The one thing I really want for Paladins

[Ultimatecalibur]

It doesn't matter what type of follow-up healing there is if everyone is dead before because they didn't have sufficient shielding and mitigation to survive the hit.

Any party wide attack that a Warrior/Paladin (and in theory Paladin/Dark Knight) composition can survive is survivable by a Warrior/Dark Knight composition that does not have Divine Veil. If the Healers can handle a heal check during for a Warrior/Dark Knight composition then the can usually handle the same check with a Warrior/Paladin composition without needing the Paladin to use Divine Veil. This leads to lazy Paladins not using the ability because they see that the party does not need it to complete content. I don't like this mentality but I admit that the mentality does exist.

You bring up Path. Okay, the only people who will say Path is bad, underutilized, or otherwise are the people who got carried to clears by their gear. They should not be talking about job / skill balance because their perception is skewed by gear balance. Everyone that knows the truth about Path knows that it's one of the best skills in the game. The same is true for DV. DV is not underutilized when in early prog you are planning your raid mitigation around skills like DV.

You were the one who brought up Path first and I full agree that it is one of the best defensive abilities in the game, but I believe that the general non-raiding population doesn't use Path or Divine Veil as much as they should/could use it because they can't really see how good they are.

Most raiders are not the ones underutilizing abilities like Path, DV and Tempered Will and are often the ones wishing that recast timers were shorter so that they can use them more.

Like I said, if your argument is that a skill is underutilized because it's not necessary in EX Primals after over gearing, then you can say maybe 90% of the skills in the game can be underutilized.

No, its underutilized because to many of players playing Paladins fail to use Divine Veil when the could/should use it.

In far to many Sophia EX parties just after 3.4 released (i.e. before overgearing, aka during progression) did I end up being the only Paladin using Divine Veil to help mitigate raid wide damage and far to few of the Warriors I was paired with would use Path to help lighten the load on the healers. This sort of stuff is why I feel that they are underutilized.

[Brian_]

Any party wide attack that a Warrior/Paladin (and in theory Paladin/Dark Knight) composition can survive is survivable by a Warrior/Dark Knight composition that does not have Divine Veil. If the Healers can handle a heal check during for a Warrior/Dark Knight composition then the can usually handle the same check with a Warrior/Paladin composition without needing the Paladin to use Divine Veil.

DRK/WAR comps can survive that eHP check because of Reprisal's 10% damage reduction. You either have the mitigation from Reprisal + Path, DV + Path, or DV + Reprisal. The tanks are balanced in terms of raid mitigation. If PLDs didn't have or didn't use DV, then no, the healers wouldn't be able to handle the same eHP check.

You were the one who brought up Path first and I full agree that it is one of the best defensive abilities in the game, but I believe that the general non-raiding population doesn't use Path or Divine Veil as much as they should/could use it because they can't really see how good they are.

In far to many Sophia EX parties just after 3.4 released (i.e. before overgearing, aka during progression) did I end up being the only Paladin using Divine Veil to help mitigate raid wide damage and far to few of the Warriors I was paired with would use Path to help lighten the load on the healers. This sort of stuff is why I feel that they are underutilized.

Content like Sophia EX and bad players who don't know how to play their job should not be the standard used judge whether or not skills are underutilized and should not be justification for why an ability needs to change. I could clear that content and out perform those players using <10 skills. Does that say something about the other >20 skills? No.

[Ultimatecalibur]

DRK/WAR comps can survive that eHP check because of Reprisal's 10% damage reduction. You either have the mitigation from Reprisal + Path, DV + Path, or DV + Reprisal. The tanks are balanced in terms of raid mitigation. If PLDs didn't have or didn't use DV, then no, the healers wouldn't be able to handle the same eHP check.

Wrong. Take for example Divine Judgement in A12N and A12S and similar limit break attacks that appear throughout the game, you can not mitigate the damage from the attack with either Path or Reprisal due to being unable to hit Alexander Prime with either attack less than 20s before the attack goes off. On the other hand the Paladin can help mitigate each and everyone of those limitbreak attacks by proper use of Divine Veil's shields.

Content like Sophia EX and bad players who don't know how to play their job should not be the standard used judge whether or not skills are underutilized and should not be justification for why an ability needs to change. I could clear that content and out perform those players using <10 skills. Does that say something about the other >20 skills? No.

Actually they are the exactly the players you need to check with to find out why they are not using (i.e. underutilizing) an ability because there is a cognitive gap somewhere.

