Paladin Parity Suggestion Package

[Arannon]

My biggest concern is there are a lot of effects in here that we've not really SEEN before. Stacking buffs? Yeah, but a stance that makes your attacks aoe?

A spell with two stages to its casting, interrupted or cancelled after the first causes a scaling effect based on how long you kept it going?

These may not be things their code is currently capable of...

At least, I don't know that I've ever seen similar effects out of any other ability in the game.

What you suggest may be nice, and well thought out, but could it be implemented quickly, efficiently, and with ample testing? I'm really doubtful...

[Shurrikhan]

My biggest concern is there are a lot of effects in here that we've not really SEEN before....a stance that makes your attacks aoe?

A spell with two stages to its casting, interrupted or cancelled after the first causes a scaling effect based on how long you kept it going?

These may not be things their code is currently capable of...

To be honest, looking back on what I've written, you can almost consider those particular changes being given to PLD, while in my mind the ideal fit, excuses for their development. I honestly feel that if FFXIV wants to be any sort of forward-leading game, it needs at least be capable of the combat code complexity done in competing games. We don't even have fading debuffs here (e.g. a heavy starting at 80% and fading (completely/to 20%/to 40%/whatever) over, say, 2 seconds), let alone roll-over debuffs, or cleaves that splits damage among all hit but deals bonus damage per enemy hit (where that bonus may scale up or down with each bonus given), or channeling spells, or charge spells, or multi-stage spells, or dynamic abilities (with different effects and accordant animations conditionally)... all these just from examples that stuck with me from other MMOs).

Sorry if it sounds like I'm just trying to defend my post. I'm honestly not. Rather, this is a stance I've been kind of hard set on since I ARR came out, and refreshed when Heavensward stuck to the same relatively shallow path. It seems I took the opportunity here (though unaware at the time) to push that within my suggestions...

Hard to grasp how balance many of these changes would be on pld, since some don't have comparable counter parts ingame. But I will say be careful on a refreshable shield swipe with no cd. In the early life of 2.x life Shield Swipe was refreshable after every block with no cd, and also ogcd, but costed tp. I could nuke mobs faster then dps classes while in Shield Oath, but also nuke my tp. The dps increase was very noticeable on trash, and on bosses. Idk when they changed it be on gcd in 2.x. Since I was just casually playing the game at the time and playing/leveling several jobs at the time.

I honestly don't remember any time when Shield Swipe was refreshable and oGCD. I primarily leveled my GLD first (carried over at ~level 26) as soon as the game was released, too. Granted, that was a long time ago. If I wasn't watching a particularly good movie or anime during the run, I'd be unlikely to remember any run that far back... let alone what happened during said run.

As for balancing it, though, that has been a place of concern for me. What I'd consider ideal, though, takes more new coding than either of my suggestions that already have no counterpart (Clemency and Sword Oath)... I suspect adding an internal cooldown (individual or per x procs) or adjusting the proc chances would suffice, however. Right now it's simply set slightly higher than Low Blow rates without Dark Dance (unless using a Tower Shield), a fair bit more than with Dark Dance when using Bulwark and a kite shield or buckler, or a bit less than with Dark Dance and no Bulwark, etc., as to make up a bit of PLD's MT dps gap with WAR and DRK in a way that the Defender stacks could not on its own (being, as it is, concerned primarily with MT AoE dps). Both are adjustable, of course, though I feel that even in combination they're unlikely to have any greater MT dps, ST or AoE, than the other tank jobs. I'll run the math again after I finalize Shield Oath / Defender.