The Bottom Feeders: Moves You Never Use and Why.

[Iagainsti]

If you do 2 Steel Cyclone, it means you use Infuriate. Thus, you can use Unchained to negate Defiance damage penalty, and you spam OP during Unchained for a lot more damage than 2 SC.

Sorta; you waste 5 secs of Unchained building up maim, and waste a 10%crit bonus for your OP spam seeing how your tp lasts longer than Unchained's 20 secs, plus you can sustain the 10%crit then 20% for the full duration of your tp by timing your Maim/Berserk/IR properly, then following up with B2B SC Bomb for major Hp return and damage. Unchained is better for single targets. Unchained+IB was the wrecking Ball; B2B SC was the TNT. If you disagree, test it out.

[Februs]

Back 2 Back Steel Cyclones with IR+Berserk+BloodBath was pretty potent in WP speed runs, and any other speed run I guess where you pull the whole place to the boss room(Keep in mind it negated the Defiance penalty where OP does not)Wrath stacks used to give % to crit b4 3.0, so you could just rip 20%increased crit chance OPs till you were ootp, then follow up with 2 SC right before the pacify. Now Decimate nullified that, so imo SC is less useful now than it used to be previously.

Spooky Ghost was referring to pre-2.1 patch, during which time your method would have been inefficient and far less effective.

Before 2.1, Steel Cyclone had greatly reduced enmity gen. Even if you spammed it (which you couldn't, at the time) you would be lucky to hold enmity on the entire mob. Also, Warrior's ability to self-heal was horrendously nerfed before 2.1, so it was near impossible to do Speed pulls and stay alive as a Warrior. Speed pulls weren't even really a thing back then, to be honest, but even if it was, Tp costs for almost all of War's moves were much higher, and the cooldown times of all of War's abilities were much longer. They were dramatically under-powered at the time.

SE ignored the problem for a long time, but finally decided to do something about it when the first set of the Binding Coil of Bahamut was implemented. War under-preformed in there spectacularly, leading to people using the job in ways that SE had "not intended" (which meant as a trash magnet or not at all). Pld was not much better off, but their CD's were much preferable for boss tanking. In the end, SE made changes to 12 different aspects of War's skill set (more if you include multiple changes to single moves, like Holmgang which got 4 changes alone). It was one of the biggest single patch changes to a job class this game has ever seen, and is the ground work for all of the lovely perfection that Warrior enjoys today. Without those fundamental changes, War would be the least used tank in the game, not the most used one.

[Reynhart]

SE ignored the problem for a long time

Long time ?! They fixed WAR right at 2.1.
That's a pretty short time to make the job wonderful.

[Februs]

Long time ?! They fixed WAR right at 2.1.
That's a pretty short time to make the job wonderful.

Well, not a long time lol. I just meant that they kept claiming that the job was fine and had no problems ("working as intended") for a while before they made the changes. Every time someone asked about it, they had the same response. They only even bothered to make changes because they were forced to acknowledge that there was a problem when the First Binding Coil of Bahamut pretty much eliminated Warriors from the MT position (or really any position) in end-game content.

By comparison, though, Pld's cries for help have been ignored for far longer. Even if you consider the "start" point of the Pld issues being 3.0 (arguably, they started long before), SE has already passed the point in which the found an acceptable fix by almost double the amount of time.

• Alex is released = No change to Pld.
  
• Savage comes out = Pld falls even further behind meta, and there is still no change.
  
• 3.1 releases = Minor changes implemented to Pld that literally didn't fix anything. Some changes actually act as a nerf to the job in many cases.

SE's response to all of this? They haven't really said anything, leaving us all to fall back to their original comment a while back which was: "Pld is working as intended..." So... You intended to completely destroy that job and remove it from the end-game content... Okay then. All according to plan.

[VanilleFang]

I'm starting to wonder if I should have posted a 2nd and 3rd version of this exact thread in the Dps / Healer Forums. I wasn't expecting to get discussions about moves outside of the Tanking sphere. It's interesting, for sure, but it's caught me off guard a little.

Maybe you should. Stimulation conversation in the forums is always nice. And sorry, I can't really contribute to the thread much. I mostly come here (and the DPS forum) to educate myself about things I don't know. I'm finding the DRK stuff REALLY interesting in particular.

[Februs]

Maybe you should. Stimulation conversation in the forums is always nice.

I thought about it, but I'd be the one contributing least to those threads. I'm extremely fluent at Drg, but my experience with other Dps classes is very limited, and I almost never heal (only just got my Whm above 50 the other day). Not to mention that I have a feeling the thread wouldn't be quite as useful on the Dps forums in particular. Dps rotations tend to be extremely strict, so there's not often a lot of room for finding additional utility in moves you don't use frequently... All the same, I've been surprised in the responses I've gotten about other jobs so far, so I may go ahead and post the threads anyway, just to see what happens.

And sorry, I can't really contribute to the thread much. I mostly come here (and the DPS forum) to educate myself about things I don't know. I'm finding the DRK stuff REALLY interesting in particular.

No need to apologize. The whole point of this thread (besides my personal enjoyment) was for people to learn about moves they under-use. So, even if you're just reading then it's serving a purpose. If you do have questions about any particular moves you feel like you're not using enough (or even using frequently but are concerned you're not using them to the best of their utility) don't be afraid to pipe up and ask. Someone's bound to have some insight for you.

[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).

[Fredco191]

Unchained? I Use Unchained In Alexander (Fist - Normal) All The Time!

[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.

[Sapphidia]

Well I can agree with that, but my point was a little different. I agree Paladin needs help of course, but I don't feel that looking at all the less used skills and comparing them to alternatives from other classes is the best way to do it. All skills don't have to be equal, and it's okay designwise if jobs have some skills that have very limited use as long as they're not -totally- useless.

Could Tempered Will be better? Of course it could. It could have a 60 second cooldown. It could give the paladin a heal when used. It could be another damage mitigation ability. It could even be a DPS cooldown that boosted Crit or something. However, as it stands it's still a skill that has some uses, and its existance doesnt really bear any connection to the overall usefulness of the paladin.

Boosting the power of a class is mostly done by increasing potencies, reducing cooldown amounts and generally just buffing numbers. You can do more creative things, sure, but if Paladins were doing 20% more DPS than they do right now you wouldnt have anyone really whining about Tempered Will and Divine Veil being niche abilities as the overall class is strong. But because the class is viewed as weak the eyes naturally fall on the weakest elements.

I think the only ability paladins have which I feel needs a big viability boost is Clemency. It -should- be class defining but its implementation makes it stupidly hard to use.