Paladin idea for expansion

[Enkidoh]

Why design a new class when the current one is in need of fixing? While I see your point, I hope you won't deny that PLD is in need of an update, specifically in the areas of play style and damage.

As a level 50 GLA/PLD who has played from version 1.0 into ARR and who is quite happy with how GLA/PLD is currently set up, I'm curious as to how you consider PLD 'in need of an update.'

Is it because they don't play like FFXI's PLDs who have to spend half their time slinging Cure spells just to hold hate (and the other half spamming Provoke, which locked the job into subbing WAR just to do so)? Is it because there's no great swords to live out Cloud Strife fantasies? Exactly how are they such a 'broken' class/Job? Please enlighten me.

[HeroSamson]

Please no more for paladin, I already think the job is perfect the way it is.

Unless you replace moves with better ones that's the only way, I don't feel like stacking moves on a macro bar, replace current moves with upgraded ones other than that don't mess with it.

[Donjo]

In no situation will a good paladin ever do more damage or generate more hate than a good warrior. I hope that was a joke (albeit a bad one). Warrior does more damage (uh... due to maim... which should be up 100% of the time) and certainly does higher single target and multiple target enmity generation. And this was before taking into account the 2.1 buffs. This was the same situation at launch.

Stop spouting off and actually read!

Did I ever say that "X will always do Y better?". No!

First of all, the 2.1 buffs did absolutely nothing to increase the damage of WAR's. The only enmity increase was the one granted to Overpower. So, whether it's 2.0 or 2.1 doesn't matter. WAR Damage and Hate when compared to PLD is absolutely unchanged.

To put things in better perspectives:

A WAR will, if they pop Berserk, Unchained, and all the stops at the beginning of a fight, establish a large hate lead on a PLD. Meanwhile, A PLD pops Fight or Flight and generally proceeds to slowly catch up to the WAR's hate. By the time a WAR is ready to burst again, the PLD has probably either reached their level of hate or even passed them. Keep in mind that this is in situations in which both Tanks are equally geared, and I mean equal. They're both wearing all Fending accessories, wearing all DPS accessories, or wearing equally melded alternate accessories. They also have identical bonus attribute distributions. I have observed the WAR's reliance on an initial burst in several situations where I, as PLD, have to switch off with a WAR. Even if I switch to Sword Oath, I can steal hate right back if I don't give the WAR a second. This is albeit temporary as the WAR burst happens eventually to really establish hate, but the ebb and flow I describe here shows a balance in their Hate generation. I'm talking "through the entire fight" here, not "the first 1-2 minutes of the fight". The shorter the fight is, the higher the WAR's hate lead will be. If a WAR is dumb enough to try and keep both Storm's up, I've stolen hate as a PLD in Sword Oath on Twintania even though I had no threat on Twin herself while taking the 3 dragons at the start of the fight.

A WAR does more damage while Main Tanking because of Maim, Wrath, Unchained, etc. However, the use of things like Maim and Storms and such necessitate that not every combo can be the Butcher's Block combo, which is the only one with enmity multipliers. This means that in completely normal situations where the "good" warrior is keeping Maim and a Storm up and waiting for berserk and unchained to go off cooldown, a PLD is actually generating hate more quickly because all they have to do is spam their hate combo. The thing about PLD Hate Generation is that it's very consistent, and that's their strength. It's not a magical balance breaking situation because the WAR's burst makes up for the loss they suffered during the interim phases and Fight or Flight is not as powerful as the Berserk/Unchained combo. When the fight is all said and done, the WAR and the PLD will have generated approximately an equal amount of hate on a single target. If one is actually winning, it's not by a significant margin because it's obvious that both can keep hate on a single target.

When off tanking, a PLD switches to Sword Oath, nullifies the 20% penalty from Shield Oath, and gains 50 potency on every auto attack. This is a constant and underestimated gain in DPS that only changes when Fight or Flight is up. An OT Paladin will also always have the full 300 potency of Spirits Within in addition to the 250 Total Potency of Circle of Scorn. When off tanking, a WAR will remove Defiance. This nullifies the 20% penalty on damage, but also removes the ability to gain and use Wrath, which is a significant part of WAR hate generation and damage generation while tanking. A WAR can compensate for the lack of these moves by applying Storm's Eye, but this also helps the PLD. Alone, an OT WAR will probably beat a PLD, but when they're together Storms Eye will make the PLD win. I'm only talking about 8 man content in which both are present in the same fight.

When we're talking AOE hate, the WAR wins. No contest. Overpower and Steel Cyclone scale on STR, which is much more beneficial for Hate Generation than Weapon Damage or whatever in the world Flash actually scales off of.

So, let me make this perfectly clear. I'd first like to reiterate again that these are based on fights where both a PLD and WAR are in the same party.

I never said that "PLD generates more hate than WAR". I said that they generate an approximately equal amount of threat and the way a WAR's generation ebbs and flows will enable a PLD to steal hate for a time before the WAR's next burst. Maybe my post was unclear, but the idea was that (high consistent + low burst) == (low consistent + high burst). Think of it as 1 + 0 = 0 + 1, if you want.

I never said that "PLD does more damage than a WAR". I said that an MT WAR does more damage than an MT PLD and an OT PLD does more damage than an OT WAR. When both are fighting the same enemy. I honestly cannot see what you got out my post to think that I was saying that PLD always does more damage no matter what.

There are reasons that people like having PLD and WAR together. It's because they are completely awesome and complement each other when they're in the same battle. When they're both beating on the same enemy and switching the tank job once in a while, they're pretty much equal. That's the point.

