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

[Violette]

Oh this I know, I'm not talking about using PIE as any of your stat allocation points or your gear, but I'm talking about raw base stats. DRK has higher base PIE and thus more MP than the other two tanks because they have to in order to use their moves. They also have lower VIT and thus HP because of their ability to syphon off HP from enemies. Similarly WAR gains more HP through activating a stance rather than raw base stats before any equipment is considered. This is what I'm referring to with PLD having more VIT and thus having the potential for a larger DPS boost before any other changes are considered with this new patch.

It's more a difference in base mp than it is in piety.

[wereotter]

It's more a difference in base mp than it is in piety.

And max MP is determined by your PIE stat.

[Violette]

And max MP is determined by your PIE stat.

Paladin, 185 PIE - 5198 MP
Dark Knight, 185 PIE - 6930 PIE

[wereotter]

Paladin, 185 PIE - 5198 MP
Dark Knight, 185 PIE - 6930 PIE

That makes no sense. Not saying your wrong, but why would the stat not change to reflect your stats? Shows why I was wrong about my earlier assumptions.

[Violette]

That makes no sense. Not saying your wrong, but why would the stat not change to reflect your stats? Shows why I was wrong about my earlier assumptions.

Because the classes have different BASE values for HP/MP. Piety is trash on non-healers, you need a lot of extra piety to get enough out of it for DRK to be useful, and even then because DRK has no % based mp recovery, it's still only increasing your total amount, stored, not your ability to regenerate it. Same reason it's trash on AST.

[CookieMonsta]

It's the job that espouses the "brick wall" design. Rampart, Sentinel, Sheltron, and Bulwark - abilities that spell UNPRECEDENTED MITIGATION. I haven't done any Alexander Savage but I do read, and my understanding of the situation is that the later turns are filled with a ridiculous amount of dps checks, and since the line is "Paladins are the weakest of the three tank dps wise," the job has become undesirable. I haven't read anywhere that you couldn't complete Alex with a Paladin, only that it was harder. The UNPRECEDENTED MITIGATION is superfluous, *We need more dps, more dps now* is the end game meta and so Paladin suffers like Summoner and Dragoon did before it. And with that Paladin is on the verge of receiving some buffs. It's offensive capabilities will be enhanced, which is fine, I guess. It's the "overall adjustments" I'm apprehensive about. I really really really hope the job's defensive capability isn't sacrificed to appease DPSers that want to tank. WAR is good for that and DRK was created exactly for people that wanted to dps but didn't want to tank. If Paladin *needs* adjustments, then fine, but please don't lose sight of what the job was and is.

We cleared A4S with a PLD. I can tell you first hand, yes the PLD is a disadvantage vs DRK, yes there was a little less raid DPS, was it harder? not really, did it matter in the end? no because we had an experienced veteran PLD. I would much rather work with an experienced PLD than a grassroots DRK (that gritless style is brutal to learn).
PLD DPS is actually not that bad once they got reasonably geared. For some reason, people like putting their PLDs as MT and yet expect top tier DPS, just one look at their stances will tell you this is folly. We simply got our WAR to MT as much as possible and let the PLD OT more to fully utilize Sword Oath.
At the moment, the PLD is clunky, I would welcome the changes that would improve their MT DPS because right now, its borderline impossible to effectively hold emnity without some decent damage being output. Though with that being said, we treated our PLD very much like BLM + MNK, they need the strat to be somewhat catered to them to allow full potential.

[Violette]

We cleared A4S with a PLD. I can tell you first hand, yes the PLD is a disadvantage vs DRK, yes there was a little less raid DPS, was it harder? not really, did it matter in the end? no because we had an experienced veteran PLD. I would much rather work with an experienced PLD than a grassroots DRK (that gritless style is brutal to learn).
PLD DPS is actually not that bad once they got reasonably geared. For some reason, people like putting their PLDs as MT and yet expect top tier DPS, just one look at their stances will tell you this is folly. We simply got our WAR to MT as much as possible and let the PLD OT more to fully utilize Sword Oath.

'Cause Paladin's all have a MT complex.

Go PF A1S this week for tanks you'll see it. "Hurr durr we have a shield we have hallowed ground we must be da mt". (No shit I had that excuse one week and they were promptly sent to a corner because the dps were holding back due to pld enmity). (And gritless is easy. Turn off grit, go ham, use bloodbath).

One of the easiest ways to help increase MT damage is make SwO a buff like Darkside/Maim. Also reduces the clunk in stance dancing.

But as I've said over 4-5 different threads, paladins are bad for progression as they are.

PLD dps is not bad, yes, but (MT+OT) WAR+PLD is worse than WAR+DRK, which is worse than DRK+WAR. Sure we're taking baby steps each time, but by doing so we create larger and larger gaps until there is both a sizeable and (in progression raiding), unforgiveable gap. Groups that had Summoners met a massive wall in A3S with HoP, until everyone was over geared for the fight. But when you have to clarify "when geared", it means that the class is unsuitable without near BiS. Sure, for softcore/midcore groups ehh this is ok, the gear level will slowly increase from previous rounds until you can brute force things due to superior numbers. Until then, we are faced with the fact that while gearing, taking several classes presents enough of a lack in many ways (pld in enmity/damage, ast in dps, smn in single target dps), that they may end up holding back a group if they wish to play on their class.

[Shurrikhan]

I might be wrong in this, but I get the feeling it'd affect the flow of battle on some level.

