3.1 PLD Changes

[Sapphidia]

People who say this is a buff are outside their own mind right now if they think it is.....

IT IS A HUGE BUFF.

Shield Swipe is now OFF THE GCD. Before it was ON the GCD. The 210 potency was a DPS loss to use - you were replacing a move that could have had much higher potency. Now you use it between your other moves and it's FREE DAMAGE. Free damage with extra enmity.

Your standard Goring/Royal/Royal 9 GCD rotation has an average potency of 251-256 per GCD depending on skillspeed (due to goring clipping). Let's say it's 250 rounded down. So 250 potency every 2.5 seconds from abilities. 100 Potency per second roughly. Circle of Scorn and Spirits Within both do roughly 10 potency per second averaged over their cooldowns. So currently a Paladin is doing around 110-120 potency per second, plus auto attacks, plus sword oath AA procs (20 potency per second roughly).

Shield Swipe can now be weaved in between these every 15 seconds for 150 potency, so an average of 10 potency per second extra.

That's what, 8% increased potency from skills? That's huge. This change is a BIG DPS BUFF and BIG THREAT BUFF to Paladins who are able to block (so no change when offtanking or tanking non-blockables like A4).

To say anything else is to show massive misunderstanding of paladin mechanics. This looks on paper to upwards of a 5% increase to paladin dps when MTing, and a larger overall threat increase. That's significant.

[Fyce]

That's significant.

But not significant enough to still take a PLD in raid over a DRK and a WAR.
PLD MT will still be below the other two, and the better survivability doesn't make up for it, at all.

So, yes, it's a good buff... but it doesn't change the fact that the more a tank can DPS, the better it is in the current content.

Besides, the only utility a PLD can bring to the team is the RoH debuff... and that's currently useless due to all the freaking magic damage there is.

In short: these buffs won't change the meta.

[Jpec07]

In short: these buffs won't change the meta.

No one is suggesting that they will. But they will help PLD in a lot of ways, and they will make the job more interesting (oGCD Procs make me happy).

We need to look to encounter design in 3.2 to see where they're going with the meta. The language in some of the interviews suggests that we will probably see more in the way of high-tank-damage fights, which will make PLD relevant again.

[Sapphidia]

But not significant enough to still take a PLD in raid over a DRK and a WAR.
PLD MT will still be below the other two, and the better survivability doesn't make up for it, at all.

Oh for sure, I do agree here. But mostly I'm just over the moon as we heard Yoshi's interview BEFORE these patch notes and said we werent getting any dps increase at all.

Then the patch notes drop and it looks like we're getting about 5% more dps when able to block. That's a nice boost. Also, having more offensive off-gcds is always fun, and I think this change will make paladin a little more fun to play too (I always liked using Reprisal on Dark Knight).

I think Paladins will have to suck it up in Alex Savage at least, as we're now starting to overgear it anyway. From what Yoshi is saying, hopefully all future content wont be so dependant on raw dps checks and will need more general survivability and group coordination.

[Fyce]

Oh for sure, I do agree here. But mostly I'm just over the moon as we heard Yoshi's interview BEFORE these patch notes and said we werent getting any dps increase at all.

To be honest, I stopped believing that Yoshi-P had any kind of influence in class/job balance from the time he said that WAR was fine, while the job was completly revamped just after that.

But yeah, to get back on the point, the core of the problem lies in the way they made survivability irrelevant... well, at least, very far behind DPS's impact.
They cannot fix the "tank meta" unless they change their view on the importance of DPS checks.

So, while the PLD buffs here are really good for the job... I have no idea why they did that in the first place, since it won't really change anything in the end.

If they ever did that, they'd have to increase the physical defense on caster and healer gear because right now, casters and healers have the same problems with physical than DRGs had with magical, and we know that even with their superior HP pool, it was a disaster in the early days of FCoB.

Not really, this was a problem because of the amount of magical damage DRG took due to their combat gameplay.
While shifting the tank meta to make survivability relevant, they can also change the healer's one so healer's DPS isn't relevant to meet DPS checks.
In short terms: make tanks tank and healers heal.