Tank adjustments we can agree on?

[eagledorf]

It's not necessarily a wipe though, we were able to get everybody back up and finish that leg (of course we did wipe after that). Clemency is actually quite good at preventing wipes by letting one healer hard-cast raise while I heal. This is why I would rather they not replace the current Clemency with an oGCD skill with a cooldown like Equilibrium.

Shadow Wall is really thoughtless in its design. It's the duration and cooldown of Sentinel (which is 33% stronger of a cooldown) with the strength of Vengeance (which is 1.5x the duration with .66x the cooldown and gives you 20% of an Inner Beast), which I suppose is fine as long as the only damage you ever take is magic. The devs really screwed up by trying to specialize one of the tanks for magic damage, imo.

[eagledorf]

Can we seriously not even agree on at least points 2-4? They seem like design errors to me.

1. Native tank spells should have their cast times and recast times based on Skill Speed, not Spell Speed.
2. Dark Knight should have a means of managing TP without dropping Grit other than spamming Unmend.
3. Shield Swipe procs should not be a DPS loss.

[Drtoxicmedica]

Can we seriously not even agree on at least points 2-4? They seem like design errors to me.

1. Native tank spells should have their cast times and recast times based on Skill Speed, not Spell Speed.
2. Dark Knight should have a means of managing TP without dropping Grit other than spamming Unmend.
3. Shield Swipe procs should not be a DPS loss.

The primary function of shield swipe is not for dps anymore it's just for tp management if that wasn't the case they would have upped the potency at launch when they cut riot blade tp cost since it's now part of there main rotation. The tank spellcasting I agree with but the tp issues I don't fully agree with there are very few current fights that really starve either darkknight or paladin from a MT perspective minus A4. Which a nin with goad could fix just fine. If we have more fights like A4 I'd agree however.

[Drtoxicmedica]

However I do think that paladins should be able to block Magic based attacks to solidify it's role as the mitigation tank. Only real issue I feel with the class. It has lowest dps so it's mitigation should be higher since that's it's thing. Not on par dps wise. was never on par with warrior dps anyway even in 2.x. it's supposed to be a mitigation tank any buff it gets should be higher mitigation imo that's what made it a great progression main tank very high easy to use mitigation was never about its dps.

[Lemuel81]

Nobody has said DRK doesn't need buffs, its a poorly designed tank that only benefits because the current meta caters to it. The fact is that PLD is garbage and some of its skills, such as Clemency and Shield Swipe are flat out completely useless.

Paladin garbage?
Shield swipe useless?

What??

[eagledorf]

The primary function of shield swipe is not for dps anymore it's just for tp management [...] the tp issues I don't fully agree with there are very few current fights that really starve either darkknight or paladin from a MT perspective minus A4.

The problem with Shield Swipe is that it's almost a 20% potency loss over just doing your combo unless your skill speed is such that you reliably gain a tick of Goring Blade by using it (if you clip Goring Blade with a full 3 seconds, it's exactly neutral to use, but is still a DPS loss if you use it with Fight or Flight so you can use it only 1-2 times a minute). The potency gained/TP is so minimal compared to Goring Blade (~0.35 potency/TP) you might as well hope somebody will give you TP and go all out, then set a macro that does the Goring Blade combo every 24 seconds and AFK if you run out of TP instead of using your Shield Swipe procs.

Besides, a proc should be a DPS increase in my opinion. One of the most interesting things on Paladin in 2.x was timing Bulwark with FoF and potion for a small DPS gain. If it's DPS neutral it has no use in any fight with breaks or if you have a Ninja, which shouldn't be the case. I understand the thought that it helps with hate, but once you've established hate that doesn't really have a point to it either.

As for TP, A3 Savage currently TP starves me on Paladin and I'm sure DRK that use Grit would have this problem (though Grit's not necessary for that fight). Anyway, the TP issue is a fundamental flaw in the job that will become a problem if there's ever a fight that hits hard with 3 minutes of sustained uptime. Using Unmend is a potency gain/MP over saving MP for Souleater (especially factoring procs), but a poor solution to TP management overall.

[Drtoxicmedica]

Like I said before Pld in my eyes is about pure mitigation. As long as it has close dps it's fine. Could shield swipe be changed sure but purely for tp consumption while remaining dps nutral. If pld gets its dps buffed it should have nothing upping it's mitigation like shorter clemency casts. In physical heavy fights it will already out mitigate a dark knight which will make them useless in said progression if buffed. Or you could simply say screw tank originality and make them all parse the same with the same rotation and cd's and call it a day. Warrior has highest dps and skill gap. Dark is inbetween. While pld is the easiest hands down. If you buff pld dps it needs something to make it difficult to play. All these buffs will ruin any chance dark has when magic damage isn't heavy. So buff pld mitigation in magic fights so it mitigates the most and keep its dps at the bottom or buff it's dps and Nerf it's mitigation to be mostly physical. Only 1 cd is unique to drk for magic fights.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

All these buffs will ruin any chance dark has when magic damage isn't heavy. So buff pld mitigation in magic fights so it mitigates the most and keep its dps at the bottom or buff it's dps and Nerf it's mitigation to be mostly physical. Only 1 cd is unique to drk for magic fights.

Yep, the current Meta is Magic heavy. What if next Meta is Physical Heavy?

