PLD dps needs to be buffed, current dps a joke

[Praesul]

As a ARR WAR main, I was really excited about the PLD changes in heavensward. The first class I played in this game was GLA, because I knew from the beginning I wanted to tank. After playing it for a bit, I decided to give WAR a shot sometime before 2.2? I think? Fell in love and didn't look back. I kept both jobs geared just to be more versatile, but I preferred WAR.

So when I saw what PLD was getting in HW, I was so hyped. I also loved the "knight in shining armor" trope, but was bored by PLD's play style. So now they get new combos, shields, an inner beast equivalent, and a HEAL! I thought to myself, there's no way any raid group will ever choose not to take a PLD, their shit is OP....

Man was I wrong. PLD utility is barely useful, sheltron is really nice but pretty meh in alex savage, and their damage is the lowest of the 3 tanks. It's disappointing to me, because it was the first job I got to 60. Yeah, things can be cleared just fine with a PLD, I've never been kicked from a group for playing PLD, but it bugs the shit out of me as a minmaxer.

If nothing requires PLD's supposed high defense, why take it? DRK and WAR can MT everything a PLD can more than fine, while doing more damage. You can argue "but PLD can also clear everything in the game just fine!" until you're red in the face, but it doesn't change the fact that PLD doesn't really offer much other than taking slightly less damage over long periods (which does not = extra healer DPS, because the amount of damage taken is still so significant even on a PLD that it barely makes a difference)

I've leveled WAR to 60 now though, and I'm working on DRK. They're more fun, tank everything more than fine, and do more damage, so at least I have that...

[Valkyrie-Amber]

bumping my thread as this is still an issue why should 2 tanks be superior out of the 3 if you only ever need two tanks for any duty in the first place?

[Tyrial]

bumping my thread as this is still an issue why should 2 tanks be superior out of the 3 if you only ever need two tanks for any duty in the first place?

The only thing two of the tanks are "superior" at is pushing DPS on bleeding edge content. Stop being a baby and suck it up. If you don't like playing PLD anymore and it's a "joke" go roll another class...I hear WAR is pretty awesome.

[Valkyrie-Amber]

sorry but tanks shouldn't be so far apart in dps and that is this threads issue.

A tank is a class who grabs all agro holds all mobs in a spot and lives with healers and their own defense cds.

But due to only 3 tanks many would pick the two dps kinds over pld due to pld is worthless dpswise even if they can tank all mobs no problem if a dark can do same and kill mobs like 20secs faster.

[Tyrial]

sorry but tanks shouldn't be so far apart in dps and that is this threads issue.

A tank is a class who grabs all agro holds all mobs in a spot and lives with healers and their own defense cds.

But due to only 3 tanks many would pick the two dps kinds over pld due to pld is worthless dpswise even if they can tank all mobs no problem if a dark can do same and kill mobs like 20secs faster.

No...people pick the kind of tank that they're most comfortable running with. Go find yourself a static and stop the fussing. If you're good at the class you play people aren't going to care that you're PLD instead of DRK or WAR. Seriously, grow up lol all this thread is is you being upset that you can't do everything better than everyone else.

[Praesul]

Check out all the WAR mains telling PLD and DRK players to grow up.

[Tyrial]

Check out all the WAR mains telling PLD and DRK players to grow up.

I'm a WAR main because that's what my group needed. Previously (and since I started playing at beta) I was a PLD main. I'm also in the process of leveling up the other two tanks so that, unlike some narrow minded people, I have all of the options available to me. What I main doesn't change my view on the situation and I wouldn't be on the forums complaining if PLD or DRK was doing something better than WAR.

[OPneedNerfs]

Somewhere down the line people seem to come up with this fantasy where WARs and DRKs can't take hits/survive as well as PLDs.

That would be true if the game was focused mainly on High damage Physical attacks that happened frequently enough that passive mitigation is king.

However, Ever since the introduction of 2.1, all tanks have been homogenized to a point where "Pop cooldown before X attack" is the only thing in meaningful content.

The only time a PLD's shield and skills related to it is worth anything is when tanking thrash mobs that constantly deal damage by auto-attacks.

However, because their AoE damage is as good as none, things end up dying slower and thus ends up requiring more healing in the end anyway.

The fantasy that is "PLDs mitigate damage better than other tanks" which in turn lead to "Other tanks are squishier than PLD" is something that died when 2.1 changed WARs to become damage reduction tanks just like PLDs.

Of course, this being the OF Tank Forums, I have no doubt that people are going to continue propagating the aforementioned fantasies as facts.

A good example of this is ever since Page 38 in this thread where certain evidence was disproved so hard the poster likely is not going to post in this thread anymore, yet is still seen posting the same evidences elsewhere. That's the state of how it is in the OF Tank Forums now where the people who make sense just can't be bothered with people who just want to continue spreading misinformation because that's apparently what they do for their own satisfaction.

[Praesul]

The way I see it is, higher damage is always a benefit. It's almost always useful. Okay, so not all the time because sometimes it makes for awkward phase pushes or pushes things into enrage on extremely overgeared content (see unsynced ifrit EX or mog HM). But that's stuff you can control.

The so called higher mitigation that PLD brings to the table? When is it useful? And by how much? In any hard content that matters, tanks are still taking bonkers amount of damage, so "increased healer DPS" isn't really a benefit from having to heal a PLD less. And it's SLIGHTLY less, by the way. It's like, okay, the PLD blocked. He took 28% less damage. Cool. He's still gonna get cure 2'd right after just like a DRK or WAR would anyway.

Of course it would be dumb if they designed content so only certain tanks could main tank it, so I understand why they don't make things impossible (and I'm glad for it!) but I feel like what PLD brings to the table isn't good enough at the moment. No one complained in Pre-HW because the viable comp took both tanks ANYWAY, so it's not a matter of "butthurt PLD" complaining all of a sudden.

[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".