PLD 4.0

[fm_fenrir]

DRK's enmity combo provides no mana, but is within 10 potency of their highest regular combo. It IS WAR's highest potency combo. Why then does it need to be 80 potency off for PLD, let alone have a lesser enmity modifier? That's all I meant by this.

But my original statement was that RA is not only the least involved DPS combo (since it doesn't require any special actions to do), but it also has enmity built in via Savage Blade. That makes it difficult to add anything to without grossly favoring PLD, because they'd have Halone and the Buff RA variant to draw from.

What do you give RA that isn't absurdly strong, considering you can do it every three GCDs with no penalty? As PLD's highest potency combo, it will always be the go-to combo unless you direly need threat generation from ROH, so whatever added effect RA got would always be in play.

[Shurrikhan]

But my original statement was that RA is not only the least involved DPS combo (since it doesn't require any special actions to do), but it also has enmity built in via Savage Blade. That makes it difficult to add anything to without grossly favoring PLD, because they'd have Halone and the Buff RA variant to draw from.

What do you give RA that isn't absurdly strong, considering you can do it every three GCDs with no penalty? As PLD's highest potency combo, it will always be the go-to combo unless you direly need threat generation from ROH, so whatever added effect RA got would always be in play.

I never said RA needed buffs. I'm sorry if I lead you to think that; I responded out of confusion in regards to the parts you worded ambiguously, not to defend the idea of RA buffs. I feel that RoH could use a buff (say, to 280 potency), Sword Oath tanking in general could use a slight buff (for instance, by changing the 50 AA bonus potency to 30 bonus potency on weaponskills and abilities would increase dps by only 1% while contributing far more to enmity and burst), MT dps could use a small buff (such as by reducing damage only to weaponskills, giving about a 9% dps bonus), and that PLD needs AoE (be it in the form of CoS-Flash synergy, shield cleaves, reflect damage pairable with Cover, or whatever else).

RA is just fine to me as is. If I were to modify it, it would only be by detracting potency and adding a significant attack speed bonus it its place, as to further benefit DoT spreading via GB, make RoH more frequently usable, and generally reduce the value gap between finishers.

[Reynhart]

RA is just fine to me as is.

Yes, on its own, RA is fine. It's the whole "PLD in ShO" that falls a little short compard to other two.
That's why I think that allowing RA to bypass the damage penalty could be an interesting idea. Because even if is, on paper, the highest, one time potency finisher, WAR and DRK both have something to compensate.
With Maim, Butcher's Block stands now at 336 potency and you use it every two combos. With the slashing debuff, it would even go as high as 369, but a PLD could also benefit from an OT WAR, so it's not as important. With Darkside, Power Slash is above 340, and the Power Slash combo is the weakest.

And both tanks can use a 500+ potency move akin to Goring Blade, but with less downside. Scourge doesn't need a combo to take full effect, and Fell Cleave is a one time potency, boosted by Storm's Path (And Deliverance), and with no TP cost.

And this effect on RA wouldn't change anything in SwO where PLD is much closer DPS wise.

[Kosmos992k]

PLD 4.0 changes? Interesting.
here is my 2cents...

No new attack or support skills
New trait for Sword oath (acquired through job quest), trait reduces defense by 5%, but increases Auto attack potency by 60.
Reduce recast timer on Shield Oath and Sword Oath to 1s
Sheltron ignores auto-attacks
Shield Swipe becomes available with a successful block has a 2.5s timer, has a potency of 210, and does not interrupt a combo.
When in Shield Oath, Shield Swipe becomes a short rage, frontal cone AoE, with a 90 degree arc. In Sword Oath it remains the normal Shield Swipe.
Slight enhancement to the strength of PLD cures so that they can at least heal marginally more than the auto-attacks we receive...
Battle Raise with an 8s cast time and 600s recast timer
Alter tank damage formula for damage dealt, reduce the impact of STR, increase the impact of Vitality *and* determination (affects all tanks).
Strengthen the impact of Parry, make the strength of a parry depend on both STR and DEX (affects all tanks)
Include blocking as a secondary stat on PLD gear so we can build to increase it
Change block strength calculation in line with the tank damage calculation changes.
Add a trait to Tempered will that reduces the chances of being interrupted while casting, and increase the re-use timer by 10s.
Very mild buff to CoS aggro, and the aggro multipliers on RoH and SS.
Allow Clemency to trigger Devine veil (there should be no skills on any job that require another player to activate them)
When PLD reachs the 4.0 level cap, they gain an additional Cross Class skill slot(*), and the ability to use cross class skills from DRK.
Status effects from our attacks become worth a damn again (same for all jobs/classes).
Last but not least add a trait (acquires through job quest) to Bulwark that restores 5% of our Max TP for every block while Bulwark is active.

* - I would do the same thing for all jobs. When they hit the level cap, each gets one more cross class skill slot and one more class opens up that they can borrow from.

