3.1 PLD changes look good

[NFaelivrin]

The only thing that got broken was people's expectations for PLD to come back into the status of being the dominant tank in the game.

Why is it always people with warrior or marauder set as their main class in the forum who say this nonsense. People who you know, main the objectively dominant, best, most powerful tank class in the game, by a huge margin.

You know what people's expectations are? To be able to play Paladin in this game's terrible current raid without being a burden to your team. Paladin was "The dominant tank in the game" for a period of time of roughly a couple months and ended in 2.1 when Warrior was made an incredibly powerful class on its own right, making it just as necessary as Paladins for raids. Let 2.0 go. It was two years ago.

[ArdorGrey]

Why is it always people with warrior or marauder set as their main class in the forum who say this nonsense. People who you know, main the objectively dominant, best, most powerful tank class in the game, by a huge margin.

You know what people's expectations are? To be able to play Paladin in this game's terrible current raid without being a burden to your team. Paladin was "The dominant tank in the game" for a period of time of roughly a couple months and ended in 2.1 when Warrior was made an incredibly powerful class on its own right, making it just as necessary as Paladins for raids. Let 2.0 go. It was two years ago.

Are you joking? War wasn't even needed in half the content. And in the other half when a pld MT actually tried to push dps they could MT full time in SwO after voking off a War opener.

You're either completely ignorant of your own classes strength in 2.x, or you view that as "balance"- when your tank is the de facto MT and the other tank is either dropped for a fifth dps or is your opener and slash debuff/path boy. Either way, please get real. You had an entire xpac cycle in the sun. War shines for one patch and everyone wants to tear them back down to that eye/storm peon position.

If this is more "biggotted assumptive whatever and ever" please, educate me on where I'm biggotted and assumptive.

[NFaelivrin]

You're either completely ignorant of your own classes strength in 2.x, or you view that as "balance"- when your tank is the de facto MT and the other tank is either dropped for a fifth dps or is your opener and slash debuff/path boy. Either way, please get real. You had an entire xpac cycle in the sun. War shines for one patch and everyone wants to tear them back down to that eye/storm peon position.

People who think WAR didn't make a great MT in 2.X after it was fixed are hilariously wrong, I did T12 with WAR MT and there were absolutely no problems whatsoever because all of WARs defensive cooldowns have higher uptime than PLD's and are only marginally weaker. WAR could easily solo tank the, well, solotankeable turns of SCOB just as well as PLD, people just were very slow to notice just how good WAR was.

[Reynhart]

Are you joking? War wasn't even needed in half the content. And in the other half when a pld MT actually tried to push dps they could MT full time in SwO after voking off a War opener.

Now that the "WAR is not supposed to be MT" mentality is gone, you just have to do some tests.
Go in lvl50 synced at the lowest ilvl or, at least, gear available when the content was released, and I'm pretty sure you'll realize you can tank anything as good as a PLD.

[Sleigh]

3.0 switched to DRK because i took 1 look at WARs abilities and noticed none of them were defensive cooldowns or interesting.

Not to nit-pick but this is pretty much completely opposite the truth. WAR gained Equilibrium and Raw Intuition, the latter of which really completed WAR's arsenal of having a nice set of CDs to use without relying on Defiance/Inner Beast. Technically Deliverance is also a bit of a defense boost in practice as you can now OT and then when you need to MT, you can start with an instant Inner Beast without blowing your Infuriate.

I think WAR got some of the most exciting, interesting skills post-50 of any class, personally. Nice mix of offense and defense, especially because with Bloodbath, Fell Cleave and Decimate have insane HPS capabilities.

On topic:

I am on the side of the fence that these changes are completely underwhelming. I do not believe Sword Oath PLD will reach DRK/WAR DPS even with perfect Shield Swiping RNG. Also, if you want to get into what DRK vs PLD does for the group's DPS, DRK allows you to, without detriment to healer DPS or raid survivability, drop MNK in favor of NIN - that's just one of the biggest, widely unsung disadvantages to PLD, a crippling issue I believe would persist even if somehow PLD matched or beat the other two tanks in personal DPS. The TP fix is possibly one of the worst, most cautious, ineffective "fixes" I have ever seen in FFXIV history to a widely accepted issue, and it's about as far from what I expected they'd change as can be. If it was going to be one skill to get lower, it should have AT LEAST been Savage Blade, as that would hit two combos rather than once every 21-24s.

