Can anyone give me some PLD tips?

[JackFross]

I understand what you're getting at here, but you're looking at a massive trade off for a tiny return. I was using a figure of speech when I was talking about "the math," but if we're going to get into the nitty-gritty of it, then I'll give you some rough napkin math to show you where I'm coming from.

Considering I literally just did, this should be fun. I'll bold your comments and reply beneath since it's easier than a series of quote blocks.

The debuff is 10% for a duration of of 20 seconds, applied immediately upon application. The application of RoH takes 5 seconds.
RoH takes 7 seconds to apply the STR debuff at 354 Skill Speed, because of RoH having an animation delay of ~2s and it being the third GCD of a combo. 2.5+2.5+2=7, not 5.

Going off of your example of a 40s encounter with roughly 1 auto attack every 2 seconds
Mobs in dungeons attack once per 3 seconds, on average. Sometimes the delay is longer.

that accounts for 20 auto attacks from a single mob over the course of the encounter
By actual calculations, 40s is only 13 auto attacks from that single mob - a drastically different figure than the one that you're using.


With a standard pull rotation of 1 Flash and 1 CoS, you're looking at a 2 second delay on your initial RoH, pushing it to 7 seconds. That accounts for 3 auto attacks that are un-mitigated on a single mob, followed by 17 auto-attacks that are mitigated. On the second mob, at an additional 5 seconds (12 in total), that works out to 15 mitigated attacks from the second mob. The third mob has the lowest return, at 17 -19 (if you throw in an extra Flash, for example) seconds. That works out to 11 mitigated auto attacks. Spread across all 3 targets, that's 42 mitigated physical attacks (again, not including direct attacks) out of a total of 60.
(It's actually just 39, not 60, and that's maximum, not expected. Stuns, movement, slow, etc cut down on how many autos you see.)

(which can vary dramatically depending on the size of the pull and the type of enemies within it).
Working with wrong numbers.
Let me reorganize this for you.
1 Flash -> RoH = 7+2.5 = 9.5s = 3 missed AA's, so you mitigate 10% of the following 6 AA's of this mob, since it only lasts 20s - not 30.5.
RoH on the second mob = 10+7 = 17s = 20s (3 left over) of RoH debuff = 6 more AA's with 10% down.
RoH on the third mob = 17.5 + 7 = 24.5 = 15.5s of RoH debuff = 5 AA's.
RoH on a fourth* mob = 25 + 7 = 32 = 8s of RoH debuff = 2 AA's.
And then the battle ends.

In the course of this battle, you mitigated a total of 6+6+5+2 = 19 AA's dealing 90% of their maximum, which amounts to a total of 1.9 AA's mitigated.
If you instead opened with 2-3 Flashes and used GB combos, the encounter would have ended 3s faster, netting a total of 3 AA's mitigated, a gain of nearly 50% mitigation.

The problem is that you're looking at quantity of mitigated attacks, rather than the quality with which mitigation is happening.

Unless the damage caused by those 3 attacks exceeds the total mitigated amount of the immediate effect caused by RoH upon application
Which it does, because 1.8 attacks is how much your RoH method mitigates, whereas 3 (a larger number than 1.8 by more than 50%) is how many AA's are mitigated by using GB instead and killing the mobs 3s or more faster.

then the benefit to increasing your dps output is clearly outweighed by the thousands of hit points you saved just by applying RoH
I addressed this point directly in my previous post. Thanks for completely ignoring me and arguing against points that I made myself with incorrect math.

I could get into further detail with GB and RA, but that's more napkin math than I'm willing to commit to, and it amounts to no more than peanuts in the bucket; so, to each their own with that one.
And I will reiterate, again, that the benefits of ending an encounter 3-4s faster by improving your dps by 300-400 points vastly outweigh the comparatively tiny amount of mitigation you get from spreading RoH debuff. I hate repeating myself and this is the fifth time I've had to make this point. You mitigate 10% of the damage dealt by the incoming physical attacks for its 20s duration, which is 6 autos. This amounts to 10% x 6 = 60% of 1 Auto Attack mitigated for every one cast of Rage of Halone - a combo which is dealing - quite literally - 60% as much damage as a Goring Blade in its place (which, again, I've shown will always in every encounter reach its full duration on the first mob you use it on, so long as your melee doesn't burn it down).

