Please stop asking for paladin DPS buffs.

[Rustangel]

You are only demanding homogenization.

This post might seem angry, but I'm more just weary. I have seen this exact same situation play out before. Rewind to 2008, World of Warcraft - the closing months of the Burning Crusade. Three different tanks that played three different ways, which meant DIVERSITY and variety. But you can't have variety without imbalance.

Some people...the imbalance is all that they see. It's a form of activism, an injustice to be fought - they take to the forums to post petitions and champion their cause: "That tank can do a thing my tank can't do! UNACCEPTABLE! FIX IT!!". Even if well-meaning, the suggestions they make are short-sighted, focused only on the other tank's toys.

Anyway, Wrath of the Lich King rolled around, and and suddenly, all the tanks were exactly the same. Same mechanics, same "oh-shi" buttons, same same same. My Paladin could do everything my friend's Warrior could do and vice versa. All that was left was different animations for the same mechanics.

Any of this sounding familiar? "PLD needs DPS like WAR, PLD needs the same debuffs WAR/DRK has, PLD needs <existing advantage other job has>". It's like looking back in time. "Paladin needs Shield Wall, Paladin needs Last Stand, Paladin needs Spell Reflect". We know exactly how that dance plays out, yet here we are with people loudly demanding to do it all over again.

Are things balanced at present? No, of course not. But our response to that should be constructive, creative suggestions that try to push the tanks FURTHER APART, not closer together. Do you want your PLD to be a WAR in shiny armour? To be exactly the same? I don't think most of you do, I think you want your PLD to be a PLD and be competitive in itself. So why all the "give us more DPS" posts? This is the simplest solution, but also the laziest. The thing you're asking for will eventually destroy the uniqueness of the job you claim to love so much. If SE listen to you, as they've said they do, then you are advocating to make the game more boring.

The people who post solid suggestions that increase PLD's raid effectiveness while retaining its defensive heart are a vast minority, from what I've seen while lurking here. But they are the ones who really need to be signal boosted. Not the people asking for bigger numbers.

You guys might think that you have played a lot of games and you therefore know how to design games. YOU DO NOT. Those are two different things. If you don't believe me, try making some games. It's really, really hard. This will probably ruffle some feathers because people generally don't like being told they aren't special. The truth hurts. This game is exceptional, and I mean that both descriptively and statistically. 95% of us could not build what the SE devs have built here so far, let alone do better. If it were that easy, there would be many MMOs better than FFXIV available, and we wouldn't be here arguing about this stuff in the first place.

FFXIV devs, if you see this: please never make the mistakes that were made with WoW. I dearly loved that game at one point, but once the players broke its back, it was an endless cycle of tiny "conveniences" based on forum bandwagon complaining that ended up making the entire experience trivial and meaningless. Death by 1000 cuts. Eventually all classes have a stun, a snare, a self-heal. Everyone gets an Ashbringer. All exactly the same except for the animations: shallow, homogenised, and above all, dull.

Is that what you all want for Eorzea? Think about it, please, next time you make a "moar DPS for PLD" thread.

*Observes incoming furious responses*
*Casts Hallowed Ground*

[OPneedNerfs]

Homogenization was no longer an argument after 2.0 WAR got changes to be more in line with PLD.

Also, DRKs are a PLD reskin.

Please, stop using "homogenization" as an excuse for a class to remain bad.

Did this really warrant another topic?

[Rustangel]

Homogenization was no longer an argument after 2.0 WAR got changes to be more in line with PLD.

Also, DRKs are a PLD reskin.

Please, stop using "homogenization" as an excuse for a class to remain bad.

Did this really warrant another topic?

Let me emphasise this bit for you, as you might have missed it:

Are things balanced at present? No, of course not.

[OPneedNerfs]

Let me emphasise this bit for you, as you might have missed it:

Let me emphasize this part for you even though my post was extremely short, as you obviously missed it, along with all the other posts on this forums.

Homogenization was no longer an argument after 2.0 WAR got changes to be more in line with PLD.

Also, DRKs are a PLD reskin.

[Rustangel]

Let me emphasize this part for you even though my post was extremely short, as you obviously missed it, along with all the other posts on this forums.

If anything, this supports the argument for more diversity, not less. You are saying that just because we have a degree of homogenisation already, the best course is to have more?

[OPneedNerfs]

If anything, this supports the argument for more diversity, not less. You are saying that just because we have a degree of homogenisation already, the best course is to have more?

So your suggestion is to revert the WAR back to it's 2.0 form?

Let's see how many WARs agree to that shall we?

[Freyyy]

So your suggestion is to revert the WAR back to it's 2.0 form?

Let's see how many WARs agree to that shall we?

You obviously don't understand a single point here and/or are a very narrow-sighted person.

Wanting less homogenisation doesn't mean reverting WAR to 2.0 at all, and doesn't mean keeping PLD as it is right now either. It means that yeah, we need job changes, we need balance, but we don't want the jobs to be the same, balance can be brought without making every job the same. Like for example, instead of increasing PLD's DPS, they could make them have a party-wide buff that increases damage by X%, which would match the difference in DPS between a PLD MT and a DRK MT. There is plenty of solutions to balance the jobs without making them all totally the same.

[Ashelia_Ferron]

Diversity is one thing. Having a class be outright rejected for content due to lack of viability is another.

There's already a fine example that just happened not too long ago: Astrrologians. Before the buff many groups did not take AST because it was inherently weaker than the other two healers. After 3.07, it became a non-issue, and the healers are still unique in their own ways, but the point is that they're all acceptable to bring to raid.

PLDs are not,, because they have an inherently harder time meeting the tight DPS checks, so groups just aren't using them (the fact that these Raids lack the need for high physical mitigation doesn't help either).

[Rustangel]

So your suggestion is to revert the WAR back to it's 2.0 form?

Let's see how many WARs agree to that shall we?

This isn't a thread about WAR? I mean, it's indirectly about them, because homogenization argument, but what I'm saying is that we should be trying to find ways to make PLD more raid viable without simply pushing them closer to WAR by upping their personal DPS.

[RapBreon]

You obviously don't understand a single point here and/or are a very narrow-sighted person.

Wanting less homogenisation doesn't mean reverting WAR to 2.0 at all, and doesn't mean keeping PLD as it is right now either. It means that yeah, we need job changes, we need balance, but we don't want the jobs to be the same, balance can be brought without making every job the same. Like for example, instead of increasing PLD's DPS, they could make them have a party-wide buff that increases damage by X%, which would match the difference in DPS between a PLD MT and a DRK MT. There is plenty of solutions to balance the jobs without making them all totally the same.

See I'm not entirely sure; not the balance gaming communities tend to advocate anyway.

I mean MNKs, NINs and DRGs are actually remarkably well-balanced in terms of numbers. But due to the way the game comes together as a whole, MNKs were considered poopty pants (this eased up when they got buffs). The game has a lot of moving parts and accurately predicting the outcome is supremely difficult; especially when you consider how broad the community is in skill-level. The example of the PLD buff seems good taken by itself (it actually does), but the synergy it may have with other classes (e.g inflating a specific DPS over all others) could end up creating a situation not unlike the MNK one when DRKs got their debuff.

Honestly, I think the only way to achieve perfect balance is complete and total homogenization, but you get a very drab game as a result (at least in my view). They appear to be inversely linked (negative relationship), how close the association is, does still appear to be a mystery. So the question really in my mind is; how much imbalance are we willing to tolerate in the name of flavour?

Edit: Oh yea, this thread gun be goooooooooooooooood.