PLD 4.0

[Shurrikhan]

Picking an idea I came up in another topic.
Officialy, PLD's design is to be the tanks that mitigates. It has an obvious issue here, since, every tank is sturdy enough to survive each encounter. And it's a good thing, since you don't want PLD to become mandatory. But, if PLD was able to solo tank anything,it wouldn't be mandatory, but just an option. You'd chose either one PLD or two of any tanks.

The tricky part here is that some fight are designed to prevent solo tanking, like A1 where the two bosses buff each other, or A3 with the resistance down. It's as old as Titan EX and T6, though.
But, what if PLD had an ability especially for those kind of situation ?

I present you : "Divine Calling"

Recast : GCD
Cost : Nearly half of MP pool.
Effect : Gain a Divine Stack

• Under Shield Oath, each Divine Stack reduces damage received by 10% and damage dealt by 10%. Also increase enmity gain.
• Under Sword Oath, each Divine Stack increases the potency of auto-attacks by 5

Duration (To be determined)
Using Divine Calling again will put another Divine stack for a lesser duration

The idea here is something akin to Blood of the Dragon of Enochian. By timing you skills properly, you'd gain a stacking defense buff to compensate for all the stacking damage buff on enemies. But, since the duration is lowered more and more, you'd have no choice but to lose it at one point since it would take too much time to refill your MP.

This would give depth to PLD, a skill that varies depending on your stance. And a clear but not mandatory gap on damage reduction compared to other tanks.

PLD can't remain balanced while suddenly being guaranteed able to solo tank anything. That said, for two tanks, two healers and 4 DPS or 1 PLD, 2 healers, and 5 DPS to have equivalent raid dps, honestly, the PLD dps would have to be absolute shit, which means they'll never be taken for content that specifically (mechanically) require two tanks, or for anything that could already be solo-tanked. They'd essentially become an even gimper breed of tank.

That said, I doubt these stacks here would be able to give PLD nearly such a survivability buff, especially since unless the stacks are lasting a minute or more, you'd probably never be able to get past the second stack; it takes a bit over 50 seconds to regenerate half your mana, depending on the number of Riot Blade uses.

PLD could be "shadow" DPS if their utility allowed healers to spend more time doing damage, instead of the current situation of tank (and only tank) DPS needing to carry the last bit of the check. Divine Veil seems like it was aimed at this role, but it's such a long CD it doesn't really reduce healer load all that much.

To be honest, the cooldown is less the issue so much as the defense. In most cases, the mass PLD-stoneskin of Divine Veil doesn't actually reduce healing needs at all, because the healers must still respond to incoming AoE damage in exactly the same way as they would. If at the bare minimum ilvl, where a Sacred Soil or Succor would otherwise be needed, it might save a life. Short of that, it simply isn't built a useful enough manner to save the healers any casts. It really is little more than a strong Succor shield on a 3-minute cooldown.

For comparison:
Divine Veil - Enwraps the party in a Divine Veil, sharing a shield equal to 10% of your maximum HP per party member affected across all party members. Damage taken that would reduce a party member's health below 1 is instead siphoned from the Divine Veil's shield. Lasts 12 seconds.

^ Granted, this would need a way to prevent it from being abused in saving the MT as the OT. Right now that could be a 14k ish 'no death' shield on the other tank. For instance:
Each instance by which Divine Veil saves an affected party member from death reduces the duration of Divine Veil on that member by a percentage of base duration twice proportionate to the damage compared to your maximum HP. (6k damage taken at 1 health, with a 18k PLD, reduces duration by 2/3s, or 8 seconds. 9k damage absorbed would kill the buff instantly after the absorption. Still good for a single-hit, at least.)
--OR--
Divine Veil cannot absorb direct-targeted damage. (Can't eat tank-busters, cleaves on the main target, or AAs.)

[Instrumentality]

They could just make all of the tanks do the same average damage in both tank stance and out of tank stance.

