PLD is just boring

[Bravely_Default]

Should not have a cooldown due to the vast (1/6th MP) cost associated with it already, in addition to this the largest part of the damage of sword oath is just the auto attacks and with what I am suggesting the main tank would only use sword oath very briefly (1 or 2 auto attacks and a royal authority) before "weaving" out of it. If it was found to be too strong if anything it should just have a 1 or 2 second cd and be increased if it is found to be too strong from there, but I think leaving it as having no cooldown would make careless paladins prone to run out of MP anyway.

[Disc]

There is absolutely nothing unique about PLD right now outside of their external healing ability (which is clumsy and easily interrupted), and their slightly enhanced physical mitigation (thank you shields). And I think that's why a lot of people, myself included, wish that they'd do something to change it.

What, you mean like adding a 30 second oGCD block ability, two new combo closers, and turning Shield Swipe into an oGCD ability? You're just suffering from a case of the grass being greener.

[SpookyGhost]

Should not have a cooldown due to the vast (1/6th MP) cost associated with it already

Riot Blade exists and you'll be using it often enough to easily replenish the cost of ShO/SwO swapping.

in addition to this the largest part of the damage of sword oath is just the auto attacks and with what I am suggesting the main tank would only use sword oath very briefly (1 or 2 auto attacks and a royal authority) before "weaving" out of it.

You're also under the impression that you'd be in ShO most of the time, when in reality you'd use ShO as a toggled Rampart and stick to SwO 99% of the time, utilizing Sheltron/Bulwark/etc to make damage on you trivial. Unless damage on the tank receives a massive boost, there will still be no reason to stay in ShO and only swap to SwO for a RA + some autos.

[Bravely_Default]

If I am main tanking why would I not use shield oath for the majority of the time? additional damage from the enemy would add up and cause additional strain on the healer which would lead to more aggro being drawn due to the part of less enmity gain. royal authority still has less enmity generation then rage of halone so staying in sword oath a majority of the time would not work out.

[Bravely_Default]

in addition to this yes you can get MP back from riot blade but that would be the purpose of having no CD on shield and sword oath, the control to its use would be the MP so there would not be a purpose to attaching a large cooldown on it as a main tank would not stay in it for a long period of time. yes riot blade restores MP and that would fit into the resource management when you are trying to "dance", a paladin can only spam fast blade->riot blade/->Goring blade so much before it becomes a loss of damage and enmity as well so natural MP regen would come into play here. Obviously all of this is just wishful thinking on my part so we will have to see what direction SE decides to take things.

[Disc]

If I am main tanking why would I not use shield oath for the majority of the time? additional damage from the enemy would add up and cause additional strain on the healer which would lead to more aggro being drawn due to the part of less enmity gain. royal authority still has less enmity generation then rage of halone so staying in sword oath a majority of the time would not work out.

I haven't been able to test yet since my PLD is not properly equipped to compete in raids, but Shield Swipe as an oGCD worth roughly 34% of Halone may be enough to change the enmity issues. Especially if your first lands during the initial combo with ShO & FoF up for a total 1170 potency worth of enmity.(150Base*1.3FoF*2ShO*3Mod) And forgot- PLD as is in SwO with both passive/active defense & Halone's debuff on will take about as much damage as a DRK in Grit, so not a very big deal.

yes riot blade restores MP and that would fit into the resource management when you are trying to "dance", a paladin can only spam fast blade->riot blade/->Goring blade so much before it becomes a loss of damage and enmity as well so natural MP regen would come into play here. Obviously all of this is just wishful thinking on my part so we will have to see what direction SE decides to take things.

Sheltron also restores a significant amount of MP.

[Jpec07]

What, you mean like adding a 30 second oGCD block ability, two new combo closers, and turning Shield Swipe into an oGCD ability? You're just suffering from a case of the grass being greener.

Oh I see, you seem to think I've been playing since 2.x, when PLD only had one combo finisher.

