3.1 PLD changes look good

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Please don't use fracture...

[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.

[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.

[Shining_Tiger_Excalibur]

The issue with the changes are that there are a lot of IFS in them:



IF Shield Swipe doesn't require an activator and is just an ability you can use every 15 seconds with no TP cost then that is certainly......more on that later. Paladins will be slightly gimped in dungeons but I'm okay with it as long as healers are healing me enough while DPS-ing as well.

IF Shield Swipe still requires an activator, is 15 seconds recast, costs TP AND is reduced potency......it's over for Paladins because being able to limit damage was a good thing even with us being lowest DPS tank.



What people are getting caught up on is that this is, instead of a vertical improvement, a horizontal one instead. One of the good features of Paladin has now been changed for DPS instead of developing a way to keep our skills like they are while adding to our ability to overcome our own weaknesses. This is why I'm pretty much strictly opposed to this change. At the end of the day it doesn't really solve anything........and like I've said CONSTANTLY, Paladins have only received band aid fixes. It still doesn't solve the issues with our toolkit either. Clemency is still abysmal, Divine Veil is somewhat good, Sheltron is still weird, and we can't provide ourselves or the group with ways to justify our spot in raids. Even after groups have farmed better equipment they'll still laugh at certain party compositions like DRK/PLD and AST/WHM. People are literally accepting the first change they're making to jobs and that is EXTREMELY dangerous because glaring issues are still present and they haven't even hinted at fixing those. We as a community should be pushing for more changes because even if this change works out to be the best case scenario change......it's not enough.

Paladins still won't be able to lower incoming damage for the group with 100% uptime, won't be able to increase others' DPS, won't be able to maximize its own, won't be able to use the toolkit we have to overcome low item level obstacles, etc. Like I said a while ago, Paladin is still the most selfish fucking job in the game right now because of all of this.....and the developers refuse to ADEQUATELY fix the job. If Paladins aren't allowed to do any of this, what the fuck are we allowed to do? That's what people need to be asking, need to be asking the developers to fix, and need to be thinking of in the future. This "hotfix" garbage needs to stop. Actually, this isn't even a hotfix, it's been 4 months at least since issues have been known.

EDIT: I'm also over all this Main or Off tank shit too.....no tank should be explicitly forced into a role. Obviously for "optimal" encounters it's highly suggested but I shouldn't be forced into a position just because of design ideology.

[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 ?

[NFaelivrin]

PLD could be a lot better without increasing its DPS significantly (albeit frankly, I'm not sure current raid design means it'd be actually viable without a DPS increase) if the following were true:

1) PLD cooldowns were designed in such a way that its oh-so-hyped emergency invincibility button didn't have to be used in its normal cooldown rotation and could be actually saved for emergencies, like Living Dead and Holmgang are.
2) Clemency was useful at all.
3) Divine Veil, with its awkward activation mechanic, limited range and far too long cooldown was, at least, better group mitigation than just keeping delirium, dragon kick or storm's path up.

Currently none of these 3 are true, meaning PLD becomes a low DPS tank with poor utility and an incredibly strong invincibility button that, because of how long your cooldowns are, you end up having to use as if it was just another cooldown for your rotation when dealing with scripted tankbusters.

[LadyCeles]

I love the changes. I would have rather seen fast blade get 10tp cheaper but switching shield swipe to ocd adds more dps and aggro. I never thought pld was in a terrable spot. The dps was a little lower if all tanks optimize there rotations. I keep up or out dps most tanks i play with that also run alex savage. Now that i get more dps im sure i will here that pld is broken when i reality people need to work on there own rotations

[Xenosan]

I'd say that the 3.1 adjustment is a 'good start.' It does seem like getting adjustments to PLD is like trying to push a boulder up a mountain.

The TP adjustment is almost a nonfactor especially for those who used Swipe pre-patch as TP sustainment. still I feel we're still wanting Aggro modifier, TP adjustment, QoL fixes to utility.

But top of my list is still AoE. I know for raiders that may not be a top concern. But imo a tank without AoE at this point in time is like a healer without an HoT/AoE heal or a DPS without a TP restore ability. I'm so surprised they figure PLD is 'fine without' at this stage of the game's life.

[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.

[ArdorGrey]

I'd say that the 3.1 adjustment is a 'good start.' It does seem like getting adjustments to PLD is like trying to push a boulder up a mountain.

The TP adjustment is almost a nonfactor especially for those who used Swipe pre-patch as TP sustainment. still I feel we're still wanting Aggro modifier, TP adjustment, QoL fixes to utility.

But top of my list is still AoE. I know for raiders that may not be a top concern. But imo a tank without AoE at this point in time is like a healer without an HoT/AoE heal or a DPS without a TP restore ability. I'm so surprised they figure PLD is 'fine without' at this stage of the game's life.

shortening CoS to 20 second CD would be nice, maybe even buffing its potency a bit.

alternately, make blinded enemies take slightly increased physical damage as part of blinds effect. c: