PLD dps needs to be buffed, current dps a joke

[Praesul]

Those must have been some Godhand DPS if they're carrying a 250 DPS WAR around in savage.

[Sandamar]

The war doing 250 dps Is the weird thing and i dont know How He does that even if you only spam BB combo you do more than that.

On my personnal experience We were running pld/drk (i was the paladin) We still managed to clear A1 and A2 during the first week with this setup but then came A3S and i decided to go Warrior to see how it goes and God the difference is huge.

More dps, triple fc for the burst phase, Storm path for cascade and i barely take more damage than my paladin. And the sad story is that i dont have any eso gear in my Warrior but it is performing better than my paladin. Just Storm path on cascade is a huge help for my scholar and less Stress on healer and sometimes i even use it for the 6 splash meanwhile i can tank easily up to 4 stacks swap without any fear in the last phase

[Pooky_Pasha]

Those must have been some Godhand DPS if they're carrying a 250 DPS WAR around in savage.

I was thinking Godhand healers dps-ing. If the DPS on original Oppressor can't get ahead of a 450 dps OT that's a on a different target ~60% of the fight, or even rip hate off of a 250 dps MT, they probably aren't doing much.

[Reynhart]

If all Tanks are designed to survive all Tank Busters w/ Cooldowns, then what is left? It's all about how much Damage they do.

That's exactly where the whole tank design is flawed.
Sure, when you can survive a fight, the most important thing is to win it, and you win it by killing the boss.

But, in my opinion, it's wrong to focus on what personal DPS tank do instead of how they can contribute to the overall DPS.
If all tanks do exactly the same damage, what's the point of having multiple tanks ?

[Sandamar]

True that but actually the tank that deals the most damage is also the one giving the greatest support for dps with eye (for the other tank and ninja if you have one) and for healer with path

True story

[Croisciento]

I can relate Sandamar. But in my case I was playing DRK. Like you i've spent esoterics on my primary job but kinda got forced to switch to Warrior because I wanted to provide the best as a person for my group. It saddens me as a DRK that I cannot bring anything useful to my group. We got a monk so my utility is beyond 0.

Warrior got more damage and more utility and isn't worse/better depending on the fight, it's such a versatile job... I don't even know why nothing was changed in 3.07. Warrior is the only tank that's mandatory for any raid group that wanna progress through A3S properly. To be honest I think Square screwed up really hard. They saw that both PLD and DRK were picked so they figured nothing was to change. What brings warrior to your group is just to good to pass on and it's unacceptable.

[SpookyGhost]

But, in my opinion, it's wrong to focus on what personal DPS tank do instead of how they can contribute to the overall DPS.
If all tanks do exactly the same damage, what's the point of having multiple tanks ?

This raises a good point - how important is it that a job is unique in how it contributes to the group? I feel like SE had the right idea with AST, but not with DRK and MCH.

AST does something unique for a healer job, which is buff other party members to do more DPS (among other things). As an AST, depending on what card you draw, you have to decide what to do with it and how it will best benefit your group's DPS or survivability as a whole. A SCH is more focused on their personal DPS, whereas an AST is focused on the DPS contribution of others through their cards. This is important, as neither WHM nor SCH function in this way and having an AST in your group is different from having a WHM or a SCH (but not a detriment).

DRK is... a tank. It doesn't bring anything special. It mitigates damage, it deals damage, that's about it. It's "specialty" is mitigating magic damage, which it does fantastically, but this isn't something unique to the job. A WAR can mitigate magic damage, a PLD can mitigate magic damage. It mitigates magic damage frequently, but so does WAR (just to a lesser extent and even trumps DRK if the magic damage is frequent enough). The only thing unique (at least for the tanks) it brings is it's INT down debuff, which is a massive stretch in terms of individualizing jobs.

MCH is a BRD with a floating turret. It offers nothing unique, it has random CC strapped onto it that is irrelevant in any content that matters. It is essentially useless. If MCH were gone, nothing would change at all.

What we need, more than anything, is individuality and balance. The biggest problems with PLD specifically at the moment are that:

1. It deals less damage than DRK/WAR.
2. Alexander Savage is mostly magical damage and while PLD's toolkit is fine for it, DRK's toolkit is better.
3. It's utility is lackluster at best and doesn't make up for it's damage loss.

PLD isn't actually in as bad of a spot as people make it out to be - denying a PLD a position in your raid group just because they deal less DPS than an optimal DRK is just stupid. If you're currently pushing A4S, by all means do as much min/maxing as you'd like, but if you're not in that tiny little sailboat then don't think that you can fit into it while still in A1S/A2S/A3S progression. Yes, DPS is a massively important thing in every floor of Alex at the moment, but with current gear it genuinely isn't your composition that's the problem - it's your players and their skill level.

That said, PLD is still flawed, and it being okay now does not mean it doesn't need to be fixed. This applies to DRK too, which is doing fantastically, but obviously suffers from fundamental flaws in it's cooldown suite. Currently everything is fine and, much like when people thought DRK shouldn't be allowed in Ravana parties, everyone's just basing their views on what world first groups are running. Things need to be changed, but it's nothing you should concern yourself over right now. Enjoy PLD, enjoy DRK, enjoy WAR, and hope that SE is wise enough to realize the problems that these jobs will face in the future (except WAR, which is perfect) and fix them.

