Paladin Parity Suggestion Package

[Februs]

This might be kinda off-topic but has anyone else noticed that PLD base STR is 10 less than WAR and DRK while all three has equal amount of DEX and VIT. Also PLD has extremely high MND even tho its totally useless for said job, tbh it seems these are some kind of leftover things from 1.0 that should get fixed.

I think you hit the nail on the head, actually. I'm pretty sure that the original concept for Pld back in the 1.0 and early 2.0 (as early as beta) was totally different from where the Tanking meta ended up, and SE has been painfully slow at making adjustments to compensate. It's like they're holding on to the original concept they came up with, despite the fact that they created a game it doesn't fit in.

War, conversely, has seen a VAST number of adjustments since it's original inception in 2.0 (which was actually quite broken). They "fixed" a good deal of the job since then and have continued to polish it up to the lovely gem that it is now. By comparison, SE has blatantly ignored Pld. They've made a few changes over the years, but most of them were minuscule at best (at worst were actually nerfs) and really did not fix any of the main issues. I think they kind of had blinders on, because by the time End-game happened for 2.0, Pld was still capable of being the preferred MT despite having several flaws in mob tanking and overall stat allocation. Tp consumption was an issue back then as well, but not nearly to the same degree that it is now. They should have taken the hint when they could and started on the necessary adjustments, because now what was essentially a small cut has festered into a giant life-threatening wound.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd love to see shield swipe modified to add a debuff that increased dmg taken, or increases chance to be critically hit, etc.

Since it affects everyone, it would need to be low, like a 5% dmg increase, but would still give a compelling reason for a Paladin to MT. Or, if you had a DRK as MT, you could coordinate tank swaps just so the pally can apply the debuff before the DRK provokes it back. On fights where there isn't already a mandatory tank swap mechanic of course.

Also, an "improved provoke" trait which was paladin only that gave a small potency heal to whomever you just provoked the mob off of would be cool as well.

I'd love to see anything that provides more reason for 'soft' tank-swaps (not enforced by CD needs or stacks, etc.), but I just honestly don't think vulnerabilities are the best way to go for that. Luckily, as far as a DRK-PLD combo goes, the DRK itself would have enough CD tools to encourage swapping in for about 15-20 seconds at a time before the PLD goes back to MTing, except that the DRK already does more MT dps than the PLD by a fair margin (even after my suggested changes). It almost makes me miss the idea of Spinstroke, a 1.0 weaponskill meant to steal threat back or take advantage of your co-tank taunting/pulling off you, usable for mini-swapping.

Just a fun fact, Provoke used to be a Warrior ability, and Taunt (the closest equivalent to current voke) was a Pugilist ability (and Flash was a single-target threat nuke with a short CD, iirc). If we still actually had more than one taunt, you could easily just throw in the WoW PLD ally-targeted taunt, forcing anything attacking the target ally to attack you instead. Alternatively, if we had spare traits to work with, we could have the taunt heal the target of target just before voking, though that would include a self-heal possibility if you're willing to waste the taunt component.

This might be kinda off-topic but has anyone else noticed that PLD base STR is 10 less than WAR and DRK while all three has equal amount of DEX and VIT. Also PLD has extremely high MND even tho its totally useless for said job, tbh it seems these are some kind of leftover things from 1.0 that should get fixed.

+ @Februs
Yeah, those whole bits of vestigial identity currently feel about as useful as, well, hip bones in a whale (when expected to thereby have once walked, rather than for entirely new purposes(?)). That said, the same is kind of true of 3 Traits in every class as soon as we're few levels past when they were given -- Vitality+6... really? Who's going to notice that at 50, let alone 60? We could have had so many more useful improvements instead. (And then there's the mere fact that jobs have no traits, when it would in certain cases solve certain of their issues more easily, smoothly, or otherwise satisfactorily than new abilities could.)

All in all, it feels like there's a lot of junk still lying around here and there, PLD just being the lead example thereof.

