PLD dps needs to be buffed, current dps a joke

[Julienne]

That's because PLD is a tank class. It's not a DPS class. Would I like more DPS for my PLD? Yes. Do I need more DPS for my PLD? Not if the other DPS are doing their jobs properly.

[NFaelivrin]

That's because PLD is a tank class. It's not a DPS class. Would I like more DPS for my PLD? Yes. Do I need more DPS for my PLD? Not if the other DPS are doing their jobs properly.

This line of argument always makes me wonder if the people saying these things have done any progression raiding while it is relevant. PLD is getting dropped from Savage groups due to poor DPS and the raid design nullifying PLDs primary defensive advantages. Endgame raiding is what the game is balanced around, and thus why people are worried about PLD's state right now.

[Faytte]

End game content revolves around making dps checks at this time.
The important mechanics are largely magical. The rest dont really play into a paladins strengths anyways (which is burst physical damage. Warriors are actually just as good on duration physical damage due to better cooldowns (uptime/downtime).
Dark and War can tank in their offensive stance and use their combos pretty freely.
A Paladin with top tier dps even in defensive stance is going to be spamming rage of halone a bit, and if they go to sword oath? LOTS of rage spam.

All three classes can tank. Two work with the meta, one does not. That is kind of the issue. There are plenty of ways to fix them, not all of which involve a massive dps increase, but they are certainly not in a good spot.

[Disc]

...

STR down & a nice block rate are meaningful when you're taking 2-6k damage physical auto-attacks before/during/after those crazy high 3.5-6k damage founts. Those numbers are accurate by the way. DRK can reduce a few founts, but their damage taken is still higher overall than a good PLD. Plasma is a joke for both jobs. They pull ahead due to naturally higher enmity & Dark Mind/Dark Wall out of tank stance to mitigate a few extra founts out of grit, pushing their DPS higher. Dark Dance is decent when you can pop it, but completely wasted if you're losing Reprisal time because it's down.

DRKs int down is wasted in most instances if you have a MNK, STR down is universally useful outside A4. Cover is nice to use on healers to ignore Sniper enmity. Clemency is mostly useless I'll agree, but if you're worth anything a 5k heal immediately following tankbusters is massive. It's also easy to push out in A4 during ball/discoid phases when healing is most stressed. You don't see Clemency used in the videos you mention because they're pushing to beat enrages with i190 weapons, clemency will show more use for the following groups. My healers rarely heal me to full immediately following Plasma when they have to deal with two tanks taking over 10,000 damage each, unless they get a lucky crit.

10 seconds of invincibility is not something to shrug off. The job is not useless just because it's not the absolute best at every aspect of the game. It's designed to be the most defensive tank, which it is. Yes DRK can reduce more magic damage, but it's still nothing compared to a PLD really trying to turtle down. All fights now and in the future are designed to keep this trend.

It doesn't matter that the DPS are seeing increasing damage too. Savage Blade, Circle of Scorn, etc have enmity multipliers. A 300 damage increase is significant when it converts to 900+ enmity generated. That is why you can tank something like Bahamut in Sword Oath effortlessly, but then struggle to hold hate against the same DPS in A1 Savage.

It would be one thing to complain about the job if it was seriously lacking, but complaining about how it performs in world first groups is just dumb to be honest. They're more DPS oriented because they are approaching DPS checks meant for groups with better gear, and they're executing those fights perfectly to pass. QoL for healers and other members to make mistakes will be much more beneficial to many of the following groups, and a PLD will bring that.

[Faytte]

I never see 6K hits on my war, their laser attack is magical someone confirms, so delirium helps against that. The buster is only a joke if a paladin pops hallowed ground on the second one, otherwise--not at all a joke.

Int Down is fine--I have no idea why people like to bring this up with a monk. Lets say you have a monk? In A1 you put it on the other add. In A2--doesnt matter. In A3--sure its not awesome?
But Warriors have this with the slashing debuff and ninjas--no one discounts how great it is to have a warrior with the slashing debuff or brings up "well its not that great cause of ninjas". Secondly--Monks are not really in vogue right now, with dragoon/ninja being seen as a more viable melee team.

