PLD highest DPS tank single target

[Destous]

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It's a deeper issue than it would appear on the surface. Yeah, 640 potency for 50 TP sounds great, but spending 30% of your time doing a DoT combo isn't ideal. Take a look at Scourge; 500 total potency for one GCD, and it lasts longer which means less time devoted to applying a DoT and more time managing 3 other combos. The same is true of Fracture. It's also worth noting that the extra GCDs matter.

Goring Blade = 3 GCDs and 1020 total potency for 3 GCDs. 3 GCDs worth of Scourge is 1500 potency; and even Fracture isn't far behind with 3 GCDs worth of itself coming in at 900. Taking 3x as long to apply the DoT matters.

Additionally, the combo leading up to Goring Blade offers mediocre benefits; you get some extra MP that you didn't need. Compared that to Demolish, where the combo leading up to it provides a blunt resistance/int debuff on the boss, a personal 5% damage boost, and a 10% damage/attack speed buff. The combo leading into Chaos Thrust provides a piercing resistance debuff. Spinning Edge only requires 2 GCDs, so it's not strictly comparable. The point being that for Demolish and Chaos Thrust, the GCDs leading up to the DoT provide benefits that the player would be picking up regardless of the DoT or not, and so the DoT acts as a nice bonus at the end of the GCD investment. Whereas with Goring Blade, the sole purpose is to apply the DoT, and the combo leading into it provides nothing worthwhile.

[Seku]

Again, PLD is not far behind DRK. PLD, by how it seems, is relegated to being the simple tank which by far is true. Balance is a very tough issue to address.

I'll take the better consistent and burst AoE and Single target damage tank jobs that make "casual content" go by at least 4-5 minutes faster and that heal just about the same over the tank job that only has niche utility at best.

Also, DRK needs to be looked at too. :/

[Lambdafish]

PLD does need some changes but straight DPS gain is not the solution. SE needs to justify PLD being the 'tankiest' by a larger margin of all tanks, like what YoshiP said.

Honestly I would rather them move away from the theme being of them being the "tankiest" job, as it's really hard to balance and at a point becomes irrelevant as all 3 tanks need to be able to survive. What I want is for PLD to become the support tank, something that fits even more thematically than tankiness. A tanky tank is very GLA, but a support tank, with it's cover, divine veil and clemency, is much more akin to a holy tank.

The OP is right that PLD needs SOME AOE damage, but it doesn't need a damage buff as such. What I would like to see is for PLD to get a holy shield ability in the future that gives a shield or regen when stepped in, and a small bleed if an enemy steps in, this means it can be used for support or DPS (or change it so that its ability is dependent on the stance the PLD is in like equilibrium).

Also, I am also in the camp for improvements to SwO, not to give it higher damage, but to make it a more interesting and fun skill, with OGDC added to promote stance dancing.

[Seku]

PLD should get more utility and some type of AoE damage.

Agreed. Would be nice if they actually went about making it to where shield blocks protect you from being interrupted while casting. Would make clemency more or less a guaranteed icure while MTing as long as the damage is physical.

[Lambdafish]

Agreed. Would be nice if they actually went about making it to where shield blocks protect you from being interrupted while casting. Would make clemency more or less a guaranteed icure while MTing as long as the damage is physical.

To me clemency is fine as is, it's an emergency tool, or an activator for divine veil (which is always easy to execute during ultimate moves as an example). This is especially apparent in PVP which I love doing as PLD, acting as a support class to keep your party alive with extra heals, SS, divine veil, cover and access to the best stun in the game, a silence and a pacify is a very robust toolkit for a support class which IMO is a preferred choice to WAR DPS in that situation.

Edit: Now that I think about it, the best way to improve clemency kills two birds with one stone, which is to give tempered will a surecast effect, but leave the actual skill as is, this works with the concept of the skill too, in that the PLD is an immovable wall, and nothing should stop the spell from casting.

[Destous]

To me clemency is fine as is, it's an emergency tool, or an activator for divine veil (which is always easy to execute during ultimate moves as an example). This is especially apparent in PVP which I love doing as PLD, acting as a support class to keep your party alive with extra heals, SS, divine veil, cover and access to the best stun in the game, a silence and a pacify is a very robust toolkit for a support class which IMO is a preferred choice to WAR DPS in that situation.

Clemency is garbage with no practical use in raids; and it's purely to do with the cast time. What SE should do is make it instant, cannot target self, and give it a CD; keep the mana cost, which is ~30% of your bar. You can still use it to activate Divine Veil, it heals the target and yourself already. Speaking of Divine Veil, the heal activation part is outright stupid. It's just an unnecessary middle man that prevents clutch shields from a PLD, even in a coordinated group because now you're dealing with PLD ping + healer ping as you try to time a shield. It's an asinine idea.