[Syzygian]

Dark Knight:
:: OT dps increased ~1.5%. MT dps increased by up to ~3%. Reprisal utility improved.[LIST][*] The cooldown of Dark Arts now scales with Speed.[*] Blood Weapon may now be used in Grit, but while in Grit it provides healing instead of mana. This is primarily meant to aid with TP issues. The MP costchange to Grit is the primary save for stance-dancing and MP issues. The healing done is generally inferior in value to mana generated.[*] Living Dead now requires the DRK to be healed for 80% of its health, down from 100%. Reaching full health at any time during Walking Dead will remove the debuff. [*] Delirium will no longer be removed by Dragon Kick, though their effects will still be incapable of stacking.[*] Reprisal no longer requires a parry to be usable, but its duration has been reduced to 12 seconds. Using Reprisal also triggers the buff Revengeance, which gives a 20% chance for Reprisal to be usable regardless of cooldown (neither affected by or affecting CD) after a dodge or parry. Reprisals used under this effect will only deal 120 potency, however, and refresh the duration of Reprisal by 10 seconds, to a maximum of 20 seconds. Proc available for 5 seconds.[*] Blood Price has been revised. Blood Price will now give mana per attack attempted against you, rewarding dodges and enemy misses, and its mana returns are averaged with a flat value, an amount based on the mitigated attack’s original potency, and the attack's actual damage. It should now give lesser returns against minimally damaging attacks but much greater returns against heavier attacks. Dodges now only waste 33% of mana returns. [*] Darkside’s visual effect has been revised. It should now appear smaller and more concentrated around the Dark Knight’s eyes, right arm, and blade (when drawn).[*] The Soul Devourer trait now improves Souleater’s damage-to-healing drain percentile both in and out of Grit by 50%. (After 48, Grit Souleater will heal for 100% of damage, but non-Grit Souleater will also heal for 50%.)[*] Losing Darkside will no longer remove the Dark Arts buff.[*] Soul Survivor may now be used on allies, and will apply a duplicate effect to you when doing so. If the allied target dies during the duration, you will gain Soul Survivor's normal amount of health and mana. If you die during the duration, the allied target will gain the health and mana instead.[*] Physical attacks that trigger but are immune to dodges will automatically force a parry while Dark Dance is up. (If the attack rolled a 'dodge', but the attack cannot be dodged, wasting the roll, it will instead be parried. DA-Dark Dance is no longer wasted against undodgeable physical attacks, but simply has a doubled parry effect instead).
[*] The mana costs of several abilities have been reduced to provide slightly higher mana efficiency, improve stance dancing, improve Darkside prioritization/dropping, and provide more smoothly rounded values at level 60.[*] Grit MP cost reduced from (at lvl60) 1326 to 700. (53% of past value)[*] Darkside MP cost reduced from (at lvl60) 442 to 350. (79% of past value)[*] Unleash MP cost reduced from (at lvl60) 800 to 770. (96% of past value)[*] Dark Passenger MP cost reduced from (at lvl60) 884 to 800. (91% of past value)[*] Abyssal Drain MP cost reduced from (at lvl60) 974 to 880. (90% of past value)[*] Dark Arts MP cost reduced from (at lvl60) 1764 to 1500. (85% of past value)

I have the same problems with this as I have with most of your changes, but I'll address DRK b/c its my main.

You're basically skewering the skill ceiling of the job and making everything WAY too easy.

The plethora of MP cost reductions are wholly unnecessary. You're basically taking a DRK that keeps Darkside up the MP management of a DRK that doesn't use Darkside i.e. a bad player.

Making Reprisal usable while OTing and Blood Weapon usable while MTing is like taking WAR and giving it Fell Cleave in Defiance and IB in Deliverance. I don't understand why this is necessary.

Considering how much WAR and PLD HATE putting their debuffs on a target due to the DPS loss, Delirium and Reprisal, in practice, benefit your raid as much if not more than both these abilities combined, since they are kept up/used on CD and are a dps/mana gain for the DRK. Not seeing the need for change here.