High end players will show designers how abilities are best used for max output while average players will show average use for average effect and give them a better idea of how abilities are being used/not used. The average player is why many of the 4.0 changes are happening not the world first hardcore endgame raider.

[Brian_]

Wrong. Take for example Divine Judgement in A12N and A12S and similar limit break attacks that appear throughout the game, you can not mitigate the damage from the attack with either Path or Reprisal due to being unable to hit Alexander Prime with either attack less than 20s before the attack goes off. On the other hand the Paladin can help mitigate each and everyone of those limitbreak attacks by proper use of Divine Veil's shields.

Wrong? You don't understand the first thing about coordinating raid mitigation. As a raid, you have a finite number of mitigation tools that must be ordered in a way to give you sufficient coverage to survive all of the eHP checks. This is stuff like Storm's Path, Succor, Fey Covenant, Adlo + Deploy (which can be buffed by Convalescence, Defiance, and Mantra), Expanded Bole, Collective Unconscious, Noct Aspected Helios, Reprisal, Delirium, Dragon Kick, Divine Veil, Sacred Soil, etc.

During early prog when you have lower HP due to your ilevel, you typically need to stack 2-5 of those effects to consistently survive the frequently occuring raid-wide damage. This isn't only about gimmicky attacks like Divine Judgement. This is about early prog and fights like A3S, A4S, A7S, A8S, A11S, A12S which constantly hammer you with raid-wide damage that you need to mitigate before you have enough extra HP from gear to shrug it off. In A8S, P3 starts with a raid-wide hit that will kill you without heavy shielding / mitigation. 30 seconds later another sequence of mechanics happens that will kill you without shielding / mitigation. After another 30 seconds those mechanics repeat and can wipe you again without shielding / mitigation. Then, after 20 seconds, another raid-wide hit happens that will kill you without heavy shielding / mitigation. Finally, that entire rotation repeats itself again in 40 seconds. You need to budget out your stronger raid mitigation like DV and adlo+deploy in a CD rotation much like how you mitigate tank busters.

If you remove DV from that rotation, a PLD group is going to have some serious issues having enough raid-mitigation to survive all that damage while a DRK group with Reprisal will be just fine. That's the point.

Actually they are the exactly the players you need to check with to find out why they are not using (i.e. underutilizing) an ability because there is a cognitive gap somewhere.

High end players will show designers how abilities are best used for max output while average players will show average use for average effect and give them a better idea of how abilities are being used/not used. The average player is why many of the 4.0 changes are happening not the world first hardcore endgame raider.

You don't understand content balance at all.

What happens when you tune content so that skills like Path, Reprisal, and DV are no longer under utilized? You get the hardest Savage fights. When the eHP checks are so tight that the use of those skill is mandatory, all the players who can't perform at that level will get road blocked.

Content in general should not be designed for that level. By making it so that extreme degrees of coordinated raid-mitigation are not needed outside of early-prog in the hardest content, SE is catering to more average players. If you forget to apply path or DV, it doesn't mean that half your party will be dead as a result.

[Sarcatica]

Wrong. Take for example Divine Judgement in A12N and A12S and similar limit break attacks that appear throughout the game, you can not mitigate the damage from the attack with either Path or Reprisal due to being unable to hit Alexander Prime with either attack less than 20s before the attack goes off. On the other hand the Paladin can help mitigate each and everyone of those limitbreak attacks by proper use of Divine Veil's shields.

Except that LB3 tank is normally used, healers have ample of timing to heal back. DV doesn't do anything there at all, so basically just an illusion that it "helped" mitigate when you will still survive just fine without it, there is nothing to dps there as well so your healers shouldn't have issue at all. If you want to use situation where DV and Path/Delirium work best is things like Photon into double Whirlwind in A11S where shields and mitigation potentially play an important role to help top up (although ideally your healers should have enough tools to instaheal/mitigate for all members to full before 2x Whirlwind take effect) or A12S' Holy Bleed into Mega Holy where you take 18k~~ damage into 15k~ damage. The word mitigation is only ever important when you are potentially going to die without it, effective mitigation is not how you would perceive as mitigating damages that aren't consequential enough that you need it to clear.

