The Bottom Feeders: Moves You Never Use and Why.

[Sapphidia]

This is an interesting thread. The major devil's advocate question to ask is "just because you almost never use an ability, does that mean it's a bad ability if it does one rare thing well"?

Tempered Will is the standout here from the OP's original post. It's a skill you'll probably never use on your average dungeon run, and rarely use on bosses. However, for the few specific bosses that DO have some kind of knockback or slow it suddenly becomes a hugely important part of the Paladin's kit. Being able to avoid knockbacks is incredibly useful provided an encounter actually has them. Just because a boss fight might have no reason to use Tempered Will doesnt mean it isnt a fantastic ability. The convenience of things like being able to eat Shiva's bow pushback to the face, or eat a divebomb on T13 if you got out of position, or ignore a Titan Landslide is hard to quantify - you rarely "need" to avoid a knockback but if you CAN avoid it then you can make a certain part of an encounter a lot smoother.

I think that's the key with the Paladin's toolkit. The paladin has a small selection of attacking moves they use all the time, and a good base level of cooldowns that see use on just about every encounter. However, they have a HUGE toolkit of super specific moves that are never vital to an encounter's completion but CAN make the encounter a heck of a lot easier. Cover. Divine Veil. Stoneskin. Tempered Will. Even Clemency. You wont use them much, but when you find that awesome spot in an encounter where you CAN use them they feel anything but underpowered. It's remembering that these skills exist and using them at the key moments that separate the okay tanks from the great one.

Sure you can argue that these moves perhaps need some buffs or usage increases, but is it necessary for all moves to be consistantly used? I rather like having a handful of super specific move options that I might use in 10% of fights, as long as when I -do- use it I feel their impact keenly (Cover is a good example of this - it makes picking up the huge pack of snipers/soldiers/hardhelms super easy on Wave 8 of A2S. It's not vital but the use of the skill removes virtually all RNG risk of healer splat causing a wipe at this point).

The skills I consider bottom feeders arent the ones which have niche use, but the ones which have tiny impact when you DO use them. Awareness as a paladin is the one that stands out for me. It's... well it's not -terrible- and it's sort of free to use, but the fact that auto attack damage is so negligible means that whilst it COULD be an awesome tank cooldown, in practise popping it just equates to about 3% less damage taken for a bit. Maybe. It adds some stability but anything that's super damaging doesnt crit anyway. It's the kind of skill that I feel would be best served being an "always on passive", perhaps a trait on Shield Oath that makes you immune to crits.

Aside from maybe 2 encounters in the entire game where there's a "boss crits lots now" mechanic, Awareness is a button that has no real tangible impact when used and so feels underwhelming. I just find myself pressing it consistantly throughout most fights now so I just have high uptime on it rather than ever recalling a moment where I thought "uh oh, I'd better not be crit now" as those moments are usually the ones where you have other tank cooldowns running.

The other underwhelming skill Paladins have isnt really a skill, it's "the fifth crossclass slot". Foresight, Bloodbath, Stoneskin and Mercy Stroke are all must-haves. They're not super strong but they all have good use for a paladin tank and are worth taking. The fifth slot though... it's wasted. Fracture is now 100% a DPS and TP loss whenever you use it in ANY situation at level 60 and thus shouldn't even be on the bars as a paladin any more. Raise can't be used in combat. Protect is the only viable option and the healers take care of that.

I can't help wishing that the crossclass system either limited you to 3 slots so you had to make more meaningful choices, or allowed a selection of 5 skills from a bigger selection of classes. As a Paladin I'd LOVE to crossclass something like Invigorate, or Shadeshift and Goad from Ninja, or even Blood for Blood for doing better OT dps. That useless fourth crossclass slot just feels so annoying. Whitemages get the same issue I think - once they've crossclassed Virus, Eye for an Eye, Swiftcast and Surecast the only two skills for the final slot is Ruin (useless) or Blizzard 2 (which is pretty much worthless when you have Holy for AOE and Stone 1 for slows).

[Freyyy]

Aside from maybe 2 encounters in the entire game where there's a "boss crits lots now" mechanic, Awareness is a button that has no real tangible impact when used and so feels underwhelming.

