There are already two dps-tank jobs, please don't make Paladin the third.

[Iagainsti]

Sure, anytime, but I wasn't making a dig at DRKs to dig at them. I'm sorry if it came off as that.

Not your fault, Syzygian is a knowlegdable Dark, just very touchy for some reason.

Honestly, I think Pally just needs a cleave, like add to Shield Oath "Savage Blade now hits all targets within<insert x yalms> in front of player" or something along those lines and enmity is solved. I currently haven't run any endgame with a pally yet in 3.x(partner is a DRK) so I can't really conclude any judgment on on the OT dps concerns.

When leveling pallly, I did find it to be very 1,2,3 zzzz playstyle, and I was maining Warrior from the get go, so I didn't follow it through to 50 once I received Awareness.

[Brianmj]

PLD doesn't necessarily need to deal a lot of damage like WAR/DRK, but it needs to contribute to group DPS in some way if it hopes to compete.

Shields! Defense! UNPRECEDENTED PHYSICAL MITIGATION! Defender of the party!

patch 3.2

Now everyone, here's your raid wide attack increase!

O_o

Honestly PLD even with the new HW abilities is still the most vanilla, least fun tank to play. It has a good toolkit of defensive abilities but aside from that, nothing particularly exciting..

WAR is options galore, and complex. A healer, tank, and dps rolled into one will no doubt appeal to many, especially one that has so many tools at it's disposal. Paladins basic design also has appeal. Pop one cooldown, I have 30% damage reduction, pop another, now I have 70% mitigation, pop another, now 95%. NOW IM FREAKING INVINCIBLE. Surely there are others that find appeal in doing one role and doing it well.

[SoloNightlock]

Ib... inner beast? Why would I use that when I could fell cleave

[Awful]

Just wait till 3.2 and see what kind of changes are in store everything is getting a rehaul including how tanks generate dmg through VIT instead of STR. SE said they acknowledged Gordias Savage as being too hard and too DPS heavy so they're changing it to which some speculate as with tanks having more health encounters are going to be more about healers healing and tanks mitigating more damage. Another thing is Midas might be more physical heavy but we'll see that when we see it, in the end all tanks can do all AS1-4 with a pld/drk, pld/war, Thordan EX pld/war/or/drk I welcome paladins becoming more relevant i'll probably lvl it next to 60 and see how it is.

[Claymore65]

WAR is options galore, and complex. A healer, tank, and dps rolled into one will no doubt appeal to many, especially one that has so many tools at it's disposal. Paladins basic design also has appeal. Pop one cooldown, I have 30% damage reduction, pop another, now I have 70% mitigation, pop another, now 95%. NOW IM FREAKING INVINCIBLE. Surely there are others that find appeal in doing one role and doing it well.

Important Math misconception! You don't actually get "95%" reduced damage from combining cooldowns like that. The damage mitigation isn't completely additive, otherwise it would probably be possible to get above 100% mitigation, which means you should hypothetically heal damage from being attacked.

Using some very rough math, let's say an attack deals 100 points of damage to you. You have two cooldowns, both of which reduces damage by 50%. Hypothetically, that should grant you 100% damage reduction, meaning you take no damage, right? (50% + 50% = 100%, or 100 - 50 - 50 = 0)

However, that's not actually how it works. Each one is applied to the total damage sequentially. So, in this simple example, the first cooldown reduces the total damage by 50 Points (100 - (.5 * 100) => 100 - 50 = 50). The second cooldown then activates. This reduces the total damage by 25 points (50 - (.5 * 50) => 50 - 25 = 25). In the end, you will take 25 damage, even though you were "supposed" to take 0 damage. The total mitigation of the two abilities combined is 75%, not 100%.

That's not to say stacking cooldowns is ineffective in the slightest, but it's not as simple as you're making it out to be. I don't disagree with the spirit of your argument (the "Iron Wall" tank is fun), but I wanted to correct the math on that.

[RecklessLion]

I agree with theverything opening here. And it\\'s kind of funny but people arguing the tanking being Balance between theach three. Meh I don\\'t see it at all. I think pld and DRK take damage better then War due to the fact grit and shield oath is an active. While you have to prep storms path and IB for incoming damage. Still I have to give it to PLD, why their the easiest to master and dominates on the defensive scale. You have grit + rampart or sentinel or if a physical mob rage of halone which is your emnity combo every 30secs you have a guaranteed block, your flash blinds the enemy which acts as a more improved swift foot and that's on top of grit. And of course hallowed Grounds which have zero repercussions for use. people try to argue the single skill but if you put it together as a whole on top of clemency PLD sits well as the wall for tanks. You can try to compare and but it will fall short to a PLD unless magic is involved. So naw I don't think they need more dps.