Oh no all tanks are the same the horror.

[Brian_]

Which this is not. Allowing PLD to solo tank doesn't mean that it'd be the only solution or even the best.

As Shurrikhan details to some extent, your fix misses the main issue with PLD almost entirely.

The reason why WAR is good is pretty obvious. They're good. Period. It doesn't matter what situation you throw them into, they're equipped to deal with it. This applies to their class and essentially all their skills. They're all good skills in any situation. Outside of some QoL issues, they're flawless.

Why is DRK the other preferred tank atm? Because within the current content, they fit that same mold. They're good. Period. Because of the way fights are designed, DRK's strengths are very apparent and align in a synergistic way with the encounters. At the same time, those fights make much of PLD's kit much less effective.

PLD can still be a strong job. They're better than DRK in content where their strengths are utilized like Thordan EX. The entire problem with PLD is that they're forced into a niche due to how situational a lot of their skill-set is. Your suggestion does not fix that, it only makes it worse and is only going to restrict overall design space.

There are two solutions but one singular direction in addressing the issues PLD has. Design content to balance the three tanks or design all three tanks so that they're balanced regardless of content. The singular direction is that all three tanks need to be equally viable in all current content in any mixed pairing.

To prove a point, let's just be stupid for a second and give PLDs the same stack mechanic that WARs have. Bulwark now generates a stack. Tempered Will now generates a stack. Using Clemency now generates a stack. Cover now generates a stack. Hell, we're not even done with all the situational garbage PLD has but let's just stop there for now. Give PLDs weapon skills equivalent to Fell Cleave, Decimate, IB, Unchained, Steel Cyclone, etc. Instantly, Bulwark is now usable in any fight and in any situation. Tempered Will and Cover just went from relevant in 1 fight in all of Gordias to being an ability you use on CD just for the stack. Clemency is now no longer such an intolerable DPS loss because you get a stack. Now, you can throw PLD into A1S or any other fight that is predominantly magic damage and their skill-kit would still be usable and relevant. Now you can design any fight you want to and bring any tank you want to (though DRK would obviously need some love, too).

The idea is not to separate the tanks so that if you want to be the best tank player possible you need to level and gear all three. Or, if you want top progression, that you need to bring the class instead of the player. Pushing tank design into niches is a horrible, horrible idea that is both stupid and unhealthy for the game.

[Link594]

(2) It's actually the blocking, as compared to the more general nothing's-gotta-bring-me-down/pain-suppression/all-form mitigation of the Inner Beast motif that makes me think of PLD as the most physical of the tanks, and WAR as the middle of the road. I personally kind of like it that way; I just think PLDs should, holy/curative/light-magic user and all, be able to block some magic damage, reducing that gap. (That's just talking motif though; add Storm's Path vs. Rage of Halone and there's no contest, for better or worse.) Depending on how blocking is handled in regards to magic though, that would be much less the case, yeah.

(3) At any rate, you'd think it might make sense for a PLD to at least be able to block magic during Bulwark. But alas, no job traits. My favorite way to handle it is complex but, imo, realistic. Shields function against purely aetherial but projected (launched from caster to target) magic based on shield size (towers best), much like actually blocking a wave of fire against you; what's hidden won't be hit, so maximize that area. Just about anything should be able to block manifest magic (e.g. Stone). Nothing can block non-projected magic (anything that starts/appears directly in/on the target).

(4) Lately I've been looking at a lot of different ways to sort of get the same effectiveness out of Shield Oath without it being quite so basic, in combination with similar looks at Grit. Honestly, I really like the idea of stance-dancing, almost to the point where I feel like it wouldn't especially hurt if, in a fight with varying damage levels, a tank might stance-dance not just to get more dps out, but even to improve his overall defense.

