Is Paladin the least fun class to play?

[Shneibel]

to much thinking, just play and enjoy

[Brannigan]

Paladin is in a weird spot. It has a lot of really powerful buttons that are pretty boring and a few really crappy buttons. Additionally, most of our subclass skills are pretty underwhelming. There's little reason to ever use Riot Blade. Shield Swipe is similarly mediocre. Awareness, even without the bug, is one of the worst skills in the game. Two of our five job abilities are passive stances, cover is very situational, and Hallowed Ground, while strong, has a very long cooldown. If you compare our current defensive cooldowns to 1.23's paladin, there's a pretty huge difference. 1.23 cds were generally multi-function and shorter cooldown compared to what we have now. In addition to mitigating damage, Old Rampart generated enmity if you hit allies with it, Old sentinel gave an enmity bonus, Divine Veil caused an AOE regen, and Aegis Boon healed you. Current Rampart, Sentinel, and Bulwark mitigate only, so there's no choice to make there. "Am I going to take a lot of damage soon? Guess I better hit one of these."

The main thing paladin could use is for its bad skills to be fixed up. I'd say that Riot Blade, Shield Swipe, Awareness, Cover, Tempered Will, and a few others could use some changes. Additionally, Paladin really needs to use a lot more MP than it currently does. This would give it another resource to manage and really make it stand out from the other melee classes. Things I'd like to see happen:


-Delete Awareness and replace with Aegis Boon. Raises your shield, blocking the next attack made against you and healing you for the amount blocked. Same MP cost as Flash, breaks combos. On magic GCD. Learned at level 2 to make sure GLAs know to equip a dang shield.
-Rampart moved to lv 34, "Enhanced Awareness" and "Enhanced Rampart" levels swapped.
-Enhanced Awareness trait is now called "Awareness" and reduces the effectiveness of crits against you in some way (reduced damage, reduced chance, whatever)
-Tempered Will: Same as current, but CD reduced and add "restores MP upon taking damage."

-Riot Blade potency increased to 255 (so that the potency/GCD is similar to Halone combo). MP regeneration is increased slightly, but given over a period of time (9 seconds?) instead of instantly.
-Shield Swipe pacification removed. Pacification is OP on stuff it works on and useless on stuff it doesn't work on. Shield Swipe now gives attack speed for a short duration.

-Cover cooldown reduced to 1 minute. Range increased. During cover, any enmity generated by the covered target will be given to the paladin instead.
-Sword Oath and Shield Oath combined into one skill called whatever (Solemn Vow/Paladin's Pledge/Gallantry/whatever). First press toggles Sword Oath, second press toggles Shield Oath, third goes back to sword. Oaths remain as-is, but oath effects linger for 12 seconds after switching. MP cost is the same, still on GCD.
-Lv 40 Paladin Job ability: Holy Succor. Roughly 40% MP cost for base piety. Healing spell, ~3s cast time. Should heal for roughly 20% of the paladin's max HP. Heals the paladin for half of what was healed if cast on another target. Generates double enmity, rather than reduced. Also, for the love of god, scales with weapon damage and strength instead of magic damage and mind.
-Spirits Within: Same as now, but add Combo Action: Shield Swipe. Combo Bonus: Increased enmity (5x would put it at 1500 hate potency, which is slightly higher than Halone.)
-Circle of Scorn: Same as now, but add Combo Action: Shield Swipe. Combo Bonus: Reduces the cooldown of Circle of Scorn by 5 seconds for each enemy affected.

Basically, it adds two combos to paladin (Aegis->Shield Swipe->Spirits, Aegis->Shield Swipe->Scorn), adds a lot of MP usage to encourage Riot Blading often, adds an actual healing spell with a prohibitive MP cost, and allows the paladin to actually control his shield arm a little bit with on-demand blocks. I don't know why I bothered with this since nothing like it will ever happen! But basically I'd be happy if they just deleted Awareness so I don't have to look at that horrible ability.

[Pots_Talos]

Paladin is in a weird spot. It has a lot of really powerful buttons that are pretty boring and a few really crappy buttons. Additionally, most of our subclass skills are pretty underwhelming. There's little reason to ever use Riot Blade. Shield Swipe is similarly mediocre. Awareness, even without the bug, is one of the worst skills in the game. Two of our five job abilities are passive stances, cover is very situational, and Hallowed Ground, while strong, has a very long cooldown. If you compare our current defensive cooldowns to 1.23's paladin, there's a pretty huge difference. 1.23 cds were generally multi-function and shorter cooldown compared to what we have now. In addition to mitigating damage, Old Rampart generated enmity if you hit allies with it, Old sentinel gave an enmity bonus, Divine Veil caused an AOE regen, and Aegis Boon healed you. Current Rampart, Sentinel, and Bulwark mitigate only, so there's no choice to make there. "Am I going to take a lot of damage soon? Guess I better hit one of these."