The change to Sole Survivor is just no. I don't want to benefit from me or my party dying, I want to benefit from the boss dying.

Considering you shouldn't be boosting evasion/blinding targets with Blood Price up, I don't see the need for changes to it or Dark Dance. I do agree with giving DA DD an additional effect that will translate to it being useful in raids, but I'm thinking more along the lines of additional Parry Strength instead.

[Shurrikhan]

I have the same problems with this as I have with most of your changes, but I'll address DRK b/c its my main.

You're basically skewering the skill ceiling of the job and making everything WAY too easy.

The plethora of MP cost reductions are wholly unnecessary. You're basically taking a DRK that keeps Darkside up the MP management of a DRK that doesn't use Darkside i.e. a bad player.

Making Reprisal usable while OTing and Blood Weapon usable while MTing is like taking WAR and giving it Fell Cleave in Defiance and IB in Deliverance. I don't understand why this is necessary.

Considering how much WAR and PLD HATE putting their debuffs on a target due to the DPS loss, Delirium and Reprisal, in practice, benefit your raid as much if not more than both these abilities combined, since they are kept up/used on CD and are a dps/mana gain for the DRK. Not seeing the need for change here.

The change to Sole Survivor is just no. I don't want to benefit from me or my party dying, I want to benefit from the boss dying.

Considering you shouldn't be boosting evasion/blinding targets with Blood Price up, I don't see the need for changes to it or Dark Dance. I do agree with giving DA DD an additional effect that will translate to it being useful in raids, but I'm thinking more along the lines of additional Parry Strength instead.

I see what you mean by all the skill ceiling decrease via the Blood Weapon, Blood Price, and Reprisal changes, (you don't have to stance-dance to maintain TP, your evasion abilities no longer entirely cancel out your mana absorbs, and Reprisal doesn't require proc-fishing) but how does decreasing mana costs (essentially increasing your raw DAs per minute faintly, especially if stance-dancing) reduce skill ceiling? Unless you'd be otherwise be desperately fighting to get a DA-SE ready for a tankbuster to shield you from a trailing AA, wouldn't this just be a basic dps increase? Your minimal safety margin when preparing to AD/DP adds, etc, gets maybe 10% smaller or whatnot--that's all. With Darkside at 265 MP cost per 3s, or 88.3mps, every change here but Grit's is a long shot from giving you DS-less MP.

I made the adjustment to Blood Weapon almost solely to deal with the large TP gap between MT and OT. The dps gap, via mana returns, still exists as much as ever. Reprisal still requires MT position to fully utilize. (Though simply increasing parry rate, or giving it a way to guarantee a parry would have had nearly identical effects, and is something else I considered for this.) Note that this change is simultaneous with a reduced gap between RA and RoH and a faintly reduced gap between SP and SE/BB.

All I attempted to do with all this was to deal with the parts others had hailed as 'broken' (BP+DA-DD), improve stance-dancing slightly, and faintly improve dps and utility to bring it up to par with the adjusted PLD and the dominant WAR. Adjusting MP values was a way to faintly adjust DPS within DRK identity, but MP consumption should not be so changed that previous decision points are bypassed in any way (except perhaps when reapplying Grit just before another MP need). Moreover, I feel changes should be made to improve overall balance, parity, and entertainment across multiple situations and player levels, not just the few needs of an already veteran player, who may now enjoy as 'tactical' what he may have called 'flawed' half a year ago. It's for that reason that I didn't leave PLD without any AoE and just ship them back to Thordan repeatedly, etc (they can just go non-PLD for anything like A2, right?).

Of course, this is all just rationale / excuses. I understand if my efforts did not reach my aims here, and/or if the changes suggested were excessive.

[Nicobo]

This is meant to give Paladin near balance with other tanks in every area except anti-magic...

I think above preset is wrong. ^^;
PLD can cast some white-magic, logically white magic is based on MND so this job should have higher m-def than WAR and DRK.
Therefore, this lowest dps tank should have the highest def in every area without the "anti-magic" exception.