Perhaps A5-8 will make DRK a genuine survivability risk compared to PLD and only DPS pushers will pursue it while DRK is getting rocked by an onslaught of Flatten level tank busters, but I'll have to see it to believe it.

[Reynhart]

Total ignorance and disrespect to just properly quote someone so I'll just do the same for the sake of space

Actually, you don't understand anything of the situation...

PLD don't want to be the 'absolute best tank in the game' /background_thunder. We want to be as useful as any other tank.

In 2.x WAR was NOT behind PLD. It was a very wrong hunch that WAR was "difficult to heal". And on top of that, WAR and PLD each had one spot where their DPS beat the other (WAR as MT, PLD as OT). And the game was more focused on mechanics that pure DPS check. And stacking jobs was a bad idea.

Now, WAR is on top either as MT or OT in regards to DPS, games is more focused on DPS than everything else, you can bring two tanks without a PLD AND without stacking and content is clearly designed to ignore some of PLDs skill just so that DRK feels like a very useful tank. See a little difference here ?

[Reynhart]

If you are still stuck on the idea that you should play PLD or any job for that matter 100% of the time when doing raid progression then you're completely missing the point of the game.

The point of the game is that you CAN play the job you want, not that you HAVE to play the favored job of the month. Again, the fun thing is that, when WAR was "supposed to be" inferior, you didn't see PLDs come and slap you for wanting to be better...

I understand that you feel like 'PLD is bad and will never be good again because those mean short sighted employees at SE wont make it good!' but they design content and you dont.

Right, they design content, and it's obvious they have a perfectly accurate view of the game, and that no player can ever point some flaws...apart from all the time when they did and jobs were adjusted...you know...like WAR in 2.1...
It's probably a wonderful design to give DRK abilities and traits that activate when he parries or when he's hit and then 1) don't give them the parry buff as a cross-class skill, 2) give them the ability to boost their own parry buff...by adding Evasion bonus to it, and 3) give them a blind line AoE so that they won't be hit as often...

So when they make content that you really want a shield for, you can go back to thinking they've validated your main job.

Strange, I'm pretty sure I've said that designing content specifically for PLD is also a problem, because it would reduce the viability of DRK. See ? See ? I'm thinking about other jobs, not just my own...

By the way, I play all three tanks. But my PLD is just accumulating dust, because, whatever the content, my WAR or my DRK always offer something better.

[ManaKing]

The point of the game is that you CAN play the job you want, not that you HAVE to play the favored job of the month. Again, the fun thing is that, when WAR was "supposed to be" inferior, you didn't see PLDs come and slap you for wanting to be better...

Are you doing progression? Yes. Pick the party setup that min/maxes the best because you are trying to push through content that you arent geared well enough for yet so you can get gear sooner. If you arent on the bleeding edge then the small difference in tanks dont matter because you'll have more than enough DPS. Your DPS should be doing their job, you shouldnt be carrying them.

WAR min/maxed the best because incoming tank damage wasnt remarkable other than it was predominantly magic accross the board and DRK reduces magic damage better than anyone else so AS1 and 4 were cake walks. Looks like it's their time to shine. If they dont design any content around PLD being the better tank because of it's physical mitigation superiority next raid cycle then ill call SE on intentionally leaving PLDs out but for right now you guys are all premature with your criticism.

[Reynhart]

If you arent on the bleeding edge then the small difference in tanks dont matter because you'll have more than enough DPS.

Jobs should be equally viable especially on the bleeding edge. Again, no one cares than PLD can do Expert dungeons fine...

If they dont design any content around PLD being the better tank because of it's physical mitigation superiority next raid cycle then ill call SE on intentionally leaving PLDs out but for right now you guys are all premature with your criticism.

And again, again, designing content for one particular tank is a bad idea. If the next cycle is purely physical, then DRK will be thrown out of the loop, it won't be better on the overall balance.

[Ralvenom]

And again, again, designing content for one particular tank is a bad idea. If the next cycle is purely physical, then DRK will be thrown out of the loop, it won't be better on the overall balance.

What they need to do is develop the next cycle to have several different types of encounter design. Physical, magical, pure damage check, crazy (but not too crazy) mechanics -- maybe even mix up types, depending on fight phase. That way, you can have all 3 tanks be equally viable.