Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

[Kiteless]

If anything, I would hope that any new skills DRK and PLD gain in 4.0 go towards making them more useful in the OT position. PLD can't get any simpler than it already is, and the major element of DRK that I enjoy is the complexity of its rotations, as you're always doing something with it.

As for WAR... WAR needs nothing.

[SpookyGhost]

As for WAR... WAR needs nothing.

WAR never changes...

[aleph_null]

Tbh as a war I'd like to have fracture potency boosted, and they can rebalance the dps by reducing the potency somewhere else. It just feels too minor of a dps gain to maintain 24/7, considering the risk of losing fell cleaves in a given phase of a fight.

[LilLemay]

That's my point, we can't make content that requires a PLD, so they need to go down a different route with the jobs core in order to make it able to compete with the other tanks (It is now raid viable but still falls short of the mark).

I'd hardly say it falls short of the mark.

Given that WAR is without a doubt the best OT, and that PLD is almost definitely the strongest MT, with the strongest defensive cooldowns, the best damage mitigation, and despite what everyone thinks can still put out decent dps (I normally parse about 1k - 1.2k as a MT in a9s - a11s) I hardly see the reason to take a DRK at all. The extra 100, 200 maybe dps you'd gain from taking a DRK isn't going to make much of a difference, nor should your party's dps be at the point where the MT doing amazing dps is what's making or breaking a dps check clear. Also in the light of PLD's utility capabilities, it's superior ''super'' cooldown (Hallowed), and it's raw damage mitigation it's more suited to taking repeated punches to the face than a DRK is anyway

It doesn't really matter that DRK can do a bit more dps when a PLD can make BOTH the healer AND the dps lives easier with DV, meaning your OffHealer has more time to push some dps and your main healer spends less time pulling their hair out trying to keep the MT and the rest of the party alive

As a straight OT, no you probably don't want a PLD, but given the nature of most savage content, there's at least a few tank swaps, and given that PLD is the best MT and WAR is the best OT, I'd say it's DRK that falls short of the mark if anything.

To clarify, I'm pretty sure all the tanks are viable for an MT role, I just think PLD fulfills MT better and WAR fulfills OT better

[Ahrniel]

You know what I wanna see Fracture do?
Increase the chance that any attack done to the enemy will crit by 10%.

[Sarcatica]

I'd hardly say it falls short of the mark.

Given that WAR is without a doubt the best OT, and that PLD is almost definitely the strongest MT, with the strongest defensive cooldowns, the best damage mitigation, and despite what everyone thinks can still put out decent dps (I normally parse about 1k - 1.2k as a MT in a9s - a11s) I hardly see the reason to take a DRK at all. The extra 100, 200 maybe dps you'd gain from taking a DRK isn't going to make much of a difference, nor should your party's dps be at the point where the MT doing amazing dps is what's making or breaking a dps check clear. Also in the light of PLD's utility capabilities, it's superior ''super'' cooldown (Hallowed), and it's raw damage mitigation it's more suited to taking repeated punches to the face than a DRK is anyway

It doesn't really matter that DRK can do a bit more dps when a PLD can make BOTH the healer AND the dps lives easier with DV, meaning your OffHealer has more time to push some dps and your main healer spends less time pulling their hair out trying to keep the MT and the rest of the party alive

As a straight OT, no you probably don't want a PLD, but given the nature of most savage content, there's at least a few tank swaps, and given that PLD is the best MT and WAR is the best OT, I'd say it's DRK that falls short of the mark if anything.

To clarify, I'm pretty sure all the tanks are viable for an MT role, I just think PLD fulfills MT better and WAR fulfills OT better

PLD is currently in the state where DRK heavily outweighs the MT slot due to the amount of magic damage in A12S, which means that DRK can do better job being the best MT as of the current patch. I am way more surprised that I haven't even heard anyone I know openly complaining about PLD being practically a huge downgrade to DRK in this fight, except for the cleared MTs i know ofc. PLD is at 10% of DRK's total clear for A12S based on FFlogs. You are basically taxing your WAR to tank more for you because you have very limited CDs to cycle for tank busters. PLD is indeed better for A9S-A11S currently but DRK can do just fine, which eliminates the need of a PLD.