[Marxam]

Shields! Defense! UNPRECEDENTED PHYSICAL MITIGATION! Defender of the party!

While I do agree with you that we really don't need another dps tank, I pretty sure that a dmg increase won't potentially happen for pld due to these reasons:

1) next raid is "mechanic" focused meaning less emphasis on dps and more on co-ordination and proper movement. (sure people will still try for phase pushes but we know what happens when that goes wrong ex. t7)
2) STR is having its value decreased for tank and VIT is now included as a modifier meaning PLD, and all tanks will have their eHP effectively increased while possibly still doing the same damage as with full str.
3) the balance for tanking is only skewed because of how Gordias Savage was tuned (dps focused) so naturally the lowest dealing tank will be pushed out. This may resolve itself when 3.2 drops and people realize that s no longer the issue.


SE really likes to balance everything so I doubt they would increase PLD damage right away without seeing how the community will react to it in 3.2. If its still poorly, which I doubt, then hotfix, if not then stay the course. The only reason why WAR seems so powerful is because people like to see big numbers. I know this because I get a bit giddy when I see a 10k+ clemency heal. Imo the only changes that needs to be addressed for PLD are as follows:

1) Shelltron gives back 30 tp in addition to mp.
2) lower the cost of Clemency so that you can cast 3 at full mp and reduce it cast time to 2.5. Keep the interrupt to avoid reliance on the skill. imo its another cd and needs to be used properly instead of just spamming it.
3) lower the cd of Divine Veil from 150 to 120 sec and allow any cure, including Clemency, to proc it.
4) move the start of Hallowed Ground's effect to the start of its animation instead of the end. (probably not gonna happen but this has pissed me off since 2.0)

[RecklessLion]

I really hate my phone and it's auto corrects.......

[Brianmj]

Important Math misconception! You don't actually get "95%" reduced damage from combining cooldowns like that. The damage mitigation isn't completely additive, otherwise it would probably be possible to get above 100% mitigation, which means you should hypothetically heal damage from being attacked.

Using some very rough math, let's say an attack deals 100 points of damage to you. You have two cooldowns, both of which reduces damage by 50%. Hypothetically, that should grant you 100% damage reduction, meaning you take no damage, right? (50% + 50% = 100%, or 100 - 50 - 50 = 0)

However, that's not actually how it works. Each one is applied to the total damage sequentially. So, in this simple example, the first cooldown reduces the total damage by 50 Points (100 - (.5 * 100) => 100 - 50 = 50). The second cooldown then activates. This reduces the total damage by 25 points (50 - (.5 * 50) => 50 - 25 = 25). In the end, you will take 25 damage, even though you were "supposed" to take 0 damage. The total mitigation of the two abilities combined is 75%, not 100%.

That's not to say stacking cooldowns is ineffective in the slightest, but it's not as simple as you're making it out to be. I don't disagree with the spirit of your argument (the "Iron Wall" tank is fun), but I wanted to correct the math on that.

Thank you so much for this! I leveled Paladin for the experience of being up close to the monster cause most of my play time in FF14 was spent in the back line as a WHM/SMN - completely oblivious to what happened up front. I never learned the finer details of the role. Information like this is always appreciated.

[Phoenicia]

Snip.

There is a lot of misconceptions going on out there when it comes to tank mitigation (and in-game data in general). I will address it in a sec.

In physical fights PLD should generally mitigate more....

Not to underline your knowledge of tanking, Spooky. (You are one of the few tanks I respect on these forums.) But this triggers me... Just because a tank can reduce more damage, it doesn't mean it mitigates more.

Disclaimer:I do not main a tank anymore. And the rest here is just a wall of text trying to open an insight of general tanking that a lot of people do not fully grasp. I do not mean any disrespect nor do I mean to sound condescending to anyone!

The difference in dealing with the different tools of mitigation, and healers' misconceptions of what is easier to work with rather than what is more "effective" gives a wide-spread misconception out on these forums. But they're just misconceptions.... Here is why:

1. Damage Mitigation is not necessarily damage reduction. Damage mitigation is all about reducing the severity of that damage. Hence improving survival. How do we measure survival? Simple, how many hits does the boss need to do to kill you without healer's intervention. Mathematically it is referred to as "effective" Health or damage.

While damage reduction IS one way to mitigate (and probably the most common). Healing post damage and HP padding (Thrill of Battle, Stoneskin, Adloquiem and IB's pre-damage heal) are other VERY good form of mitigation. As a matter of fact, unless an attack outright removes 81+% of your MAX HP, ToB mitigates more damage than Ramps/IB/Shadowskin. Combine ToB with IB and its effectiveness is sky rocketed. Let's not forget ToB gives 20% max HP regardless of your current HP while Ramps and co only increase effective HP of whatever you currently have.

