Paladin adjustments = PALLY BUFFS!

[Sarcatica]

Emintiy has never been a problem i can switch to sword oath rather fast and ieep hate with the best dps on our server (of course switching back to shield for tank busters). Making clemency and devine viel faster and easier to use is our bonus IMO. I like what u say and ur right the extra potency is a ton, even for the average pld who stays in shield. The ones that already produce solid dps just became beasts. But just like the other classes "beasts" its probably going t9 be comparable. I cant wait, watch out eorzia lets have some fun

There never has been a case of enmity problem at all BTW (top Paladins have been pulling in Sword Oath, just a matter of how many Halones you want to cycle to get some lead on aggro) and tank busters are actually quite a joke in Gordias Savage, yes, all of them can be tanked in DPS stance no problem.

[MariaNyan]

Actually im pretty disappointed about the pld changes, because the complexibility and gameplay is the same, dull. Drk has mp managrment, war stack management and pld... has shelltron? Im missing that extra layer of complex that other tanks have, maybe im just too biased. My only issue with pala is flash(aoe pulls) and sitting on max mana forever. I was expecting a manadump(like darkarts) or some kind of management, but guess ill stay war, because thats simply too dull for me, i dont care about tp/dmg at all...

[Violette]

Actually im pretty disappointed about the pld changes, because the complexibility and gameplay is the same, dull. Drk has mp managrment, war stack management and pld... has shelltron? Im missing that extra layer of complex that other tanks have, maybe im just too biased. My only issue with pala is flash(aoe pulls) and sitting on max mana forever. I was expecting a manadump(like darkarts) or some kind of management, but guess ill stay war, because thats simply too dull for me, i dont care about tp/dmg at all...

Paladin, like white mage and to an lancer, have always been very no-nonsense straight up classes.

Except for DRG getting the BotD.

Paladin has always been fairly simply (like whm), so the chances of much complexity coming are nil.

[Lemuria]

Not amazingly happy about the 5% damage reduction loss (okay, speaking frankly I absolutely hate it since high defense is the one thing we have going for us), and I'm not sure what they want to achieve with the enmity boost since that was never Paladin's issue. The slight damage buffs are kind of nice though, so I guess it's not a total loss. Also that clemency buff means it might even be useful!

[FallenWings]

Not amazingly happy about the 5% damage reduction loss (okay, speaking frankly I absolutely hate it since high defense is the one thing we have going for us), and I'm not sure what they want to achieve with the enmity boost since that was never Paladin's issue. The slight damage buffs are kind of nice though, so I guess it's not a total loss. Also that clemency buff means it might even be useful!

Damage penalty has been reduced from 20% to 15%

It is the -20% modifier on Shield Oath that reduces your damage that is being reduced to -15%.
So Shield Oath will now read as:
Reduces damage received by 20% and increases enmity, while lowering damage dealt by 15%. Increases accuracy by 5%.
Cannot be used with Sword Oath.
Effect ends upon reuse.

Damage Penalty =/= Damage Reduction

[Jpec07]

Damage penalty has been reduced from 20% to 15%

It is the -20% modifier on Shield Oath that reduces your damage that is being reduced to -15%.
So Shield Oath will now read as:
Reduces damage received by 20% and increases enmity, while lowering damage dealt by 15%. Increases accuracy by 5%.
Cannot be used with Sword Oath.
Effect ends upon reuse.

Damage Penalty =/= Damage Reduction

Exactly this. It's actually a flat 6.25% DPS buff for PLD in ShO.

[Lemuria]

Oh, I retract my statement then. So, basically it's all sunshine and rainbows for Paladin. Thanks for pointing out my error. I guess part of my brain assumed they wouldn't give us all of these buffs without taking away at least something in return. Makes a pleasant change.

[Februs]

So, basically it's all sunshine and rainbows for Paladin.

Not quite. They still have two totally useless moves that were completely ignored by SE (Cover and Tempered Will ... again), their Dps is still lowest out of the three tanks, and their TP draw will still be higher than the other two tanks. SE has done TP cost adjustments before. They'll help a little, but it's unlikely that they will actually fix the problem.

Most of the existing problems with Tank balance have not been addressed either. Drk's have zero OT utility, but are still the best MT. War's are still hands down the best OT. Pld's are just there. Technically, they bring raid support in the form of Divine Veil ... but lets face it, that really did not change. They haven't brought anything new to the table that makes sacrificing Drk Dps worth it. Having one is not as horrifically bad as it was before, but it's still not preferable to the Drk's/War combo.

It's probably best to wait and see how things play out from here, but, honestly, it doesn't look like SE really "fixed" anything with this patch. They just threw yet another band aid on the problem. Given that we've seen similar adjustments like this to Pld in the past, I'm not expecting much out of these ones.

[Syzygian]

snip

TW and Cover are working as intended though.

TW is essentially knockback protection. The difference is unlike WAR/DRK it does not have to expend its oh-shit-button/withhold oGCD DPS to achieve the same end. There's different ways to look at that of course, but the ability works as intended.

Cover is still fantastic utility as MT or OT, the main difference being that this raid tier didn't have many mechanics to take advantage of it. Stop me if I'm wrong, but in A3S for example, a PLD OT could have easily lightened the blunt-resistance stack load on their MT by using Cover. Its an ability that again, works as intended, but just didn't see many opportunities for use due to raid design.

The same couldn't be said for Clemency/DV which are now "fixed".

Either way, a PLD brings arguably equal utility as an MT and better utility as an OT now compared to DRK. So now what DRK brings is higher MT DPS, and that gap just got noticeably smaller with the changes to ShO and potency buffs.

DRK really really really needed something to make it a competitive choice as an OT and now it continues to have only one raid slot (MT) for which any serious raid group will consider it. SE completely missed the mark there. The only thing that DRK truly has going for it is that it is still the highest potential raid DPS contribution for the MT slot, which is likely to be less valued according to the fact that DPS checks are not going to be the primary challenge during this prog cycle.

On the other hand, depending on raid design (as always) PLD could turn out to be VERY good in this coming tier, and poof, SE just fucked up tank balance again, putting DRK where PLD was last tier, which several people pointed out as a possibility and warned us against. GG.

Obviously there will still be groups sticking to the DRK/WAR combo, but it can easily be argued that the DPS gains of that combo just became much less substantial for a much greater loss of potential raid mitigation and utility.

[Jim_Berry]

Actually im pretty disappointed about the pld changes, because the complexibility and gameplay is the same, dull. Drk has mp managrment, war stack management and pld... has shelltron? Im missing that extra layer of complex that other tanks have, maybe im just too biased. My only issue with pala is flash(aoe pulls) and sitting on max mana forever. I was expecting a manadump(like darkarts) or some kind of management, but guess ill stay war, because thats simply too dull for me, i dont care about tp/dmg at all...

Since 2.0, PLD never was to be an MP-dump job. It's physical defense. As a person who likes my PLDs, I like when players treat all three tanks equals for what they are setup to do (PLD - physical, WAR - offensive, DRK - magical).