I think you can understand how someone would think that a statement like this is wildly misleading and flat out false, because it is.
No, you're still misunderstanding.
There are two different circumstances.

1. I intend to remain in Shield Oath for an extended period of time.
2. I intend to turn Sword Oath on as soon as possible.

In situation 1, my opener is:
FB>RB>[Shel+FoF]>GB>[CoS+SW]>FB>[Swipe]>SB>RA>FB>SB>RA>FB>RB>GB>FB>SB>[CoS]>RA>[FoF falls off].
And yes. I have used this opener to hold solid against evenly-geared DPS bursting 2-2.5k on Sephirot EX with and without a NIN giving me Shadewalker. It is safer to use RoH in the opener when undergeared, but even geared or better you shouldn't need it.
In general. Exceptions exist for situations where I want the Strength Down debuff, such as my opener on Ratfinx, which looks more like:
5s > [Shel>FoF]>FB>[CoS+Swipe]>RB>[SW+Ramp]>GB>[Awareness]>FB>SB>RoH>FB>RB>GB>[Concussion].
I use RoH here for the mitigation on the ensuing tank buster - not for a hate lead.

In situation 2, my opener is as I stated previously.

As for Dkr's, that's a bit trickier. I don't remember the exact values that run behind their opener, but if I remember correctly a fully buffed C&S opener generates more enmity than a bonus applied to a Power Slash combo. They get a lot of additional hate from their oGCD's, so it's not abnormal to be able to maintain hate without the use of Power Slash while in Grit. Someone did a full breakdown of how it worked months ago, but I honestly don't remember which thread it was in ...
I was looking into similar stuff a while ago. And yeah - if you're staying in Grit, you pull with a single Power Slash (since the ramp from DA+SE and DA+CaS isn't enough to hold against most openers safely enough for my taste) and then never touch it again for the duration of the encounter. If Grit is on the floor, you'll need Power Slashes to maintain hate.

The point I was making is that DRK has 0 Enmity generation in its optimal dps rotation. None of your off-gcd attacks even have added enmity to them. Everything is just benefiting from your Grit bonus. And even they can hold solid hate without needing hate combos so long as they stay in tank stance. Paladin, on the other hand, naturally has enmity built into its main DPS combo in the form of Savage Blade and is dropping a 3x enmity modded Circle of Scorn every 25s alongside a 30s-at-worst Shield Swipe for an additional burst. This couples with the numbers that show PLD can out-damage DRK in a tank stance v tank stance battle to say that it's ludicrous to assume you'd need a Rage of Halone to hold hate.


*Fourth Mob - When cycling RoH combos, you can RoH up to 3 mobs simultaneously. By the time your fourth RoH applies, your first has fallen off (just barely). This means that your "fourth mob" in this scenario could be the first mob and the calculations I gave would not change.

So, with all of this said, I don't disagree that cycling RoH is a fine way to handle things for a new player who's learning how PLD works. I just resent the implication that you would tout this method as being superior - or even comparable - to methods which can be shown to be better with hard mathematics in both dps and effective mitigation. The argument about healer DPS is absolutely ludicrous either way because, again, your RoH is really, honestly, not doing jack shit to how much damage you're taking from the mobs, as I've explained at length.

And.

Again.

I am not saying that it doesn't do anything. I'm saying it is negligible how much mitigation it gives you and the aggro generation is unnecessary, therefore you're just wasting your time doing it! I can tell you with 100% certainty that you using RoH is not going to affect how much I can comfortably DPS on SCH by any margin /at all/.

You know why that is? Because I can never cast a single heal spell in any 3-mob pull as Scholar and never need to do more than drop Regen on my tank as a WHM.