It definitely would. Without adjustment, it would diminish TBs my more than even the upcoming Vitality changes (on a pure-Strength tank), because there's never a chance of a TB dealing an extra 3-6k damage by way of a simultaneous auto-attack. On the other hand, tank busters could easily enough be intensified slightly in compensation to create the same intensity but simply without that RNG element. ("Sorry, guys, Bahamut AAed during Plummet. Skin+Adlo+Rampart+Sentinel wasn't quite enough.") You heal hard as closely timed to the boss attack as possible, before the AA guaranteed to come within .6 seconds thereafter, that would otherwise finish off the tank unless typically unnecessary shielding or boss debuffing was used prior to the TB. Basically same as now. Just without the potential shit luck.

If tank busters weren't quite one-shotting dps in their current state, I might reconsider this preference, to have at least a chance at the accidental DRG tank surviving... but even Titan HM, in min ilvl, will one-shot non-tanks, so there's really nothing to lose by normalizing the gap between TBs and AAs so that they at least aren't muting boss animations or otherwise doing the physically impossible.

A lot of the suggestions here miss the point almost entirely. Altering SwO to a straight damage boost equal to the current SwO's AA boost does not fix anything.

It does actually fix a few things. A straight damage increase increases the effect of enmity-enhanced abilities, oGCDs (by extension--AoE), and potentially DoTs, all areas in which PLD is known to feel somewhat weak, while also normalizing SwO's effectiveness across multiple weapon speeds. I'm not saying it's the best solution, but there's plenty that a straight %dmg increase does that auto-attacks alone cannot.

Personally, I prefer the idea of a straight up +direct potency on all abilities and weaponskills, if only because that would slightly reduce the relative potency gap of Rage of Halone and Royal Authority, increase the relative effectiveness of Savage Blade, and slightly smooth enmity dynamics, all while increasing enmity, AoE burst, and reactive damage, without overbuffing our multi-DoTing via GB. And I certainly wouldn't mind this mimicking Grit-drop (no GCD cost or combo loss when going Sword Oath), or having some alternate, unique benefit to help decrease the window necessary to balance the loss so that it's worth stance-dancing to more frequently. Of course, at that point Clemency and/or TP issues would only seem an even larger concern, once our GCD losses are halved.

[Violette]

Personally, I prefer the idea of a straight up +direct potency on all abilities and weaponskills, if only because that would slightly reduce the relative potency gap of Rage of Halone and Royal Authority, increase the relative effectiveness of Savage Blade, and slightly smooth enmity dynamics, all while increasing enmity, AoE burst, and reactive damage, without overbuffing our multi-DoTing via GB. And I certainly wouldn't mind this mimicking Grit-drop (no GCD cost or combo loss when going Sword Oath), or having some alternate, unique benefit to help decrease the window necessary to balance the loss so that it's worth stance-dancing to more frequently. Of course, at that point Clemency and/or TP issues would only seem an even larger concern, once our GCD losses are halved.

I think you have the right idea of it, in regards to +potency up. (And I'm fairly sure this will comprise the majority of the Paladin changes). Sword Oath being on the GCD is more and more a problem (and SwO going off the gcd is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too good), compared to DS and Deli. That being said, I would like to see the Paladin get Potency buffs in the forms of RoH+CoS+SW getting buffed, along with Flash getting it's enmity tuned up a bit further. Also like to see Parry and Block both proc'able on the same hit but like hell we'll ever get to see that happen q.q
Given SwO is the 2nd? best crit scaling ability in the game (gdi bloodletter), as the ilvl goes up it will become better. Just, not as good as 15/20% damage up.

I'm not sure what the increase to RO would do, besides moar deeps. Thoughts?

[Shurrikhan]

I think you have the right idea of it, in regards to +potency up. (And I'm fairly sure this will comprise the majority of the Paladin changes). Sword Oath being on the GCD is more and more a problem (and SwO going off the gcd is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too good), compared to DS and Deli. That being said, I would like to see the Paladin get Potency buffs in the forms of RoH+CoS+SW getting buffed, along with Flash getting it's enmity tuned up a bit further. Also like to see Parry and Block both proc'able on the same hit but like hell we'll ever get to see that happen q.q
Given SwO is the 2nd? best crit scaling ability in the game (gdi bloodletter), as the ilvl goes up it will become better. Just, not as good as 15/20% damage up.

I'm not sure what the increase to RO would do, besides moar deeps. Thoughts?

RO? --> RA / RoH? Forgive me if I'm getting a case of massive stupidity, but I don't recall that acronym.

I still have some old stuff in my sig, for other ideas (far too many to be quite balanced without WAR MT and DRK OT getting slight buffs), if you're hungry for thought-food, but Sword Oath is pretty much the biggest issue imo, or at least the easiest to make large QoL improvements via a simple change thereto. That slight change could allow it to scale with skill-speed, along with the other auxiliary benefits I mentioned above. The only things that come close in importance are a slight potency or enmity-mod buff to Rage of Halone (270-280), and allowing Flash to scale with Fight or Flight (preferably also auto-crit, but with only a 67% of original potency, so that it scales with Crit as well). I realize Rage of Halone already does 20 more potency than WAR's debuffing combo, while having enmity to boot, but PLD has no Maim to compensate (which puts it 68 potency over RoH if both unstanced, or 58 if both in tank stance), and the debuff portion affects only half the sources of damage that Path does. (Compare also to Delirium combo at 207 potency over RoH.)

Warning: the thread's pretty out of date, and I left some ideas haphazardly up there that even I dislike.