Suggestion - Paladin Identity and new stance?

[Xyphon]

@Reynhart - Are you talking "Paladin" or "Gladiator"? I specifically was referring to the "classes", not the "jobs". I'm also talking pre-1.20.

Reference of change:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/30986

Prior to that, there was no such thing as class exclusive abilities.

[Reynhart]

Prior to that, there was no such thing as class exclusive abilities.

Prior to that, there was no "job", so "PLD" never had the opportunity to use Curaga.

Well in 1.0 plds could cross class every single conj ability/spell

Creation of jobs
Besides, before that, classes were such a mess that CNJ wasn't even the best healer..
And at that time, there wasn't any content to tank, anyway...

[Februs]

For me, the solution to the problems that Pld's have is not so dramatic. A few simple changes to the effects of certain moves while in different Oaths would be the most efficient way of balancing Pld. (Note that I said balance. I don't, personally, have a problem with Pld Dmg output, so I'm not as interested in finding ways to dramatically increase Pld Dps as I am at making them a competent Tank.)

In terms of the Oaths themselves:

Sword Oath: Remains the same.

Shield Oath: Remains the same, with one addition: Healing potency (spells cast by the Pld. NOT healing received) increases by 20% (I know this sound OP, but just wait); however, I would only want to see this change if Clemency's base healing potency was also reduced by the same amount.

The idea here is that Clemency remains at an identical potency as it is now when in Shield Oath, but suffers a nerf when in Sword Oath. That way, when Pld's are acting as Off Tank, they would be forced to stance dance to get the same healing potency. Given that the stances are on the GCD, and Clemency's cast timer is quite long, they would not be ridiculously overpowered and be able to serve as a "3rd healer," when Off Tanking. Basically, not much would change with this nerf/buff combo; however, it would give Pld's the option of using Cure (though still not quite as effective as a WHM) when main tanking, as well as the ability to (at least somewhat,) self heal to ease the strain... at least when not getting punched in the face. Given that the potency would be normal in Sword Oath, it would not be "OP," and any Pld that chooses to Off Tank in Shield Oath to compensate would be willfully nerfing their own Dps (which would probably be much worse than helping the healers, with all the Dps checks that are all the rage these days).

Now for the actual moves. Personally, I think that there are a lot of Pld moves that should change effect when used in different Oaths (especially Royal Authority, since it does nothing at the moment), but the one that I think has the most potential to help balance the Pld Tp issue is Divine Veil. The change that I would implement is:

Divine Veil: No change to the barrier ability. Provides small amount of Tp Regeneration when used in Shield Oath. When used in Sword Oath, provides Tp regeneration equal to the Pld's current Tp across the party (IE: if the Plds has max TP, than each party member gets 125 regen)

I singled this one out because, unlike Shelltron, it does not require a physical attack to initiate (which means you can still use it while Off Tanking), but it also has a long enough cooldown that it could not be considered overpowered (no more so than War's Tp regen skill, in any case... It actually might be considered underpowered still, since the CD is so damn long, and Pld's might chose to hold onto it for hard hitting aoe moves instead of just burning it on CD). The only thing that would make me hesitate is changing the effect when in Sword Oath... only, I thought about this, and I realized that I rarely run out of TP when Off Tanking. Off tanks tend to do a lot more running around, either soaking dmg or picking up adds. They do NOT have 100% uptime, like the MT does. Also, if a Pld is Off Tanking adds, they are usually in Shield Oath (if not, its usually because the add dies too fast for it to matter), so they would get the benefit of Tp regen. If they are soaking mechanic dmg, they're not attacking the boss, so there's no TP loss to make up for.

[Fevelle]

Why exactly would you want to make PLD essentially a hybrid job? In essence, what this does is turn FFXIV PLD into Holy Paladins from WoW. http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Paladi...ations.2Fstats

I have no idea why you would want this?!

Edit: Oh, and I'm willing to bet that switching into your new "Oath of Solace" would basically make PLD a limp noodle. Bad healing. Bad dps. Bad tanking. Why would you EVER do it?!

That's what Paladins are in Final Fantasy: a knight with White Magic skills, just look at Cecil.
People should forget WoW for a moment and look at the FF series before saying something about a FF game.

[Xyphon]

@Reynhart - Yea, I realized I put pld instead of gld (I think of them as one in the same..considering Pld is just a specialization of a Gld).

Though, I figured it was to late in the convo to correct it. My intention was just to point out that at one time there was no restriction, and it didn't make healers invalid.

In terms of there being no content to tank at the time...Ifrit would have said otherwise.

[Ralvenom]

That's what Paladins are in Final Fantasy: a knight with White Magic skills, just look at Cecil.
People should forget WoW for a moment and look at the FF series before saying something about a FF game.

That's not what the in-game quests imply...

[Shurrikhan]

Explain to me how it wouldn't if it allows you to bring an additional DPS to the party?