Cover should be ALL damage, not just physical. The idea of Cover is that the PLD steps in and takes damage for another player. There's no sense in making it only physical damage.
Shield Strike shouldn't have a CD longer than 5s. Sheltron should definitely reset that CD.

Flash needs an overhaul. It's the single most boring ability in the game. No damage, is completely unaffected by buffs, and why the hell is PLD a light bulb for AoE pulls? It's pure ineptitude that this skill still exists as it is.

[Hammerhorn]

Im hoping that PLD gets something OGC like LIKE dark passenger or a trait that adds damage to flash , I feel the tanks are pretty balanced when talking about survival but PLD has been low man on the dps pole too long. Im mostly a raider and have mained PLD forever also i have all 3 tanks to 60. On the A5 savage stone sea sky dummy im doing 1170 with a 230 weapon thats with 39 sec to spare on the dummy and even still thats 200 dps less than our War. Dps matters in raid talk about fairness all you want life has not been fair to Paladin and since the tanks have equal survivalbility this is a issue that will put PLD last picked for raids. Will i quit PLD , nope cuz I play him beyond what most people know how but i want to see better things for him so i at least have a chance to compete dps wise with War and Drk - All Hail Halone-

[Lambdafish]

Clemency is garbage with no practical use in raids; and it's purely to do with the cast time. What SE should do is make it instant, cannot target self, and give it a CD; keep the mana cost, which is ~30% of your bar. You can still use it to activate Divine Veil, it heals the target and yourself already. Speaking of Divine Veil, the heal activation part is outright stupid. It's just an unnecessary middle man that prevents clutch shields from a PLD, even in a coordinated group because now you're dealing with PLD ping + healer ping as you try to time a shield. It's an asinine idea.

Cover should be ALL damage, not just physical. The idea of Cover is that the PLD steps in and takes damage for another player. There's no sense in making it only physical damage.
Shield Strike shouldn't have a CD longer than 5s. Sheltron should definitely reset that CD.

Flash needs an overhaul. It's the single most boring ability in the game. No damage, is completely unaffected by buffs, and why the hell is PLD a light bulb for AoE pulls? It's pure ineptitude that this skill still exists as it is.

1. Clemency is not great, but it is not garbage, I have used it a fair amount during fight downtimes, and actually used it a fair bit in Thorden ex, where there are plenty of times when the boss isn't hitting the MT (sephirot phase 2 is another good time). You are correct that when it was 3 seconds it was terrible, but at its 2 seconds, it's not too bad to cast.

2. I do agree that cover should be all damage, I don't actually like the split between physical and magic damage, as SE really can't seem to balance it properly which greatly impacts the job.

3. Agreed again, as you say, it's not that flash is bad, it's perfectly fine, and as a cross class skill, is a good supplement for Wars toolkit, but as PLds primary AOE move, it is so boring. The blind is barely even noticed most of the time.

I hope SE has gathered a lot of feedback on PLD over this expansion and are working on bigger fixes to fix it's fundamental problems. However, back to the OP, saying that PLDs need more damage completely ignores the core problems of the job regardless of how true the sentiment is.

[Kacho_Nacho]

And again, contents outside raid don't have huge DPS checks, so play whatever you like and stop complaining especially to the people who have never raided seriously before. These people haven't tested the jobs to their limits and all they do is either complain or give their wrong opinions and they are so adamant about it, which seriously irks me so much tbh.

Thank you!

It is disheartening to like playing a low level paladin only to keep reading questionable statements about how no one wants to group with paladins at high levels because the other tanks can do much better damage. It affects my enjoyment of the class because who wants to put effort into leveling a job to 60 only to not be invited into any raids?

It is of some consolation paladins will always be wanted for content outside raids, though.

Personally, I believe the solution is to reestablish paladins as the damage mitigation tank. By that, I mean them having the best mitigation for all types of damage. Furthermore, the developers should make that matter.

[Vexed]

Personally, I believe the solution is to reestablish paladins as the damage mitigation tank. By that, I mean them having the best mitigation for all types of damage. Furthermore, the developers should make that matter.

Agreed. Paladin doesn't need to do a lot of damage, it needs to be able to survive through a lot more. That directly affects overall party DPS, be it four man content, eight man or even twenty-four. How? Well, the more resilient your tank is, the more the healer can step up and DPS in their place. Make paladin the beefiest of the tanks, keep flash the way it is, and let the healers make up for their low damage. As it stands for most content, PLD, DRK and WAR are all pretty well equal in terms of resiliency, so the healer will probably spend approximately the same amount of time dealing damage while healing any of the three. However, if paladin could sustain itself noticeably longer than warrior or dark, then that makes up for their lack of personal damage. Another solution would be to give Paladin a skill called War Drum. Have them pull out a drumstick and play a sick beat on their shield that rallies the party, causing a damage up buff. Bard tank best tank. This is a joke, but it is a legitimate compromise for paladin's lack of AOE dps. Give them party buffs.