And that's the bottom line. You're doing things with good intentions and that's cool. The issue is that the effects are completely negligible to everyone who you want to think it might matter to.

[Februs]

Considering I literally just did, this should be fun. I'll bold your comments and reply beneath since it's easier than a series of quote blocks.

Now we're getting into some fun stuff lol ... Though, I'm spying some interesting discrepancies ... For the sake of space I'm following your format.

"RoH takes 7 seconds to apply the STR debuff at 354 Skill Speed, because of RoH having an animation delay of ~2s and it being the third GCD of a combo. 2.5+2.5+2=7, not 5."

Firstly, you're tacking on a lot of extra seconds here. It's true that RoH is delayed to the end of the ridiculously long attack animation, but that animation is not a full 2 seconds. You can time it quite easily, even if you're just using your GCD timer. At most you're looking at 1 additional second (unless you have some kind of wonky latency). Even with a Flash tacked on at the beginning, that's a 7.5-8 second combo. Further, that time is assuaged by the fact that the RoH method of mob tanking requires frequent target swaps, so an extra second on the end of the combo isn't breaking any deals here.

Secondly ... Why in the flying hell is your Skill Speed so low?? You're hardly even at half of what my Skill Speed is. I was going to compare our gear to figure out what was going wrong for you here, but when I clicked on your name I was notified that you don't even have a Pld at 60 ... O_o? I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume that you either have a max Pld on a different character, or something, but that still doesn't explain your low Skill Speed value ... Did you maybe confuse the values for Skill Speed and Spell Speed? Because I think my Spell Speed might be close to that number...

Mobs in dungeons attack once per 3 seconds, on average. Sometimes the delay is longer.

True ... ish.

This conversation has led to me paying attention to some very interesting things over my last few Extreme Roulette's. As you said, mobs attack with a frequency of one auto attack every three seconds, on average, and they seem to do so following the same timer as DoT's/Hot's (though, I still need to do some testing to see if it's exact). That seems to be the given rule of frequency. There are only a few exceptions that I've found so far.

The first is that include direct attacks such as GCD hits (which some mobs actually do have, I was surprised to notice), charge attacks, cleaves, etc, do not operate on the 3 second rule. So, the rate at which a mob hits you for a physical hit can, in fact, exceed 3 seconds. Same as with our attacks, mob attacks that actually have a noticeable charge bar interrupt their auto attack pattern; though, they do share the magic pixel effect where at the very beginning and very end of the charge their auto attack can resume if timed on the DoT. It can throw them a bit out of whack with the rest of the mobs.

The second exception I've found to the 3 second rule is magic based enemies. Some of them seem to have no auto attack at all, and the ones that do hit for much less dmg (those dead conjurers in Lost City Ex made me laugh). Because they also have much more frequent cast bars than their physical counter-parts, their auto-attack timers can get frequently interrupted.


It's actually just 39, not 60, and that's maximum, not expected. Stuns, movement, slow, etc cut down on how many autos you see.

That ... doesn't quite make sense, especially not as a "maximum."

Again, this varies wildly depending on the party and the size of the mob, but with what I would call "good" dps, I've done an ex roul run in which the first pull lasted just a little under 40s. In that time, with 4 mobs (all physical) on the same rate of attack I suffered exactly 44 auto attacks (and yes, I actually recorded it and counted, because why not?). This number actually does make sense, because the timing works out. Mathematically, it looks like this: 40s at 3 auto-attacks a second is roughly 13 auto attacks by one target. Across 4 targets, that's 53 auto-attacks. There is a discrepancy between 44 AAs and 53 AAs; however, that discrepancy is accounted for by the mobs dying at different rates. It's not like they all dropped dead at the exact same time, after all.

I repeated this test a few times now, and it works out similarly each time, varying slightly with the speed of the dps. With what I would say was "mediocre" or "slow," I suffered 51 auto-attacks in a full minute encounter. So there is some variance here. Whereas, 39 could definitely happen with exceptional dps, it is definitely not the "maximum."

