7840 damage blocked
Parry (13% of the remaining 720 hits): 2246 damage parried
Combined: 10086 mitigated
Total damage done before mitigation: 100,000

Opposed to just parrying: 3120 damage parried

So there's a ~5% advantage in PLD's favour against physical damage (Shield + Parry vs just Parry is ~7%, minus the difference between Rampart and Inner Beast Buff), and puts WAR's effective mitigation ahead by over 3% on enemies that exclusively use magic. The net difference here being ~2% in PLD's favor before considering WAR's self-heals.

"So what? They're about equal like they should be." Not quite. None of the above considers offensive potential, where WAR now clearly has the advantage. They're able to bypass the damage penalty on Defiance ~17% of the time, whereas PLD cannot. Maim is an effective 20% damage increase because it can be kept up at all times, compared to an average increase in damage of 10% from Fight or Flight. The debuff from Storm's Eye reduces slashing resistance by 15% which PLD does not have access to on its own. It also does significantly more AoE damage than PLD is capable of, and has the added bonus of generating substantially more enmity while doing so. This is why I would like to see Shield Swipe turned into a normal ability with the Combo effect of being conal with increased enmity generation (at the cost of much more TP), or have increased enmity added to Circle of Scorn.

Most of my suggestions also revolve around the disturbing number of PLD abilities that are currently useless or effectively useless, or completely unbalanced when compared to other tools in Paladin's arsenal (lookin' at you, Bulwark and Awareness). I don't see it's unreasonable or "whiny" to be asking for those things to be made serviceable.

Please don't tell me my assumptions (which are indeed simply educated guesses) are unreasonable without supplying your own logic for examination.

Edit:

Okay first of all, if all the War changes go through and turn out to be just as/or stronger than people expect them to be it's not like Paladins will suddenly become unplayable or gimp or destroyed. I think we all know that.

People without relics are still certainly capable of dealing damage, yet there are many, many shouts that mandate you have one to be able to join (even for the trivial content like Amdapor Keep and Castrum Meridianum). There are also many, many shouts that specifically ask for PLDs (which is unreasonable), and should these buffs be as potent as some expect them to be, the situation will just flip to shouts exclusively looking for WARs (also unreasonable). How is this any better than what we have now?

[Lemon8or]

Care to explain why you think Holmgang isn't balanced against Hallowed Ground? They're both "don't kill me" abilities. One is gained at 42 (and isn't even exclusive to WAR), the other at 50. One grants immunity to death for six seconds, the other for 10. You can use Holmgang 2.3 times per Hallowed Ground. Which of these screams unbalanced to you?

Because healer really needs to be on the ball to heal Warriors after Holmgang while they don't have to for Paladin?

So there's a ~5% advantage in PLD's favour against physical damage (Shield + Parry vs just Parry is ~7%, minus the difference between Rampart and Inner Beast Buff), and puts WAR's effective mitigation ahead by over 3% on enemies that exclusively use magic. The net difference here being ~2% in PLD's favor before considering WAR's self-heals.

How many mobs only use magic exclusively???

"So what? They're about equal like they should be." Not quite. None of the above considers offensive potential, where WAR now clearly has the advantage. They're able to bypass the damage penalty on Defiance ~17% of the time, whereas PLD cannot. Maim is an effective 20% damage increase because it can be kept up at all times, compared to an average increase in damage of 10% from Fight or Flight. The debuff from Storm's Eye reduces slashing resistance by 15% which PLD does not have access to on its own. It also does significantly more AoE damage than PLD is capable of, and has the added bonus of generating substantially more enmity while doing so. This is why I would like to see Shield Swipe turned into a normal ability with the Combo effect of being conal with increased enmity generation (at the cost of much more TP), or have increased enmity added to Circle of Scorn.

Storm's Eyes decreases slashing resistance by 10% and only up 66% of the time currently (1 SE, 2 BB is the combo, noone ever does 1 SE, 1 BB as that renders Maim's trait useless and not as much enmity). I'm confused by what you meant when you say it also does significantly more aoe damage, Storm's Eye is single target and you need the combo bonus for the slashing resistance so it's not like you can just tab and use Storm's Eye on multiple target.
Tell me more about how much a lv14 marauder knows about a warrior's problem.

[Maqaqa]

Largely, I think he's asking for paladin to be more fun. Warrior is currently way more fun than paladin.

