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

[Steeled]

I disagree. The easier class still wants the opportunity to participate and raises cane when they can't, but honestly it's more often that the harder class is the one that doesn't get to participate.

It's usually the class that deserves the spotlight that gets left in the cold.

Bard is probably the simplest, safest dps to play, but people love them a lot more than monks and dragoons.

For much of Wrath of the Lich King, Druids and Paladins were the best tanks. They were easy and simple. Warriors were a lot like paladins but harder, and the differences made them weaker. DKs were their own breed and Blizzard had great difficulty making them equal without making them overpowered.

For much of FFXI, Paladin was a better tank than ninja, because PLD could sub nin. In that era, high level enemies just didn't reliably miss so both tanks were consuming shadows equally fast. The difference was that when a paladin's shadows were down, he still had strong defense, Flash (really potent short term blind, if it landed--way more potent than XIV) and a good collection of JAs. Ninja was harder to play and Paladin was still the better option, and that's not counting Aegis and rofl-Ochain.

And let's be honest, most players think they're a lot better than they are.

@The guy below me: Quit calling our skills broken. Awareness is the only broken skill.

[AegisXIII]

I love how in the Marauder post you aren't getting even half of the gloating and hate in this one. Can't we all be friends? The skills OP outlined really do need tweaking even without Warriors getting a boost. The 2.1 changes is just a platform to address what we'd like to happen to make every skill viable more often.

So stop being jerks and just enjoy the buffs you got, Warriors, instead of making us feel bad for trying to address our broken skills

[Starkbeaumont]

what PLD really needs is a way to be more interesting. first of all i would take the str down from rage of halone but give a 10-15s damage down debuff (10%?) to shield swipe. now instead of just 123 combo all day you want to fit in shield swipe in when you block an attack.
Also instead of being a DoT Circle of Scorn should rather recieve some kind of "super bind" that doesn't break when damage. can use when 1 or more mobs out of a group try to go for the healer and gives you time to get hate back. right now it's just a pointless filler attack that basicly has no synergy with the class.

[Lord_Zlatan]

And, by your logic, a bad PLD should be just as bad as a bad WAR, which simply isn't true and never will be. There are loads of bad PLDs out there that can tank perfectly well. You do not see many bad WARs that can get anywhere near tanking effectively. Even with these buffs, WAR will *still* require more skill to play than a PLD, if not more than it currently requires because IB usage is going to be even *more* important thanks to the 20% DR on it.



Actually, it's pretty common in MMOs to have there be a distinct performance difference between the "simple" tank and the "skill" tank. The improved performance that you can eke out of the skill tank that makes it perform better than the simple tank is the benefit for having to be *better* at the class and having greater knowledge of the content than the other class requires. In fact, it's *very good* game design because you're rewarding good players for being good players while allowing players that don't want to have to work as much to still be effective without having to work all that hard at it.

That's that entire *point* of a skill tank: if you're skilled, you get more out of it. If a faceroll tank, like PLD (and, seriously, if you *don't* think that PLD is a faceroll tank, I have to wonder if you've played anything else), could perform as well as an exceptionally well played 2.1 WAR (i.e. using Inner Beast right before *every* spike hit so that you're leveraging that 20% DR with low uptime but high rate of return for maximum benefit), what would be the point of playing a WAR since you could get the exact same performance out of a PLD without doing any of the work?

The *average* performance of a simple tank and a skill tank should be equivalent, but their top end performance *should not*. Having limitations on the crappiness of their performance is balanced by having similar limitations on the amazingness of their performance. You're never going to have 2 classes take the same amount of skill to play optimally unless they're effectively carbon copies of one another. You have to address this and allow for the variability in top end and low end performance to be a factor.

Let me frame preface this incoming post with 2 things: My WAR is only level 18, and I just started doing endgame (well, WP -_-) with PLD.

Paladin is definitly Faceroll tanking. No matter how you slice it. You can be a bad PLD, sure. It takes complete and utter fail to do so, however. PLD boils down to 2 things: 1. Can you do your rotation on multiple targets and hit flash in-between while also CoS when you need to. 2. Can you pop your CDs at the right time (do you know the fight well enough to say "this is going to hit really hard, I'm going to need to reduce the incoming damage). On top of that, we can go invincible for 10s. THIS MAY BE DIFFERENT IN COIL. I don't know for sure, but hey, just throwing my .02 into the ring on that issue.

In addition. My friends and people on these boards have said WAR needs a buff. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, I'm not quite sure. The thing that I don't want is 2 tanks that have the same abilities (there or about), with one being more fun and more complex, while the other is easy mode and devoid of originality. From what I am reading about the changes to war, they are slapping PLDs strong suit on them, making them tankier. Thats great, but what the difference now? IMO they should have really implemented more Self Heals and maybe given slight damage reduction woven into the skills.

If anything, this change is going to make me at least try WAR at 50, so I MYSELF can make an effective comparison.

[Tanaya]

If every other fight was fairly scripted, why would you assume 2.1's content will be any different? Serious question.

Fairly scripted is an understatement. For the HM primals you could write down their entire rotation for the entire fight and call out each move before they use it (this is why Ifrit HM is braindead easy). For Titan I made macros to call out his rotation for each phase, which he followed exactly.

I would assume the Extreme Primals would have some form of unpredictability because simply buffing their stats would mean nothing to any groups who are decked in ilvl90 gear. Of course, this is just me being optimistic.

[Bigby]

@Steeled

I like all your posts. I think if more paladins explained what they wanted like you have all rational WARs would be in agreement that PLDs could use some QoL changes.

[Dedayius]

I would love if they made Shield Swipe into a second combo and made the other CDs into something that was actually useful. I'm okay with paladins being the CD class but they could spice it up a little bit.

[OmegaSinX]

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.

Bravo, Couldn't have said it any better. What matters is how they play. A Tank is Not a Tank if it cant take a hit. Only thing SE did was addressed that issue. In the future(past patch 2.3), I hope they differentiate the 2 by making PLD a Magic Base Tank, and WAR a Physically Damage Tank.

[Crimess]

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...racter/713595/

Please tell me how long you been playing WAR.
Don't come suggesting buffs for Paladin when you don't have any idea feel of what we WARS go trough on tanking Titan HM or Coil1-5 as a WAR.

[OmegaSinX]

All PLD needs is a tweak to Awareness + Tempered Will and 1 More combo other than RoH to make it more fun. PLD Does not need more mitigation, Invicibility, up to 80% mitigation, and 60%+ Shield block is enough. And I dont know about you guys but when playing effectivitly, there is enough for me to do on my PLD. espcially since they have more utility and off GCD moves.