[Shurrikhan]

I think above preset is wrong. ^^;
PLD can cast some white-magic, logically white magic is based on MND so this job should have higher m-def than WAR and DRK.
Therefore, this lowest dps tank should have the highest def in every area without the "anti-magic" exception.

The changes bring its dps much more closely up to par, though. And it still has just as much mitigation against magic as Warrior. There's also no precedent relationship between Mind and mDefense in this game, only mDef and caster/healer garb.

[Shurrikhan]

Anyone know how much mitigation Defense/Magic Defense does per point?

[Aniond]

Things I would like see changed -

More synergy between skills -

For Example -
- When you block have it give a chance ( IE 20% chance ) for one of these actions to trigger
- reset the CD on cover
- have Clemency be in instant cast
- have it reset the CD on shield swipe

Other then I love my paladin - just some simple quality fixes would make it great

[Duelle]

Instead of making a new thread about this, I'll just bump this one.

Here's something I typed up for PLD, specially since the patch will be released next week. Just looking to get this out of my system before I show surprise or disappointment in SE on the 23rd. I'll only list the abilities and traits that have been changed, and this list should be looked at assuming everything else stays the same.

Abilities

26 Rage of Halone - Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Additional Effect: Increased enmity. Combo Action: Savage Blade, Combo Potency: 280. Combo Bonus: Reduce target's strength by 10% for 20s.
30 Shield Swipe - Delivers an attack with a potency of 50. Additional effect: Silence for 2s. Pacification for 2s. If used immediately after blocking an attack, the duration of silence and pacification is tripled. 15s cooldown.
34 Awareness - Nullifies the chance of suffering critical damage for 20s.
38 Sentinel - Reduces damage taken by 40% for 10s.
42 Sheltron - Allows you to block attacks from any direction for 15s. Cooldown: 180s.

Traits

40 Enhanced Rage of Halone - Increases Strength reduction inflicted by Rage of Halone to 10%.
44 Shield Counter - Using Shield Swipe immediately after blocking an attack will also increase its potency to 150.
48 Foe Familiarity - Physical damage received while Awareness is active has a 25% chance to increase the potency of the next weaponskill. Buff duration: 6s.

Job Abilities

30 Sword Oath - Increases damage from auto-attacks by 20% and removes bonus enmity from all abilities. Cannot be used with Shield Oath. Effect ends upon reuse.
35 Cover - Reduces damage received by 10%. Reduces damage received by allies behind you within 10y by 20%. Duration: 6s. Cooldown: 120s.
45 Spirits Within - Delivers an attack with a potency of 300. Damage varies with current HP. Cooldown: 45s.
52 Bulwark - Increases block rate by 100% for 5s. Additional effect: the first blocked attack will restore partial MP. Cooldown: 30s.
56 Divine Veil - Creates a protective barrier around all party members within 15y that absorbs damage up to 10% of your max HP. Duration: 30s. Cooldown: 150s.
58 Clemency - Restores target's HP. Cure Potency: 900. Additional effect: Restores to self 50% of HP restored to target if target is a party member. Cast time: 3s. If used immediately after blocking an attack, the cast time is reduced by 50%.