[Outlandish ideas - just food for thought]

(This is kind of similar to when we thought DRK might be a life-tapping tank, spending life where healers would otherwise be overhealing in order to improve defense across times where healing needs would be uncomfortably intense / bolstering defense when it matters more so that healers can maintain DoTs, etc. Could be hell to heal, essentially, or an absolute breeze. In this case though it'd just be by generating, say, a parry- or parry-strength related resource or something similar but with less RNG-ness, while out of Grit, and then popping those into a sort of parry nuke when/by returning to Grit, almost like you were spending that mana not just on a stance, but on a variable shield of sorts.)

In PLD's case this stance-dancing bit came out as sort of an Oath resource, where Shield improved general damage mitigation, blocking, and could just outright make you a shield-based badass. (Think Shield Bash nukes.) The effects of either Oath would linger a bit after 'swapping', manually convertable through charging the spells themselves. While charging, Sword Oath channels a heavy on the target while building up attack speed and preparing bonus potency for your next oGCD. Overstacking the bonus potency unleashes it as a single strong cleave. Shield Oath channels a heavy on all nearby enemies while increasing block chance and reducing damage taken, drawing said enemies towards you at the end of the charge. Overstacking the bonus block chance automatically procs your block. Either charge can be rushed to reach the overstack bonus sooner by hitting the ability again while charging (spends extra mana, getting the short-term bonuses faster, but giving less of the long-term bonuses; these will instead generate / shift over time. Hitting any weaponskil would queue it for a typical 1-GCD or 2-GCD charge (max), hitting anything else twice ends the charge at that point and performs the attack, and moving of course ends the charge at that point). Charge speeds scale with (Skill) Speed, which should be a single stat with Spell Speed anyways...

(5) But... but, then we'd HAVE to make them all awesome!

Sorry for the late reply, been a little busy but I definitely wanted to keep the conversation going.

(2) I'm not quite sure PLD is the most physical of tanks. I feel like WAR and PLD were designed to be similar because back when they came out, they were the only tanks.

I'm just saying the PLD fantasy would be better for magical mitigation due to the whole holy warrior motif and that WAR would be best for physical mitigation due to the whole tough guy theme. All this is my opinion though, and I can definitely see various arguments for their niches due to their fantasy.

(3) IMO for simplicities sake (remember I'm the guy who said not to overcomplicate the class) I would just categorize it into 2 catergories. Projected magic and non-projected magic. Blockable magics would include things like Stone, Fire, and Blizzard, and non-projected magic would be unblockable magics like Aero, Paralysis, and Banish.

(4) Stance dancing would be nice and its also why I included in my little wish list that the Oaths don't break you combos so it would be easier to shift. You can even argue that they be off the GCD.

[Link594]

Kay, heres a more updated list of my Wish list after discussing with ya and hopefully to elicit some more responses on it. Underlined are changes. Again I reiterate that none of this will ever happen and I realize that lol

More AoEs!!

Savage Blade should hit 2 additional targets for 50 potency. Main target potency reduced by 25 and RoH and RA increased by 25 to compensate. IMO all cleave looking animations should cleave. Still standing by my preference to not encourage combo breaking, don't want to have a stronger Savage Blade then a 3rd ability. RA combo will generate a bit less emnity, but both combos will do more AoE damage.

Circle of Scorn CD reduced to 15 sec. Lets you refresh DOT and press something more frequently. An increase in single target damage to be sure, but PLD can use single target DPS increase.

Maybe Flash doing minor damage? (would rather have the above 2 options so you don't spam 1 ability for aoe and run out of MP for next pull) Also breaks CCs, didn't like this change anyways

More Emphasis on Shields Blocking

Magic Attacks being blockable (only targeted obvious projected blockable ones like Fire and Blizzard, not non-projected magics like Banish, Paralysis or AoE magics from bosses) Still want this, PLD to be middle of the road tank is my dream lol

Bulwark reduced to 90 sec cd, Rampart increased to 120 sec to compensate and reduce Bulwark's block from 60% to 40%

Shield Slam purging enemy debuffs like Haste. Prob overpowered in PVP and not really that neccesary.

