Shield Oath makes Sheltron useless.

[Awful]

Silly paladins, they got the most buffs yet they still complain.

[Furious]

You get ~2 uses per minute from holy spirit alone (5 casts, 20 energy per cast), PLUS whatever you get from blocking. Shelltron is available more now than it was in heavensward, and it blocks magic damage as well.

[Kaedan]

Sheltron is not in any way shape or form necessary in level sync'd dungeons. Maybe in some old raid or mid-sized group content like Alex Savage, etc, but complaining about not being able to spam it in dungeons is pretty ridiculous.

PLDs have so many other mitigation tricks up their sleeve that Sheltron is only a small drop in the bucket.


That being said... it's pretty strange that it took you 3 trash mob pulls to get 50 Oath... What kind of crappy shield are you using? And do you bother to use Bulwark?

[Sipherous]

I ran a 50 dungeon and a 60 dungeon. in shield oath I generated so much oath from blocks because blocking is now 360 degrees and blocks magic, in 1 pull i generated my 100 oath with just a pack of 4 mobs without bulwark. Sheltron is only for massive boss tank busters anyways, you shoudln't be useing it for anything else unless you are trying to parse and force shield swipe procs. The MP gain is negligable because riot blade is in you dmg combo now and you never use enimity combo, even wars will avoid butchers block now if they can cause path gives more innerbeast. Also you dont want to use holy Spirit until you have resicast back on CD which is a full 48 seconds of spamming riot blade after you finish your 6 casts of death. Sword generates more yes but thats cause they want u to use intervention which is the best utility in the game atm.

[eagledorf]

Now that I've had the opportunity to do Susano-o, I do believe that the Shield Oath gauge has been poorly implemented, with the caveat that I haven't gotten to do max level trials yet.

However, on Susano-o, you are basically better off tanking him in Sword Oath because of the poor design of the Shield Oath gauge. By going Sword Oath, you can generate enough gauge to mitigate every one of his tank busters reliably. If you are in Shield Oath, it's hit or miss. If you run the risk of taking greater damage from the tank buster in Shield Oath on top of doing less damage, it's not logical to use your tank stance.

I suspect that the team simply though "Shield Oath should generate gauge when you use your shield!", but really it should be predictable how fast you generate gauge unless it's intended for us to tank bosses in Sword Oath and Shield Oath is only for dungeons now. While getting gauge from Holy Spirit will help, there shouldn't be a RNG element to if you get your cooldown that can only be used effectively if you can predictably time its use because it only mitigates one hit.

[Xenosan]

Now you know why DRK drops Grit.

And DRK doesn't even need a block proc for a Price return. So PLD has even more incentive to be in Sword Oath relatively.

But you also have to exhaust a GCD to switch to Sword, whereas DRK just weaves Grit off, Blood Weapon on.

They doubled Siphon's MP restore in Grit, likely due to this very conundrum. PLD gauge in Shield Oath might get similar treatment. Hopefully.

to OP: switch to Sword Oath on single target, switch back before a tank buster if necessary, then switch back to recharge

[Furious]

Now that I've had the opportunity to do Susano-o, I do believe that the Shield Oath gauge has been poorly implemented, with the caveat that I haven't gotten to do max level trials yet.

However, on Susano-o, you are basically better off tanking him in Sword Oath because of the poor design of the Shield Oath gauge. By going Sword Oath, you can generate enough gauge to mitigate every one of his tank busters reliably. If you are in Shield Oath, it's hit or miss. If you run the risk of taking greater damage from the tank buster in Shield Oath on top of doing less damage, it's not logical to use your tank stance.

I suspect that the team simply though "Shield Oath should generate gauge when you use your shield!", but really it should be predictable how fast you generate gauge unless it's intended for us to tank bosses in Sword Oath and Shield Oath is only for dungeons now. While getting gauge from Holy Spirit will help, there shouldn't be a RNG element to if you get your cooldown that can only be used effectively if you can predictably time its use because it only mitigates one hit.

Susano is level 63. You get holy spirit at level 64. You get requeiscat at level 68.

Holy spirit gives you TWENTY SHIELD GAUGE PER CAST and does 450 potency per cast, before requiescat buffs that damage by 20% for 12 seconds every minute. Every minute in a single target fight, you gain 100 shield gauge, or 2 full sheltrons, without considering any gauge that you get from blocking.

You get two garunteed sheltron casts per minute from holy spirit alone, and shield oath blocks nearly as much damage from _everything_ as blocking does, while stacking with block.

Shelltron is ABSURDLY strong at tanking timed blows. It will be up 2.5-3 times per minute, stacks with every other mitigation type except bulwark, can be banked for later use, and can absorb damage from nearly anything in the game.

If you are in Shield Oath, it's hit or miss. If you run the risk of taking greater damage from the tank buster in Shield Oath on top of doing less damage, it's not logical to use your tank stance.

Shield oath reduces all damage you take by approximately the same value as a block does, and stacks with block. If your aim is to take less damage, don't move from shield oath.

