Yoshi P's Stance on Pld

[Februs]

I feel like Royal Authority needs an added effect and Sword Oath either increase auto attack damage or total damage increase buff. And they definitely need something done about tp costs. Maybe add a tp restoration skill? just my personal opinion. Because as much as I love paladin, we just can't maintain tp and still do decent dps

Right now, Royal Authority is suspiciously vacant.... I really think they need to do something to it, even if the "effect" is only utilized in Sword Oath, I'd be happy.

As for Tp. SE has only ever done things to make Pld's Tp consumption worse... I don't know what they're thinking, but they need to do something about it, because Pld's even Redline Tp on big pulls these days (we can thank taking Shield Swipe off of the GCD for that one). I've seen a few suggestions that would be simple enough to work. The two I liked the best were 1. changing Riot Blade's mp regen to Tp regen when in Sword Oath. That's nice. If that doesn't work they could always give Tp regen to RA, since it has no effects at all at the moment. Or 2. providing Tp regen with the use of Divine Veil, since it's a decently long CD and Pld's would have to think about it before using it, since most of the time Pally's save it for raid wide hits.

[Ishkar]

I hate how limited our posts have to be on this forum...

Firstly, I'm tired of hearing people refer to the state of WAR during early ARR. What does that have to do with the current state of the game? Feels like a childish "We suffered, now you have to as well." The same goes for claims of wanting to "monopolize" the MT position.

Consider how our class is designed. Look at our skill-set and try to think for yourself how many are designed to be used in MT situations, and how many in OT situations. That's right, as OT, half of our skills become absolutely useless, and we are left with: Goring combo, Authority combo, Scorn and Spirits as oGCD, Fight or Flight as cooldown, and Divine Veil + Cover as utility. Apart from being incredibly boring in this role, we are still pulling off relatively low DPS (agreed, not as low as some people claim). This class was DESIGNED with the intention of being an MT, as Square even admitted multiple times.

[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 ?

[Cheraa]

We have three Tanks.
Square Enix want every Tank to be able to Main Tank the Content but that can only work, if all Tanks does close to the same Damage, too.
You can no design a Tank around Mitigation and give him less DMG, if the Mitigation of the other Tanks is enough to tank every Encounter in the Game. Because then, the more Mitigation of the Paladin becomes useless and in a Raid Enviorment around massive DPS checks, Tanks with the most DPS becomes mandatory, which was the result in WAR/DRK Tanks in Alex Savage and leaving out the PLD if possible.