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

[Greeve]

You are overstating how good some of these warrior changes are going to turn out in my opinion...

[Zohnax]

Nope, its a wall of text to hide this kneejerking reaction:



After three months of being OP if you want to ask for a buff at least have the decency to wait for 2.2 patch.

Sure, let's wait until the situation has turned as the OP pointed out he would like it to avoid; in response to your, "wait until 2.2 patch," comment. To put plainly, both jobs need fixes and by fixing one and not another, that creates a gap, especially if one's usefulness overshadows the other to the point of 1.0 discrimination. (WAR only tank era.) If you think that PLD doesn't have useless/underwhelming abilities that may or may not have disproportionate costs, you are incredibly mistaken. (If you missed them, go actually read the whole original post.) 1.0 players that weren't able to enjoy playing as PLD because of that definitely do not want to see it repeated. Its quite simple, but apparently that has been overlooked repetitively in this thread and/or newcomers to FFXIV are ignorant of how bad the job discrimination was in 1.0. Hence, why Yoshi-P has stated on more than one occasion that he does not want there to be one job more favored than another. To reiterate again, (repetition should make it sink it), this isn't about PLDs not wanting WARs to be useful tanks, it is about concerns of the potential usefulness disparity between the two in light of the incoming WAR buff.

[Kitru]

To reiterate again, (repetition should make it sink it), this isn't about PLDs not wanting WARs to be useful tanks, it is about concerns of the potential usefulness disparity between the two in light of the incoming WAR buff.

Repetition doesn't make the claim any more true, however.

As far as we know, PLD is not getting nerfed. It is going to be just as effective then as it is now, with the exact same math and the exact same utility, much of which WAR simply does not have and never will. The only way the WAR buffs are going to create a usefulness disparity is if they are so large that they marginalize PLD in the same way that PLD marginalizes WAR right now. The math has shown quite *explicitly* that WAR will not be doing so; the mitigation advantage only exists when you use the new Inner Beast *absolutely perfectly* and the damage advantage that WAR supposed has not be been proven a single time thanks to those tests that do "prove" refusing to use certain PLD abilities (like CoS and SW) or using a monumental gear disparity (WAR in either full STR or STR/VIT fusion gear/allotment compared to PLD in straight VIT), not to mention how, for some reason, the parsers are strangely incapable of registering the additional damage from Sword Oath.

PLD will *still* have a substantial advantage over WAR where utility is concerned: they bring silence, blind, stoneskin, a stun that can be solo chained (yes, it's on GCD, but when you need to stun a target for 10 seconds straight, PLD can do it all on their lonesome while WAR requires synchronizing with 3 other people). WAR will have a *slight* damage advantage and *slight* mitigation advantage that *only* exists when played properly. Considering the opportunity cost accrued by the loss of said utility, that's perfectly fine.

WAR mean mitigation is symmetrically balanced against PLD mean mitigation (meaning that they can be directly compared to each other), with the primary difference being that WAR has variable mitigation that has to be leveraged properly whereas PLD just has constant static mitigation. WAR damage is asymmetrically balanced against PLD utility (meaning that they cannot be directly compared and must be compared indirectly). This is perfectly acceptable since it's *still* balanced. People are always asking for the tanks to not be rendered identical and the fact that *some* aspects of the class cannot be balanced symmetrically is something to just have to accept. Of course, it also means that you can't ignore the advantages that one tank has over another in a category because the classes are balanced holistically.

If people are asking for QoL and bug improvements for PLD, like causing Awareness to *not* prevent critical heals, providing a combo that can be used while off-tanking that won't cause you to have to decide between potentially ripping off of the other tank and doing substantially less damage, or giving them more than 2 useful additional skills (of course, the fact that they only *need* 2 useful additional skills because they've got amazing native capability is something you'd have to consider as well), this is perfectly fine and should even be encouraged because you're not talking about making them explicitly better tanks: you're talking about making PLD more *enjoyable* by allowing the options that class already gets to not be largely worthless or making an ability do what it should always have done.

As soon as you start talking about making abilities *stronger* rather than fixing an ability that does not do what it says it does (Awareness) or improving QoL *without* increasing performance of primary functionality (i.e. increasing enmity compared to WAR or increasing mitigation), however, you lose the high ground and end up just being a person complaining that PLD is no longer the de facto tank for everything end game.

[Sylari]

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.

Telling someone "The class you like is intentionally designed to be inferior" is really the farthest you can possibly get from good design.

[Kitru]

Telling someone "The class you like is intentionally designed to be inferior" is really the farthest you can possibly get from good design.