I was actually born and bred in 3.0. I've done my share of reading, and while the new abilities in 3.0 helped, they didn't follow through to give Paladins anything to make them unique. DoT maintenance is something shared by every other job in the game (and less restrictively), and while Royal Authority is nice, it doesn't really help Paladins in what they're struggling with at the moment (AoE enmity and MT DPS--every other tank has a 450-potency attack in tank stance, while RA is stuck at 340). Couple that with the fact that these attacks are in no way unique to PLD, and they don't really do much to help the job feel less boring.

Sheltron is a guaranteed block, but blocking in itself is relatively lackluster, and not really all that exciting.

Clemency takes too long to cast, and only has very limited usefulness that make it worth two GCDs to use, and Divine Veil relies on the healers for usefulness, so is inherently awkward.

Any of our 2.0 utility abilities are also lackluster, if only for how long it takes them to be useful again.

So really, yes, Paladins are objectively boring. Part of it is how clunky and hard to use our new abilities are, and part of it is how generic everything else is.

[Bravely_Default]

riot blade gives around 442 MP and sheltron gives back about 702 MP at level 60. the cost of sword and shield oaths are 884 so there may have to be a little bit of balancing around it, but even with those numbers you wouldn't be able to be spammy if the oaths were OGCD.

[gehrtalert]

If you consider playing a paladin boring because they cant dps like others can or they can't heal effectively, then go play another job. There's plenty of dps classes where you can dps. Go play whm so you can learn about enmity and what happens when you abuse it. Complaining because a tank job doesn't do enough dps is just you complaining because you want to do more than you signed up for. You chose paladin because they're tanks. They take damage from the enemy so everyone else can dps or heal. They're damage mitigators. They reduce incoming damage with their skills because that's what tanks do. you people will never be happy with the job because deep down, you just don't like the job. Go play a different class.

[Shurrikhan]

I play all three tanks about equally, though lately I've been sticking to PLD when farming Alexander floors 1, 3, and especially 4, partly because I like the aesthetic of the sword-and-shield job, partly because I love its animations, and most often lately, because my healers have a habit of not healing Perpetual Ray's TB spam on the MT. Clemency, luckily, has a habit of critting when I need it to, which has made that sudden lack of heals at crucial moments inconsequential as long as I'm OTing and have more than two Clemency casts' worth of mana. That, and when I don't have to be saving the MT or taking bombs for healers who stand in all three without healing themselves between, its OT Sword Oath dps is pretty damn on par for someone who can save (idiots' or those at the mercy thereof) lives on the side.

The situation was similar with WAR and PLD back in, say... Levi Ex as well. I loved knowing exactly when my stacks would be up to Inner Beast each wave blast from the head, Steel Cyclone for adds, or when I needed to Unchained vs. drop Defiance outright for damage on the spumes. And just as much I loved knowing when to Oath-dance, stoneskinning people who tended to be slow to dodge, leaving them with 8% health where they otherwise would have died, and covering low-health dps who didn't know when to move out for tail. In A2 now, DRK MT and WAR OT does together like great bread and a really awesome butter. There's plenty to love in every job... they just need situations that make use of their tools. Though, sadly, PLD offers less broadly usable tools than the other two at current, I can't honestly say it's any more rotationally dull, nor does it require any less foresight than the other two. That said, it would be the job easiest to make more fun, with a few changes... Much like Bard in a group with neither a caster nor healer mana needs, its tools are too easily wasted--great fun when used effectively, but its horrible that their effective use usually means someone else is failing (unless the encounter provides specific ways to make use of them, like Covering AAs through/after Ahk Morn).

Edit: I personally found the Shield Swipe change made it less active, but that may just be me. At a 2.4 GCD, it was useful for perfecting my Goring Blade window. I sorely miss its on-block refresh during dungeon runs as well. Like any other good oGCD, it's great for filling enmity gaps, especially on the pull itself, but is at least as lackluster in the long term as before the change. Making it work like Low Blow would have been a godsend on physical-damage content as MT, but I'd just as happily taken it without the block requirement, a faint potency increase, and still on GCD, especially if we could just get more .75x more enmity from SB and 10-20 more potency from RoH. Still need to deal with the complete lack of any real AoE damage, though, and make Clemency more broadly relevant.