The main thing paladin could use is for its bad skills to be fixed up. I'd say that Riot Blade, Shield Swipe, Awareness, Cover, Tempered Will, and a few others could use some changes. Additionally, Paladin really needs to use a lot more MP than it currently does. This would give it another resource to manage and really make it stand out from the other melee classes. Things I'd like to see happen:


-Delete Awareness and replace with Aegis Boon. Raises your shield, blocking the next attack made against you and healing you for the amount blocked. Same MP cost as Flash, breaks combos. On magic GCD. Learned at level 2 to make sure GLAs know to equip a dang shield.
-Rampart moved to lv 34, "Enhanced Awareness" and "Enhanced Rampart" levels swapped.
-Enhanced Awareness trait is now called "Awareness" and reduces the effectiveness of crits against you in some way (reduced damage, reduced chance, whatever)
-Tempered Will: Same as current, but CD reduced and add "restores MP upon taking damage."

-Riot Blade potency increased to 255 (so that the potency/GCD is similar to Halone combo). MP regeneration is increased slightly, but given over a period of time (9 seconds?) instead of instantly.
-Shield Swipe pacification removed. Pacification is OP on stuff it works on and useless on stuff it doesn't work on. Shield Swipe now gives attack speed for a short duration.

-Cover cooldown reduced to 1 minute. Range increased. During cover, any enmity generated by the covered target will be given to the paladin instead.
-Sword Oath and Shield Oath combined into one skill called whatever (Solemn Vow/Paladin's Pledge/Gallantry/whatever). First press toggles Sword Oath, second press toggles Shield Oath, third goes back to sword. Oaths remain as-is, but oath effects linger for 12 seconds after switching. MP cost is the same, still on GCD.
-Lv 40 Paladin Job ability: Holy Succor. Roughly 40% MP cost for base piety. Healing spell, ~3s cast time. Should heal for roughly 20% of the paladin's max HP. Heals the paladin for half of what was healed if cast on another target. Generates double enmity, rather than reduced. Also, for the love of god, scales with weapon damage and strength instead of magic damage and mind.
-Spirits Within: Same as now, but add Combo Action: Shield Swipe. Combo Bonus: Increased enmity (5x would put it at 1500 hate potency, which is slightly higher than Halone.)
-Circle of Scorn: Same as now, but add Combo Action: Shield Swipe. Combo Bonus: Reduces the cooldown of Circle of Scorn by 5 seconds for each enemy affected.

Basically, it adds two combos to paladin (Aegis->Shield Swipe->Spirits, Aegis->Shield Swipe->Scorn), adds a lot of MP usage to encourage Riot Blading often, adds an actual healing spell with a prohibitive MP cost, and allows the paladin to actually control his shield arm a little bit with on-demand blocks. I don't know why I bothered with this since nothing like it will ever happen! But basically I'd be happy if they just deleted Awareness so I don't have to look at that horrible ability.

These are the best suggestions for Paladin changes I have read on this board, I would love to see these!

[Leiron]

[QUOTE=OmegaSinX;1641716]
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

Cool, I am game/

Typical tank and Spank fight.

Paladin: RoH combo, weave SW/CoS between GCD's to prevent clipping and threat loss. Utilize FoF in order to establish a proper enmity buffer. Do I have enough threat? Utilize Fracture to maximize DPS output.
Is a big hit coming? yes
How big is the hit? Is it small enough to use Rampart? What about Sentinel? Is it physical so I can use bulwark and risk not blocking it? What about convalescence?
pop Rampart/sentinel/bulwark + Vitality pot; because PLD's can also use them too.
Do I have enough to risk stunning the mob to decrease damage taken?

Oh look, I can make Paladin look a lot more complicated too!

Sorry, I can summarize everything you said like this

WAR: BB combo, BB combo, SE combo (you must use SE). Big hit coming? Pop a cooldown.

Its not anymore complicated outside the fact that PLD cooldowns are a ton more effective.
Let alone you contradict yourself constantly.
Its not complicated you say, then in the next breath "It takes a lot more to maximize a WAR."
The two are one and the same.

[OmegaSinX]

Cool, I am game

Ok Bro, You obviously want the last word. Bottom line is PLD is very passive. WAR has to work for his survivability . PLD only has to rotate buttons. Outside of poping Defensive cooldown, its mostly the same tune and dance for PLD.

Arguing with you is like "Time". It never ends.

[Mister-Wonderful]

As a pure turtle tank, I think PLD (My main job, by the way) is quite boring.
The fun part happens when you try to be a little more than that.

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.

As a side note, I'd really appreciate a third combo to have a more complex rotation. And I think Sword Oath sould have a self-cure potency boost, so that the "conjurer part" of PLD wouldn't be totally useless.

As far as I know tonberry king ignores oath, Just go sword oath the whole fight. Unless you like doing that mixup lol.

[Maelwys]

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

Hmmm.

