Yoshi P's Stance on Pld

[Ishkar]

And just to clarify...

I DON'T WANT more DPS, and I DO WANT to OT! I'm just asking for the game design to not make me feel like a waste of a member slot in anything I'm running. Even our mitigation (as proven multiple times in numerous posts) isn't as "King" as some people and even Squenix claim. What Paladin need is to make the class more engaging and rewarding. How they do it, is something I'm not even going to go into. But that they NEED to do it, is proven by the amount of unsatisfied Paladin.

Remember, if a massive amount of people from any community are complaining in unison... Maybe, just maybe, it's because they have something to complain about. So please stop dismissing our comments as immature cry-outs, or inaccurate claims made by inexperienced players. There are plenty of solid claims and references to support them.

[Februs]

And just to clarify...I DON'T WANT more DPS, and I DO WANT to OT! I'm just asking for the game design to not make me feel like a waste of a member slot in anything I'm running.

Agreed. One thing that bothers me about every single discussion concerning potential changes in Pld is that they all, eventually, dissolve into a debate about increasing Pld's Dps. That's annoying and actually cheapens the point we're trying to make to SE. I'm personally not overly interested in Pld Dps. It's always been lower. It always will be lower. I can live with this. That being said, there are some changes I would like to see in the Pld that could, potentially, increase their Dps in certain circumstances, but that wouldn't be the goal. The goal is to achieve balance and (in one case) a fix.

As far as I'm concerned, there is only one issue that Pld's have which should be considered a "Fix" if changed, and that's their TP consumption issue. It's broken, especially compared to the other two tanks, and leads to a lot of the other problems that people complain about. So it needs to be fixed. Everything else is an issue of balance and is far less critical by comparison, because at least it functions.

[SwordCoheir]

Agreed. One thing that bothers me about every single discussion concerning potential changes in Pld is that they all, eventually, dissolve into a debate about increasing Pld's Dps.

I agree, but DPS more of a consequence of the games mechanics relying on DPS (and attack power for Flash) for threat generation. Granted any subtle improvement to hate management outside of just adjusting the enmity modifiers (for the umpteenth time) would likely resolve in increased DPS either directly or indirectly. But my beef overall is SE's overall disinterest in fixing any issues especially when you look at PLD's impressive list... of flaws.

-Lowest DPS
-Lowest Enmity generation of any tank
-Lowest AoE Enmity generation of any tank
-Lowest overall Utility of any class
-Highest TP consumption over time.
-Questionable mitigation advantages over other tanks (especially since they nerfed shields hard).

Seriously I don't see why they want us to continue scraping the bottom of the barrel and keep giving PLD's half-hearted attempts at fixes.

[Faeon]

Seriously I don't see why they want us to continue scraping the bottom of the barrel and keep giving PLD's half-hearted attempts at fixes.

Probably because of the numbers, show that PLD still active in terms of numbers of players, also my own personal opinion is that they not interest in the JOB, you can tell they invested more time and resources into the WAR and DRK to polish them out.

Also I reckon they want us to play multiple jobs depending on the raid atm! Yoshi said the content at this time does not favour the PLD in one of the interviews, so in other words he is telling you for this round of content gear your DRK or WAR, next round gear your PLD or what ever.

[Ishkar]

Also I reckon they want us to play multiple jobs depending on the raid atm! Yoshi said the content at this time does not favour the PLD in one of the interviews, so in other words he is telling you for this round of content gear your DRK or WAR, next round gear your PLD or what ever.

The sad thing is that each of the points that SwordCoheir mentioned are completely unrelated to the content and will persist regardless. In any case, if it is truly their intention to have players switch tank jobs according to content, I have serious questions as to why they chose to make our esoterics gear job locked...

Regardless of how you look at it, it seems they didn't think things through. Locked esoterics imply that you focus your gearing efforts on one job, which means every job should be competitive in every content. Otherwise if different jobs in the same role are meant to be juggled according to content, locking esoterics to one single job only feels like a low blow. They are sending us two different messages.

[Faeon]

The sad thing is that each of the points that SwordCoheir mentioned are completely unrelated to the content and will persist regardless. In any case, if it is truly their intention to have players switch tank jobs according to content, I have serious questions as to why they chose to make our esoterics gear job locked...

Regardless of how you look at it, it seems they didn't think things through. Locked esoterics imply that you focus your gearing efforts on one job, which means every job should be competitive in every content. Otherwise if different jobs in the same role are meant to be juggled according to content, locking esoterics to one single job only feels like a low blow. They are sending us two different messages.

Makes sense Ishkar.

[Reynhart]

They are sending us two different messages.

They are sending only one message :
We didn't think anyone could beat Alex Savage without several Esoterics pieces, a point where the lesser DPS of PLD wouldn't be a real issue anymore. And now, we don't know what to do about it.

As for what to really do...the more I think about it, the more it hurts me to realize that increasing DPS is perhaps the more efficient way...
Every tank has enough mitigation to survive every content. On high-end content, healers already manage to pack quite a lot of DPS, while keeping the party alive. I don't really think you could manage to give them significantly more DPS by increasing PLD's mitigation. So, if PLD needs the same support as WAR and DRK, then its lower DPS will always be an absolute flaw (Even without hard DPS checks, people always want to clear content faster and faster)

So, what about "less support" ? As I said, healers already manage to keep everybody alive while doing great damage (for healers), so the "less support" would dangerously come close to "fulltime DPS" for healers, aka "no support". But in that case, why not taking a DPS instead ?