PLD highest DPS tank single target

[Lambdafish]

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.

The big problem with this is that this used to be how it was, PLD was the mitigation tank, and WAR was the damage tank, it worked really well and you would have a PLD and WAR on your team and everything would be good.

By releasing DRK it threw a massive curve ball into the system and meant that one tank was always competing for a slot. This is why DRK is the magic tank and PLD is the physical tank, which only served to strengthen WAR as an all-round mitigation and DPS tank. By making PLD good against all types of damage, DRK would be strictly the worst tank, and we would have this problem all over again.

[Sarcatica]

Current meta is MT able to flex both PLD/DRK depending on strats and composition. I am actually fine with this as they do achieve different things. It's just ironic that SE believes that every tank can clear any content albeit having the right comp to clear is way easier rather than changing. So it's both the community having to enforce compositions that suit themselves and SE getting the shorter end of it. Because you know, people like to play what's OP.

[Fernosaur]

Agreed.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.

I agree with all of this, particularly the part about the party buffs. I think it's really silly that Paladin is the only class that thematically forms part of a military organization, and yet it has absolutely nothing of worth to give to the party from this piece of lore and flavor. Also, the part where PLD could be the best tank at mitigating stuff. It would make solo healing things much easier and could open up different party comp possibilities. They would have to really up WAR and DRK's damage for that, though, which isn't necessarily bad, but yeah.

[Lyth]

The most important factor in determining tank dps is the amount of time that you spend out of tank stance. Your ability to stay out of stance depends mainly on the rate of incoming damage. In most fights, the bulk of the incoming damage (i.e. 40-70%) on a tank is in the form of auto-attacks, and to a lesser extent, cleaves. PLD has three unique advantages in this regard: block, Shelltron, and RoH.

The parry calculation thread from earlier this week showed that your shield provides about a 4% damage reduction advantage over the other two tanks in low parry configurations. When you combine that with 10% strength down from RoH and the additional damage reduction from Sheltron on cleaves, your incoming damage profile should be significantly smoother than a WAR or DRK. This gets converted into an offensive advantage by allowing you to spend less time in tank stance. This is where you can catch up with your dps.

Fights with magical autos are a bit of an equaliser of sorts, but they penalise everyone. DRK loses reprisal, and the main advantage that we're left with is DM. This is handy, but you need to burn a DA to power it up above 15% magical damage reduction, so it doesn't grant nearly the same passive advantage that PLD has in a physical fight with Shield + Sheltron (compare this to 23-28% damage reduction on a block). At the end of the day, all three tank jobs have to be more clever about their cooldown usage to stay out of tank stance in these types of fights.

PLD's main strength is in its ability to simplify fights, both for yourself and your raid group. HG is the most powerful tank cooldown in the game. In several cases, you can outright cheese mechanics with it. You can bypass tank swaps in fights like A7S by denying stacks. You can redirect stacks to yourself as OT using Cover. You can chain stun adds with the only on-demand tank stun move. You are the only tank with access to silence (wasn't DRK supposed to be the magic tank?) DV protects the raid from big AoE hits, such as every second Akh Morn in Nidhogg. It's an absolute joy to play in these fights.

It's easy to look at another tank job's advantages and want them for yourself. The important thing is to find one that you're passionate about and learn to push it to its maximum potential. I'd main DRK even if it was terrible (and it was viewed as such, up until Gordias arrived). If you can't say the same for PLD, maybe it isn't the right fit for you. Fix the player before the class.

[Destous]

snip

Sheltron shines against physical busters, in which case you're in shield oath anyway. Additionally, block rate is as unreliable as parry rate for damage reduction.
If you're using RoH, it means you didn't use RA; that's a DPS loss.
DM is better than relying on blocks because DM is player controlled instead of RNG controlled; also, DM is saved for busters and not for magic auto attack reduction.
HG is overpowered, and it sits at a 7min CD because of it; this inevitably means that you only get one HG per encounter while a DRK or WAR can easily get 2 uses (3 for WAR) out of their anti-death CD; it's not strictly an advantage for PLD.

