Is Paladin the least fun class to play?

[Sylari]

Re: Sword Oath. Use it more. Shield Oath is far from mandatory. Even offtank PLDs in Primals/Coil can also be using it to good effect.

It's not that Sword Oath isn't good or useful. It's just that it's not at all interactive. You're gonna toggle it fairly rarely in a normal situation and the rest of the time it's just there. It doesn't give anything to the paladin. There's no compelling mechanic. It's just "you do slightly more damage than you'd otherwise do while not tanking".

It's especially painful in a game like 14 where abilities are a premium.

[Grembo]

Its quite fun timing CDs and understanding the fight mechanics to get the most out of your tank class. is it an easy class to play ? yes but its equally a very hard class to master. you need to know what to do in every fight and you also need to know every boss mechanic including the ones you don't dodge so that when they happen you always have a back up plan. example of this is popping hallowed on titan to give healer time to raise someone "comfortably"

Seems like you're talking about Gameplay/Boss mechanics more than PLD itself here.

Sure if you want to get the most out of your class you'll have to learn what you can and can't do in specific situations but the fact that these gameplay mechanics exist doesn't mean us PLD's get to do much more than our 1-2-3 combo and pop some cooldowns when they are needed.

As an example, let's take the Tonberry King. You can tank it straitgh up, with Shield Oath, using your cooldowns for grudge move.
Or you can tank it with Sword Oath to do far more DPS, pop Shield Oath for the first Grudge, go back to Sword Oath, pop Shield Oath and Rampart for the second grudge, and so on...When trying to optimize both your tanking and your DPS, that's when PLD becomes reaaally fun to play.

Since Everbody's Grudge completely ignores Shield Oath i'm not sure why you would do any of this.

[Duelle]

Is this another one of those threads that confuses the word "straight-forward" with "dull/not-fun", I wonder.

*reads OP* Ah it is. Move along, nothing to see here.

[OmegaSinX]

I havent played all classes enough to know which is most boring (WHM might be a strong contender) but the differences between WAR and PLD is Clear. Although Rage of Halone and Circle of Scorn look flashy, Doing the same rotation gets boring. I think PLD downfall is that It's a simple class to play. Not many Choices of what to do.

Single ? = RoH
AoE ?= Flash
Big Damage incoming ? = Pop a Defensive Cool Down.

WAR on the other hand has to alternate between 1 of their 3 Combo's Depending on situation, Manage Wrath, and make decision on the fly on which ability to use their Wrath on. All while doing the same things PLD has to do above .

[Leiron]

WAR on the other hand has to alternate between 1 of their 3 Combo's Depending on situation, Manage Wrath, and make decision on the fly on which ability to use their Wrath on. All while doing the same things PLD has to do above .

Suggesting WAR is anymore complicated or difficult to play is a silly notion.

Only difference between PLD and WAR in terms of difficulty is that, WAR uses 2 combos instead of just 1.

ST? BB>BB>SE
AOE?: Use overpower/Flash
Big damage incoming? Pop a defensive cool down.
Have 5 stacks of Wrath? Save it for inner beast since everything else sucks.

Second difference is that popping a cooldown for a PLD has more meaning than a WAR.

[OmegaSinX]

Suggesting WAR is anymore complicated or difficult to play is a silly notion.

No one said WAR is complicated or difficult to play... but it definately more complex to maximize its full potential.

Edit: Also the arguement is not about difficulty, its about how fun the classes are. I was just stating PLD lack of options hurts it's fun factor. And Now with 2.1 around the corner, i think the gap will be even bigger.

[Cabalabob]

As someone coming from ffxi I think paladin is a lot more fun here. In ffxi you literally stood there and took damage and spammed your provoke macro until 100% tp to use a weapon skill or until a damage mitigation buff was up. You had shield bash but it was on a 5 min cooldown so you weren't expected to be the active stunner of the group and there were no little tricks like shield swipe to throw in for pseudo stun. I like that paladin has the ability to actively stun, silence, pacify in this game, the combos are nice and flashy, managing hate on multiple mobs keeps you awake. It's just a lot more active and fun than what I had to deal with in XI, it may not be the most interesting job in the world. But at the end of the day it's a tank. Your job is to shout obscenities at the mob and hope you don't die for it. There's only so much you can do with tank mechanics and I think for the type of game XIV is they did a decent job.

[Leiron]

No one said WAR is complicated or difficult to play... but it definately more complex to maximize its full potential.

Except it really isn't Omega.
The ONLY difference between the two is that WAR uses two combos instead of one.
If anything, being reactive makes it easier on WAR too, since you react after the fact, you don't predict.
Now to be fair, none of the classes in these games are complicated/dfficult.

[OmegaSinX]

Except it really isn't Omega.
The ONLY difference between the two is that WAR uses two combos instead of one.
If anything, being reactive makes it easier on WAR too, since you react after the fact, you don't predict.
Now to be fair, none of the classes in these games are complicated/dfficult.

Typical Tank and Spank Fight:

As PLD: RoH combo, Weaving Spirits within & Circle of Scorn when up, Using CD before Big Attack.

As WAR: BB Combo, Use Unchained to get Ahead of DPS, Do I have enough threat buffer(?); Use SE Combo, Building Wrath Before Big Hit, Ensuring you use Internal Release + SE + Berserk prior to big hit to maximize Inner beast after big hit,Using Bloodbath before Inner Beast, Weaving Wrath Skills to build Wrath faster, Wrath Not Up ?; Pop Thrill of Battle (+potion of vit for more) right before the big Hit. Although this is not difficult to do one slip up can mean alot more pain for WAR

It takes more thinking to maximize WAR play than it does as a PLD . There's more to it than just an extra combo. If WAR played just like PLD, all it would be is BB Combo's and weaving Brutal Swing when there up. 2.1 will only make WAR even more diverse

[Hocchi]

Least fun? matter of preference really. I personally enjoy it, having to manage aggro on multiple things, and dealing with emnity if it gets ripped off.
But I will say it's a stressful class to play.