Suggestion - Paladin Identity and new stance?

[Reynhart]

Do you believe every class should have rez? Why/why not?

I believe every class/job that can use raise souldn't be blocked by an inconsistent trait.

[Bravely_Default]

The above is just an example of an oversight on SE's part. why is there a mechanic that wipes everything but the tanks if failed? what purpose is there for the tanks to survive it? they could just as easily just make each sword do 20% of your health thus making any more then 4 swords a total wipe. Every other mechanic from bosses such as levi, titan, ifrit, bis, just to name a few are TOTAL WITHOUT QUESTION WIPES IF FAILED. I do not think there are any other instances other then ravana where a dps failure only leads to a squishy wipe, and would be an exception that would need changing if the pally had a battle rez.

[Reynhart]

Why is there a mechanic that wipes everything but the tanks if failed ? Every other mechanic from bosses such as levi, titan, ifrit, bis, just to name a few are TOTAL WITHOUT QUESTION WIPES IF FAILED. I do not think there are any other instances other then ravana where a dps failure only leads to a squishy wipe, and would be an exception that would need changing if the pally had a battle rez.

I'd say because these mechanics are a bad thing.

For Ifrit or Garuda, the strenght of their attack was tied to the number of nails or rocks that remains. So, even if you didn't do that part perfectly, you could survive with proper management.
The first time I used the tank LB3 was indeed to save a wipe on Ifrit, and it was very satysfying...oh, crap, the tank can save a party if they fail the mechanic...should we remove tank LB3, too ?

Food for thoughts...Should we nerf WHM ?

[Leigaon]

The TL;DR version;
The shield is core to Paladin identity. Changes to blocking diminish that. Sword Oath is pointless. The CNJ cross class abilities are lacking.

Current Sword Oath effect should be a trait. Create new Sword Oath to increase dps and decrease defense. Shields can block magic. No change to Shield oath. Add new Oath of Solace - healing stance. Healing stance allows Raise during battle, increases strength of Cure, decreases DPS and defense. PLD would have 4 stance options, no stance, attack (Sword Oath), defense (Shield Oath) and healing (Oath of Solace). Size of shield has small effect on Skill Speed.

Make a virtue of the fact that the Paladin is really a master of no 'trade' by making them a jack of all trades based on their stances.

I'm trying to level PLD now because..it's just awesome looking. I hope to see some changes in the next update. I can't say for raiding but just in general.

I agree the sword oath isn't that amazing. It should just be a normal trait. I have been playing AST, it's made me realize it couldn't hurt to have the base of a job and then expand to something very unique. I do love this job, I like cover..a lot..so this job can only get better for me.

[Malicewolf]

No cigar. Saving a group from a wipe as the last one standing is one thing, but it is not the only thing the PLD does in the ravana example. The PLD res can be used INSTEAD of meeting the dps check required for normal progression. That isn't what the SMN did in your example.

Question for you:
Do you believe every class should have rez? Why/why not?

A PLD can also just use cover and hallowed ground on a healer. Or pop Divine Veil right before the ultimate hits (because let's face it, you have PLENTY of time to prepare for his ultimate). Or both. Are we also too OP for this already and should lose these two abilities? If everyone used every action available perfectly, then there'd be no wipes in the first place. If the AST used galvanize just in time alongside everything else, you wouldn't wipe (unless you really failed the DPS check). WHM use stoneskin. etc. etc.

But if healers are down and there's no summoner, regardless, it's a wipe unless it's the final stretch of hp on the boss. You can't get through an entire boss fight without any heals (well, any higher level). Unless you got some weird BLM who decided to stack in mind instead of INT and kept physick. And even that wouldn't give good heals. But perhaps enough to sustain a tank long enough to finish a boss off. But this is pretty much a ridiculous concept.

[Xyphon]

All of the cross class abilities are remnants from 1.0. You think pld having a decent cure is OP? Well in 1.0 plds could cross class every single conj ability/spell (as all other classes could as well). Meaning, they could use cure 3. Was this overpowered? No. Did you still need a healer? Yes. Did it help tanks survive crazy tank busters, some what.

Speaking of FFXI, plds could even use holy. The biggest difference was attributes and mana pool.

I'm guessing everyone who's thinks pld would be OP for healing is due to "Riot blade", right? Cause that infinite mana gain is just impossible to gauge!

