A tank's concern

[Cynfael]

Splitting of hairs.

There are also situations even in AoE where the PLD's incoming damage is adequately balanced by a healer's ticking HoT and/or oGCD healing abilities, making Clemency a pure DPS loss and an MP dump.

I get your theory, but at this point it isn't "meta," so when it comes to duty finder, I stick with the broader generalization of Clemency as an emergency tool.

[Furious]

Splitting of previously split hairs.

Clemency is not an emergency tool. It is a tool, to be used in a fashion that enables the most efficient management of health and damage available to the party. The same as every tool possessed by every player.

There are very few (no?) hots that don't require a gcd. A gcd is a holy or a gravity. A hot can be put up before a pull, but in an aoe pull that can mean a healer gets hit.

If the damage isn't high enough to require more than ogcd heals, I have no idea why we are even talking about who is healing.. who cares? You aren't choosing between clemency and making the healer heal in that situation. If someone needs to give up damage to heal in aoe, it should be the paladin, not the healer. What the meta is doesn't really matter; what works best invariably becomes the meta. How long it takes depends on how entrenched the old meta is.

Clemency is a cheap and efficient heal on a class that has very good mana regeneration, who cannot be interrupted while casting, who wants to generate healing enmity, who has little aoe damage, and can allow classes who have very strong aoe damage to continue doing that damage. It is also an emergency tool in cases where you don't want to be casting it (single target or low target). You say you get the theory, but if you still think of clemency as an emergency tool you don't get it.

If you're using plinkaplink total eclipse at any point that the healer is casting an on-gcd healing spell on you, your group lost damage.