[Reynhart]

True that but actually the tank that deals the most damage is also the one giving the greatest support for dps with eye (for the other tank and ninja if you have one) and for healer with path

That's why we need to look at every type of action (Not counting mitigation because thay all need to have enough for every fight) we can do in the game and design one tank to be the best at them:

• Damage
• Buff
• Debuff
• Heal
• Refill ressources

With a very basic view, we could technically have room for 5 different tanks

The best part is that healers could work the same, on top of separating pure-healing and barrier-healing.

As for DPS ? Yes, they almost only DPS, but I think their rotation and gameplay are unique enough to make people keep playing all of them even they do the same numbers.

[Ultimatecalibur]

(except WAR, which is perfect)

Have you ever considered that it may not be the Paladin and Dark Knight where the problem lies and it is actually in the Warrior's "Perfection"?

• The Warrior does the most DpS as both the OT and MT (beyond the ~11% damage boost it gets from its slashing debuff).
• The Warrior has the best continuous debuff (-10% damage vs -10% str and -10% int)
• The Warrior has no TP issues through a combination of "free" on GcD actions and a TP restorer.
• The Warrior has the best fast anti-tankbuster as long as they come only once every 9 or more gcds.

[Phoenicia]

Have you ever considered that it may not be the Paladin and Dark Knight where the problem lies and it is actually in the Warrior's "Perfection"?

• The Warrior does the most DpS as both the OT and MT (beyond the ~11% damage boost it gets from its slashing debuff).
• The Warrior has the best continuous debuff (-10% damage vs -10% str and -10% int)
• The Warrior has no TP issues through a combination of "free" on GcD actions and a TP restorer.
• The Warrior has the best fast anti-tankbuster as long as they come only once every 9 or more gcds.

PLD and the old WAR were designed with tank swapping in mind. When WAR got fixed in 2.1, it suit just became... magnificent. WAR's toolkit is great, there is no denying it. Is it over-done? Maybe. But not badly that it needs a nerf. It's the tank that requires the most micromanagement.

• WAR doing most DPS is an intentional design to be their "thing" at the cost of being the riskiest tank to play. WAR CANNOT deal that "amazing" DPS if it wants to mitigate as well as PLD/DRK. More on to "why" in the following points.
  
• The "continuous" debuff is not continuous because you cannot maintain both Storm Eye and Path while keeping aggro or dishing out maximum DPS. A WAR MT will not have Path up continuously, but would rather only apply it before busters/major AoE damage. Storm path is simply a trade off the WAR has to make between either the slashing debuff or optimal DPS/aggro via Butcher's. WAR doing Storm Path "continuously" is either 1) not holding aggro or 2) not doing good DPS or 3) both.
  
• WAR having no TP issues is as how it was since 2.0. The TP restorer was an overkill. When tanking in defiance, the TP restorer is gone.
  
• Inner Beast is amazing, it's the best anti-burst skill in the game. It only needs 5~9 GCDs (12.5 to 17.5 seconds) to be ready, heals you for a good chunk and reduces damage for ~3 GCDs. All that AND it can be refreshed with Infuriate. But it's a trade off from Unchained (huge DPS loss), Steel Cyclone (Massive aggro/DPS loss in AoE), Fell Cleave (Again, DPS loss) or Decimate (Even more massive loss in AoE). A WAR mitigating Twintania's death sentences will not do double the DPS of PLD.

Please, I implore you, let's stop pretending that WAR, in its "perfection", deals the DPS of a DRG while mitigating like a PLD. WAR's MAXIMUM DPS is higher than PLD, but if it wants to mitigate like a PLD, it will not reach those levels of DPS.

EDIT: A PLD dishing out its maximum DPS will still mitigates more than WAR simply because it does not lose a single tool of mitigation aside from Shield Oath. As none of its mitigation tools par Shield Oath "interrupts" the PLD's DPS flow. WAR loses IB and in a magical environment they go down to having only Vengeance as a "good CD" and ToB+Convalescence which is far worse than Rampart in both effectiveness and CD/uptime.

Now on topic, ACTUAL data collected shows PLD can deal the DPS levels of DRK, with A2S being the exception since PLD can't AoE for jack.

I stand at where I have been standing from the beginning of this ridiculously asinine thread, as long as PLD has its defensive superiority and ease of play, it doesn't deserve a single potency increase on any of their abilities (Shield Swipe might be an exception). However, it DOES have issues, DPS is definitely not one of them.

What PLD needs:

• Enmity multipliers fix to be in line with the other classes. This WILL allow PLDs to deal more DPS as main tanks.
  
• Some form of TP management. It doesn't have to be a TP restore. Anything is fine as long as it is not a DPS loss that involves standing there and watching boss.
  
• Removed clunk from their utility abilities. Such as follows:
  1- Clemency cast time reduction and/or cast interruption prevention (block during casts?).
  2- Divine Veil on a shorter CD and/or not require a heal trigger.
  3- Cover to also "cover" magical damage. There is no reason it doesn't other than that it didn't in previous FF games, but this is not the previous FF games.
  4- At the very least, stance swaps shouldn't break combos. You can keep them on GCD if you must.