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

[therpgfanatic]

Except that, as established, boss auto-attacks can consume Sheltron and you're SOL at that point. Timed blocks work in games that require precise gameplay (see: Dark Souls, Dragon's Dogma, the Soul Calibur games). FFXIV is far from that and a different approach to that ability should be considered.

I know they will never do it, but wouldn't it be awesome if PLD had the Dragon's Dogma Mystic Knight ability Magic Cannon? We could summon it then everyone in the party could then auto-attack the orb to rain death on the battlefield.

If you have to dodge an AOE and can't auto attack then that's a personal problem or you're not strafing. SwO is really strong and is why, as an OT, PLD is pretty competitive. I think touching SwO isn't really a thing they should do, though there are probably ways they could go about it.

Think harder about what I am referring to here. I dodge AoE just fine. What I can't control is when auto-attack triggers. No one can.

"Burst damage" and "auto-attack" cannot be part of the same sentence. Sword Oath contributes nothing to burst damage, which is a key mechanic in many fights these days where even the tank needs to burst down either an enemy or a floating orb in order to prevent the boss from casting the party wipe spell. Paladins are the weakest tank when it comes to this, because we cannot burst and Sword Oath and it's effect of adding 50 potency to an auto-attack rather than a flat % increase to all damage is a key candidate for changing to address the burst issue.

I am well familiar with the auto-attack arguments. Ironically Paladins in WoW had a similar mechanic with an aura and people, even other Paladins players made all kinds of ridiculous arguments about how it was superior to improve auto-attack damage than over-all skills. This went on from vanilla to WoTLK expansion. Guess what, the developers finally made the change to allow for burst and almost overnight PLD DPS being weak was never an issue of debate again.

Sword Oath is an impractical skill in a game that requires players -- especially the tank -- to move around constantly. You cannot trigger auto-attack on command, so it can't be easily employed.

So you'd put PLD back to using 1 combo forever? Dunno if that's such a good idea.

I don't have any problem with one combo for damage. PLDs got enough to deal with since our mitigation is largely built around popping cooldowns, and fights that make the tank run all over the map mean we sometimes have to abandon the combos before we finish them anyway. It's more annoying than useful to have three combos which all require three GCDs to gain their benefits.