[Shurrikhan]

PLD 4.0 changes? Interesting.
here is my 2cents...

Meant only as useful feedback. Sorry for any nitpicking.

]No new attack or support skills

Nice; no extra ability bloat. Though also no consolidation of old abilities...

New trait for Sword oath (acquired through job quest), trait reduces defense by 5%, but increases Auto attack potency by 60.

From 50 to 60, not for a total of 110 bonus potency per AA, yes?

Reduce recast timer on Shield Oath and Sword Oath to 1s

Fair enough, though it would probably have to be turned into an Ability, much like a combination of Meditation (GCD-shared short recast) and Dark Passenger (MP cost)

Sheltron ignores auto-attacks

No complaints here.

Shield Swipe becomes available with a successful block has a 2.5s timer, has a potency of 210, and does not interrupt a combo.

2.5s timer = GCD? ...So, back to exactly how it was?

When in Shield Oath, Shield Swipe becomes a short rage, frontal cone AoE, with a 90 degree arc. In Sword Oath it remains the normal Shield Swipe.

Can definitely be a bit overpowered during trash. No other job can spam a 210 potency cleave. Perhaps cleave for 50%-60% of the damage?

Slight enhancement to the strength of PLD cures so that they can at least heal marginally more than the auto-attacks we receive...

I like.

Battle Raise with an 8s cast time and 600s recast timer

Recast timer not supported except by a new ability, which you said you wouldn't give. Why it should be necessary, even, honestly, if you're already going out of your way to give PLD battle raise at all.

Alter tank damage formula for damage dealt, reduce the impact of STR, increase the impact of Vitality *and* determination (affects all tanks).

Wouldn't this just force tanks to stack Determination over Crit as their secondary stat of choice now?

Strengthen the impact of Parry, make the strength of a parry depend on both STR and DEX (affects all tanks)

DEX as strength? Not as parry rate, as before? I doubt we'll be seeing a return of this if only because SE seems to want to avoid additional mitigation scaling, but I'd certainly like to see it back, sure.

Include blocking as a secondary stat on PLD gear so we can build to increase it

There's very little "PLD" gear, though. And if the added block chance/strength were significant, it would just destroy your horizontal gear choice between raid and AF/job-specific currency gear.

Change block strength calculation in line with the tank damage calculation changes.

Sounds good.

Add a trait to Tempered will that reduces the chances of being interrupted while casting, and increase the re-use timer by 10s.

The cooldown is plenty long as is even to support complete interruption immunity. Holmgang similarly provides immunity to knockbacks, and to DEATH, all for the same cooldown - albeit at shorter duration and with a chance of locking you into AoEs.

Very mild buff to CoS aggro, and the aggro multipliers on RoH and SB.

Definitely this.

Allow Clemency to trigger Devine veil (there should be no skills on any job that require another player to activate them)

May as well just remove the "by a party member" component of the description, allowing any (spell-based) healing you do to proc it.

When PLD reachs the 4.0 level cap, they gain an additional Cross Class skill slot(*), and the ability to use cross class skills from DRK.

There'd be a lot of near-redundancy here. Not necessarily a bad thing, but there's a reason Shadowskin and Shadow Wall get called DarkRampart and DarkSentinel, and Dark Dance sometimes DarkBulwark

Status effects from our attacks become worth a damn again (same for all jobs/classes).

Great.

Last but not least add a trait (acquires through job quest) to Bulwark that restores 5% of our Max TP for every block while Bulwark is active.

This would be incredibly OP, and yet the funny thing is, it would proc most where we hardly use any TP whatsoever: AoEing. Where we actually need it (single-target), it might not return anything. I guess we'd be the sprinting speedrun kings again though?

[Kosmos992k]

Meant only as useful feedback. Sorry for any nitpicking.

NP, nitpick away, I was jotting down ideas quickly so some of them are a little rough at the edges. So any feedback and discussion is great.

From 50 to 60, not for a total of 110 bonus potency per AA, yes?

Yes, correct from 50 to 60 as a balance against taking more damage due to the reduction in defense. Definitely not 110 since that would not simply be OP, would be game shatteringly OP.

Fair enough, though it would probably have to be turned into an Ability, much like a combination of Meditation (GCD-shared short recast) and Dark Passenger (MP cost)

My thought here is that Sword oath as it stands is a zero cost stance that in essence ought to be the default stance for Paladin - in other words, you shouldn't need t turn it on. But, by traiting Sword Oath with an additional 10 potency boost and a 5% drop in defense, it becomes possible that players would want to use no oath, Sword Oath or Shield Oath, and so I thought that reducing the delay for using an Oath would facilitate smoother stance dancing.

2.5s timer = GCD? ...So, back to exactly how it was?

Yes, back to the way it was, I don't find the new Shield Swipe to be as effective, and it certainly doesn't help TP management.

Can definitely be a bit overpowered during trash. No other job can spam a 210 potency cleave. Perhaps cleave for 50%-60% of the damage?

