PLD feels underwhelming lately

[kukurumei]

Meh, that kinda was the case but I haven't seen anything in the Second Coil has yet to scream "PAL needed!" (Please correct me if I'm wrong, haven't looked at t8 or t9 yet). Plus, as the echo buff keeps increasing in the first Coil, you can do basically what ever you want for kills there. Might as well go Drg/War or Drg/Pal just to clear the fights quickly.

I can't imagine a group turning down a Warrior in hopes of finding a Paladin to start a fight. It's hard enough to find tanks as is. The idea that any fight hinges on the Paladin toolkit is archaic at this stage of the game.

Levi doesn't leave town without a pld for chain stunning that's 2.2
T6 even then you want a cover for bees unless you have a really veteran group. And hollow ground for super slug if I remember right in worse case.

And most single tank runs are still with a pld in old coil. A war is amazingly above and beyond for single tank runs for most groups. No one wants that, just go with a pld.

There's just almost never a time you don't want a PLD in end game. Can't say that with a war.

[VidulaSaix]

Make Cure not completely worthless.

In pretty much every other game, Paladin's are hailed as Tanks that can help sustain their selves. It would be a nice means of keeping some stress off the Healers, especially in fights like Leviathan EX with Briny Veil.

[Umbeliel]

Levi doesn't leave town without a pld for chain stunning that's 2.2
T6 even then you want a cover for bees unless you have a really veteran group. And hollow ground for super slug if I remember right in worse case.

And most single tank runs are still with a pld in old coil. A war is amazingly above and beyond for single tank runs for most groups. No one wants that, just go with a pld.

There's just almost never a time you don't want a PLD in end game. Can't say that with a war.

Quoting for emphasis and addition: with the exceptions of AoE enmity and in stance dps, there is absolutely nothing a paladin can do that a Warrior can't. The only point of having a Warrior in your group is Storm's path and absolutely nothing else.

[kukurumei]

The problem comes for the fact that SE hasn't made any content that screams "Warrior"

Every general player made strategy is made with PLD in mind from 2.0 to 2.2.

Thus PLD/PLD can mesh into almost any strategy and no strategy comes in the form of war/war.

Name a strategy that only war's can preform? Zero.
Name a strategy that only pld can preform? Lots and lots. Ranging from lowly T1 to twin, to levi, to 2nd coil.

While there should be strategies that work with Warrior in mind...they either don't surface or are sub-standard to the pld strategy.

There is almost always a place for "ooh hollow ground works so well" to "he's stunnable, send a pld in" to "OMG this sucks, can you cover?"

[RhazeCain]

The problem comes for the fact that SE hasn't made any content that screams "Warrior"

Every general player made strategy is made with PLD in mind from 2.0 to 2.2.

Thus PLD/PLD can mesh into almost any strategy and no strategy comes in the form of war/war.

Name a strategy that only war's can preform? Zero.
Name a strategy that only pld can preform? Lots and lots. Ranging from lowly T1 to twin, to levi, to 2nd coil.

While there should be strategies that work with Warrior in mind...they either don't surface or are sub-standard to the pld strategy.

Gonna disagree with this, to some extent. There are of course some places where PLD is clearly the better option, but this poster gives too much credit to PLD and not enough to WAR. Some background on me first though: I play both WAR and PLD. Other person in static is WAR and I prefer WAR, but go PLD when needed.

WAR shines when:
AE damage. Think Brayflox farms or parts of coil t4.
Predictable repeated spike damage. Like Inner Beast for every death sentence on Twin.
Reliable agro when pickup adds. Like dancers in t7: Tomahawk > Overpower > Overpower while moving into position instead of Shield Lob > Shield Lob > Shield Lob. (I'm aware that PLD usually adequate, but WAR a bit better)
Damage while tanking. Like single tanking t8: it's a DPS race. Both are fine, so might as well get the little bit of extra damage.
Storm's Path. Just takes a bit off the top everywhere. Can work from OT position too.

Currently we're going WAR/WAR on t6 (that's just personal preference), then WAR/PLD on t7 (for hallowed ground at the Prosecutor), then WAR single tank on t8. Still learning t8, but the reason failing isn't the tank currently and there are videos out there with WAR single tank going whole way. Overall, WAR/PLD is going to equal or beat (usually beat) WAR/WAR or PLD/PLD every place to date.