Shield Oath increases Block chance by 20% instead of just flatly reducing damage taken. With magic blocking, (and correct tuning, maybe 20% isn't the right number, this changes nothing except make the class more focused on blocking.

Cover effect extended to magic (since we would be able to block them)

More/Better Options on Cross Class Skills

Raise being cast in combat

Esuna being cross skilled (would be nice)

Don't mind losing Stoneskin, stone doesn't really fit the fantasy of PLD anyways. Stone element doesn't fit, the absorb fits but would rather have Esuna

Fracture being longer, maybe it still won't be used, but at least make it a viable option Fracture should be better and viable, doesn't matter how.

Can you imagine having to choose between Protect, Raise, Esuna, Cure, Foresight, Bloodbath, Fracture, and Mercy Stroke with these changes? What would you choose?

TP Management

Shield Swipe or Riot Blade(in addition to MP) regenerating some TP (20 TP?) Weaponskills regenerating TP doesn't make sense, but I think something should be done

Other Stuff

Tempered Will having a Surecast effect

Sword Oath and Shield Oath not breaking combos

Shield Oath not having such a penalty on DPS (15 or 10%) Want to increase MT dps, not OT

Rage of Halone reducing int and dex in addition to str by 10% ALL damage dealt by 10%. This would reinforce PLD being middle of the road and it wouldn't be OP

[Link594]

Pushing tank design into niches is a horrible, horrible idea that is both stupid and unhealthy for the game.

I don't think so.
Let's suppose DRK favors magic damage (100%) and is okay for physical (80%), WAR favors physical damage (100%) and is okay for magical (80%), and PLD treats all damage equally, (90%). All classes have their own seperate utility toolkits too. So bring 2 of the same tanks is always a disadvantage.

Now suppose you introduce a 70% magical and 30% physical fight.

If you truly want to min max performance, DRK/PLD is the way to go. 190% combined towards magic, 170% combined for physical.

However, if you decide to bring, DRK/WAR, you are just sacrificing 10% magical dmg mitigation for a 10% physical. The net difference would be very negligible and you don't lose much. 180% towards magic, 180% towards physical.

Third option would be PLD/WAR, this is the least viable comp for this fight. The fight is still doable, but you lose a combined total of 20% magical damage but you gain 20% physical damage. The difference is more noticeable, but the fight is still doable because the differences are so slight. 170% for magic, 190% for physical. Sure this is the least viable option, but you aren't forced to bring a DRK to clear the fight.

All in all, the difference between all 3 tank compositions have their differences, but they are so slight and negligible that in the end it really doesn't matter which tanks you bring. They just all have different niches that make them all unique. Feel free to number crunch the differences between the 3 comps in this hypothetical scenario to prove me wrong. I didn't do the math myself tbh, but eyeballing the numbers makes me feel like the differences are small.

On a fight where its 50/50 magic/phyiscal, it doesn't matter which tanks you bring.

They could just make all of the tanks do the same average damage in both tank stance and out of tank stance.

Oh no all tanks are the same the horror.

I agree with you, if there are niches, it should be focused on utility and dmg mitigation and not dps.

[Brannigan]

I just want them to take some risks when designing paladin abilities in the expansion. Stop catering to the "lol I like a job I don't have to think about at all because then I can survey the battle " crowd - they won't be inconvenienced by more complex mechanics because they aren't tackling any content that requires any level of job mastery anyway. For that matter, something for dark knight to make it more than just "level 50 paladin with more off GCDs" would be nice. The whole MP aspect of the job doesn't even really set it apart imo. Also niche tanks are retarded and risk ending up useless a lot of the time so they shouldn't push that stuff.

[Brian_]

snip.

You're vastly underestimating how much better DRK is against magic, how much better PLD is against physical -- especially when sheltron is at its best, and how much WAR excels at either.

In a fight like Thordan EX, DRK is complete garbage and PLD takes a huge dump on them with WAR taking a smaller dump on both.