To top it off, casting while tanking or even in melee combat isn't the easiest thing to do. Especially with the amount of magic damage being thrown around that interrupts you. In order to even think about healing, you are without a doubt sacrificing plenty of other things as a tank you could be doing. Such as continuing your enmity/dps rotation. This applies even as OT.

Sadly the biggest raising trump that healers normally have isn't currently in the game. That being reraise.

[Reynhart]

All of the cross class abilities are remnants from 1.0. You think pld having a decent cure is OP? Well in 1.0 plds could cross class every single conj ability/spell (as all other classes could as well). Meaning, they could use cure 3. Was this overpowered? No. Did you still need a healer? Yes. Did it help tanks survive crazy tank busters, some what.

No, they couldn't. Lots of actions were exclusive to their native class.
They could use Stone, Cure, Aero, Protect, Raise (Without any restriction), Stoneskin and Sacred Prism (To make your next spell an AoE)

[Kosmos992k]

In regards to the "pointless" Sword Oath:

1. The improved Sword Oath would be flagrantly overpowered. We're that not much behind WAR in terms of single-target OT dps, and ahead of DRK when its mana is strained.

Thanks for doing the math here, I haven't been able to play as much as I would like (very long story relating to my wife and her health and her inability to play currently - so I am waiting for her) and so haven't progressed MSQ through to the end, so it's difficult to really do the math when you don't have as good a perspective on the new skills as someone who has done that and played end-game for comparison with WAR/DRK.

So, thank you for the theory-crafting/math regarding Sword Oath. I agree from what you've said that stacking the abilities would be overpowered. However, if I may, let me explain my thought process on Sword Oath. As it stands, I simply see no reason for it to be a separate stance. I can think of no reason at all why it should not be turned on unless you are using Shield Oath, because there is no penalty to using it, so there's not really a choice to be made. You're not trading any defensive ability or power for the additional attack power. So why have it as a stance at all, why not just make it a trait, so it's always there, and have that trait disabled when Shield Oath is used.

But I like the idea of there being an attack stance and a defense stance, so I would prefer a Sword Oath that boosted our DPS at the expense of some of our defense. Whether the boost comes through a potency modification to Auto Attack, or by a direct % modification on all damage dealt doesn't matter to me. Having a true attack stance makes it an actual decision with regard to whether you want to use Sword Oath or not.

So, despite my lack of mathematical exploration of the impact of the initial suggestion, I'd still like to see change to Sword Oath to make it more of a give and take, like Shield Oath is.

If you want a "more interesting" version of Sword Oath, it cannot be stacked upon another version that, while lackluster, is damn effective.

Agreed, I should have removed that stacking, I hadn't considered the combined impact of both with the detail and accuracy that you have.

If, say, you wanted to trade it out for... generating Crusade stacks

I don't want to do stack management on PLD, that already exists on WAR, and to be honest I wasn't intending for PLD to be close to WAR in DPS because the point of the idea was to give Paladin something that the other two tanks lack, just as each of them has something that we lack. Had the role of the shield not been diminished so much without a compensating gain for PLD, I doubt I would have made the suggestion, except to bemoan the pointlessness of Cure, Raise, and Protect. If Sword Oath were overhauled, I'd prefer it to be something of a mirror to Shield Oath. Such that the greater focus on Sword means a lower focus on defense and therefore gain in DPS is offset by a reduction in defense or mitigation, much like Shield oath boosts our passive defense at the expense of our DPS.

Note: with a 2.0s blade, Sword Oath provides 1500 per minute, about the same as your three oGCDs if you could only proc 2 Swipes per minute.)

Doesn't the reduced auto attack on the weapon offset the reduced delay? I was under the impression that if you had a 2.0s sword, that the also reduced autoattack (compared to the same ilvl weapon with a longer delay) offset the benefit of the delay?

Your suggestions would make likely make PLD a contending easy-mode DPS without solving much if any of its real issues.

That, clearly, was not the intention here.

As for the new stance (heal oath):

1. PLD's strength, the stat from which Clemency's 1200 potency is based, will still likely blow the Vit/Mind-based Cure out of any real use. All the more so when they could be dpsing for OP numbers instead of heal-casting for a mere 400 potency at a time.

Yes, I see that from an end-game point of view, but for any PLD working up from Gladiator, Clemency is not relevant, and cure is, and we have it from very early in the game; so I'd like to see it made a bit more useful to us. Also, I think that the MP cost and longer cast time of Clemency could work with a more viable Cure for PLD to use giving the Paladin a more efficient, but less powerful healing spell in addition to the more powerful, and MP consuming Clemency.