You can't just bunch mitigation as overall damage mitigated because the stat alone is hollow and doesn't mean anything when you don't die, and that's not how tanking/healing works in the first place. It's like you are shielding a 10k aoe damage and you take 7k in the process when you have 22k HP, like that's inconsequential. If let's say you have 9k hp and the aoe dmg is 10k, then yes, the 3k shield works wonder for you. Effective mitigation isn't the same as passive mitigation, like Grit/ShO taking autos (you prolly mitigate 1k~ which regen will overheal anyway) VS Grit/ShO taking 40k tank busters (taking 20% less damage has more impact here).

Actually they are the exactly the players you need to check with to find out why they are not using (i.e. underutilizing) an ability because there is a cognitive gap somewhere.

High end players will show designers how abilities are best used for max output while average players will show average use for average effect and give them a better idea of how abilities are being used/not used. The average player is why many of the 4.0 changes are happening not the world first hardcore endgame raider.

You don't understand content balance at all.

What happens when you tune content so that skills like Path, Reprisal, and DV are no longer under utilized? You get the hardest Savage fights. When the eHP checks are so tight that the use of those skill is mandatory, all the players who can't perform at that level will get road blocked.

Content in general should not be designed for that level. By making it so that extreme degrees of coordinated raid-mitigation are not needed outside of early-prog in the hardest content, SE is catering to more average players. If you forget to apply path or DV, it doesn't mean that half your party will be dead as a result.

Early progression in week 1-3 was harder, if you do see the early kill videos where mitigations were used effectively. Now with more HP overall from gear, people clearing with less "optimal" mitigation is getting more common and is expected. IMO these tools help the poor healers more, while still maintaining the importance of mitigation where damages are fatal. The likes of Path/DV/Delirium will be pretty trivial in i270, it's already somewhat trivial for i260++ players with A12S on farm.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Brain_, Sarcatica, both of you are completely missing the point of what I am posting due to your early progression raider elitism.

I am not saying that Divine Veil is a bad ability or needs to be removed. In fact I think it is an awesome ability and very in character for the Paladin to have. The only real change I would make to it is perhaps boosting the shield to 20% the Paladin's hp.

Right now it is far to easy for players to develop "its nice but not necessary so you don't need to use it" mentalities around perfectly good abilities and I hope that 4.0 changes that.

What happens when you tune content so that skills like Path, Reprisal, and DV are no longer under utilized? You get the hardest Savage fights. When the eHP checks are so tight that the use of those skill is mandatory, all the players who can't perform at that level will get road blocked.

There are multiple ways of changing things such that those abilities are used more. Rotations can be changed and potencies adjusted so that constantly keeping the Storm's Path, Rage of Halone and Delirium debuffs up is not a dps loss. Divine Veil's shield could be made stronger in order to make it more obvious the amount of weight it takes off the healer's shoulders. Tempered Will's recast timer can be shortened and duration increased in order for it to be used more often.

Forcing use is not the only way to reduce underutilization. Making abilities easier to use is also a very good way (perhaps an even better way) to improve things.

Except that LB3 tank is normally used, healers have ample of timing to heal back. DV doesn't do anything there at all, so basically just an illusion that it "helped" mitigate when you will still survive just fine without it, there is nothing to dps there as well so your healers shouldn't have issue at all.

Which is exactly my point. Limitbreak attacks such as these are the intuitive places to use Divine Veil, but due to several factors the average player/raider see using it as useless/unnecessary/unhelpful.

[Brian_]

Brain_, Sarcatica, both of you are completely missing the point of what I am posting due to your early progression raider elitism.

I am not saying that Divine Veil is a bad ability or needs to be removed. In fact I think it is an awesome ability and very in character for the Paladin to have. The only real change I would make to it is perhaps boosting the shield to 20% the Paladin's hp.

Right now it is far to easy for players to develop "its nice but not necessary so you don't need to use it" mentalities around perfectly good abilities and I hope that 4.0 changes that.

It's elitism to point out blatant misinformation with actual facts and real examples? Or explain why things are how they are?

This is the actual reason why people develop the mentality you speak of. I'm telling you that DV is an incredibly strong and vital skill and you are just staying inside your own bubble of thought.

A 7k shield stacking shield that will only scale upwards going forward? On demand crit-lo level shielding. That's just stupid and imbalanced.