Hallowed Ground is NOTHING to ignore--but in say, AS1 when you use it to get through a buster where other tanks could just soak through it, and still keep their anti deaths as 'oh shit' buttons, that says something. No one is saying Hallowed isnt useful--its great; but I would not play a class strictly for it.

And yes--everyone knows how enmity works (or should work?) by this point if your in savage. Plenty of spread sheets and the like the explain it, but a Paladin right now has to spam their emnity combo because those same combos do not have very good core damage and have the same multipliers as other tanks (x5 for your enmity finisher, all stances are x2, etc). Add in the fact that in their offense stance, Paladins added potency does not interact with their ability enmity, which is why you see---and you can google pld as1/as2 kill vids for this--- when they got into sword oath they are not spamming royal authority; hell you do not see many royal authorities at all. You see them maintaining goring blade and spamming RoH with the 'sometimes' royal authority because aggro is a huge issue for them.

Cover and Sniper--well if the healer stands close enough to you for this to matter; sure?

Its also dumb to not understand that the same dps checks you are facing are also with the best players in the world. Your static, my static--our dps wont meet those levels. They wont play as good, so you can add on item levels but still see the same issues. This is not a world of echo fail buffs to get people through things.

[Disc]

You don't see 6k damage hits on your WAR because you have Storm's Path. My DRK does not have STR down or Storm's path.

Putting the MNK on the other tank's add doesn't change the damage a DRK is taking from physicals, it's still a significant amount more DPS than a group with a PLD who will naturally take less damage.(also less from Plasma if DRK is using Shadow Wall to increase DPS) INT down being useless in A2 is also not a benefit. A WAR putting up Storm's Eye allows NIN to skip Dancing Edge, resulting in a DPS gain for both jobs in most cases. A DRK using Delirium does nothing because MNKs still want their blunt resistance debuff. MNK vs NIN vs DRG is an entirely different debate.

Hallowed could be the big game changer in A4 Savage. Even in normal mode a PLD can use it to eat a full Discoid and 3 orbs. Whether you would play the job for that ability or not is irrelevant, it's one of many benefits the class brings.

Enmity multipliers are not the same for the tank classes. That is why PLD has so much trouble tanking out of stance right now. As DRK I can easily hold hate until the second adds out of Grit by opening with Dark Arts+Power Slashx2, PLD does not have that luxury. I know because I actually dealt with it while tanking A1 Savage as PLD in Sword Oath.

You're giving those DPS checks way too much credit. I've never had echo to clear Coil turns, I don't plan to sit around and wait for it to clear the rest of Alexander Savage.

[Faytte]

Eh--I'm not chaining storms path in AS1. I'm doing most of the fight in deliverance with eye on the boss. I'm not seeing 6K hits.

Just to correct you. I'll be re running it Saturday but the only time im throwing up path is before busters and for a little while after each one until healing is settled down.


For the most part, the damage debuffs arnt super userful in AS2 outside of small windows. Warriors are not tab targetting /storms pathing each target, and frankly paladins arnt either other than the heavy heavy hitters--its far better to burn everything down as quickly as possible. Paladin aoe dps in AS2 is a terrible joke. Warriors and Dark are leagues ahead of them, and everything being dead===the best form of mitigation.

We dont know what AS4 is, so its not fair to speculate. But given A4 had a buster every minute, then i would MUCH rather have a dark and a warrior taunting off eachother and using cds than a paladin who can hallowed -one- of them and otherwise has a 90 and 180 second cd to a dark knights 90/180/60 second cd + 10% debuff and a warriors whenever 20sec, 120, and 90/60 second bursty self heal and.

Enmity multipliers for the most part, are the same for all classes. I have no idea why you say otherwise. You can check spread sheets on this? All of the tank stances are 2x, all of your combos with extra enmity are 3x or 5x based on the part in the combo (rage of halone is 5x, butchers block is 5x, etc). The difference is the potencies are very different, but that is not the multiplier (which is what you brought up). Rage of Halone and an unmodified power swing are both x5x2, but one is a 260 combo and the other is a 300(so about 14% behind). Couple that with a Drk dps advantage in tank stance over a paladin (fof is 10% over time, dark side is 15% always) and there is a difference there. Now...go into offense, and things go out the window for the balance typically. They cant do things like dark arts /power slash and the extra damage from sword oath does not get any sort of enmity treatment, and in pulls like AS2, where a pack dies and you go onto the next pack, FoF being your soul threat/damage increases means it just wont be up vs Darkside/Maim being always available and enhancing that core ability.