Let's repeat that, because apparently people miss it: shield oath reduces ALL DAMAGE you take by 20%, which is only marginally less than a block does at ~22%. Changing out of shield oath to block more often via sheltron is a ludicrous false economy.


We really need to stop the hyperbole around sheltron. It's extremely strong for what it does, and it is available more often in stormblood than it was in heavensward, even in shield oath.

[Duelle]

spam

PLD did not need a resource bar
PLD did not need a resource bar
PLD did not need a resource bar
PLD did not need a resource bar
PLD did not need a resource bar
PLD did not need a resource bar
PLD did not need a resource bar
PLD did not need a resource bar
PLD did not need a resource bar

See? I can do it too.

-------------------------------------------------

I think the OP underlines the problem with creating a resource bar but making resources generate very slowly while under Shield Oath. I'll add that Holy Spirit should not generate 20 Oath under Shield Oath, since that forces the design to funnel Oath generation behind that spell to get people to use Holy Spirit on top of focusing on recovering MP (to cast Holy Spirit some more).

I'd probably nerf Oath generation from Holy Spirit, change Shield Oath to generate Oath when you take direct hits (blocks and parries would generate slightly more Oath), along with more Oath consumption from other skills to compensate.

[Lemuria]

We really need to stop the hyperbole around sheltron. It's extremely strong for what it does, and it is available more often in stormblood than it was in heavensward, even in shield oath.

Not sure I agree there, from what I've observed on my paladin Oath takes a very long time to generate, and Shelltron eats a good portion of it. I've found it available considerably less often than it used to be.

Sure, this might change once I hit 70, but that still means it's close to useless for at least 12 levels.

Overall I'm happy with the changes to Paladin. We're definitely a lot stronger overall but I guess Shelltron was the trade-off for that added strength.

[Furious]

I think the OP underlines the problem with creating a resource bar but making resources generate very slowly while under Shield Oath. I'll add that Holy Spirit should not generate 20 Oath under Shield Oath, since that forces the design to funnel Oath generation behind that spell to get people to use Holy Spirit on top of focusing on recovering MP (to cast Holy Spirit some more).

I'd probably nerf Oath generation from Holy Spirit, change Shield Oath to generate Oath when you take direct hits (blocks and parries would generate slightly more Oath), along with more Oath consumption from other skills to compensate.

The resource does not generate slowly while under shield oath. I can't believe this is such a hard concept to grasp.

You will be casting 5 holy spirit per minute at a MINIMUM as part of your normal rotation on paladin. 5 holy spirit generates 100 energy. 100 energy gives you two uses of sheltron. 2 uses of sheltron per minute means one use of sheltron per 30 seconds, which is exactly the same rate as the old sheltron was available - only now it can be banked and used back to back if required, where before it couldn't.

As well as this _bare minimum_ of 100 oath gauge per minute, which already equals heavensward sheltron, you _also_ get 5 energy per block (which is only possible because the ability is now gained in small increments rather than on a cooldown or as a chance to reset). At a minimum, you get 10 energy per minute from the two attacks you block while using sheltron, meaning that at its base sheltron is available more often than it was in heavensward through standard play. If you really wanted to, you could shelltron > hs >sheltron > hs > hs >sheltron > hs > hs > sheltron, for 4 sheltron blocks in 12.5 seconds, and come out of that with ~20 gauge remaining. It would use up your sheltrons for a while, but you can do it if a fight pattern demands it - you could never do this before, and you can because of the way you generate sheltron energy now.

Your standard rotations now both use riot blade, which intrinsically regenerates enough mana in the interceeding time to cast your holy spirits, as well as the bigger portion you get back from blocking with sheltron.

Taking it a step further, you have a 100% chance to block with bulwark up, which garuntees you a portion of blocks every time it is off cooldown, and when you aoe pull, your number of blocks also goes up significantly (tanking even two mobs will nearly double your gains from blocking (which we have already established are extra charges that are already more than what you had in heavensward)).

I'm not sure why you think you need to be forced to use holy spirit when it is signicantly stronger than your standard damage rotation; you don't need incentive to use the royal authority combo do you?

Not sure I agree there, from what I've observed on my paladin Oath takes a very long time to generate, and Shelltron eats a good portion of it. I've found it available considerably less often than it used to be.

Sure, this might change once I hit 70, but that still means it's close to useless for at least 12 levels.

Overall I'm happy with the changes to Paladin. We're definitely a lot stronger overall but I guess Shelltron was the trade-off for that added strength.

You get holy spirit at 64, and you don't need it before endgame anyway. Yes, it's marginally awkward before 64. It simply doesn't matter enough to do anything about that though.

Sheltron now is so much better than sheltron in heavensward, it's crazy. It's better in every way.

It's available more often, and significantly more often when you use bulwark or aoe tank. But even at baseline, when you get holy spirit at 64, you have more casts per minute of sheltron available in SB than you had in HW.
It can be used on magic damage.
It can be used regardless of facing or positioning.
It can be banked up to two effective charges, and if absolutely needed can get up to 4 uses within a 12 second window with enough preparation time.

Sheltron isn't the tradeoff for everything else, sheltron is a big part of the everything else.