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

[Ultimatecalibur]

I mean, really, SE? You give us a wonderful spell (well...as wonderful as it could be, anyway) but then limit its use by letting it be interrupted. And the 3 second cast time? You'd think for over two thousand MP, it would cast faster than that, or at least not get interrupted...

Clemency is interruptable because it is a spell and that is not the real problem. It actually takes a fair bit of damage to interrupt a Paladin's spells, but the current "Str over Vit + fight in DpS stance" meta makes it far easier for monsters to interrupt casts. It takes more than 1.5 times the damage to interrupt a Vit paladin in Shield Oath than it does to interrupt a Str tank in Sword Oath if they are the same ilevel.

4000 damage taken within 3 seconds is more common than 6500 taken within 3 seconds.

And I never understood why Sword/Shield Oath resets combo progression. I feel as though that would help boost PLD's overall DPS/raid performance in end-game, if we were able to switch between stances. Perhaps not so freely.

Because in phase non-swap stance dancing was never intended to be a part of the tank skill suite. Tanks are intended to be in tank stance while tanking and in dps stance while not tanking.

Pretty much every fight where a tank needs to change stances to help with a dps check has a 3 or more second phase transition where combos would drop of anyways so changing stance is free.

The ease of Defiance/Deliverance stance swapping is the irregularity not the intended norm.

[Shurrikhan]

The ease of Defiance/Deliverance stance swapping is the irregularity not the intended norm.

Given that we have PLD at one end (2 GCDs, highest mana cost), Warrior at the other (no GCD loss, possible health loss and slower eHP increase), and DRK exactly in the middle of that 'ease of swapping' spectrum (1 GCD loss, moderate mana cost)... it seems kind of hard to say definitively that this was never intended...

It also seems hard for them to have actually completely neglected a simple consideration like "If the next 2 GCDs' worth of damage are less than 20% of the total undiminished damage of the swap window, it is better to swap than stay." That's just common sense. I can see that they may have intentionally made that compromise a gameplay component for PLD, but for them to have never considered that their scalar and its offset might eventually intersect (at 4-5 GCDs depending on prior combo position and oGCDs ready) seems unlikely.

And I never understood why Sword/Shield Oath resets combo progression. I feel as though that would help boost PLD's overall DPS/raid performance in end-game, if we were able to switch between stances. Perhaps not so freely.

For example:
(1) Switching to Shield Oath would reset combos, but switching to Sword Oath would not.

Just an idea. It'd be nice to (2) tack on Goring Blade without the damage reduction by Shield Oath, without having to do the entire combo for it in Sword Oath.

That said, this much is (1) DRK (drops combo on applying Grit, not upon dropping Grit) and (2) just dropping Shield Oath early, finishing combo, and then putting up Sword Oath (before having lost a second opportunity to buff your AA). For a GB, that just saved you 100 to 108 potency. If you you could swap into Sword Oath without losing combo, then you could slap on another 50 or 100 during that GB GCD's AA(s).

[Giantbane]

Given that we have PLD at one end (2 GCDs, highest mana cost), Warrior at the other (no GCD loss, possible health loss and slower eHP increase), and DRK exactly in the middle of that 'ease of swapping' spectrum (1 GCD loss, moderate mana cost)...

In reality, the PLD only loses time. MP is meaningless to PLD in the vast majority of situations where they'd even consider stance dancing. The MP a DRK spends always means lost damage, since excess MP can always be used to dump into DA + SE (or DA + DP if you've really got an excess of MP). So in practice, the PLD is losing 2x GCD worth of damage, while the DRK is losing 1 GCD and another ~85ish potency (75% of the difference between a DE and a DA + SE). I mean, DRK still has it better than the poor PLD at this point, but it's worth understanding.

The health that the WAR loses should be considered significant. But they also have, hands down, the best self healing among the 3 tanks, so it's sort of moo.

[Giantbane]

I hope they change it for both PLD and DRK.

Me too, it really feels much better with the WAR setup.