So paladin without FoF smacks a group of boss with rage in Sword for...260 potency of aggro (x5).
A dark knight does is for 345 potency with dark side (no dark arts) x5
A warrior in deliverence butchers blocks for 352 potency (maim and deliverance) x5

Dark Knights also have some tricky ninja aggro. Every time you pop dark arts after aggro has been established, your getting the free 50 aggro from having popped a buff according to testing. Kind of nifty--and actually can add up rather well over an entire fight to being worth a few gcds worth of aggro itself.

[Phoenicia]

Using Unmend to recover TP is a DPS gain. You gain 150 potency and 50 TP (not 60, 2.5s = 50 TP) against the alternative of "stand there and wait for the TP tick".

INT Down is fine and allows for you to drop monk from the raid set up.

People bring MNK up because THEIR buff is MANDATORY to THEIR DPS. So a DRK applying INT down doesn't inherently increase the MNK's DPS by dropping Dragon Kick for the sure crit on Bootshine, causing a no synergy or added effect for having both jobs.
As opposed to warrior's slashing debuff actually INCREASING the NIN's DPS by allowing the NIN to drop DE for the far more potent (+80 potency) Aeolean Edge. Assuming the NIN natural rotation is DE > DoTs > AE > Armor Crush when Huton <30s.
Inversely, NIN applying the slashing debuff allows a WAR MT to go SP > BBx2 for maximum mitigation and threat uptime. This however is a raid-wide DPS loss and is not needed. Also not bringing a WAR and substituting it with a NIN for the Slashing Debuff and running a PLD/DRK combo "should" be a viable option. But people seem to ignore it. The "glaring" disadvantage of non-WAR TP issues are automatically solved by Goad in here. GREAT synergy between those classes.

The video I've seen of a PLD tanking As1 in Sword Oath doing a VERY healthy rotation of RoHx1, GBx1, and RAx1 while still pulling ahead of the DPS. The DRG was VERY close second (85% close) but the DRG never even tried Illusive Jump. I believe the video was linked in the other thread that I started. I'm not saying PLD doesn't need an aggro buff btw. I think PLD's having weaker enmity on its RoH combo is "balanced by SE" around the fact that CoS and Shield Swipe have aggro multipliers and are incorporated in their rotation. But with Shield Swipe being a DPS loss and a deharmonizer of their rotation, SE should probably rethink this approach.

While these early DPS checks are met by people that know how to maximize their classes and maximize raid wide DPS by increasing synergy between the classes. Other early groups are not THAT far behind. The math behind the maximum DPS doesn't change and those people do not have some secret ways to do more damage. They just have better execution. Most non-bleeding-edge but "good" players will copy the bleeding-edge players and pull close numbers. Hence people copy their strategies and rotations. The difference between the world first groups and the average static is the flexibility of creating new strategies, not some secret way of doing more DPS. Adding item levels will surely reduce those issues you're talking about.

[Faytte]

Link this video with a dps meter. My bet is if they could maintain that rotation off dps, that the dps was terrible.

[Disc]

WAR actually have 3.5x & 5.5x on their Skull & Butchers in addition to Berserk offering a massive DPS boost for their initial enmity combo, they also get to use their enmity skills for damage. The potency difference between DRK & PLD is 260 vs 300, or 271(Shield+FoF+Halone) vs 312(Grit+Darkside+Power) if you want to count buffs. You do not get to reduce it to it's overall DPS gain when discussing initial threat. DRK pulls ahead in enmity by pairing Dark Arts with power Slash for an enhanced enmity modifier, not potency boost. This is why I can safely tank out of grit until Plasma cannon only using Soul Eater combo(no enmity, never power slash) while my PLD struggles in Sword Oath using Savage at least 2 out of every 3 combos. Both tanks are generally fine after Plasma due to additional stance enmity generated & DPS disengaging for adds. Mileage will vary with your DPS of course. This is is where DRKs damage has the most significant impact because damage dealt is effectively doubled by the split.

edited for stances