[Shurrikhan]

Nobody has said DRK doesn't need buffs, its a poorly designed tank that only benefits because the current meta caters to it. The fact is that PLD is garbage and some of its skills, such as Clemency and Shield Swipe are flat out completely useless.

Though I'm speaking only for normal mode Alex here, I have saved myself or others way too many times with Clemency to find it useless, and I do like having 200 TP still while the DRK has none, complements of Shield Swipe spamming.

But I will agree that in Savage-level content, anything that you have that another job could do stronger, faster, and with more control will almost always be waste. Running out of TP later, if the whole raid is getting Paeon or Goad will be ready for you before you starve, is a non-benefit.

But what would it take to save those two moves, really? Clemency would likely have to be usable as an actual emergency heal even when under cutting-edge content attacks, in other words, to be to some extent interrupt-immune, and to have enough speed to fulfill its expected function. This could be done via a Paladin trait, an attachment to Shield Oath, attachments to both Oaths with divergent purpose, an attachment to Tempered Will, an attachment to Awareness, an attachment to Bulwark, an attachment to an already-revised Shield Swipe or Shield Bash, or an attachment to Clemency itself. (Or just about anything else.)

If we look at its value outside of self-healing, however, it would need not only to be able to save the Paladin himself, but also his emergency heal target. Random example: if Clemency immediately provided a rapidly-increasing temporary increase to maximum health alongside temporary healing as the cast progresses. If the cast fails or is canceled, the target receives nothing. While in progress, the target's health bar and health percentage show little change as not to be distracting. On completion, it merely looks like the heal completed and nothing really happened in between. But, it now has the ability to keep the target or oneself from dying within, say, a half-second of the heal actually going off. Moreover, this temporary max health increase makes the PLD better immune to interruption, though only slightly. There would need to be a bit more. The only issue is then, should that interruption immunity be limited by extent or by coverage - does it better belong with a CD like Awareness, Bulwark, or Tempered Will, or does it better belong to a natural 40% increase to the damage required to interrupt your casts while in Shield Oath (which still cannot allow you to save yourself or others during a tank buster or from the AA finishing blow shortly after it)?

Now, Shield Swipe. Is it currently necessary for PLD to be competitive? Would changes to it be necessary to make PLD competitive (before and after whatever changes are made to Clemency)? Should these changes involve any or all among 1) making it mesh better with Goring Blade, 2) improving its potency directly, 3) improving its relative potency in another manner, 4) improving its potency conditionally (e.g. during Bulwark), 5) improving its general ease of use, 6) etc.? Additionally, 7) should it be more 'fun', and would changes in that regard best come from changes to Shield Swipe itself, or from, say, the entire 'Shield' Set of abilities?

What ideas do you all actually have for these two abilities?

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Personally, I'd just like for PLD revisions to start by revision to the two above, but also by reducing the dps loss from maintaining or 'over'-using Rage of Halone as OT and MT respectively, likely by increasing its potency to 280, or adding an affect to it that will in some way improve damage after use, less than just using another RA, but with less gap than it currently has. At that point, the majority of its new abilities should feel "finished". RA won't feel annoying in that you are often forced to use RoH when you do not need StrDown just for its threat, Clemency won't feel stunted, and Shield Swipe won't feel like it's at best stunting your use of other, better abilities, and should consequently help grant a tiny bit more identity to the job. That all won't improve the job's attractiveness to more casual players who already find it dull, but it should at least make it feel like a polished raid candidate.

And, more of a pipedream, I'd like to see Spell Speed and Skill Speed combined into Speed, for TP refresh speed to scale with Speed (giving 50 TP per GCD instead of 60 per 3.0s), and for Speed to affect AA and oGCD damage similarly to Det and Crit, though Det and Crit may then be scaled up slightly to retain equal stat weight. Having the "complexity" of an optimal stat does not lead to increased choices. At best, it only makes the search for your next best piece of gear a tiny bit more pressured and mechanical.
For the same reasons of future-proofing I also hope that DRK eventually gains some means of managing TP without Unmend spam, but at that point the Shield Swipe TP advantage would be even less unique, and likely the only means of TP management among tanks that costs that much dps, unless changed. If PLD support-heals ever become worth using, that in itself should aid significantly in TP management, and just as DRK should not only have means of TP-management outside of Grit, PLD should not only have means of TP-management while MTing - though the comparison may fit their archetypes...
Edit: And I'd like to see Vitality increase Attack Power-based self-healing, roughly equally to Strength (applying both to direct heals like Clemency and boosting the healing done from damage as in Inner Beast), and Defiance and Convalescence to affect Ability healing, both one's own, like Clemency's self-healing and outside sources like Lustrate.

[Litegrace]

Honestly, the main issue for me right now is fending gear. The fact that tanks are essentially required to ditch their "job specific" accessories in order to meet a dps check is stupid to me. With the gear we have now, stacking VIT becomes useless since the left side gear already has enough. I would personally like to see some kind of damage reduction or healing buff added to the gear (however small it may be), or just adding some STR to it (ie 10-20 STR per 40 VIT or so).

As for specific jobs, I would say Warrior is in a great place right now. DRK is still a bit weird (some abilities don't really make much sense), and PLD could probably use a little bit of love. I think both are still in relatively good places (certainly viable), the main issue again is the fending gear for me. The fact that i150 accessories are better than i210 just bothers me, and I really dislike mixing and matching slaying/fending gear.