Also, stuns definitely reduce that number; however, you should keep in mind that stuns can also be a double edged sword. If the Pld uses a stun (god forbid they exercise some utility, right?), they are also reducing their outgoing dps, as well as canceling any active combos. The funny thing is, a Pld's first stun effectively does exactly what you're recommending with speeding up the encounter. It eliminates 1 full attack from the mob's rotation, as well as delays their next attack until the next tick.

Working with wrong numbers.

It would seem that you are also working with the wrong numbers here. I've already pointed out that the animation time for RoH is not a full GCD (it's roughly 1 second), so tacking on an extra 2 seconds is inaccurate. You also seem to have a much slower GCD rate than I do ... Honestly, I'm a little baffled at how you could be that much slower than I am, because I shaved off several seconds from your estimations when I actually ran it on my Pld. That said, a half a second here and a full second here isn't what makes your numbers off. The problem is the estimated number of auto-attacks, as well as the rate of death spread across the mobs.

In some of the test runs I did (namely, the one's with exceptional dps), you're not wrong. Moving faster provided a little better mitigation, than applying the RoH Debuff. However, in some cases the additional speed didn't even come close to what RoH could mitigate, and what effected this value more than anything was the behavior of the dps team. Their overall speed and the spread their dps made a huge difference, whereas mine made only the smallest of adjustments and not always for the better. Some dps burned so quickly that there was absolutely no doubt that GB's potency was being rendered inefficient. Some were so slow that that I had time to apply multiple GB's, which meant RoH would have mitigated far more. Some Dps spread their Dps out (ranged, like Smn's are guilty of this), making for a more even death rate, causing a higher tick on both GB and RoH.

Another thing that made a substantial difference was the dodge rate caused by adequately spreading out Blinds using Flash. A speed burn rotation requires several Flashes at the beginning (2-3, as you said). Blind is resisted after 3. Therefore, throwing out all 3 blinds right off the bat reduce the total number of time enemies are blinded in a fight, which reduces your dodge rate. Applying Blind in between RoH, however, spreads the blinds out to their full duration, increasing the overall dodge rate throughout the fight. I was surprised at how much of a difference that made over the total dmg taken. Another thing it made a difference to was the application of GB. Using 3 Flash at the start provides for a much slower application time of GB than RoH, so the one circumstance in which you pointed out GB being less effective ("so long as the melee doesn't burn it down") was not so uncommon. Some of that can be avoided by being choosy on which target actually gets the GB, though, so that one didn't provide a big difference unless I made a mistake on application.

No, you're still misunderstanding. There are two different circumstances.

No, I'm not misunderstanding. I get what you're saying now, but what you're saying now is not what you said when you first posted. You wording was very explicit. There is a big difference between "I never ever" use something, to "here's two circumstances, wherein one of them you are actually using it." It's not like I'm psychic lol. Not a big deal though. All cleared up, and I don't disagree with either rotation per se. It just depends on the dps. Some of the Dps I've run with would most certainly cause issues with situation 1, but if it works for your dps team then all the power to you.

The point I was making is that DRK has 0 Enmity generation in its optimal dps rotation. None of your off-gcd attacks even have added enmity to them.

You actually pointed out the issue right here. It's not that your other Drk abilities don't have or generate enmity. There is no physical attack in the entire game that generates 0 enmity. They just don't have an enmity bonus. It's good to keep in mind that every attack has flat enmity multiplier working in the background, even if the combo itself doesn't generate a bonus. So long as the attack is generating high dps output, you can maintain a lead on hate. The "problem" is that no matter how high a Drk's dps is, they don't have the potency and speed to out dps a true dps character; so, a lead is still necessary and you have to be very careful to make sure you're bursting properly .... which is a royal pain on Drk, because they have a billion frigin' oGCD's to manage.

