PLD dps needs to be buffed, current dps a joke

[Sapphidia]

I think the problem with PLDs is that they're balanced around "utility" rather than damage as their secondary role, and right now their utility is so negligible it might as well not be there.

Warriors are in a good spot because they have a similar tanking mitigation kit to paladins in terms of overall effectiveness, just a little harder to use (pressing Rampart is easier than ensuring you have 5 Wrath stacks for an Inner Beast and timing it right so the 6 seconds are at the best spot). Point for point though, the "higher mitigation" paladins have is pretty much a myth. It's not in their cooldowns because the Warriors have parity there. Vengeance is 10% less than Sentinel but has far more average uptime. Foresight/Awareness are traited differently but balance out. Rampart and Inner beast are roughly equal. Hallowed Ground is better than Holmgang but have similar roles and Holmgang has a shorter CD. Raw Intuition and Bulwark are roughly equal, if anything RI is better due to much higher uptime. Paladin has 10% better Convalescence but Warrior has Thrill of Battle too. Warrior has Equilibrium and improved Bloodbath for self healing, Paladin has Clemency which is stronger but much harder to get off without interruption.

The major comparison between Warrior and Paladin mitigation is the fact that for -sustained- damage rather than bursty EHP a Paladin is slightly better, as the 20% Shield Oath reduction works out slightly better than the 20% healer boost on Defiance (it should be 25%), and the fact that a Paladin's innate block chance comboed with Sheltron use beats out the increased Parry chance warriors get from Wrath stacks. And this difference only affects physical attacks, and isnt reliable on tank busters. Basically you'll only ever notice the difference between a Paladin and a Warrior in toughness when tanking large packs of rapidly hitting mobs, rather than a big single boss (hence why Paladins are viewed as noticeably more survivable in A2S, at a cost of much lower aoe damage).

So whilst we can quibble slightly over the exact numbers, in practise when tanking your average single target big raid boss Warriors and Paladins do a near equal job of mitigating the incoming damage. The advantage of Warriors is that they can dish out more damage whilst doing so, and MUCH more damage whilst sitting in an offtank role. ALL of their skillset is geared towards pretty much nothing but dealing enhanced damage.

Paladins however... they have Divine Seal. Cover. Clemency. Crossclassed Stoneskin. These all give Paladins the role of a "support tank". The Warriors have the damage, the Paladins have the healing and the protection. Warriors will kill bosses faster, Paladins -should- make the healing requirements much easier on a group. Right now however there arent really any fights where healer output is such a difficult problem that these supporty abilities brought by Paladins can make any major difference to success. They're little more than emergency buttons for when something messes up in the healing, and not anything you'd really bring a Paladin for specifically. They -can't- really be a requirement because if Paladin-specific utility skills were needed for an encounter then you'd be forced to bring one. This is before you factor in the fact that the Paladin's low mana pool coupled with the long cast times of Clemency/Stoneskin and the fact you can be interrupted means in practise these moves can only be used at very specific times in an encounter.

Musing: What if Clemency had only 0.5 second cast time and cost 25% of the mana cost it does now. That would be overpowered? A paladin able to spam out 4k heals on the raid without risk of interruption? In a hypothetical situation where Clemency was THAT strong... would it be strong enough to warrant bringing a Paladin over a Warrior? I mean with so much casting spam a paladin woudl do even LESS damage. At what point can you buff utility to be so hugely powerful that it actually beats out "much more damage"?

I guess I'd -prefer- to see Paladins fixed by having their DPS left where it is and having their utility buffed so they're a definite choice over a Warrior/DRK for a different reason. The more you buff tanks to be closer to each other, the more raw DPS numbers dictate which is optimal. I doubt there's any way to easily increase utility without unbalancing things though. Let Warriors have their niche as the high damage tank, let DRKs sit in between Paladins as the medium damage tank that excels at mitigating magical tank busters. Those seem to be good, popular niches. Paladins just need a more clearly defined niche that isnt just "well you can help out a crappy healer a bit sometimes".