Why does Clemency get interrupted? And why does Sword/Shield Oath reset combo?

[Aurius]

I think it has to do with what the stances do, and that's why they make it gcd, break combo, and cost mp. Defiance increases health, but when activated does not restore the difference in health, this is why the war stance dance is how it is. Swapping to your tank stance results in a 25% gap to max hp, that needs healed. Shield oath is perma rampart, activate it and you instantly have 20% mitigation. I swear I read a dev statement that compared shield oath to a CD as it reduces damage, no drawbacks to switching back and forth and so a fear of it being op arose. Now, for my opinion: clemency should be instacast or uninterruptible, I don't know how else to say it. Shield oath and sword oath, no longer breaks combo, still gcd. I don't feel that doing this would be game breaking, but will instead make a wonderful class even more fun to play.

[Judge_Xero]

For Clemency if you pair it with Shelltron wont that negate the interrupt? I don't think that magic damage can cause an interrupt and you can't be interrupted while blocking.

[Freyyy]

For Clemency if you pair it with Shelltron wont that negate the interrupt? I don't think that magic damage can cause an interrupt and you can't be interrupted while blocking.

Lol you can't block while casting.

[Shurrikhan]

Even the WAR's stance-dance comes with penalties. Swapping to Defiance doesn't provide an eHP increase until you're healed. Swapping out of Defiance when you were topped off is practically taking 20% HP of damage. But yes, the current meta makes those generally inconsequential compared to a lost GCD, or worse, lost combo-finishers (though in that case you should just be dropping Shield, finishing combo, and then popping Sword). Letting Oaths retain combos would in no way overpower (our current, underpowered) PLDs, nor would making them oGCD while retaining combo-drops.

[Sapphidia]

For reference, what I was told (and tested to seemingly be the case) is that casts are interrupted in FFXIV when you take a single hit of damage that's equal to or greater than 25% of your health. At least, I believe it's 25%, it might be a lower number, maybe 10 or 15. I'm 90% sure at least that the -size- of an individual single hit determines whether or not you get interrupted.

You can actually often spam clemency whilst tanking a pack of instance trash despite being hit hundreds of times because none of the trash mobs hit you hard enough to trigger this interrupt. On bosses of course, most autoattacks or spells will be over the threshhold and will thus interrupt any cast you make. Amusingly this means that Clemency is easier to get off with a high vitality build and with tanking cooldowns up, though the -size- of the clemency scales with Strength of course.

If the devs do what they implied they might in 3.2 and rebalance tanks to use vitality as their damage stat, such that all tanks start wearing full fending and going 35 stats in vitality, tanks will end up with higher health pools and thus will naturally be less likely to have a Clemency interrupted compared to now. I still feel clemency needs some kind of way of Surecasting it via a stance or cooldown, but if SE decide to ignore it and leave it as it is, it might be slightly more useful in 3.2 anyway simply due to tanks having bigger health pools.

If anyone can actually confirm the mechanics of interrupting and health threshold though, I'd be grateful - this is from word of mouth and casual tests so might be incorrect.

[Bashum]

As someone who mains warrior, I wholeheartedly support an instant or at least uninterruptible clemency, and no combo breaking when changing stances. Will it completely fix Paladins? Of course not, but it would sure make them a smoother overall experience to play.

Make the above changes, plus add some sort of way for them to increase raid dps by 3-5% and they'd probably be about right.

[fm_fenrir]

If anyone can actually confirm the mechanics of interrupting and health threshold though, I'd be grateful - this is from word of mouth and casual tests so might be incorrect.

I'm pretty sure there's a damage threshold for an interrupt, but I'm not sure what the value is. I've only had one clemency cast interrupted as PLD, but I also got blasted with a crit for the interrupt, so I don't know if it was the crit or the damage that did it.

Anyway, OP, ShO/SwO are spells, so they interrupt combos. Defiance/Deliverance are abilities (which don't interrupt combos), and the "tank bonus" for Defiance doesn't come into play unless someone hits you with a Lustrate/Tetra immediately after you pop it; ShO is an instant -20% damage taken, so yes, it has a penalty associated with it.

[Freyyy]

Anyway, OP, ShO/SwO are spells, so they interrupt combos. Defiance/Deliverance are abilities (which don't interrupt combos), and the "tank bonus" for Defiance doesn't come into play unless someone hits you with a Lustrate/Tetra immediately after you pop it; ShO is an instant -20% damage taken, so yes, it has a penalty associated with it.

Unleash and Flash are both spells and both don't interrupt combos so it has absolutely nothing to do with this. And Oaths being on the GCD is enough of a penalty, interrupting combos is too much.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

They interrupt combos because the default setting is for GCDs abilities to do so. They didn't think to exempt Oaths, Clemency, etc. from this because they didn't think it would matter. It obviously does matter and something should be done (I think Shield Bash is a far worse offender, from a design perspective, but it may not be as relevant). They did exempt Flash and (old) Shield Swipe from interrupting combos, however, because they knew it would be a problem if they didn't.

It's just arbitrary; there's no rule. They exempt certain GCD abilities from interrupting combos because they think it will play better.

[repoe]

Because paladin wasnt developed to fluidly switch between stances.