That said, Drk should have no problems when compared to Pld, even with their oGCD enmity boosts. Shield Swipe's dmg potency was nerfed pretty hard, so the amount of enmity generated is actually quite small. The same goes for CoS. Even with the multiplier, the dps output of the attack is so tiny that it doesn't compare to a buffed Carve and Spit. These moves get an enmity boost, but their baseline enmity is so low that it levels them out. It's similar to how Flash falls a bit behind to overpower. It has a similar enmity modifier, sure, but without the baseline damage tacked onto it, it doesn't hold a candle to the amount of enmity generated by War's or Drk's.

In the end, I never intended to imply that one method was superior to the other. I was simply pointing out that their is a trade-off made between the two. Your original post made a few vague claims (and errors) that made it sound as though pushing for that extra dps was a landslide better, when, in fact, its not that black and white. Quite frankly, neither of them are the better method. In all of the tests I did, the amount of dmg mitigated was equal, or near equal, varying slightly on the circumstances of the fight. In some cases, extra Dps was definitely the way to go. In others, the extra mitigation of combined debuffs had far more mileage. Clear times weren't any different between the two either, so there wasn't a clear benefit in time efficiency. Honestly it really falls down to the party composition, dps competency, and what the person is comfortable with.

[Yuni_Queen]

You forgot [/QUOTE], which makes your post a bit less serious.

And to the actual topic.
I was reading this conversation, and i noticed two things:
1. You discuss, despite the fact, you have same meta point of view.
2. Shield Swipe wasn't nerfed. It was buffed. Previosuely, there was little point in using shield swipe every 2.5 sec, when you had an opportunity. Now you can use it as oGCD.

Every additional oGCD to skill palette is pure dps increase, which will be always better than no matter how strong GCD skill. DRK is good example here.
You can use Souleater for 400 potency, or you can use Dark Passneger for pitiful 150 potency, which is still better choice, cuz gives more dps than 140 potency increase GCDs you would use.

But that hardly matters.
Now Yuni flies away, becuase your topic started to be so complicated, i need more enters between those lines.

[Februs]

You forgot [/ QUOTE], which makes your post a bit less serious.

Thanks. Totally missed it. Fixed.

Shield Swipe wasn't nerfed. It was buffed. Previosuely, there was little point in using shield swipe every 2.5 sec, when you had an opportunity. Now you can use it as oGCD.

You're misunderstanding what I mean by "nerfed." Taking Shield Swipe off of the GCD was a buff to Pld's overall single-target Dps; however, the actual potency of the attack was reduced from 210 to 150. Each individual hit of the move is weaker than it once was, and it's enmity multiplier was not adjusted at all to compensate for that reduction. It's dps value also varied dramatically depending on the circumstances, as a full 2.5 second rotation of shield swipe (proc'd by Bulwark) generated a combo potency of 630. That was higher than an RoH combo, provided enmity on every hit, and pacified the target. At the time, a flat increase to single-target dps was preferable because of strict dps checks in that content; however, it hardly made a difference and Pld's were still not a preferable choice, hence the dps checks in Midas and Sephirot are substantially easier.

[SpookyGhost]

Shield Swipe also saved TP. d(' - '

[Destous]

snip

I don't see why they gave Shield Swipe a CD and reduced its damage. It should a very low CD, around 3sec, and most preferably no CD at all at its current potency value. Considering that Pacify does nothing to bosses, using Shield Swipe does little more than add a tiny bit of damage every, at most, 15 seconds. The change also made Bulwark and Sheltron less effective in the sense that you end up with a ton of block procs that are whisked away while Shield Swipe is on CD, whereas before hitting Bulwark meant a steady stream of Shield Swipes. Now PLDs end up with TP issues even on fights where they get plenty of blocks.

[JackFross]

Now we're getting into some fun stuff lol ... Though, I'm spying some interesting discrepancies ... For the sake of space I'm following your format.

Lots of good points, but most of your argument is ignoring something really important and all gets blown out of the water by a single thing. Not gonna argue re: RoH, since I was just assuming it's as long as Chaos Thrust - both seem to take forever to apply the thing. It's not about animation lock so much as it is about when it actually lands.

