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

[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.

[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.

[SwordCoheir]

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

Well if he was a 1.0 player that actually played like I have then he's payed his dues in spades. Little known fact to most of the 2.0 players is the situation WAR is in now is nothing to what PLD's sat through over a year when the jobs were introduced.

Anyways @ OP.

Shield Oath- I kind of agree it is a little lacking in the Enmity, it doesn't need anything special just a little boost to it.

Shield Swipe- The main issue with this ability is it shares the GCD, I'd rather it stay the same but moved to a normal non-GCD ability but still proc on blocking.

Tempered Will- Situational at best, but by far much more flexible than Holmgang. If I would add to this it would be to remove debuffs on yourself which more or less a one time Esuna.

Other than that I don't really think the changes are needed. People throw out the basic cooldowns but it seems like everyone forgets we have more mitigation tools than they let on, enhanced Awareness duration, Convalescence boost, Blind effect on Flash, Reduced physical damage from Halones STR down effect which are all distinct advantages over WAR in mitigation. If I had to claim one major difference though is PLD has less control when to use the mitigation as it's hard to predict when your going to block/parry/dodge.

[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.

[Eardstapa]

I would rather wait to see how it pans out than jump the gun on 'buffing' or 'equalizing' Paladin as none of us have played with this newer Warrior yet. Once we see it in action and can compare it to Paladin directly, then we can pin point issues just as Warrior issues were.

Tanaya; How can you find it hard to come up with a rebuttal to that? With SEs design of large spike damage, our self heals are not optimal for the amount of damage we take, and it stresses healers far more than it ought to. This makes Warrior viable for the issue SE has made itself; The higher boss DPS goes up, the better mitigation is overall versus self heals without massive steroids on the skills and healing factors themselves...

[Tanaya]

I'm saying it's pretty hard to not admit that SE just said "fuck it" and gave WAR defense cooldowns similar to Paladin, which was supposed to be Paladin's thing. Warrior's thing was healing the damage taken. Like I said, I don't mind it, but the differences between WAR and PLD are much smaller now.

[Steeled]

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.

They needed to make changes to warrior and they unfortunately chose this path. Just because they took the first steps in making the jobs similar doesn't mean that I want them to take steps with Paladin to make them further-similar. Do you understand what I mean? Paladin simply isn't as fun as warrior. I believe that, aside from the satisfaction of a 2k Inner Beast, much of warrior's fun factor will be retained, and that's the important part.

I want paladin to have meaningful healing again (A cure worth using, which should be prohibitively expensive and on a long cooldown, Holy Succor, something, a group wide hot, something) but when I've brought up that idea people have said "Well self healing is warrior's thing".

What they could do for paladin is design some procs. It works for whm and SCH, whm likes its procs, and SCH has none and yet the two jobs are competitive and work best in tandem.

They just need to be careful that such procs don't spell your doom if you don't get them in a fight.

Edit: I agree, 1000 char limit sucks.

[Leiron]

What does a tank need to do? Hold agro and be able to take a hit.
Self recovery is a tricky thing to balance, and it is easier to provide mitigation instead.

What matters is how they play.
WAR plays differently from PLD and that is enough.

Frankly, I think you guys are making a much bigger deal of the issue than warranted.

[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.

[zdub303]

I think we can all agree though, aside from SE making some PLDs worthless abilities actually useful, that we NEED enmity suppression on sword oath. PLDs are really held back when in an OT role because our primary damage rotation generates way too much enmity when we're not actually tanking.