Basically, if you have 100 HP and boss does 10 damage. Reducing damage by 20% and increasing your health by 25% has the same effect, the boss will need 13 hits instead of 10 to kill you. At the same time, healing 2-3 damage post-damage will net the same result. Or healing once for 25-30% of your HP. All those tools "mitigated" the severity of the boss's attacks from 10 hits to die to 13 hits to die. Only difference between those tools is how the healer and tank should go at coordinating between those tools.

2. Magnitude isn't everything! PLD's "spectacular" damage reduction is VERY WELL countered by the effy, near terrible, up time. Hallowed Ground may have the strongest "effect" from a defensive CD, but due to its obscene CD, it is probably one of the least effective in a fight. It will never reduce as much damage as Rampart, Sentinel or IB over the course of 7 minutes. Though it may prevent deaths and cheese some mechanics... It will do so at a much lower frequency than the equivalent tools the other two tanks have, albeit it will require the least healer intervention.

Frequency of availability makes CDs "better". There is a reason Vengeance and Inner Beast are the "best" defensive tools. And that is their availability for every other tank buster (And in some cases EVERY buster) in the case of vengeance. And availability for EVERYTHING that is not Auto Attack in the case of Inner Beast. True, turtling on WAR is a lot of wasted potential DPS, but we're talking "mitigation" here.

3. Number of CDs mean nothing, if those CDs are too situational to matter. I see a lot of people count PLD's "defensive" CDs and say they're 10 or so...

• Convalescence is not a mitigation CD, it's a healing boost (A recovery CD if you may).
• Cover is there for thematic purposes and is almost useles.
• People cry about how "useless Iron Will" is, even though it's barely "defensive" as it is a utility CD, not defensive. And I'm one of the ones saying it's useful.
• Awareness is difficult to calculate in terms of eHP and you can never predict what damage it prevented. Unless it's used in a scenario where crits are 100% guaranted.
• Bulwark is iffy at best being only physical and never 100% reliable. Has an obscenely long CD of 3 minutes and a laughable up time of 15 seconds. Compare it to Raw Intuition... Heck, compare it to Dark Dance... I don't care if your tower shield blocks 50% damage, the unpredictability and laughable up time make it a CD I only use to supplement another. Such as the laughable Foresight.
• Sheltron shoots itself in the foot with its timing and bosses not stopping auto-attacks while casting potentially popping the block with an auto only so you eat that 23k buster and blocks never precede crits. Again, damage type limited CD.
• Hallowed Ground has an eternity for a CD... Heck we delay when we pull because of how retardedly long that CD is.

Basically, PLD's "reliable" defense is really down to: Rampart and Sentinel. Of course, Shield Oath.. But I like to treat tank stances as "baseline" defense.

4. Practicality; This in part could belong to the above point, but clutchy and clunky tools are only that, clutch and clunk..

Doesn't matter if you can pretend to be able to heal yourself for 1200 potency and or pad your HP by 10% if the reaction time for those is retardedly long. Paladin doing anything trying to cast those will first have to wait 2.5 seconds GCD, then cast for 3 seconds. If you can get hit for more than 10% of your max HP, you risk getting interrupted... And those bosses are merciless. Compare those to the instant, oGCD, CD boostable Equilibrium, Inner Beast and Second Wind? Souleater is more mitigation than the PLD's shield and Clemency combined over the course of any fight. Physical be it or magical.

We can clearly see who has the "better" tools.

Divine Veil, while in theory blocks a LOT of damage, is very clunky and requires healer intervention. Divine Veil is probably one of (if not THE) most impractical defensive tools in the game currently.

TL;DR: The better tank is the tank that takes the most hits, having the most effective health while needing the least heals, where self heals + healing received from healers is the most effective. Tanks are roughly VERY close to one another based on encounter with WAR having the most effective health and PLD receiving most effective healing, and WAR and DRK both having more effective self heals than PLD. However, outside of Hallowed Ground, PLD is probably the furthest from being the best combination of both among the three tanks.

The reason there is a blatant problem with PLD: PLD is taxed by lower DPS and 0 raid DPS contribution for an imaginary defensive advantage that does not exist, nor is needed in the current meta.

The issue was so deep that SE had to change the tank's main damage stat, re-evaluating and looking at tank traits, AND shifting from sever DPS checks to mechanic checks in the upcoming savage instead of just simply buffing PLD and/or nerfing the other tanks.

Again, I do not mean disrespect or to sound condescending to anyone. But this topic has been triggering me for a while when people tell a tank to change the job they like playing (and play better at) because it's a WAR/DRK and not PLD or whatever.