Secondly ... Why in the flying hell is your Skill Speed so low??
Because you were using a 2.5 GCD in your calculations, so I did, as well? I just clarified that I was using base sks as my point of reference. I never said it's how much sks I have on my Paladin (seen here). I have both characters linked to this account... Not sure if it's possible to see both in my profile or whatever.

This conversation has led to me paying attention to some very interesting things over my last few Extreme Roulette's.
Never looked to deeply into it all. That's pretty neat stuff!

That ... doesn't quite make sense, especially not as a "maximum."
And here's where you just go completely off the rails arguing against something I never said. We were specifically talking about a 40s encounter against 3 mobs when I mentioned 39 autos. 13 per mob at 3 mobs is 39. You were calculating (incorrectly) 20 per mob at 3 mobs for 60 autos. I never once extrapolated beyond this to more enemies. So you then go on to say how wrong I am when you apply a comment about 3 mobs to an enemy group of 4 or larger. What is that intended to prove? That the comment I made is still completely correct?

All of your discussion here backs up the fact that [time]x[mobs]/3 = Maximum amount of auto-attacks you'll take in any given encounter. None of your findings dispute this. So all you did is corroborate my point that 39 is the maximum amount of autos you'll see in a 3-mob encounter that lasts 40s.

Like - this discredits quite literally half of your post, from you simply misunderstanding and misrepresenting the very accurate point I made regarding how many hits you'll take in an encounter.

It would seem that you are also working with the wrong numbers here.
I'll just start with RoH not being "roughly 1 second" anymore than it is "roughly 2 seconds" since it's more like ~1.5-1.6s with my 2.38 gcd. Rounding down to 1 is arguably a worse estimation than me rounding it up to 2. Neither is good, though, is the bottom line here, so let's not play the "I'm right, you're wrong" card. Neither of us is right on this count in our calculations.

And I will repeat, again, that Goring Blade is stronger than Rage of Halone the instant the Goring Blade attack does damage. It doesn't need a single DoT tick to be more damage. If you can then hit another Riot Blade before that Goring Blade mob dies, you've gotten more potency than you would have from a Royal Authority. We're currently (at a 2.4s gcd) sitting 12-17s into the encounter. Spoiler alert! That mob isn't dead yet. Let me say this again and hopefully get it through to you this time.

Goring Blade does not need 24 seconds of uptime in order to be your strongest attack by a wide margin on any given mob.

Another thing that made a substantial difference was the dodge rate caused by adequately spreading out Blinds using Flash.
This is fair, but it's worthwhile to note that the blind effect seen here can be done using Goring Blade as well. You can Flash once to get them to stick and then Flash again after the first Goring Blade combo, like you're doing with Rage of Halone. This may be shocking to you... but if you have 3 mobs, Rage of Halone doesn't do much more to hold all three of them to you than Goring Blade does. One of them with RoH still ate a 0 bonus enmity hit, and you can still somehow get to Flash without losing hate.

When coupled with Sheltron>Shield Swipe on the Fast Blade target and Circle of Scorn, stuff is stuck to you pretty well (for ~10s) with just the 1 leading Flash and a Goring Blade combo. You have until the BLM drops Flare or the SMN drops Deathflare to make sure things are on you solid - before then, the enmity generated by DPS is low. At sweet levels of Spell Speed, Fire III is still ~2.7s cast, and each of the following 3 Fire II's is also ~2.7s to cast, and then the Flare takes upwards of 3, putting us easily above 10s before the hammer drops, which is more than enough time for flash > combo > flash. And Dreadwyrm Trance requires 3 stacks of Aetherflow to be spent and then a solid 10s of dot ticks before Deathflare drops. Plenty of time.

No, I'm not misunderstanding.
... It's exactly the same thing. I took the exact wording I used and broke it down for you, because you misinterpreted the clear context I had given in my first post. Go back and read it.