And that's good. Please notice the other thread currently in this same forum complaining that WAR needs an improvement. Since some people think both ways, that's a pretty sure sign that things are about as they should be. Unlike the 2.0 where WAR was majorly shafted.

[kukurumei]

Gonna disagree with this, to some extent. There are of course some places where PLD is clearly the better option, but this poster gives too much credit to PLD and not enough to WAR. Some background on me first though: I play both WAR and PLD. Other person in static is WAR and I prefer WAR, but go PLD when needed.

WAR shines when:
AE damage. Think Brayflox farms or parts of coil t4.
Predictable repeated spike damage. Like Inner Beast for every death sentence on Twin.
Reliable agro when pickup adds. Like dancers in t7: Tomahawk > Overpower > Overpower while moving into position instead of Shield Lob > Shield Lob > Shield Lob. (I'm aware that PLD usually adequate, but WAR a bit better)
Damage while tanking. Like single tanking t8: it's a DPS race. Both are fine, so might as well get the little bit of extra damage.
Storm's Path. Just takes a bit off the top everywhere. Can work from OT position too.

Currently we're going WAR/WAR on t6 (that's just personal preference), then WAR/PLD on t7 (for hallowed ground at the Prosecutor), then WAR single tank on t8. Still learning t8, but the reason failing isn't the tank currently and there are videos out there with WAR single tank going whole way. Overall, WAR/PLD is going to equal or beat (usually beat) WAR/WAR or PLD/PLD every place to date.

And that's good. Please notice the other thread currently in this same forum complaining that WAR needs an improvement. Since some people think both ways, that's a pretty sure sign that things are about as they should be. Unlike the 2.0 where WAR was majorly shafted.

War/War anywhere is incredibly messy, and shaving some time off the run for damage, doesn't make it a strategy more like a boredom.

In your T6 case, you loose cover for bees, loose HG to super slug, and you loose double HG(if you go double PLD) for the burn. Heck double cover for each Bee on CD still owns if you run PLD/PLD.

For IB, yes it works great on twin, but a PLD has been tanking it since forever, and they still have Twin beat when they can HG hatches and liquid hell themselves and they can stoneskin each other as tanks in twin (waaaay better then IB) and in fact the orginal strat was 2x PLD with stoneskin buddies and tank swaps at the end after burning CDs.

War does have some lacking quality, but the biggest lack is the strategy's that PLDs are favored. hongang is no replacement for HG, off CD stun is no replacement for chain stun, cover wars have nothing, and pretty much every thing the pld's arsenal is built in to be

"Build for PLD first, try to adapt it to wars later"

Wars in the end are still 2nd teir, as PLD-buddies. Not PLD-equals. Much better then 2.0, but nothing SE has come up with that makes war...well warrior, aka war/war just...meh...

Wars are great when you can brute force stuff with skill or power, but that's all there is right now. SE is too hesitant to give Wars some truely unique skills, or a advantageous skills.

Not to hijack the thread, but if Wars had 100% trill of battle spike instead and shorten the duration, that might be a great mechanic, or make Steel Cyclone be AoE provoke instead of threat. Instant top hate list for multi mobs, etc.

PLD's skills are too powerful in that they are instantly adaptable. Half is from other MMO lessions, the other half simply because they work.

[Kyana]

Make Cure not completely worthless.

In pretty much every other game, Paladin's are hailed as Tanks that can help sustain their selves. It would be a nice means of keeping some stress off the Healers, especially in fights like Leviathan EX with Briny Veil.

Well, we have Stoneskin. It's not great but it's better than cure and can be used to mitigate big hits if you know when they come.


And if you compare PLD and WAR, tanking multiple mobs is no problem for both, but while WAR can build hate and deal damage at the same time, PLD can only use Flash and CoS.
Yes you can split Rage of Halone combo, but not if you want to hold hate against 2-4 players dealing AoE dmg.
Then you only have Flash to keep aggro and can't do much else except the needed Riot Blade combo.
Using Shield Bash on a group of mobs takes too long and you risk losing hate, if your DDs are worth their salt.