Again, in the best scenario, healers don't even need DV to top up, nice to have but not necessary. Healers can also still DPS, basically every single one can DPS safely. DRK can do more DPS for sure, PLD loses out by a good margin. 1.5k dps VS 1.3k dps is something to sweat about if you are into speedrun. Hallowed doesn't do anything too spectacular either. You pretty much use it twice and DRK can match that easily. So again, PLD is the underdog in this current patch. You can try to prove otherwise but the data denies that heavily. Unless if SE makes a fight that heavily favours PLD for physical damage, DRK still remains to the best MT overall which has been the case for 3 raid patches so far.

EDIT: Here is the data btw.

https://www.fflogs.com/rankings/13#b...kKnight&page=4
https://www.fflogs.com/rankings/13#b...l&spec=Paladin

[Lyth]

Don't touch tanks pls. Our rotations are fine. I don't wanna fall asleep between tank-busters.

What's this in relation to specifically? I know that there are plans to overhaul the cross-class system, redundant skills, and potentially the stat system, but I don't see how any of this would make the tank jobs rotationally simpler (is there room to make them simpler?) The only potential issue that I see at the moment is that if cross-class skills become role specific (i.e. subdivided into tank, healer, melee dps, caster dps, and physical ranged dps common skill pools), then PLD may potentially lose access to Stoneskin unless they integrate it back as a core skill on the job. I don't foresee access to Stoneskin being shared with WAR and DRK.

As far as "redundant" abilities go, the main issue with Fracture is that you lose 4 out of 10 possible ticks for using the untraited version, making it a fairly weak cross-class. Some skills are the opposite and are better used as cross-class: Feint may not see much use on DRG, but Bards can make use of it under WM as a sort of makeshift Scathe. Let's not mention the fact that Savage Blade and Butcher's Block are listed as tank cross-class skills, with no cross-class value whatsoever. An overhaul was long in order.

If anything, the implementation of the double cross hotbar system and the mention of new skills from 60-70 suggest that our rotations might gain more depth in the future. We may see players given more tools to help them manage their rotations or skill changes to make mistakes less punishing, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as there's room for skilled play.

[Brannigan]

I am way more surprised that I haven't even heard anyone I know openly complaining about PLD being practically a huge downgrade to DRK in this fight, except for the cleared MTs i know ofc.

Stage 7: Acceptance.

I pretty much knew I would be forced off paladin as soon as we saw the normal mode fight. I stayed on paladin for the whole time on brute justice and it probably cost us weeks (no mnk). It's a stupid situation but it's one I expect by now. Hopefully 4.0 pushes paladin and dark knight away from each other gameplay wise but closer to each other in capability. Without that it'll always be this way since raid damage is just harder to deal with than tank damage and physical tank damage is never so high that a dark knight can't take it with some adjustments to virus placement, etc.

With that said you can certainly make pld's cooldowns work for every buster with an early HG but everything is just easier with dark mind and reprisal anyway. I also don't really want to derail this thread.

Regardless of anything else they do in the expansion I really hope they cut Awareness.

[SpookyGhost]

DRK > PLD in A12S.

~But~ like how DRK can do 9-11 (DRK knocked down the towers), PLD can do 12. DV is also pretty okay in there for Mega Holy stuff. Obviously it doesn't beat out the magic mitigation, Reprisal, and the ability to do the 3rd part of the add phase the correct way that DRK brings but it can still do the thing. You also have the 1st part of the add phase where PLD just does CoS and then pretends like it's doing something worthwhile.

But yeah. It's not like A4S or whatever, there's no DPS check that can't be met, it's just you have less mitigation and less AOE damage so if you had the choice between your MT playing PLD or DRK you'd prefer DRK, but you'd take a PLD (especially if the PLD was a gr8 PLD vs herpderp DRKs).

2x WAR is also an option but... *shrug*

[Februs]

Stage 7: Acceptance.

Basically this.

I think a lot of Pld's have come to the realization at this point that their job is just not keeping pace, and SE doesn't at all seem invested in trying to do anything to fix that. It's almost like they're always playing catch up. Each new patch leaces Pld behind, then they get minor patches later to make them temporarily viable until the next major patch puts them out to pasture again. It's been back and forth like that for the entire expansion, and it's exhausting to put up with. It's easier to just swap to War or Drk and not have to worry about it at all, rather than sticking it our for the sake of the underdog.

Regardless of anything else they do in the expansion I really hope they cut Awareness.

I think War's would weep at this, because it pairs magnificently well for them. Even Drks see a better pairing with it when using it with Dark Dance. Pld's, on the other hand, probably couldn't care less. It might be a different story if the CD timers lined up better, but right now it's not really something to bat an eyelash at.