The Definitive State of Paladins Thread

[Sapphidia]

Yeah we're at a weird state now - everyone has enough gear that (aside from maybe A4S) most good groups can run quite suboptimal lineups to Savage and brute force it via higher item level. Paladins work just great here because there's no real risk of hitting the tight DPS checks if your group is decent.

The problem has always been the -first- clears, the times when every single last bit of DPS from the best players in the world is make or break for the encounter. And that filters down - not everyone is as good at the game as the players from Lucrezia or Elysium, but people sort of expect that they are. The issue is that due to the lower "wiggle room" for dps you get when you bring a Paladin, it affects the lesser groups too who can't quite pump out the max damage for their jobs.

"We can't do enough DPS to pass this check" usually signals that your raid group needs to learn to play better, or just gear up more. If however you can simply replace a Paladin with a DRK/WAR and suddenly your underperforming raidgroup DOES have enough DPS to pass the check, then that's a problem. And right now the damage difference is noticeable enough that even the non-first-clear groups are having to have serious talks about whether their devout paladin main tank might be better off switching.

To look in context, right now Bards and Machinists are pretty interchangeable, and do pretty equal damage within reason. Both work. Same with Black Mage and Summoner - pick any one. ANY two melee dps work, though one can argue that one of them has to be a Dragoon to be optimal, but Monk/Ninja are both equally balanced in terms of raid contribution. Now that ASTs are buffed you can take any combination of two healers. But for tanking, Paladin is strictly a downgrade over the other two tanks in -current- content. Yes, they can do all encounters now, but noone likes feeling that they're slightly sabotaging their team's performance due to class choice.