Paladin quests from level 30 to 40.

[Februs]

I'm not seeing where this idea of brokenness comes from.

It's true that Pld's have a foundation in swordsmanship and shield defense; however only the shield is ever emphasized, and it's not emphasized all that well. None of our combos utilize our shield, for example. Shield Bash is a dps loss unless you absolutely have to stun something, and even then it cancels your current combo; so it doesn't work with your offense. It doesn't block magic, and the only way to buff it is not by activating the "Shield Oath," but by using Bulwark, which is one of the longest defensive CD's a Pld has. The write the Pld as a master of the sword and shield, but the way you actually use them is counter-intuitive and clunky.

Worse yet, the Gld kit is fundamentally incompatible with the Pld kit, and the Whm kit is fundamentally incompatible with both Gld and Pld. In most cases, the Pld moves work against one another. Take casting for example, Clemency is a great heal and can be used for yourself or your team, but you can't defend or attack while using it. Even your passive block rate is made null and void. How about Fight or Flight? That's a solid Dps increase taken right out of our Gld roots, right? True story, but you'd better deactivate Shield Oath, because they don't work well together and your wasting Dps and enmity by having them both active at the same time. I could go into a lot more detail than this. I could probably write you an essay explaining exactly why and how Pld is broken from both a technical and lore stand point, but the short hand of it is that it is torn between 3 different jobs which it fails to fully realize. It's lacks balance between the things it claims to be, and almost none of its tools work well together.

Actually, it's just that SE was too lazy to change the GLA description from 1.0 to 2.0. The GLA description was worded that way because it used to have traits that boosted damage dealt if you didn't equip a shield. This was back when traits could be swapped in an out depending on what you were aiming to do with the class.

That's an interesting insight. I wasn't around for 1.0, so I did not know this. It's kind of sad though. It sounds as though SE had some interesting ideas with the original 1.0 game. I know that most of it didn't work, which is why it all failed, but every now and then I hear about a few things that sound as though they would have been cool to run with if SE had stuck to it.

[Duelle]

It's true that Pld's have a foundation in swordsmanship and shield defense; however only the shield is ever emphasized, and it's not emphasized all that well. None of our combos utilize our shield, for example. Shield Bash is a dps loss unless you absolutely have to stun something, and even then it cancels your current combo; so it doesn't work with your offense.

That's intentional, since the ability to stun (specially when said stun has no cooldown) requires opportunity cost or some other trade-off to make it balanced.

It doesn't block magic, and the only way to buff it is not by activating the "Shield Oath," but by using Bulwark, which is one of the longest defensive CD's a Pld has. The write the Pld as a master of the sword and shield, but the way you actually use them is counter-intuitive and clunky.

This is because Shield Oath is a tank stance. They could have called it Defensive Stance instead and would be the same thing. SE just wanted to be fancy (hell, the JP versions of Sword and Shield Oaths are "Sword of Loyalty" and "Shield of Loyalty").

I can kind of agree on Bulwark, though that's only because WAR ended up getting something much better than Bulwark and DRK has a sort of equivalent on a shorter cooldown. Bulwark is one of the first things I'd axe if I was allowed to tweak GLA/PLD for that very reason.

Worse yet, the Gld kit is fundamentally incompatible with the Pld kit, and the Whm kit is fundamentally incompatible with both Gld and Pld.

This is partly a concept thing. Paladins in past FFs have had access to white magic in some form (usually weak and still a far cry of what a white mage could be capable of). You can't really throw that out the window.

In most cases, the Pld moves work against one another. Take casting for example, Clemency is a great heal and can be used for yourself or your team, but you can't defend or attack while using it.

This sort of makes sense, though. If you're busy casting a spell you're not going to block. Yes, I get that FFXI and FFXIV 1.23 had a block mechanic on casts, but in both cases healing was part of enmity generation. And needless to say, I was very happy to see that go away.

How about Fight or Flight? That's a solid Dps increase taken right out of our Gld roots, right? True story, but you'd better deactivate Shield Oath, because they don't work well together and your wasting Dps and enmity by having them both active at the same time.

It's still a gain in damage which thus translates to a gain in enmity generation. In fact, it's damage gain is taking into account the damage penalty from Shield Oath. It's obviously not going to be the same amount of damage as Sword Oath/no stance, but that's sort of the point. Tank stances exist to be used when taking the mob, so this is all perfectly natural. The very core of a tank stance is to sacrifice offense for defense.

I could go into a lot more detail than this. I could probably write you an essay explaining exactly why and how Pld is broken from both a technical and lore stand point, but the short hand of it is that it is torn between 3 different jobs which it fails to fully realize. It's lacks balance between the things it claims to be, and almost none of its tools work well together.

I'll disagree, as I am still not seeing these major issues. There's abilities that need tweaks but aside from that the job is actually solidly designed. I'd edge away from making shield combat a thing for PLD for the simple reason that it can be instead used as the foundation for a new job. It's obviously not going to replace a healer in any way, nor should it. I guess we could say it draws close to a hybrid while not really being one, and that's not really a bad thing.

That's an interesting insight. I wasn't around for 1.0, so I did not know this. It's kind of sad though. It sounds as though SE had some interesting ideas with the original 1.0 game. I know that most of it didn't work, which is why it all failed, but every now and then I hear about a few things that sound as though they would have been cool to run with if SE had stuck to it.

1.0's dev team was different from the team brought in by Yoshida.

The armoury system was built on an entirely different idea, as well.