Notes

- The buff to Halone's damage is there to answer the complaints about how PLD has the lowest potency enmity combo. While I haven't done it as part of these changes, buffing Savage Blade would also be a good idea, I think.
- Shield Swipe in this write up is basically an ability that can be used at any time but would have benefits if used after a block. The idea for this came from how games like Dark Souls treat shield parries along with how Dragon's Dogma rewards you for perfect blocks.
- Awareness baseline duration being extended would be to justify getting rid of the original trait. Foe Familiarity gives a PLD an additional reason to use it; I picture it being similar to watching an enemy during a one-on-one fight and learning to read their moves or find weaknesses in their attack patterns.
- Sentinel's baseline 40% damage reduction is there to justify getting rid of the trait.
- Lv42 Sheltron would help the PLD a little when dealing with multiple enemies. Specially in helping get shield procs and mitigating at least some of the hits with the shield.
- The change to Sword Oath aims to turn it into an actual DPS stance. For a DPS stance you need more damage, and what comes with that is the loss of "Increased Enmity" effects on abilities used while in Sword Oath.
- Cover is a shameless copy of Aegis of Light from the WoW Legion alpha. It's a pretty damn good idea and I wish I had thought of it first. It'd work as group mitigation and easily fits PLD's concept.
- Spirits Within basically no longer silences and is just a strong attack with a 45s cooldown. Couldn't think of anything here that wouldn't end in turning Spirits into a copy of Riposte.
- Lv52 Bulwark is an improvement over what we currently have, IMO. The MP recovery thing can still be part of it, but just limited to the first hit.
- Divine Veil losing the middleman (heals from someone else) is a given at this point, and I don't think anyone would be against it.
- As much as some may hate to hear this, to make Clemency "easier" to use it needs some kind of nerf. I was thinking of turning it into a self heal with a cooldown but that sort of clashed with the devs' rules on how abilities with cooldowns work.

[Shurrikhan]

Instead of making a new thread about this, I'll just bump this one.

Here's something I typed up for PLD, specially since the patch will be released next week. Just looking to get this out of my system before I show surprise or disappointment in SE on the 23rd. I'll only list the abilities and traits that have been changed, and this list should be looked at assuming everything else stays the same.

Just ignore all this if you're not looking for too much feedback, but just a few handful of questions:

1. The change to Shield Swipe would make it the only job in the game with more than a 1-second silence, let alone a sub-30s cooldown. Moreover, without that block, it can be a slight physical mitigation loss compared to its original form.

2. [Aesthetic - Ignore] Why do we have to see this ugly ability (Shelltron) even sooner?! Does the Shelltron change come with a 100% block chance, or is simply to allow us to block (though we still cannot parry) attacks from the back and flank? This seems mostly useless if it's just "allows" and not "causes". Also, will the animation now also cover the back? Can I be a PLD Dome hikikomori?

3. 20s default Awareness would Warriors to use it for the full uptime of Raw Intuition. Just saying.

4. Heh... Foe Familiarity reminds me a bit of the old 1.x stuff... How much would it increase weaponskill potency by, though?

5. Why remove enmity modifiers from Sword Oath? (We spend a good half of our time tanking in it even in A4S, it seems like.)

6. Divine Veil no longer requires healer attentiveness to mass self-stoneskin the whole party. Cool. As you said, I don't think anyone will complain about this. Though we might still lament that it never became a cooler ability.

6. Bulwark would now be as strong as Inner Beast vs. physical. (Technically 50% stronger, but ~50% less frequent.) Is this intended?

7. Clemency, while strong, feels like it needs to be to see any usability. Why reduce it by 25% without some alternate buff? An auto-attack is just as likely to break a 1.5s Clemency as a 3.0s Clemency where it counts, and where the boss presents a cast bar as to make interruption a non-issue, we already have enough time, despite the full cast, to have the heal trigger instantly after taking damage. Given that Shelltron (now Bulwark) still gives almost two Riot Blades' worth of mana, this will only further lock Clemency into MT-affordability, while still leaving it useful almost only as (very slow, and now rather weak) support. (Yes, some bosses do still attack during the charge, but they're the rarer half; AAs that continue processing but wait until the TB to release are usually the bigger concern to healers, yet something Clemency can be the perfect answer for if there's even the slightest delay and Shelltron isn't up, or Bulwark with a high block rating shield ("tower shields for everybody!" said the loot tables).)

Edit: 8. Forgot to mention Cover. This would be decently neat, though I feel it'd only be used in the same circumstances as Divine Veil, unless you needed to use that while you still had cleaving mobs on you. Between the two, failed dps check punishments in the form of AoE damage taken would be trivial, as the PLD himself is now a tank LB.