What Makes a Paladin? An Essay on Paladin Identity

[Freyyy]

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Level 60. The purpose of this post was to say that the MP regen PLD gets is high enough for the very few MP-using abilities it has and it would still be high enough if they got battle raise. Most of the time the MP from Sheltron and Riot Blade are wasted because you're already at max anyway (Unless AoEing).

I agree that battle raise would be a very good utility to add on PLD, but it would anyway just be for emergency cases, like almost all of PLD's kit. In real fights when everything is going as expected, nobody should die, thus making battle raise useless. It wouldn't even fix the job's issues so it wouldn't be broken at all. It'd just be one more underwhelming utility. PLD should become useful like the other tanks in every cases, not just in emergency situations.

[Bravely_Default]

^Indeed it would be more of an icing on the cake.

One way I see it is it would be safer just to give paladins overall damage mitigation for the whole group with their abilities then risk making them OP with additional healer abilities. As they say, An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

[Malicewolf]

Well, i'm very glad you guys get lots of awesome DF parties
I'm not so lucky.... I've very often found myself with an incompetent healer who tells me "they're new" at lvl 50. Aside from roulette, i avoid DF like the plague. That one healer dying and forcing the other to over extend themselves because we don't have a summoner to raise and the battle rages on, that is simply a hard enough situation to deal with that would make me having raise worth while. I'd love to not be in situations where I need to use Raise. But I find myself in those situation plenty of times and I have to go "oh well, it's a wipe guys, no heals". And before people come in and go "well then, you must be a bad tank if the healer's are dying". No. Just no. There are plenty of bosses that throw random AoE's out and plenty of healers who DON'T MOVE.

[Bravely_Default]

Unfortunately there is a lot of changes that would make DF life easier but we cannot go off of those instances when it comes to determining what classes are in a bad spot.

[Archaell]

Personally I would like to see paladin shifted more towards "leadership" buffer tank rather than off-healer tank. Instead of doing healing maybe the paladin could buff healers to increase potency of spells, turning single target skills into aoe skills, giving direct heals shield effects, turning them into instant abilities etc.

We could even solve the TP / MP issue. Just create a skill called "Team Spirit" - Paladin and its target split TP+MP cost of skills, so we could use healer's TP to hit things and healer could use our MP to heal things.

It should not just be limited to healers tho. Some kind of buffs to increase damage/defense of other party members would be also great.

[Februs]

I actually posted this in another thread, cuz' I'm half asleep and didn't see this one. The cliff notes for what I'd posted before is that the changes to Shield Swipe suck in practice.

It is a dps increase on bosses only, of that there is no doubt, but Mob tanking has actually suffered horribly for it. Mob dmg is down because Sheild swipe can no longer be spammed between alternate targets so, Flash has replaced Sheild swipe for peripheral aggro. You can't mitigate as much dmg without pacification, and Bulwark and Shelltron are now effectively useless for their original utility (which, if you knew how to use Bulwark properly, was ridiculously OP for mob tanking). Most default block rates for shields ensure that Shield swipe is up on CD, and the timer for it off the GCD actually works against shelltron in boss fights.... It's just a mess.

All of this for a tiny, imperceptible, increase to boss dps, and absolutely ZERO help to conserving TP, which is still constantly red lining in longer fights (I actually think it might be worse, because somehow I seem to be losing more TP than normal in mob pulls these days... though that could just be a thing for the new dungeons. I dunno). There were real changes that they could have made to "fix" the Pld class. This was not one of them, at least not by itself.

[Bravely_Default]

The DPS gain is there only in the small term, long term you are likely to run out of TP and will suffer a DPS drop. Paladins are running out of TP faster now because before we could use bulwark and do potentially 3+ shield swipes in a row which did quite a bit to conserve our TP since you had to fit them into rotations. Hell even without bulwark if you were lucky you could still get quite a few procs off in the course of a minute. This would all be against physical bosses obviously, really no change against magical bosses except the lower goring blade TP cost.

[TouchandFeel]

Since the OP discussed the origin of the modern concept of Knights and Paladins here is a bit of knowledge for everyone.

Knights in history.