Again, you have no concept of content balance. Anyone that actually understands how tightly tuned the hardest content in this game is will tell you it's a terrible idea to power creep raid mitigation. There is a real argument that the reason why we have such ludicrous eHP checks is because of how ridiculously strong SCH shielding is and that imbalance has forced SE to buff the crap out of Noct AST in order for a non-SCH comp to have any hope of clearing content early on. In order for the eHP checks to actually be challenging, they need to push the upper end of raid-mitigation and when you have DV as a 7k on-demand stacking shield, that standard changes completely. You end up either trivializing eHP checks or making PLD a must-bring job. You also accomplish the total opposite of making the game more casual friendly by further increasing the gap between players that use DV well and players that don't.

So in your blindness, you are throwing a wrench into end-game tuning and job balance because you didn't want to take the more sensible and logical path of just teaching players how to play the game so that they can see the value in skills that are already incredibly strong. Lots of people, including you before this topic, don't even know how or why DV is so good. That's the problem.

[Ultimatecalibur]

It's elitism to point out blatant misinformation with actual facts and real examples? Or explain why things are how they are?

The facts you use are not the only facts and are only true of 1% of the player base. Also you are looking at things as part of the top 1% of 10% of the player base. You need to consider what things look like for the average player not what they look like to just you.

You have also been attacking someone who mostly agrees with you on Divine Veil from the start. You have been attacking an ally not an enemy.

It seems you thought that "nice but not necessary" means useless. It means that less skilled players have a bad mentality where they think the ability is unnecessary or useless because of how content is done at their skill level and do not use it.

You have been pretty much preaching at the choir from the start and accusing them of being the devil's servants. I have bee trying to point out that that is what you have been doing.

This is the actual reason why people develop the mentality you speak of. I'm telling you that DV is an incredibly strong and vital skill and you are just staying inside your own bubble of thought.

What? Where are you getting that I think DV is a weak, useless ability? I've said multiple times that I wish more of the less skilled Paladins would find good reasons to use it more. And more often than not the mentality actually forms because they fail to notice the effect and just give up on it.

You are the one stuck in your own bubble of thought. Divine Veil works great in high level min-ilevel early progression content but less skilled players start failing to see how good it is the farther away from that very narrow section of the game they are.

A 7k shield stacking shield that will only scale upwards going forward? On demand crit-lo level shielding. That's just stupid and imbalanced.

Are you aware that Crit-los are ~11k shields base right now and they are continuing to grow? A normal adloquium shield at i255 is ~3.5k and should be 4.5k+ at i270. With Defiance+Convalesence, an adloquium should be putting out a 5k+ shield and a Crit-lo should be putting out 16k+ shields. A 7k shield would only be about 55% more than a deployed boosted adloquium and have no change of criting into a 20k mega shield. Scholars are must have because there is no other way to get even close to their Crit-lo shields.

Again, you have no concept of content balance. Anyone that actually understands how tightly tuned the hardest content in this game is will tell you it's a terrible idea to power creep raid mitigation. There is a real argument that the reason why we have such ludicrous eHP checks is because of how ridiculously strong SCH shielding is and that imbalance has forced SE to buff the crap out of Noct AST in order for a non-SCH comp to have any hope of clearing content early on. In order for the eHP checks to actually be challenging, they need to push the upper end of raid-mitigation and when you have DV as a 7k on-demand stacking shield, that standard changes completely. You end up either trivializing eHP checks or making PLD a must-bring job.

Just like how the Scholar is the must bring healer because it can trivialize ehp checks? What you fail to see is that an improved DV could potentially change the meta so that Scholar is not must have allowing for Whm/Astro healer comps.

You also accomplish the total opposite of making the game more casual friendly by further increasing the gap between players that use DV well and players that don't.

Wrong. Currently the problem is not the difference between players who use it well and those who do not use it well. The difference is between those players who use it and those who fail to activate the ability at all. This is the difference between a Paladin who uses a GB -> RA -> RA and one that spams RoH, not the difference between two Paladins who use FoF at different points in the GB -> RA -> RA rotation.

So in your blindness, you are throwing a wrench into end-game tuning and job balance because you didn't want to take the more sensible and logical path of just teaching players how to play the game so that they can see the value in skills that are already incredibly strong. Lots of people, including you before this topic, don't even know how or why DV is so good. That's the problem.

Actually you are the one who is blind. You have been attacking me since I replied to a post complaining about the lack of impact that Tempered Will, Cover and Divine Veil has and pointed out that Divine Veil has a good (but low impact) effect with proper timing but far to many Paladins fail to see that impact or have that impact negated by the actions of others leading to them having a mental image of DV being "Nice, but not Necessary" in a large percentage of content and therefore stop using it.