Thoughts on 4.0 PLD abilities

[Seku]

Just found a video showing all the skills for PLD, not including their cross class skills.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7Dz4BHUZmg

Looks like they are some what trolling PLD. Sheltron and Cover still only defend against Physical attacks, despite the fact Shields can now block magical damage. I hope they change this to all damage types.

While the gauge builds good in Sword oath, you only gain gauge through shield block while in Shield Oath, which has me worried since Sheltron is now locked behind the gague. I hope they change it to at least get rid of the gauge cutting in half when switching between oaths if they do not remove the shield block requirement to build gauge in shield oath, that or just allow us to build gauge from just taking damage.

Requiescat looks to be a good addition, but the buff that procs at 80% or higher MP seems to only effect magic, which isn't a huge deal since 3 Holy Spirit is the best potency PLD can get from GCD's, minus perhaps the goring blade combo and it's full time up on a mob.

Feel free to post your own thoughts and opinions.

[Synestra]

I really hope that tooltips are still not finished. Also i wonder where do i use my excess job resources if i dont need to use shelltron or intervention and my bar is full or close to, usually there is atleast one "dump" skill but i didnt see one in there.

[Seku]

I really hope that tooltips are still not finished. Also i wonder where do i use my excess job resources if i dont need to use shelltron or intervention and my bar is full or close to, usually there is atleast one "dump" skill but i didnt see one in there.

I am hoping the same. I would personally just use shelltron if MT, or Intervention if OT and another tank is tanking. I see intervention being really useful for tank busters while OT --- I just wish that it did not require Sentinel or Rampart and instead was just a flat 20-25% damage mitgiation on the target. As it would provide for better tank swaps and won't force the PLD to waste a CD.

[Galactimus]

You dump it on Sheltron, which restores your MP, which increases your Requiescat uptime.

[Synestra]

You dump it on Sheltron, which restores your MP, which increases your Requiescat uptime.

Requiescat has 60s CD so i think there is plenty of time to do some mana pooling tho it might give one more Holy Spirit cast durning the buff window so there is that.

[eagledorf]

The JP tooltip for Sheltron doesn't specify physical damage so it's possibly a mistranslation or old tooltip. I hope the JP tooltip is correct for Sheltron because it would be quite stupid for it to be physical only when blocking was adjusted! Cover also doesn't specify physical in the JP tooltip famitsu published and it currently does specifically say physical damage. Finally, the Enhanced Cover tooltip in Japanese says the 20% damage reduction is only for damage you take through Covering. Since it would be kind of stupid if Cover could be cheesed into a free extra cooldown, I suspect the Japanese tooltips are correct and the English ones are WIP.

I also notice that the JP tooltip for Gore Blade is 10 potency less than that in the EN tooltip for 670 total potency. I don't know why that happened.

Theoretical rotation seems to be Requiescat -> 4x Holy Spirit -> Goring Blade combo w/ FoF -> 2x Royal Authority -> Repeat Physical rotation until next Requiescat. Seems smooth enough. One of the people who got to play it said the MP mostly works out if you're not doing any hate combos.


The only thing that worries me about PLD is how much they've given WAR. WAR is basically totally immune to knockback mechanics now and can cleanse themselves of any removable debuff.

I agree that the gauge mechanic seems pretty slapped together on PLD since it's only used for a few defensive abilities. It also feels a little bit that way on DRK since it's basically like a small DPS cooldown on DRK and they already had Dark Arts for that. WAR feels the most natural in terms of the gauge with both DPS and defense skills using it and it really feels like a fix to the Wrath mechanic they introduced in 3.0 having no penalty for stance dancing.

[Brannigan]

NA tooltips are always to be distrusted since they've been broken and wrong since Twintania. The changes look great, and I pretty much agree with eagledorf on a lot of stuff. It'd be nice if gauge was used for a couple more things (like Cover or something), but I'm fine with it just being the gatekeeper for Sheltron and Intervention. The main thing is that paladin looks a lot more interesting and PLD/DRK should work fine - though you'll need a Samurai, or sword comp lacks slashing.
It is odd that Tempered Will remained untouched. However, everyone has Sprint for free now. The lack of an instant gap closer might not be that bad. Also, paladin got a sweet new Sprint animation.