Telling someone that "the class you like is simpler to play and, as such, has a lower top end performance" is not, and that's what we're talking about. The average performance of a skill tank and a faceroll tank should be the same but it is *entirely* proper for the skill tank to perform *better* when played *well*. That's the point of it. If you can get the same performance out of a faceroll tank as you get out of a skill tank, what's the point in playing the skill tank? The increased performance is the reward you get for playing the class *well*.

Just because you get butthurt because the faceroll tank that you play doesn't have the same top end performance as the skill tank that you can't manage to wrap your mind around does not mean that the devs screwed up the game design by creating imbalance between the classes. It means that the devs got the design *right* because you *shouldn't* be playing the skill tank because you can't manage it and, because of this, are actually *benefiting* from the design because you're at least getting to perform at an *average expected* level even though you would perform dramatically sub-par when using a tank that requires more than just rolling your face on the keyboard to beat content.

Skill classes are for people that want to eke every single thing they can out of a class *and that should be rewarded*. Faceroll classes are for people that don't want to risk not being able to perform up to par when they inevitably screw up. It's why WHM and BRD are so popular in *those* roles by the masses: WHM and BRD are *insanely* simple to play so that anyone can perform reasonably well with them, but, when you know how to play *well*, they fall behind the other options that *do* require skill to play optimally.

P.S. Nice strawman argument. I recommend you try to actually understand the nuances of what I was discussing rather than just making an ignorant comment because you're upset that you're no longer going to be able to compete with top tier WARs while facerolling your way as a PLD.

[Steeled]

Telling someone that "the class you like is simpler to play and, as such, has a lower top end performance"

I've asked before, but can someone name a scenario where that actually holds true though? It usually ends up that the simple tanks, by intention or by circumstance, ends up the better tank.

Here's a really simple example, overly simplified.

Two tanks. One always takes -20% less damage. Another has cooldown with 20s duration that causes them to take -25% less damage, that CAN be kept up 100% of the time - GCD (yeah, this fictional ability is on the GCD). Even though Tank 2 has a higher top end, Tank 1 is the better choice more often. Tanks do other things in the fight, sometimes that take precedence over everything else, like picking up adds, properly moving the boss.

In every mmo I've played where one tank was more complex than the other, the simpler tank is preferred unless the bonus is just absurdly extreme like a fictional -30% cd that could be kept up nearly 100% with perfect play.

Even the truly skilled players achknowledge at times that it's just smarter to come on the simpler job, even if the other job peaks higher. You can't always maintain that peak.

[Sylari]

Telling someone that "the class you like is simpler to play and, as such, has a lower top end performance" is not, and that's what we're talking about.

"and has lower end performance" is the crux of the issue here though. Designing a class to be out and out inferior to another is simply a terrible idea, especially when class choice is significantly more complex than simply deciding between arbitrarily defined "hard" vs "easy".

The average performance of a skill tank and a faceroll tank should be the same but it is *entirely* proper for the skill tank to perform *better* when played *well*.

No it isn't, because such a design direction alienates everyone who wants to favor the "faceroll" class for any other reason from cutting edge content.

That's the point of it. If you can get the same performance out of a faceroll tank as you get out of a skill tank, what's the point in playing the skill tank?

Personal preference or intangible benefits, which should ideally be a player's reason for picking any class.

Just because you get butthurt because the faceroll tank that you play

I don't even have a gladiator, I'm discussing the theory of your design, not anything practical. Though on that same note, you're posting on a level 50 marauder while begging the developers to make marauders intrinsically superior to the competition, so if anyone here has ulterior motives...

Nice strawman argument.

Except suggesting that Warriors be out and out superior to the competition unless poor play is taken into account is exactly what you suggested, so there's no strawman at all.

[Maqaqa]

Sure, let's wait until the situation has turned as the OP pointed out he would like it to avoid; in response to your, "wait until 2.2 patch," comment. To put plainly, both jobs need fixes.

No, they dont.
PLD doesnt need any fix... like at all.
On PLD i can do stuff in i70 gear that puts my i90 WAR in slight danger.

I had to work 3 months on the WAR to make it really effective; on PLD i click on rampart/sentinel and i can go afk.

The truth is that it could have used a nerf, and you should take war buff as a blessing because its the reason they are not nerfing PLDs to normality.

[Sylve]

Putting Enmity suppression on Sword Oath makes it useless for level 30 Paladins ....

[zdub303]

Putting Enmity suppression on Sword Oath makes it useless for level 30 Paladins ....

That's fine, when paladins want to tank, they take sword oath off. Problem solved!