Because even if the PLD had the raw output to cover healing for a moment, it would almost every other quality of a real healer -- control, speed, and a decent mana pool. If my WHM can has a 31-Cure mana pool that regens half a Cure's mana every 3 seconds, paired with a 4k and a 10% of max mana returns every 90s, oGCDs, hugely mana-efficient HoTs, AoE heals, and a cleanse, and can still do 60% of the damage of a full-fledged... why take a PLD who burns through a 12th his mana pool every Cure, 2/5s every Clemency, has none of those extra features, is delayed by GCD just to swap to heal stance, has no spell speed, and is much less able to weave dps into his heals? It simply doesn't have the toolkit, even if its raw output was better than the healers' to warrant dropping a healer in any even half-serious content.

It provides too little of a safety net that Clemency in its current state does not already provide (e.g. needing to nuke-heal the MT for 12-18k while a or both healers are jailed or are (both) busy with raid heals). By the time you're dropping your 13+% dps boost of Sword Oath (or the near 35% of combined old sword oath kept atop the new version suggested here) and every combo that comes up mid-way to needing a heal (though you'd probably be spamming Riot Blade at that point anyways, for a Cure of mana each time), you're doing far less DPS/HPS output than a healer.

As for the swapping Strength and Mind, that would be a dps loss of around 78% not even counting the loss of Sword Oath and the reduced AA damage included in the heal oath idea. It would also keep PLDs just as dependent on Slaying accs as ever, which I'd thought was something so many PLD advocates were trying to push away from...

Should we remove the healer LB3, because it could allow one healer to progress a party through a phase that the 7 other party members could not pass working together ?

Since the healer cannot Hallowed Ground / Sentinel-Rampart-ShieldOath through mechanics and then rez the remaining 7 members on the other side, this isn't as relevant as you make it out to be. In most cases where there would be 7 members dead, both healers would be among them. Almost any occasion where that would not be the case is because people blatantly sac'd themselves (maybe because they had a raid-debuff worse than Weakened?) or died in any otherwise stupid manner.

[Reynhart]

In terms of there being no content to tank at the time...Ifrit would have said otherwise.

Ifrit's fight was a mess in 1.19.
The damage calculation was so wrong that you would take the same damage as a fully armored Gladiator than a naked THM. And since v1.x didn't have any interruption mechanic (except on knockback), it was best to stack THM to heal and deal damage.
Example of nekid run

The idea here is that Clemency remains at an identical potency as it is now when in Shield Oath, but suffers a nerf when in Sword Oath.

Clemency is not relevant as it is now, so, what good would it make ?

Basically, not much would change with this nerf/buff combo; however, it would give Pld's the option of using Cure (though still not quite as effective as a WHM) when main tanking, as well as the ability to (at least somewhat,) self heal to ease the strain... at least when not getting punched in the face. Given that the potency would be normal in Sword Oath, it would not be "OP," and any Pld that chooses to Off Tank in Shield Oath to compensate would be willfully nerfing their own Dps (which would probably be much worse than helping the healers, with all the Dps checks that are all the rage these days).

Why not taking my suggestion of switching STR and MND when in "heal oath" (And tie Clemency with Mind) ? This would natturally nerf your own DPS in a very simple way, while tremendously increasing your healing output. And since PLD would only have access to single target Cure, this would never make it a real main healer.

That's not what the in-game quests imply...

That's what the class requirement clearly says.
CNJ is not "something we can use", like Pugilist for WAR, it's required to even unlock the job.

Since the healer cannot Hallowed Ground / Sentinel-Rampart-ShieldOath through mechanics and then rez the remaining 7 members on the other side, this isn't as relevant as you make it out to be.

Well since the PLD wouldn't be able to do it...With its casting time and MP pool, the PLD would be able to raise ONE member.
In most cases, there would still be a wipe, stop exagerrating.
And again, would this make you chose PLD over any tank ? Would you say to your WAR or DRK, with a straight face "Sorry, we'll take a PLD because he will absolutely save the whole party once we messed up the whole mechanics of the fight" ?

[Shurrikhan]

Well since the PLD wouldn't be able to do it...With its casting time and MP pool, the PLD would be able to raise ONE member.
In most cases, there would still be a wipe, stop exagerrating.
And again, would this make you chose PLD over any tank ? Would you say to your WAR or DRK, with a straight face "Sorry, we'll take a PLD because he will absolutely save the whole party once we messed up the whole mechanics of the fight" ?

I was merely pointing out how those two situations differ. No, it would not make me take a PLD over another tank. Nor, sadly, would almost anything mentioned in the OP other than that 20-some% Sword Oath dps buff (RIP all other OTs).

[Kosmos992k]

I was merely pointing out how those two situations differ. No, it would not make me take a PLD over another tank. Nor, sadly, would almost anything mentioned in the OP other than that 20-some% Sword Oath dps buff (RIP all other OTs).

It was 10%, and I edited the OP to remove the stacking of old and new Sword Oath after reading a length, and rather numerate reply.

My question here is, why does it always have to be DPS? We already have a DPS tank, I don't think PLD needs to imitate that role, so lets look for anothe niche we can fill.