Savage Alexander and the Paladin Exodus

[fortuona]

some changes to pld i'd like to see:

remove oaths from gcd, or at the very least make them not break combos.

remove shield swipe from gcd, or lower the tp cost.

increase enmity on goring blade and royal authority.

[CosmicKirby]

I'm barely leveling my PLD through HW content right now, and I'm curious.

In practice, what exactly is the PLD's strength over the other two tanks at the moment? Usually a random forum goer just off-the-cusp goes, "They have good mitigation!" And yet I don't see my statics DRK/WAR dying to random damage very often.

It's certainly not AoE damage
It's not single target
It's not TP management
It's not enmity generation.

Are they just slightly better at mitigating physical attacks? A mechanic that is hardly present in current raiding?

[OPneedNerfs]

I'm barely leveling my PLD through HW content right now, and I'm curious.

In practice, what exactly is the PLD's strength over the other two tanks at the moment? Usually a random forum goer just off-the-cusp goes, "They have good mitigation!" And yet I don't see my statics DRK/WAR dying to random damage very often.

It's certainly not AoE damage
It's not single target
It's not TP management
It's not enmity generation.

Are they just slightly better at mitigating physical attacks? A mechanic that is hardly present in current raiding?

The usual argument WAR/DRK will give is the shield argument. They somehow say parry is crap but think shields r OP. Hypocrites everywhere.

[Brannigan]

Shield will give like 4-7% passive mitigation depending on ilvl (Hive is like 4.5% averaged) against blockable attacks
+bulwark
+sheltron
+hallowed ground

that's the usual stuff that gets cited as an advantage. HG is really the biggest one, but a lot of fights are built around forcing the pld to use it as a tank buster mitigator.

[Klamor]

HG is really the biggest one, but a lot of fights are built around forcing the pld to use it as a tank buster mitigator.

That's the one that chaps my ass right there. Like, we have the awesome-ness that is Hallowed Ground, but we can't ever even use it to be awesome. It's forced to be used on a tank buster. At least on Bahamut, I didn't have to use it until the 4th Akh Morn (using it first on the first Flatten), which felt amazing. But on almost every other encounter that uses a repetitive tank buster mechanic I could never count on HG to be used for what I thought it was originally intended to be used... an "OH SHIT!" button to help keep the group from wiping. But here we are being forced to use it for an otherwise (should be) mitigatable attack (cooldown stacking, etc.) I'm sure WAR feels the same about being forced to use Holmgang, but if I could use HG more than once in an 8:30 enrage timer, I probably wouldn't be so annoyed about it.

[SpookyGhost]

HG was never actually intended to be an OH SHIT! button, that's why there's a delay. You use it like any other CD - to mitigate predictable damage spikes.

[Klamor]

HG was never actually intended to be an OH SHIT! button, that's why there's a delay. You use it like any other CD - to mitigate predictable damage spikes.

I suppose you'll use that excuse for why there was the same delay to Benediction, which also got a reduction in delay at the same time as Hallowed Ground.

[SpookyGhost]

I suppose you'll use that excuse for why there was the same delay to Benediction, which also got a reduction in delay at the same time as Hallowed Ground.

Because people were using them for their unintended use. That said, the reason you use Hallowed on x tank buster is because your party already knows the fight and you can freely use your HG there to increase healer DPS/strain the healers less. You can still use it as an OH SHIT! button, it's just better used predictably rather than reactively. Same goes for Benediction, Holmgang, and Living Dead.

[Klamor]

Because people were using them for their unintended use. That said, the reason you use Hallowed on x tank buster is because your party already knows the fight and you can freely use your HG there to increase healer DPS/strain the healers less. You can still use it as an OH SHIT! button, it's just better used predictably rather than reactively. Same goes for Benediction, Holmgang, and Living Dead.

I agree with this, but that doesn't diminish the excuse of being forced to use a 7-minute cooldown on a predictable ability when the encounter could just as easily be designed to require only standard cooldown use (Rampart/Sentinel, and w/e equivalents that WAR/DRK have). This isn't a simply FF point of view on this long-cooldown usage either. This is coming from the experience of several MMOs that left their longest cooldown abilities as their "last resort" sort of purposes.

For your second portion, the encounters simply don't allow the use of HG as anything other than a Tank Buster Soaker. Because even in A1S, if I didn't stack Rampart and Sentinel, and instead stacked Sentinel with every other cooldown I have (of which, Foresight would be the only real benefit) I wouldn't be able to survive said Buster that otherwise requires HG's use. (Barring the fact that this particular buster is magical and Foresight is absolutely useless for it, anyhow.)

[Coatl]

In practice, what exactly is the PLD's strength over the other two tanks at the moment?

Paladin is the only tank out of the three that can block, parry and evade attacks. Unfortunately none of those forms of mitigation matter in raid content because you can't evade anything besides auto-attacks, and parry and block are mute against magical attacks. I use to think PLD's strongpoint was physical dmg mitigation, but taking a look at all of the tank's skills side by side I saw that they didn't even excel THAT much in it.

PLD Can block. Rage of halone 10% STR debuff.
Foresight: 20%+ Defense 90s CD.
Rampart: 20% -dmg 90s CD
Sentinel: 30% -dmg 180s CD
Bulkwark: 60% +Block rate 180CD
Hollow Ground: God mode status 360s CD.
Stoneskin: -dmg=10% of your max HP. <== Really should be used more often.

DRK Delirium 10% INT debuff.
Foresight: 20%+ Defense 90s CD.
Shadowskin: 20% -dmg 90s CD
Shadow wall: 30% - dmg 180s CD
Dark dance: 30% +Parry 20% +Evasion 60s CD
Dark Skin: 30% -Mdmg 60s CD

War Storm's Path 10% -dmg. Storm's eye -20% Slash resist. Defiance now comes with up to 10% added parry.
Foresight: 20%+ Defense 60s CD.
Vengeance: 30% -dmg 120 cd
Inner Beast: 20% -dmg on demand.
Thrill of Battle: 10% +max HP 120s

From a glance, PLD's magical mitigation really doesn't seem that far off from DRK or WAR provided you have a MNK in your static. However, the most well-rounded and impactful of the tanks is undeniably warrior. Aside from multi-purpose mitigation, they provide added dps to the raid via both Storm's eye and their OT stance and that's something no serious raid will ever consider throwing away regardless of what tank has better mitigation vs whatever specific fight.

TL;DR They all have about the same mitigation but WAR+DRK > WAR+PLD in terms of DPS.