PLD needs work mostly related to AoE damage, and to a slightly lesser extent it needs work on some of its underperforming CDs. Your example of using Cover to steal stacks in a7s exists in a bubble; and is arguably no more effective overall than hitting Provoke instead and getting the tank swap. It'd also be strange to leave a PLD as OT for any longer than is strictly required, especially if paired with WAR.

[Jonnycbad]

I don't see why they can't make Circle of Scorn a weapon skill and remove the DoT. It would lower our single target DPS a bit by losing an oGCD, but they could buff Spirits Within by 25 potency or something to compensate.

[Destous]

I don't see why they can't make Circle of Scorn a weapon skill and remove the DoT. It would lower our single target DPS a bit by losing an oGCD, but they could buff Spirits Within by 25 potency or something to compensate.

CoS works well as an oGCD skill. They could rework Flash into a wide cone that does 100 potency damage, and it would make a huge difference.

[Lyth]

I'm not talking about tankbusters at all. Mitigating tankbusters is a fundamental pass-fail check on a tank. I'm assuming a basic level of tanking experience where you've mapped out not only every tankbuster, but also every cleave and AoE, and are starting to look at ways of spending as much of the fight safely out of stance as possible. In situations like these, you use your cooldown rotation to soften damage spikes from tanking out of stance.

While proc-based defensive abilities like parry and block are "unreliable" for tankbusters, they really start to shine when you look at them across a large number of hits (i.e. autos). Remember how I said that about 40-70% of the damage in a given fight is auto-attacks? Often this represents upwards of 600k damage over the course of a ten-minute fight. Having a shield may not be of benefit on a given tankbuster, but plays a significant role in controlling the overall rate of incoming damage, allowing you to tank out of stance.

RoH is a dps loss. But it's a bigger dps loss to use RA in ShO than it is to use RoH in SwO. It's better to make a small concession than a big one. If RoH keeps you out of tank stance, use it.

DM is not reserved for tankbusters. You can mitigate any tankbuster set comfortably using level 50 PLD cooldowns or their equivalent. You have a lot of bonus cooldowns at your disposal. A cooldown should never go unused for longer than its recast time. If it does, you should burn it to allow yourself to drop stance. DADM is a bit like IB on WAR. It's convenient if you somehow mess up your cooldown rotation, but it's also a dps loss if you end up having to use it. Regular DM is extremely versatile and has some use even in predominantly physical fights, where you can always burn it on an AoE heavy segment.

The key difference between HG and the other cooldowns is that it prevents damage. This isn't just a clutch save issue. If damage is a requirement for a stack or debuff mechanic to activate, you break the mechanic. It's one of the most powerful abilities in the game. You generally will use it twice per fight, as most progression fights are longer than seven minutes in length, and you don't hold a cooldown for longer than its recast timer.

Tank swaps result in dps losses. You can minimise this with good execution, but it's still a loss. This may be more a consequence of the fact that DRK/WAR tends to be less hung up on the "I'm MT" mindset, but my personal preference is to swap at natural points in the fight rather than swapping back simply to artificially preserve MT/OT designations. Cover is a niche skill which gives your raid an alternate way of working around this issue. You don't have to use it if you don't want to, but the option is there.

[Lambdafish]

CoS works well as an oGCD skill. They could rework Flash into a wide cone that does 100 potency damage, and it would make a huge difference.

I disapprove of this, Flash does need a rework, but making it LITERALLY overpower is not the right direction

[Destous]

I disapprove of this, Flash does need a rework, but making it LITERALLY overpower is not the right direction

As opposed to making it literally Unleash?

Overpower has a narrow cone. Flash could have a wide cone, like you see on one of those tree mobs, and maybe a 5s CD.