But then you have fights like A1S and A4S where PLD is just total trash compared to DRK and WAR.

You talk about small margins but people care about those margins. Just look at PLD. They can clear all of Savage. But, the margins you speak of meant they cleared it 4+ weeks after the DRK / WAR groups. I can count the number of high-level PLDs left on my server on one hand.

[Reynhart]

PLD can't remain balanced while suddenly being guaranteed able to solo tank anything.

It depends on what you think is "balance"'. For me, balancing jobs means that no option is absolutely better than other.
If you can clear instances as fast with the two setups, then neither is absolutely better.
Yes, the PLD DPS will be even less, but it's still not an issue since its the raid DPS that matters.

The trick, however, is that you chose to trade DPS for defense. Meaning that if the content is absolutely impossible to solo tank, or already solo tankable, you just won't cast Divine Calling too much and thus, keep your usual DPS.
For mechanics like Turn1 or A1 where solo tanking "only" means granting a periodic damage buff to the boss, then you'll stack the defense buff to compensate.

That said, I doubt these stacks here would be able to give PLD nearly such a survivability buff, especially since unless the stacks are lasting a minute or more, you'd probably never be able to get past the second stack; it takes a bit over 50 seconds to regenerate half your mana, depending on the number of Riot Blade uses.

The duration/MP cost were thrown there to give an idea, but can be adjusted. If Divine Calling only costs 1/3rd of your MP, it means you can easily reach 3 stacks and then, you'd struggle to go higher.
I'll try to do a simulation with real numbers, later.

The real problem here is really that tanks are all already sturdy enough that if you want one of them to focus on that, it really need to be miles above the other. And "insane" defense is far less an issue that "insane" damage, since everything eventually enrage. It's the same with Hallowed Ground : "Yeah I survived this brutal AoE that killed everybody else...now what ?"

Pushing tank design into niches is a horrible, horrible idea that is both stupid and unhealthy for the game.

I don't see how "increasing mitigation" is a niche. It's supposed to be the official trade off between WAR and PLD, and frankly, if that was really true, it would be fine. PLD's increased mitigation would allow healers to deal more damage that they can do with a WAR MT. Problem is, when considering eHP, WAR is, in fact, the highest, so healers already do whatever damage they can. So, to make PLD matters, you have to go one step beyond.

And finally, PLD's problem is only relevant in high-tier raid. Raids where you carefully chose your setup, and where you'll decide if you want to go with a single PLD or with two tanks. For everything less difficult, PLD is as viable as WAR and DRK.

[Brian_]

The reason why niches are bad was already exemplified in A1S-A4S and is a basic idea within class design in any multi-class game. PLD's first A4S was 4+ weeks after the first DRK / WAR groups. Why? Because PLD was niche in that it was the only low DPS, low magic-mitigation tank. Because we had niche tanks, they reacted differently to the same content and PLDs lost out.

Nobody thinks it was a good idea to have one tank incapable of doing content without 4 more weeks of gearing. The mass exodus from PLD is proof of this.

So, why are we discussing the idea of going "one step beyond" in relation to PLD's supposed defensive niche? So that PLD can clear content 4 weeks ahead of WAR and DRK while they wait for gear to push them over a specific eHP threshold? One step beyond is giving PLD a meaningful advantage in eHP -- an equivalent advantage to the higher DPS of WAR and DRK. We've seen what that means already.

It was bad design when it was DPS. It's still bad design when it applies to mitigation.

They admitted to their mistakes in tuning. Why are we suggesting they should repeat those mistakes in another way?

All tanks need to be able to survive content. The moment a tank is incapable of surviving content, they are no longer a tank. They are nothing. So, you set the baseline at the lowest survivability tank. But, by doing so, you are just falling back into the current meta where anything over that baseline is sacrificed for more DPS.

And, if all you cared about was casual content, then none of this discussion needs to happen. They could make PLD even worse and they'd still clear the next Alex normal just fine.