He is asking for the PLD to not be left out of content which is quite hilarious in a game where PLD is often the only accepted tank and WAR the one being kept out.
How can a PLD possibly be "fun" btw? Knights are booooooring too serious and cant take a joke

[Obsidian]

I want to see more fun in the PLD rotation but SE has set each class to have the same number of abilties, and given paladin so many cooldowns. Warrior has a ton of options and I always liked that.

I really like your shield swipe idea, but I'm afraid it's trying to be too much like Maim. Still, if they could also make sure it blocks the next hit (Imagine it, you've hit the target with your shield, dazing it, and its next attack is easily brushed aside. Another good reason for the change is that shield swipe is useless while offtanking, because it's not going to proc (an aoe might, but lol).

I like most of your ideas, but I feel like it comes off as a copy of warrior. Two main skill rotations, similar short term mitigation. I like playing warrior but I want them to find a unique path for paladin.

Part of the problem is they've uprooted PLD's "unique path" (stand there and brace yourself) and transplanted it on WAR. Paladin's thing was mitigation; Warrior's was recovery. Now WAR has pound for pound more effective mitigation barring shield blocks (which is only a ~5% advantage in PLD's favour, and only on physical damage) and PLD is just left standing there while Square pulls its plate mail off piece by piece and welds it to the Warrior wherever it'll fit. It is, by far, the more passive of the two, which was okay because the focus was on mitigation and not active recovery.

But now, WAR is in X-zibit land where it gets mitigation while it recovers so it can mitigate and recover at the same time, and the PLD is stuck out in the frozen hills of Coerthas with nothing but the faint glow of his Holy Shield to keep him company. Every one of their skills has been made useful, while PLD is sitting there with one that's more of a hindrance than a help (Awareness), one that is straight up useless (Tempered Will), one that one that only gets used when not the primary target (Sword Oath), and one that never works because it requires the target to be stepping on your foot (Cover), to say nothing of how infrequently the MP regeneration from Riot Blade comes into effect.

WAR is receiving significant improvements to its survivability and crowd control ability, as well as a marginal increase to its damage by way of Wrath stacks now actually being usable and the reduced cooldown on Unchained. This is very clearly going to swing nearly every encounter in WAR's favor, and now instead of making both tanks desirable we've gone back to 1.0 where the only thing you might want a PLD for was Darnus Hard Mode. These adjustments address a balance issue by creating an even bigger one.

I think the ideas above would go a long way to evening the playing field for both jobs while still retaining the "feel" of each one. I don't really think it's fair to shoot down an idea just because it's similar to another skill. Do you then object to Vengeance because it's effectively the same thing as Rampart and Sentinel (only better)? Can you really say you want them to retain the "uniqueness" of both classes while simultaneously taking the uniqueness from PLD, giving it to WAR (in spades, no less) and then telling PLD to go find something else to be good at? That seems backwards to me.

I don't necessarily think it's a crime to want for PLD to have a more active role in the party either, and I think giving it a second full combo would do a lot to help it in that aspect. It's most certainly not a crime to want the abilities it does have to all serve a purpose. 18% of PLD's abilities are either bugged or serve no real purpose (both, really, in the case of Awareness, since TP moves don't crit). More still could stand to receive non-trivial adjustments.

To summarize, I am slightly amused that you find my thoughts to be copying WAR, when it seems the soul of the Paladin was ripped out and slapped on WAR by throwing raw mitigation at it by the barrel-full, and then enhancing everything else for good measure. If these Warrior adjustments move ahead with no response for Paladin, 2.1 may as well be labelled 1.3. Leaving Paladin untouched while going forward with those adjustments will just reverse the issue of tank superiority instead of actually addressing it.

Also, the tag for this thread is pretty disheartening.

Edit: The character limit is also incredibly frustrating.

[Tanaya]

To summarize, I am slightly amused that you find my thoughts to be copying WAR, when it seems the soul of the Paladin was ripped out and slapped on WAR by throwing raw mitigation at it by the barrel-full, and then enhancing everything else for good measure.

It's pretty hard to find a rebuttal for this because that's exactly what happened. Even so, I don't particularly mind this. It just means the playing field is open for Paladin as well.

That said, it's pretty hard to cry foul at the moment and I'd prefer to not kneejerk-react to this.