PLD feels underwhelming lately

[Umbeliel]

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.

It stands true for pre-endgame as well. Additionally, a lot of people seem to be ignoring the RoH debuff which, though not effective as Path, is a thing that exists. On top of that, the fact that IB is effectively just shield block on demand and that it more or less just turns a Warrior into a paladin with just shield oath and 25% extra HP for six seconds is also a thing- While doing lower Coils on a Paladin, especially with Echo, if you legitimately need that extra Warrior 25% or 20% reduction your healer is probably a huge mess.

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.

Paladin is boring. Warrior is a lot more involved and takes a hell of a lot more thought to do well. Preferences are sort of irrelevant on the matter.

Warrior is easy to compensate for by design, which in and of itself says a lot really.

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.

This is just me nitpicking, but at best you can get IB on a 13 second cooldown (Providing you use veng and zerk specifically for wrath stacks and have Selene.), and with no cooldowns for Wrath you are looking at around 19 seconds bare minimum, starting count with no combo. IB is a huge tool towards equalization and we are in a better spot than we were 2.0, but it is by no means the be all end all that a lot of people seem to think it is.

The heal is trivial at best, but I'll give that if you keep spamming it maybe you'll get a lucky hit that isn't automatically overhealed anyway. Eye IS useful, without a doubt though and the 10% reduction on path(Though it really should never have been taken off Rain of Death) is good too.

Further, putting aside that it not being usable on most bosses(Which is simply not true), the diminishing returns only last for 20 seconds after the last successful stun was applied. That is, with twenty seconds downtime on stunnable bosses you have about nine seconds of not taking damage. Let's not even bring up the practicality of Stoneskin(It's actually amazing, by the way. Use it as much as you can.), the fact that your AoE enmity tool essentially gives you Featherfoot, or that post 2.1 nearly all Warrior skills are just are just adapted to do what Paladin can already do automatically with no extra effort. Heyoooooo

The part where Paladins don't have a second combo to use is because they -don't need one-, a Warrior on tank will deal significantly higher dps than a on tank Pally, and(Unless OT Pally is a jerk, especially on swaps, and refuses to stance juggle) enmity should outright be a non issue unless it's a 2x paladin setup. Which, even then, I haven't ever actually had any issues with. A Paladin does not need an equivalent to Storm's Path/Eye, because it already has the secondary damage down effect built in an the enmity when not tanking is(Or, again, unless your other tank is fairly bad.) completely irrelevant.



....Also, to answer what you asked earlier, the most effective way I've found to define the "vit/str Do you need it?" issue is to start with vit. Because vit is your HP and absolutely nothing else, every time you go into a fight and don't fall below a multiple of 15(or 18, on a Warrior) of HP is that much vit being totally worthless that you don't need. So you find you don't fall below 150 hp? That's 10 vit that could be better used as str. Never fall below 1500? 100 str you could be having without being dead. Of course, you should maintain a buffer of sorts but it's actually not possible to go low enough that you don't have one just by using a full str allocation at 50, i90 armor/weapon and gryphonskin accessories. Every piece of i100 armor just makes it a little bit more of a moot issue.

And more on topic, not that Paladin doesn't need tweaks too. But it is in a lot less of a "needs tweaks" position than Warrior which was more or less the point of the derailing, I think. Awareness should be tweaked, Savage Blade shouldn't be cross classable (The only job that crosses gladiator is...... Warrior. And Marauder has the identical cross classable Skull Sunder for everyone wanting to use classes instead.) Shield and Sword Oath could be condensed to a single skill that switches between the two.(And leaving with one or the other always on as long as you were a Paladin. Which should be the case anyway.) Enhanced Awareness is a completely wasted trait. Except Foresight and...... Sort of Bloodbath, maybe, there's really nothing for Paladin from the Marauder cross class skillset too. Most of these are borderline QoL though.