For me, Awareness has two to three uses. The first use is the more "niche" one, where you'll want it up when there is special mechanics that make the boss crit a lot (Shiva in bow mode, T11 square add), the second use is to couple it with a move that increases block or parry rate, like Bulwark, Dark Dance, and Raw Intuition. Using Awareness alongside those eliminates crit from the table, thus increasing your effective block/parry chance even more, since crit chance is calculated before them. The third usage is quite similar to the first one; it's when you're in a pretty damage-heavy phase and you and your healers don't want you to get a crit that could become too much damage for you to survive, or for them to handle on top of the other damages. It's true that you have other tank CDs for these moments, but Awareness does a good job here in addition to them I think. The first example that comes to my mind when I speak about that is in A3S, when the boss is in his giant hand form. His auto-attacks are incredibly powerful if they crit, it's literally a tank buster when it happens close to a cleave. The fact is that A3S is a very high DPS check, so you want to minimize the time spent in tanking stance. Using Living Dead on the first cleave, then Awareness + Dark Dance + Convo for the 2 next cleaves after the first Wash Away, made me able to tank the whole phases 1 and 2 entirely out of Grit. If I don't use Awareness there, I'm at the risk of dying from an auto-attack crit unless I put Grit on. Awareness makes me able to completely safely tank out of Grit in this particular situation, so it basically increases my DPS. Shadow Wall and Shadowskin are already used during phase 1 to compensate for Grit, then Shadowskin is re-used later in phase 2 when I'm at 3 stacks, and Shadow Wall becomes available again in phase 3 for one of the tethers. This way I get full benefit of all of my defensive CDs, and it makes me able to tank out of Grit for easily 80 to 90% of the fight. Without Awareness, I'd have to either burn something else for this specific time which may then not be up for another, thus forcing me into tanking stance, or just go Grit for this moment, which in both cases results in the same raid DPS loss.

This makes Awareness a much better ability than Tempered Will. Tempered Will is a pile of shit which should have another effect added to it and maybe its CD reduced depending on the said effect. Same goes for Cover, Clemency and Divine Veil. PLD's toolkit started from a good idea, but has been very poorly designed and makes the job very bad in most fights. Even in Thordan EX, I've done it with the 3 tanks as MT, and while PLD has its shining moments there, WAR does much better anyway, and DRK offers more raid-wide mitigation than Divine Veil (which is incredibly shitty because of its super long CD for what it gives compared to the loss of Reprisal + Delirium if you don't have a MNK like my group). The only really good thing that PLDs get is Sheltron, which is absolutely gorgeous.

Hell, even as an anti-knockback Tempered Will is shit compared to what DRKs can do with Plunge. Plunge is basically Tempered Will but with a 200 potency attack attached to it, and only 30sec CD. The only advantage that Tempered Will has is that it doesn't require an enemy target (like everything else from PLD, HG compared to Holmgang, Sheltron compared to IB, Divine Veil compared to other raid-wide mitigation tools like Path, Delirium, Reprisal, Virus, Disable, etc...). But it's a really small advantage that only takes place in rare specific cases, like if you wanna eat a T5/T13 divebomb in the face. I know you love your PLD job Sapphidia, and that you're always trying to find all the tiny little good things that can exist in his kit, but, the fact is that this job is currently very bad designed and needs help. Most of his kit is garbage compared to what other jobs have, that's it.

[Februs]

This is an interesting thread. The major devil's advocate question to ask is "just because you almost never use an ability, does that mean it's a bad ability if it does one rare thing well"?

I actually ended up putting an Edit on my original post to address this. My original intent in posting this thread was not to imply that some skills are inherently "bad," I was just identifying which are underused and how players not maximizing specific move utility that they might be overlooking. The original examples I put into the OP were just that, examples. However, there are certain moves that you could play devil's advocate for and outright say are bad. Your Awareness vs. Tempered Will example is such a case.

Being able to avoid knockbacks is incredibly useful provided an encounter actually has them. Just because a boss fight might have no reason to use Tempered Will doesnt mean it isnt a fantastic ability. The convenience of things like being able to eat Shiva's bow pushback to the face, or eat a divebomb on T13 if you got out of position, or ignore a Titan Landslide is hard to quantify - you rarely "need" to avoid a knockback but if you CAN avoid it then you can make a certain part of an encounter a lot smoother.

The skills I consider bottom feeders arent the ones which have niche use, but the ones which have tiny impact when you DO use them. Awareness as a paladin is the one that stands out for me.