I was envisioning a short range swipe that only hit's targets in immediate range, and wasn't really thinking in terms of 210 per target, more 210 total split to the targets. So either drop the potency to 100 when in Sword Oath, or leave it as 210, but spread the damage across all targets hit, so total potency is still 210, regardless of the number of targets hit.

Recast timer not supported except by a new ability, which you said you wouldn't give. Why it should be necessary, even, honestly, if you're already going out of your way to give PLD battle raise at all.

I was thinking about doing this by using the trait that Conjurers use. They get it at level 28. I was thinking in terms of allowing this trait to carry over between CNJ and PLD. So if you have leveled CNJ to at least 28, then when you hit 30 on Gladiator and gain the soulstone to become a Paladin, that trait that you already earned on WHM carries over to your PLD.

Actually, this is a different discussion, but I honestly think that stat boosting class traits (not job related traits) should be cross class automatically. You gain those traits on the same character, and they are not intrinsically linked to your weapon or armor, they are character traits. I know that for a player that leveled everything this would be completely overpowered, so as a compromise I'd suggest that any class traits of the classes you required to gain your job should remain active since you have combined both classes into the job. But, that's a completely different discussion - note though that the traits to enhance Mind would fix the problems that PLD has with their CNJ cross skills.

Wouldn't this just force tanks to stack Determination over Crit as their secondary stat of choice now?

I'm not sure. I see determination as the secondary stat that provides a gentle base improvement in many areas, and Crit as a stat that - depending on RNG - makes for a very flashy, and highly damaging - hit. To me, those are two different ways of playing, one is low risk, but steady and low reward, the other is higher risk because of the RNG, but potentially a high reward due to critical damage. I haven't done the math, these are all just ideas I was throwing around.

DEX as strength? Not as parry rate, as before? I doubt we'll be seeing a return of this if only because SE seems to want to avoid additional mitigation scaling, but I'd certainly like to see it back, sure.

You're correct, restoring DEX to modify the chance of a parry, STR to modify the strength of the parry. Parry as a innate skill depends on your dexterity and strength, Dexterity to actually execute a parry, and Strength governs how successful it is. I agree about SE's attititude - though I do not understand it because it removes any chance of differentiating yourself from other tanks based on how you allocate various stats. I'd sure like to see it back as well.

There's very little "PLD" gear, though. And if the added block chance/strength were significant, it would just destroy your horizontal gear choice between raid and AF/job-specific currency gear.

I see your point, though I would still like a way for PLDs that choose to, to boost their Blocking, even if it cam at the expense of something else. Perhaps using Job Specific accessories, or Materia with Blocking that can be melded onto Fending gear that can take Materia? This is one of those nice to have things, to provide more flexibility and freedom in how we play, if it causes gearing or itemization issues, then it's not important enough to worry over.

The cooldown is plenty long as is even to support complete interruption immunity. Holmgang similarly provides immunity to knockbacks, and to DEATH, all for the same cooldown - albeit at shorter duration and with a chance of locking you into AoEs.

I was just sort of throwing the additional delay in to balance against the lower chance of being interrupted while casting. Additional delay isn't necessary, and Honestly I don't see adding the interrup proteciton to Temered Will as something that really needs balancing, but inevitably someone will say it's OP...so...

(regardiong Devine Veil) May as well just remove the "by a party member" component of the description, allowing any (spell-based) healing you do to proc it.

That would work for me, I still find it amazing that anyone thought it would be a good idea to give a spell ability to PLD and then make it dependent on another player's action. If there was a visible (and persistent until triggered) aura once the ability was used so that healers would be able to notice and cast a quick heal, it would work better. I still don't like depending on another player to cast something to trigger the effect, but we've been asking for player combos in other settings - most notably attack combinations. So I kind of like that we can combine with another player to produce a good effect, but it needs to be easier to use.

There'd be a lot of near-redundancy here. Not necessarily a bad thing, but there's a reason Shadowskin and Shadow Wall get called DarkRampart and DarkSentinel, and Dark Dance sometimes DarkBulwark

I haven't dabbled in Dark Knight much, so I wasn't aware of how closely similar those skills are. Your point is well made. The reason for the suggestion about adding a cross skill slot and widening the selection to include another class was really to facilitate a little more freedom in how your character is played

This would be incredibly OP, and yet the funny thing is, it would proc most where we hardly use any TP whatsoever: AoEing. Where we actually need it (single-target), it might not return anything. I guess we'd be the sprinting speedrun kings again though?[/HB]

LOL, this probably gets the vote for the least thought through element of all. I had got to the end of my thoughts, and wanted some form of TP reclamation or regeneration. Bulwark may not be the best choice. How about a small boost to TP regen when Convalescence is up? Or alternately a one time TP regen when Divine Veil is triggered? The drawback with Devine Veil for that being that you have to be a high enough level to use it, where Convalescence is available to all PLD regardless of level.

Thanks for the feedback, it makes for a good discussion.