Job Recommendation: Paladin Tanking and Area of Effect

[Brian_]

Well with multi-dotting from GB, PLD's potency per GCD is not bad. It's just that not many people play PLD correctly in AoE situations. You only want to flash a bare minimum to hold enmity. All your other GCDs should be spent tab targetting GB.

For PLD, on a 3 target pull, 150, 230, 640 = 340 PPGCD
For WAR, on a 3 target pull, OP is your highest potency GCD at 360. 360, 360, 360 = 360 PPGCD
For DRK, on a 3 target pull, Abyssal Drain is your highest spammed potency GCD at 360. 360, 360, 360 = 360 PPGCD

Of course for WAR and DRK, they have other things on the side like DRK's Scourge multi-dotting, Dark Passenger, Salted Earth, and WAR has higher resource sustain and Decimate. So, PLD does fall behind despite things like CoS. But, it's not that bad. In fact, unless they add a lot of potency to flash, it doesn't even really help.

So, it's just on very large groups of enemies where PLD really falls behind and adding potency to flash might help. I don't think SE designs their dungeons with the intent that we make huge pulls. That's something the community has done. In raid content, there aren't many situations where mass AoE is relevant. In A5S you have the pig packs which good groups skip or use to pad their fflogs. In A6S you have Swindler adds which some groups LB. In A7S and A8S you have nothing.

[Kitfox]

Well with multi-dotting from GB, PLD's potency per GCD is not bad. It's just that not many people play PLD correctly in AoE situations. You only want to flash a bare minimum to hold enmity. All your other GCDs should be spent tab targetting GB....

That sounds pretty bad. Goring Blade is a DoT that rarely gets all its ticks, so the PPGCD is less than 340. Then any Flash thrown in there is 0 PPGCD that further drops it. Not to mention swapping Oaths is also a 0 potency GCD while WAR and DRK can drop their stance oGCD. The other tanks have a higher base of 360 PPGCD, that then goes up instead of down like for PLD. Why?

It's bad and could be better. There's really no good reason why it is so bad. If people dislike the idea of Flash doing damage, I'd replace the whole ability with a new one that actually feels good to use.

[Brian_]

If your DPS is killing the mobs in less than 24 seconds and costing you GB's full damage potential then they're also dropping the DRK and WAR below their 360 PPGCD, too. And, on 2 targets, PLD is even better. If you haven't realized, GB is the strongest weapon skill in the game and is at its best in lower multi-target situations. In this way, they are not very different from BRD. The more targets you have the worse PLD gets in comparison to DRK and WAR. If they're taking 24 seconds or more, you're getting the full value out of GB.

A PLD can also drop their stance oGCD and should. At least that negates the damage penalty from ShO. Any PLD worth their salt is used to doing this already because it has been the norm since forever. If you're going to activate SwO then the GCD price is the cost. For any PLD that knows what they're doing, SwO is only ever a DPS gain so I don't know what you're complaining about.

[RLofOBFL]

You have to use 3 skills to use ONE goring.

Abyssal/OP can be used 3 times in the time you get one Goring dot on one baddie. And they hit every enemy where GB hits one enemy. So in any situation with say 4+ enemies PLD loses. Not to mention Flash doing 0 damage & eating a GCD. Besides that the fun is restoring hp or doing aome type of side effect where we get BLIND. Blegh.

DRK cannot drop Grit during mid combo, so it's fair with PLD, but SwO is a GCD where Darkside is not. But the problem with that is you waste an entire attack changing to attack mode, permanently lowering your overall damage output for the entire fight.

Furthermore, GB only does 3000-5000 damage including the actual hit. I have the 240 weapon & have counted every tick. If every hit crits it will be 5000 damage, that is 8 ticks & 1 hit.

Fell Cleave with my WAR with a 210(30 ilvls lower!) weapon does 3100(5K crit) damage with maim & storm's path, 2500(3.9K crit) normally & has increased crit rate due to Deliverence & only needs one hit to crit where PLD would need 9. So potency wise it's the highest but overall it is weaker than FC.

But that's a different argument. PLD is fine, I just want some AOE ;_;

[Kitfox]

Why do DRK and WAR drop down in short burst? DRK I can understand because of Salted Earth being a DoT, but WAR? If anything, wouldn't WAR get better at short burst because of Berserk and TP limitations?