And as some already mentioned, on single targets we have RoH combo. We don't have much more to do even if our enmity is more than enough.
Shield Bash doesn't work on 95% of the bosses, and if it works we have diminishing returns.
Shield Swipe is ok for damage but pacification doesn't work on bosses either.
CoS and SW have cooldowns and Shield Lob is useless when you're tanking the mob already.

A WAR can keep up Storm's Eye and Storm's Path debuffs while keeping hate, healing himself and dealing dmg.
No matter which combo used, the WAR builds up wrath till he can use Inner Beast.
That's -20% dmg for 6 seconds every ~13 seconds and additional heal. PLD's Rampart lasts for 20 seconds but also has a 90 seconds cooldown.
But that's not important.


Don't get me wrong. I don't want to make PLD stronger than WAR.
But at the moment PLD, which is meant to be a dmg mitigation tank, doesn't mitigate much more than WAR.
On paper maybe, but ingame I don't feel a big difference in survivability, but a difference in utility and hate generation (dmg).
That's what bothers me.
Either improve PLD to mitigate more dmg than WAR or improve its skills to give it more utility.
EDIT: I don't mean utility in a certain situation which occurs once in a certain fight, but something that's useful in more situations.

And as I said, I'm curious how others distributed their stat points and what kind of accessories they use.
I'm on +30 VIT, accuracy and parry with as much det/crit as I can put in at the moment.
WAR is at +30 STR with half of the accessories being STR for dungeons, and going full VIT/parry accessories when tanking harder stuff. Also aiming for enough accuracy and as much det/crit as possible.

[kukurumei]

EDIT: I don't mean utility in a certain situation which occurs once in a certain fight, but something that's useful in more situations.

And as I said, I'm curious how others distributed their stat points and what kind of accessories they use.
I'm on +30 VIT, accuracy and parry with as much det/crit as I can put in at the moment.
WAR is at +30 STR with half of the accessories being STR for dungeons, and going full VIT/parry accessories when tanking harder stuff. Also aiming for enough accuracy and as much det/crit as possible.

Play more end game. PLD just have more tools...for everything.

Wars have better upkeep but matters very little in endgame. SE doesn't like warriors...or perhaps they are continuing to evaluate how they design fights. 2.2 is far more fairer then 2.1, but still a far cry, from war anything.

Heck pretty much every content in 2.0 and 2.1 is completely war-phobic.

PLD is king of end game, and that's not on paper.

[Kyana]

Play more end game. PLD just have more tools...for everything.

Wars have better upkeep but matters very little in endgame. SE doesn't like warriors...or perhaps they are continuing to evaluate how they design fights. 2.2 is far more fairer then 2.1, but still a far cry, from war anything.

Heck pretty much every content in 2.0 and 2.1 is completely war-phobic.

PLD is king of end game, and that's not on paper.

And yet, you seem to prefer WAR while your PLD is only lvl35. No offense, just an observation.

Yes, I've yet to get to 2nd Coil, so I don't know how well WAR and PLD work in there.
But the difference I experienced myself, when tanking endgame stuff with either PLD or WAR, was minimal at best so far.

[Codek]

And yet, you seem to prefer WAR while your PLD is only lvl35. No offense, just an observation.

Yes, I've yet to get to 2nd Coil, so I don't know how well WAR and PLD work in there.
But the difference I experienced myself, when tanking endgame stuff with either PLD or WAR, was minimal at best so far.

That's pretty much the case the whole way through. Not sure why Kukurumei feels the need to turn an ant hill into a mountain but the Paladin toolkit is in no way a requirement for any fight.

If your raid nights are between a kill and a wipe based off the use of HG and Cover, then there is some fundamental issues going on there (Exclusion being T4 double dread strategy when people were in all i70 gear). They are a nice luxury to have but groups can also easily work around not having them just as well.


This is a fine tuning issue as there is literally nothing else to complain about between the two classes (in regards to balancing them). I'm far more concerned with the lack of on the go decisions players have to make while playing a Paladin then compared to a Warrior. If SE were to make changes to the classes, then this is what I prefer to be prioritized. It gets far too stale to play Paladin through the fights having only 1 go to combo and predetermined points in time where cooldowns should be burned.