You actually pointed out the issue right here.
Whoooosh. That's the sound of my point flying over your head. Let me break this down in steps for you.

In Grit:
Dark Knight uses no moves with additional enmity mods and can maintain solid hate throughout an encounter without ever needing to touch Power Slash if they remain in Grit.

In Shield Oath:
Paladin spends more than 20% of their GCDs on a skill which generates additional enmity (Savage Blade) while also pressing two off-gcd attacks on 25s and at-worst-30s intervals, each of which both add to overall dps output and generate additional enmity.

The argument:
A Paladin in Shield Oath should never - under any circumstances outside of tank swaps with a Warrior - need to use Rage of Halone for purposes of hate generation. They're packing so much passive threat in their main DPS combo that it's ludicrous for you to make a statement like you did:

You wrote, and I'm quoting here "with Shield Oath active, you should never ever need to hit RoH to maintain hate." Which, at first glance, indicates that you never use RoH at all, even in your opener (hence the words "never ever"). I think you can understand how someone would think that a statement like this is wildly misleading and flat out false, because it is.

Actual, hard comparison of enmity/second of off-gcd attacks from PLD and DRK:
DRK:
Low Blow: 100/25 = 4
Dark Passenger: 150/30 = 5
Plunge: 200/30 = 6.7
Carve and Spit: 450/60 = 7.5
Salted Earth: 75x7/45 = 11.7

Total: 34.8 at worst

PLD:
CoS: 450/25 = 18
Shield Swipe: 525/30 = 17.5
Shield Swipe: 525/15 = 35

Total: 35.5 at worst

Now, in fairness, I ignored Reprisal, which WILL proc, but is a +3.5 enmity/second gain, at best. And that isn't even beginning to consider the fact that Paladin's enmity per gcd is VASTLY superior to Dark Knight's. Grit and Shield Oath provide the same passive boost (x2.7) so let's look at rotational enmity, now.

DRK:
Scourge>DA+SE>Delirium>DA+SE>Delirium
[ 500+(150+250+400)x2+(150+250+280)x2 ] / 13 = 266.15 enmity potency per gcd.

PLD:
GB>RA>RA
[ 150+230+590+(150+200x3.5+350)x2 ] / 9 = 374.44 enmity potency per gcd.

That extra 3.5 from Reprisal isn't gonna matter when comparing these.

This is not a vague claim - it's a fact of how much enmity the two Jobs generate when using their maximum DPS combos in tank stance. DRK holds solid without using Power Slash when in Grit with a drastically lower output of enmity, so it stands to reason that Paladin can do the same, considering the massive amount of additional hate that they can shit out.

I was simply pointing out that their is a trade-off made between the two.
The major flaw with the testing you did was that you were testing with DF, not with a solid group doing the same thing from pull to pull. The DPS of the party fluctuates each time you hop back into the dungeon, causing there to be no constant in your testing. A test without a baseline - a test with no Control Group - is not a scientific test that should be taken seriously. You're not testing anything other than the gross disparity between different party comps and different player skill levels. Saying "I didn't notice any notable difference in encounter length when I changed my rotation" doesn't imply anything when you're changing any of the following variables between those two tests:

1. Which Mobs are being fought.
2. How many Mobs are being fought.
3. The Jobs of the DPS players in the instance.
4. The players who are playing the DPS players.
5. The person playing the healer, and what Job they are.
6. What cooldowns you use to mitigate damage in that pull.
7. What buffs you use for offensive potency in that pull, like Fight or Flight.

And a small sample size in this game is incredibly misleading due to the drastic variance that you can get simply from a DPS inflicting critical hits with AoE attacks. You'd need dozens of pulls to replicate to the point that you would see the calculable differences between these two strategies in terms of encounter time.

At the end of the day, it's the same argument people give for using Potions to increase DPS output - it's another buff that does absolutely increase how much damage you do. The problem is that variance in damage and critical hit rate can make you do more damage without a Potion than you do on the next pull with one. Potions don't increase your flat damage output on a given pull - they increase the average damage output that you'll do over all pulls.