The problem I have with GB is that it takes up to 7.5 secs to apply, so just getting the first one out means the mob actually has to live closer to 30 seconds to get the full effect out, and in the case of 3 mobs, closer to 50 secs for the last one. Also, GB isn't available for anything below lvl54, whereas Overpower and Unleash are. Am I missing something here?

Yes, GB is great in low multi-target scenarios with mobs that live long, but my gripe is Flash and how bad PLD is in dungeons where a typical pull is 3-9 mobs and where the packs die in 20-30 seconds.

I have to admit that I never played PLD enough to get into dropping ShO for the skill damage gain, so I'll have to try that out. The annoyance with SwO GCD ties to GB application, as it pushes back the ticks even further. Eg. Flash twice for initial hate, switch Oath, 7 seconds have passed and GB combo isn't even started, and now mobs have to live closer to 37 seconds for full effect, just on the first GB. WAR/DRK also switch into their dps stance to unlock their full dps potential with an oGCD, while PLD only unlocks about half of it by dropping Oath.

[Raim]

Paladin's oaths being GCD locked and costing mana each time makes it impractical to stance dance as often as the other two, and without the self healing potential short of 2 Clemency casts (there goes your MP for Flash and you contributed no damage) it feels very unwieldy to switch to Sword Oath on any group larger than say 2-3. As the so called defensive tank thats why I wanted to have this discussion so we could theorize something that would make their contributions more weighty while in Shield Oath rather than having them act like the other two and focus on stance dancing. I don't want them to have as good AoE DPS as the others, but as it stands right now they are a hindrance to dungeon groups and if Palace of the Dead ends up being popular Paladin will be one of the last picked tanks for fixed compositions. Another alternative could be to have Flash reset or extend the DoT component of Scorn.

[Xlantaa]

Well. I can see new skill for 4.0 maybe. Or, few ideas to be more accurate.

1. An in-combo AoE: E.G -> Fast Blade -> Savage Blade -> Sacred Field (cone AoE with 120 potencya and 100/120 TP comsuption), but NO ENMITY (Tis is for DPS only, not for Enmity)

2. A Stand alone Sacred Field, 120 potency, 120 TP.

3. A Magick type Sacred Field AoE that consumes MP instead of TP. Let's say, around 700 MP (so, you can use like 5-6, dependign if you use Flash or not)

I think this can be done.

[The_NPC]

if my memory serves me don't NPC Gladiator's use a move called "Spirits Without" (since there GLD so they can't have "Spirits within" which is a PLD job skill) that is a small rectangle AoE... if they added that AoE to our same move there we have an AoE that makes sence sorta (would have to make ours a bit longer/wider as NPC move is made for VS players not Mob-adds 2-3x a player in size). I want them to do something about Sword Oath really as most time that 50 potancy to auto-attacks isn't even worth the MP to use unless u'r gona be OT for fair awhile even a bonus of 10 potancy to all attacks would be better than a bonus 50 DMG every AA when OT.

Personally like PLD as is I just feal useless in AoE mob holding is my only gripe (using Cover on the MT while they have a few vulnribility debuffs is always fun, even more when u hallowed Brutial Justice & Cover the OT who ran to becide u.... cheesing Mechanics is anyway fun with PLD)

[Kitfox]

I want them to do something about Sword Oath really as most time that 50 potancy to auto-attacks isn't even worth the MP to use unless u'r gona be OT for fair awhile even a bonus of 10 potancy to all attacks would be better than a bonus 50 DMG every AA when OT.

Sword Oath by itself is actually extremely powerful. Auto-attacks are faster than GCD (generally anyway), so having 50 extra potency attached to all of them is more damage than 10 potency attached to both AAs and GCDs. If you wanted to add that 10 potency only to abilities, that would actually end up being even weaker.

[Raim]

I don't want to think too far ahead into 4.0 content because for all we know the staff may focus primarily on traits to avoid skill bloat in the future. Thats why I think the solution lies in a trait or change to an already existing skill that could be implemented even before the expansion and possibly available at lower levels to help supplement Paladin leveling in groups. We don't need to focus entirely on building each class' skillset on max level content because that can leave them vitally lacking in early levels.