Knights in Europe mainly come about during the Dark Ages and the chaos that ensued after the withdraw and eventual fall of the Western Roman Empire. During this time wars between small feudal fiefdoms, kingdoms, etc. were common place and so pretty much every king, lord or whoever had an army. The elite among the army were the mounted cavalry.
At this time owning and keeping a horse, particularly one that is suitable for warfare, was very costly and so only those of means, i.e. nobles, could really afford warhorses and so through this combination of circumstances, knights as we know them today come about, warriors of nobility (political, not necessarily virtue) atop mighty steeds charging into battle with shield and lance (really just longspears for use in mounted combat).
The shining armor part came later with advances in metallurgy, smithing and armor making, but of course again a suit of plate was extremely expensive and so relegated pretty much to nobility.

The image of knights at tourney (tournements) in colorful regalia, jousting against each other came about later during the Medieval period after things had calmed down a bit and the wealthy and powerful went back to doing what they do best, spending lots of money putting on big and fancy shows and parties to entertain themselves and giving themselves awards, fancy titles and pats on the back.

Paladins in history and legend.

Paladins originate with the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne and the name was used to refer to members of his inner group of nobles and officials. The name comes from the evolution of the Latin word palatinus and the association of the aforementioned individuals with the Palatine hill, where the emperor’s palace was.
The association of the term Paladin with knights comes from the tales and legends surrounding Charlemagne’s retainer Roland and the cadre of twelve knights that he was head of.
The stories of Charlemagne and the Paladins echo very closely to the tales laid out in Arthurian legend, with the Paladin going on pilgrimages and crusades with Charlemagne to recover holy artifacts and to uphold the kingdom of God on Earth by fighting against the Saracens. There is even a “last battle” in which the knights are betrayed and later fall in battle
Also much like Arthur and his knights, the Paladins were popular figures in literature during the Italian Renaissance, but unfortunately never saw a more modern revival in popularity.

Arthurian legend random factoids and such stuff.

The tales and legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are probably the greatest influence on the modern image of the gallant knight. We are all, at least hopefully, fairly familiar with the stories and characters, so instead of retelling them I will instead just list some random factoids and tidbits on the influence of the legends on stuff in modern pop-culture.

- Camelot is well known as being the capitol of King Arthur’s kingdom, but the entire realm that Arthur ruled was known as Logres, sometimes spelled Logris.
- Galahad is Lancelot’s son and while not directly said, it is heavily implied that Percival is Gawain’s son.
- The Sword in the Stone is not Excalibur, but is a different sword altogether. Arthur retrieves Excalibur after the sword that he drew from the stone breaks in battle.
- Excalibur came along with a magical sheath that was enchanted to prevent the wearer from losing too much blood from their wounds/being wounded too grievously in battle. This sheath was stolen by Morgan le Fey while Arthur slept and tossed into a lake.
- Arthur was essentially born of rape. His father Uther Pendragon fell in love with the Duke of Cornwall’s wife Ygraine (also spelled Igraine) and used Merlin’s magic to disguise himself as the Duke so that he could have sex with Ygraine. This is how Arthur was conceived.
- For more dirty laundry, Arthur had sex (accidently) with his half-sister Morgan le Fey when she came to him disguised as Guinivere. From this Mordred was born, who is eventually the knight that betrays him at the last battle where Arthur is killed.
- The Paladin healing ability of Lay on Hands in Dungeons and Dragons is a direct reference to Galahad healing the wounded King Pelles, in which he lays his hands over the wound and it is miraculously healed. As Final Fantasy was heavily influenced by Dungeons and Dragons (as were many other Western fantasy video games), this is where the concept of Paladin/Knight healing comes from.

[Jpec07]

Wow, thanks for the info!

I've updated the original post to include it--unless you'd rather it not be there.

[Februs]

Awareness is a filler ability. Always has been. Devs couldn't think of anything else to give gladiator, I guess. Crit immunity should either be on gear or tank stances.

Actually, Awareness is amazing with Raw intuition (though there are 5 seconds during which the War will be vulnerable if not careful). The truly sad part about Awareness is that it was a filler ability... until they basically re-branded it and made it FAR more useful for War's than it ever was or likely ever will be for Pld's. Call me crazy, but I think something's wrong when the Job you specifically designed the ability for gets less utility out of it than an alternate class which is borrowing it.