2. If anything, PLD needs a higher barrier (percentage of damage dealt required to interrupt), into which defensive CDs could synergize, not just an RNG shield. Nor does this help really with MT healing, where Shield Oath was already technically helping. Given SE's rigidity of universal design (11 traits for every class), it's unlikely that its interruption can be solved by a trait, so it would have to be attached to an oath (where the one that makes the most sense would be Shield Oath), all oaths, or to Clemency itself (since non-WHM Stoneskin's been screwed since 3.0 anyways)...

If you add a third Oath, the lower chance of interruption can be built into the Oath, along with allowing battlefield Raise while in that Oath. I am going back to a third Oath because I think that each of the Oaths should have a coherent purpose. Sword Oath's purpose is increasing damage, Shield Oath increases defense, and the healing Oath would increase our healing capability. It gives us an additional 'mode' of play, especially when we are in the OT role.

3. The sheer swap time and mana cost would eat too deeply into its benefits.

That might be true if a player was bouncing in and out of the Oaths. I was thinking more in terms of making tactical decisions about which Oath to use, rather than switching back and forth in order to obtain the specific beneficial effect you want at that time. So as MT you'd obviously pick Shield Oath (some will suggest Sword Oath I am sure), as OT you'd go Sword Oath, but if there was a problem with the healing, you'd switch to the healing stance, and stay there until the situation improves before switching back. Swapping back and forth would eat too many GCDs and you'd likely not have time to recover MP, as you suggest.

4. Even if you could then heal significantly, it likely wouldn't be worth the mitigation or dps benefits of the other two stances in almost any situation (esp. any situation Clemency couldn't already cover).

Is that from the player's perspective or the party? perhaps we are viewing a healing stance from different points of view? I'm thinking of a healing stance as a party support role, not a personal healing role.

o keep from nit-picking without providing anything, here's some stuff I think might help / would like to see.
**snip**

A lot of that sounds good.

Rewinding back to the start, and echoing some of what others have said. I don't want to make PLD an imitation WAR or DRK, so we don't need to be trying to match WARs DPS for example, no stack management. Make sure that each tank has something that they, specifically, are good at, that set's them apart from the others.

PLD being a mitigation tank and therefore making mitigation our 'thing' is somewhat flawed in this game since every big encounter has to be balanced around the mitigation capability of all 3 tanks. It PLD had mitigation considerably better than the others, we'd always be the MT option, no matter what, which is clearly something to be avoided. All 3 should be viable as MT. So you can't lean on mitigation. On the other hand our Cross class stuff provides something special - healing ability from CNJ, so why not make use of that to carve out something that we can do that no one else does?

So, create a healing stance, rework Sword Oath into an actual stance rather than a passive DPS increase on an autoattack, and don't mess with Shield Oath. Looking at those cross class skills, Protect is the same for everyone, as is StoneSkin, so we can't do much to those. Cure is extremely weak for PLD and Raise is completely unusable, so a healing stance needs to fix those two skills to make them usable, and useful enough to merit use. By all means give the Healing stance an aspect that reduces the interrupts.

But, don't make our healing ability so powerful that some might be tempted to bring PLD along as a second healer rather than an actual healer. That's a difficult balance to strike, and perhaps the best way to do that is to either. Perhaps a way to enforce that is to take a leaf from the book of the NPC Sylphie who heals by using her own life force; so each Cure we cast while in the healing stance consumes both MP and HP in equal numbers to balance things and prevent a PLD from sitting in healing stance all the time to act as a second healer.

Thank you again for working out the math for Sword Oath, as well as your perspective on PLD.

[Reynhart]

So, create a healing stance, rework Sword Oath into an actual stance rather than a passive DPS increase on an autoattack, and don't mess with Shield Oath.

For me, we don't need Sword Oath. We can do far enough DPS without any oath for anytime we're soloing.
And in party situation, a Tank stance and a Healing stance will give us far enough to do, and we still have the option of deactivating our stances.

[Kosmos992k]

For me, we don't need Sword Oath. We can do far enough DPS without any oath for anytime we're soloing.
And in party situation, a Tank stance and a Healing stance will give us far enough to do, and we still have the option of deactivating our stances.

That would work, I just feel that the current Sword Oath is not so much a stance as a default state, it should not require stance switching to gain the effect.