Here's the thing. Whereas Tempered Will does have a niche usage in which it can (and often is) extremely useful, it is important to note that the niche usage of Tempered Will often encourages a Pld to play badly to take advantage of it. Out of all of knockbacks in the game, there are very few that are unavoidable if you are just paying attention (Titan's LS vs A3's Wash Away for example). IF you can dodge a knockback without taking the hit, then you should never be taking that hit. It's that simple. Having a Pld pop Tempered will to avoid the knockback implies they are willfully taking additional dmg, and since Tempered Will does nothing to negate that dmg at all, it's actually a bad call to soak for the sake of positioning when you could simply dodge. So, in theory, any knockback that can be dodged is taken out of Tempered Will's utility.

That leaves us with the knockbacks that cannot be dodged. A3 and Nevverreap are the most commonly encountered ones at the moment. 2 Fights, and in Neverreap you can only use Tempered will for 1 out of 2-3 knockbacks, and even if you are using Tempered Will, you usually still have to position yourself accordingly for the sake of not dragging the boss through your knocked back teammates, which means stacking on the AoE until it is done and moving contrary to your team's knockback.... Even if we're calling it a niche, that's a pretty rare occurrence. Right now, A3 is the only fight that I can think of in the entire game where Tempered Will get's a reliable use. It's use can be improved upon, because people tend to forget that it dispels heavies, but those are rare as well, so again, not very useful.

Awareness, on the other hand, has a reliable usage. Niche uses (such as Shiva or T11) are nice, but a Pld can also save Awareness for every single use of Bulwark, thereby increasing the blockrate. That ~20-30% physical dmg mitigation per block (depending on shield type etc). Each successful proc out-mitigates Rampart, in that specific area of dmg. That's a pretty huge impact, especially for Mob tanking. I've even used it to a strong degree in boss fights. It's a bit of a gamble, but Thor Ex: Holy Blade Dance with Sword Oath (essentially a one-shot Tank killer) can be successfully mitigated without Hallowed ground by coupling Awareness/Bulwark/Foresight and a well timed stoneskin from my healer (I didn't have a choice. Shelltron/ HG were still on CD at the time). Even with that Stoneskin, I should have died. Increasing the proc rate of Bulwark saved my life by cutting the dmg of Blade Dance essentially in half. The only problem I have with Awareness on Pld is actually a problem with Bulwark. The CD timers don't line up for Bulwark and Awareness to be used in sync or even with every second usage. Terrible timing. Bulwark's CD timer should be adjusted to match.

[Giantbane]

The only problem I have with Awareness on Pld is actually a problem with Bulwark. The CD timers don't line up for Bulwark and Awareness to be used in sync or even with every second usage. Terrible timing. Bulwark's CD timer should be adjusted to match.

I'm really not liking how Bulwark is set up right now. It's an in between ability that's not 100% block rate, but it has a long cooldown. I wish they'd either make it a short cooldown with only a modest improvement in block rate (like DRK's dark dance) or a longer cooldown with 100% block rate (like Raw Intuition, although I guess that is a short cooldown too...). It was ok in 2.0, but by 3.0 standards it feels very lackluster.

[Februs]

I'm really not liking how Bulwark is set up right now. It's an in between ability that's not 100% block rate, but it has a long cooldown. I wish they'd either make it a short cooldown with only a modest improvement in block rate (like DRK's dark dance) or a longer cooldown with 100% block rate (like Raw Intuition, although I guess that is a short cooldown too...). It was ok in 2.0, but by 3.0 standards it feels very lackluster.

100% agreed.

A simple adjustment to Bulwark's timer would go miles and miles for fixing that move as well as the efficiency of Awareness on Pld (call me crazy, but I kinda think it's weird that Pld's get the least utility out of a move that comes from their kit). I would probably leave it's block rate the same for now though. 100% would be inefficient now that Shelltron is in the Pld line-up and lowering it would make it under-powered compared to Drk's and War's, because the Duration of effect is much shorter.

Personally, if I could sit down and talk to the Dev's, the change I'd implement to Bulwark would be to reduce the CD timer to 120s (same as Awareness). I'd also consider decrease the block % (maybe as low as 45%), but only if they also increased the duration of the effect to 20-25 seconds with 25 being optimal, as it would last an identical time as Awareness on Pld (and before anyone gripes about the unfairness of that, I'll remind you all that Awareness is a Pld move. It makes sense that Pld's should get the most use out of it. Wars and Drks can suck it up).