PLD: Proper use of Cover (useful in Coil or WP). Balance on-GCD stun timing with enmity gain and remain aware of Diminishing Returns (Stuns are very effective on Trash). Likewise, Flash's "Blind" Diminishing Returns. Use of Spirits Within for Silences (No DR for you, but need to be aware of it if you have Bards in the party. Long animation means you need to anticipate cast times). Proper use of Stoneskin (On-GCD very high mitigation in certain boss fights, but results in less enmity gained. Interruptable if you take a certain percentage of incoming damage during the cast). Use of the Riot Blade combo to regenerate MP used in Flash spam (Mainly Speed Runs not Boss fights, though I've used it before in AK Boss #3 for example due to Stoneskin spam!). Ability anticipation for pre-emptive activation of proper cooldowns (No sense using Bulwark versus Magic Damage!). Swapping into Sword-Oath for certain Phases (Titan Heart?). Remembering to NEVER EVER USE AWARENESS EVER due to the brokenness of it preventing Critical Healing on you... the list goes on!

Paladin's Weaponskill rotation is very basic, but it has a lot of flavour or "utility" abilities that can sometimes make or break a fight.

The "fun" for me comes from the constant battle for hate, and jumping around the dungeon maps like a giant heavilly-armoured kangaroo.
I tend to queue for DF dungeon runs and get players with very very random ability. Carrying a "bad" group through a dungeon - Fantastic fun. Never letting an "excellent DPS" group pull hate from me? Intense, but brilliant run. Managing to finish off a Boss whenever the Healer died halfway through due to no fault of my own? 'Mazin craic.

PLD = Keep Hate, Be tough to kill, and Instantly Adapt to whatever random situation crops up.
(Occasionally you just plain run out of Cooldowns or HP, but that's what the respawn button is for!)

Only problem is that I'm constantly getting dragged into random Coil PUGs now...

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

As I am relearning content from the tank / Paladin perspective, it is enjoyable to me.

I haven't yet found opportunities to weave Sword Oath into battle, e.g. Ifrit's Double Radiant plumes or Hydra's triple Ball of Fire/Ice phase. I think Titan has one, Weight of the Land, Gaol, Landslide, something else before Mountain Buster combo (where during this time, Titan is auto-attacking between moves and you might get overhealed in Shield Oath).

But I think I would have liked to see (prior to the Warrior announcements) that Sword Oath and Shield Oath both consume MP gradually to encourage weaving in the Riot's Blade combo and/or to increase Mage Ballad / Mega Ether appreciation.

[Scribe]

Please keep in mind all of this is an opinion, so here goes... My main is PLD, while I have DRG and WHM.

Fun to Play:
This class is certainly fun to play because of the 'I'm the leader' mentality. For people who like to lead, tanking is what you need to do because you set the pace of the raid, and because of this, I enjoy playing the Paladin. I can play the game the way that I want to, and if someone is making me wish that SE had implemented a kick feature, then I can make them glad that they haven't (I know, there's one being implemented in 2.1). Similarly, tanking also requires having an intimate knowledge of the dungeons. DPS and Healers (people are going to hate me for this part) do not have to know the dungeon, all they need to know is which monster/person they need to attack or heal, and attack or heal that monster/person. Sure, they have to position themselves every once in awhile, but overall, it's a pretty consistent playstyle once you find your perfect rotation.

Not Fun to Play:
Paladin rotation is, simply, boring. There isn't much to it, go into dungeon, put on shield oath, run at a mob, use flash a couple times, mark mobs, and then start up your rage of halone combo. Boom done, move onto next set of mobs. Oh woah, you want me to pull 4 mobs together so you can show off your awesome DPS? Sure, I can spam flash, I mean that awesome 1 button has been screaming at me to mash it into oblivion it all night. You want me to tank Titan? Sure, I can press 1, 2, 3 for 10 minutes and side step every once in awhile. Woah, he just used Stoneskin, this tank is the bees knees.

Conclusion:
I'm happy with where the Paladin is at right now. I am glad that I picked the Paladin, since I can play how I want to play. Though I am sad that SE did not put more variety in for the Paladin. I'm thinking that over time we will see a lot more variety added to the game, including class variety. If I don't see some rework of class skills in like the next year or two, I'll be a bit disappointed. However, since I'm getting closer to gear my Paladin in full ilvl90 at this point, I am not overly concerned as I'll be gearing out my DRG next and if I get bored I have my DRG for variety.

As a side note: I like your ideas for the four oaths, I'm sure that SE will do what they want so I'm not going to pick them apart.

[kayuwoody]

First off, like your Oath ideas overall. With that said, going to have to disagree with you. Main reason being, all of the classes bar healers are bout the same 'depth'. I personally don't see how following my dps pew pew rotation and occassionally switching targets or moving out of void zones is any 'deeper'. It's the fight mechanics that make the fights interesting or not. As a tank, Titan HM? Zzzzzz. As a healer though, can be challenging. ADS or Turn 4 are quite interesting to tank on the other hand, and you'll quickly be able to tell apart the good tanks from the average ones.

For me personally they haven't really put in fights with a lot of mechanics like we saw from WoW like 0 lights Yogg-Saron, or HM Lich King.
I haven't really done T5 yet so can't comment too much, but I don't think it's going to be really that bad. The general consensus was that the timing was unforgiving especially when you consider the game engine, rather than actual mechanical dificulty.