[indira]

if they every do the dual specility thing heres the DPS pld.

sword of oath - turns all defensive cool downs to offensive, WS bonus to damage bonus. swaps VIT with STR

more tanking junk.

we need to remove the 20% damage gimp from shield of oath, theres no point for it not like were gonna be OP but it will help with hate control a bit. thats the biggest issue we have make it a bit hard at the start of a fight when you have BLM's spamming flare.

[KinSlayer009]

Enough Said .....

[Donjo]

Enough Said .....
*Picture of awesome Inner Beast*

Yup, that's one reason why a WAR in Defiance wins against a PLD in Shield Oath when it comes to raw damage. In fact, a DPS MRD is also really dumb. An FC member claimed to have crit for about 2.1k as a MRD by popping every cross class buff ever at the same time.

[Exstal]

Spike != Sustain

[Surian]

The trouble with this is SE would have to go back and create whole new sword animations for GLA/PLD to do this, as well as having to recode the shield to remain on the player's back while the sword is drawn (as at the moment it's coded to be used mutually with the shield), a lot of time and effort that quite frankly could be better spent designing new classes.

Besides, this would conflict with the very description of GLA, where the class is specifically mentioned as being one-handed, and that some GLAs' 'like to keep their off hand free to focus on their sword arm', thus making two-handing swords contradictory.

Fixed by putting the shield on the back (thus removing it) and one handing your weapon, with the other hand free keeping the same animations it has had.

+ new skills
- no shield blocks and skills

[jlewiss]

I'm not sure much about an ebb and flow but generally speaking any tanks equally geared can steal hate from eachother if they try hard enough. ST/CT is the perfect example of this you can watch the bosses focus bounce from pld to war to war to war to pld and in a circle forever. It just comes down to whoever has the most buffs on.

[Surian]

Still, if you look at what job would be more deserving of an update, Paladin would have to be pretty on top of that list.

Warrior and Paladin are equal in mitigation now, up to the point of it being neglible. The only difference is that Warrior does FAR more damage, has a far greater arsenal of attacks, far more (and much better) self-heals and naturally has 25% more HP.

25% more HP and 20% more healing, combined with Inner Beast's 13% overal reduction (has 6s -20% on what is pretty much a 9 second recast) MORE than equals Shield Oath. I say equals since i dont want to step on anyone's toes, but between you and me it blows Shield Oath completely out of the water. Math-wise it means that warriors get hit for 87%, while paladins get hit for 80%, so you're exchanging 7% more damage taken for 25% more HP and 20% more healing. That's rediculous.

Which could have been more than enough to "fix" the not even slightly broken Warrior job before. But they didnt just stop there...

- It has all the abilities Paladin has now combined unto its own abilities, but those abilities themselves have their own Warrior Exclusive effects on top of that as well.
Storm Path = Rage of Halone + Absorb HP for 50% of the damage done
Inner Beast = Rampart + Absorb HP for 100% of damage done, also circumvents Defiance it's damage reduction.
Foresight = Convalescence (20% defense for 20% cured)
Vengeance = Sentinel
Holmgang = Hallowed Ground + draw in and bind to prevent people from running.
- Enchainment lets it circumvent the damage reduction from Defiance.
- The Potency on all of it's spammable attacks is rediculous. 280 to 300's potency on things they can throw out every 5 seconds if they so desired.
- 50% Absorbs from Storm's Path they basicly spam all the time regardless.
- Insane AoE attacks and potency. Which are spammable opposed to the 25 second wait on a Paladin's Circle of Scorn with a measely 100 potency :/
- A lot of self heals that arent rediculous like Paladin's 200 HP Cures costing 133 MP from Conjurer sub.
- They have Lower TP costs on all their abilities now.
- They have Shorter Recasts.
- Do not have Stun on the Global Cooldown, which is amazing for them.
- They have Higher Critical Hitrates, but ok, fair enough.
- They have Longer Duration Buffs.

What does Paladin have going for it?

- 10% more damage blocked on sentinel for 10 seconds, every 3 whole minutes. (opposed to warriors getting 30% for 15 seconds)
- Insignificant blocks from a shield that happen less than 10% of the time, blocking 20% at most when you're using a i100+ shield. Great, a whole 2% reduction overal. And that's asuming most attacks arent non-physical and thus unblockable, which most boss things are.

You can disagree, or even feel that Warriors "deserve" to be better somehow, but the simple fact of the matter is, they're way too strong. Right now they can keep up with any respectful DPS class in damage dealing, while also retaining all their insane tanking prowess. Just look around the boards for all the coil players bragging about how their Warriors are reaching the 300 DPS requirement as well.

If you're going to make changes and additions to a tank job, make additions and changes to the other job too. You cant just go "Oh, we fixed the enmity problem that Shield Oath was having despite displaying it on the Icon ever since 2.0" and call it equal. (Which, even funnier they broke on the last patch again where they made Shield Oath not go away on death but the enmity boost does).

There was nothing wrong with Warrior before, just people who didnt know how to play them or use them properly in a party, and people still more often than not dont have the faintest clue. Same as how there was no problem with Paladins before.

So there's two ways this can go. Either Paladin gets a massive boost to bring it back up to Warrior Levels. Or Warrior gets a massive nerf to bring it back down to Paladin levels.

Warrior used to be the Damage Dealing Tank, while Paladin was the Mitigation tank.

Now Warrior is the Damage Dealing Tank who also has all the same Mitigation Paladin has and more. Way way way more.

Lets face it

Right now, why would ANYONE want to use a tank that has 25% Less HP, deals Less Damage, Has a harder time holding Enmity on anything that has more than one opponent, while taking pretty much the exact same amount of damage?

At the very least give Paladin another 25% HP as well. And that should be the minimal start.