Same exact thing applies here. Sure, you didn't notice a difference when swapping with variables all over the place, but there's no way of knowing whether or not using Goring Blade combos actually did NOT accelerate the pull. The numbers say, flat out, that it did. It's not really a thing that's up for debate. I will argue forever that the "benefit" of strength debuffs on a single target in a multi-target encounter is negligible in comparison to how much damage you leave on the table when you do such a combo. As a point of comparison, my Paladin currently:

Shield Oath on a dummy:
FB>SB>RoH:
580 + 780 + 1000 = 2360 damage

FB>RB>GB:
580 + 930 + 970 = 2480
With 200 damage DoT ticks.

The amount of damage you sacrifice by using RoH over GB is massive and only increases the longer the mobs stay alive.


I won't argue your last set of points re: DPS composition and comfort level, since that's completely fair, but I still disagree that a top-skilled player who is using Paladin in dungeons should ever be hitting RoH on trash pulls, unless they messed up their rotation and lost hate on something. That's all I'm arguing here. It's not a judgment call - it's not something that is just as beneficial either way. One method is clearly superior. I have yet to see any discussion from you or anyone else which has remotely convinced me otherwise.



PS. On the topic of Shield Swipe - it was absolutely a buff to Paladin, but a nerf to the skill. It increases PLD's overall damage output, while decreasing the utility of the skill in comparison to how it used to be. It was a DPS loss post-3.0 to use Shield Swipe more than once between Goring Blade applications - and even that once was pushing it.

[Yuni_Queen]

Each individual hit of the move is weaker than it once was, and it's enmity multiplier was not adjusted at all to compensate for that reduction. It's dps value also varied dramatically depending on the circumstances, as a full 2.5 second rotation of shield swipe (proc'd by Bulwark) generated a combo potency of 630.

Ooooh, so that's what you meant. But, Shield swipe in 2.0 had enmity bonus? weren't those just dmg + pacification effect? I am almost sure enmity to Shield Swipe was given in 3.0!

[Launched]

however, the actual potency of the attack was reduced from 210 to 150. Each individual hit of the move is weaker than it once was, and it's enmity multiplier was not adjusted at all to compensate for that reduction. It's dps value also varied dramatically depending on the circumstances, as a full 2.5 second rotation of shield swipe (proc'd by Bulwark) generated a combo potency of 630.

That doesn't matter at all. In 2.55, Shield Swipe was 6.67 potency higher than the average of the Halone combo. You could use it 100 times and only gain 667 potency over an entire fight, while with the new one you hit 600 potency in 4 uses and 750 in 5 uses. That's completely ignoring the fact that Shield Swipe was completely useless with Goring/Royal added to the mix.

I don't see why they gave Shield Swipe a CD and reduced its damage. It should a very low CD, around 3sec, and most preferably no CD at all at its current potency value.

Its current potency is great. It's the same potency per second (or close enough) as Spirits Within (300 with 30s cooldown) and Circle of Scorn on a single target (250 potency with 25s cooldown) if you're not horribly unlucky with block procs.

[JackFross]

Ooooh, so that's what you meant. But, Shield swipe in 2.0 had enmity bonus? weren't those just dmg + pacification effect? I am almost sure enmity to Shield Swipe was given in 3.0!

I'm almost 100% sure you're right on this. It was 40 TP, 210 potency, GCD, but didn't have enmity built in until 3.0. His argument is still "right" though, in that in 3.0 it had a 3.5x multiplier at 210 potency and then it was reduced to 150 potency but kept the 3.5x multiplier.

The problem with that thinking (and why you're right to not consider it a nerf and he's wrong to think of it that way) is that now you can use it while maintaining your usual combo. It doesn't slow down you approach to Savage Blade or Rage of Halone, merely gives you additional hate on the way.

It can be viewed as a nerf to the skill (it DID lose potency) but it was an overall buff to the Job and a strictly positive change with no negative side-effects at all.