Paladin too overpowered, nerf their damage output!

[VargasVermillion]

Uhm... Shield Swipe?

Uhm....duhh? one ability isn't a playstyle, not even two abilities make a playstyle.

[AziraSyuren]

snip

There's actually no way someone can be this wrong without either being purposefully misleading or solely motivated by bitterness from HW WAR.

In HW, DRK was the most mobile tank with Plunge

That mobility was almost entirely irrelevant. Plunge is a skill you use on CD for DPS. It was almost never up when you would otherwise need it, and it's worth too much DPS (3.5% in HW, about 2.8% now) to hold for more than a few seconds, especially considering sprint doesn't use TP anymore.

and PLD had the best knockback negation with Tempered Will

How is that utility relevant in the slightest? It didn't work on all fights where it should've (Sephirot), but worked where it was completely irrelevant (Sophia). Calling it utility, especially meaningful utility that should be taken into account when deciding the viability of a class, is completely dishonest. It's more relevant now thanks to fight design, admittedly, but even then, it's something WAR doesn't actually have in practice, as I'll cover below.

Now, WAR has the best gap closer, with both a longer range and half the recast

I'll give you that. Onslaught is definitely not as bad as everyone initially thought it was, and its lower damage combined with its BG cost means it can actually be held without losing upwards of 100~ DPS.

and also has a built in and better Tempered Will effect in Inner Release with a minute shorter recast and double the duration

It's the same problem as Plunge, in that it's a DPS increase that's used on cooldown. That's not "anti-KB utility," because it can't actually be utilized to negate KB when it matters. In fact, its KB resistance is actually actively detrimental in certain fights, such as Catastrophe, whereas Tempered Will is something you can save for when it'd be useful.

It wasn't enough to copy over Invigorate as Equilibrium, for example. It has half the recast and can be turned into a 1200 potency oGCD self heal with no cost.

This is just flat-out misrepresentation. The Invigorate effect is mostly useless outside of dungeons, where it's not up enough to actually be that helpful, and the self-heal comes at the opportunity cost of decreased DPS for 10 seconds. It's the same logic people used for calling WAR the best MT in 3.0 because of Inner Beast- they completely ignore the opportunity cost associated with it. The reality is that a WAR who sat in Defiance, where they could utilize this "better mitigation," was inferior to both a Dark Knight and Paladin MT who actually played their role properly, whereas an MT Warrior didn't gain anything but extra damage from Vengeance. Not only that, but it restores 200 TP every 60 seconds, not the same 400 as Invigorate, like you were implying.

WAR is not powerful. Its only true use is in fight optimization, where its abundance of defensive cooldowns allows it to easily get away with things the other tanks can't. But even then, you learn the fight, use all of your offensive and defensive cooldowns properly, time everything perfectly with phases, line up everyone's buffs, and you're rewarded with...



About 17 more DPS than Paladin.

And on the most difficult fight in the tier, instead of just the average of the tier, you're rewarded with...



About 100 less.

You can make the argument that the top runs are padded, but the fact that it's just as rewarding (if not more) to pad a Paladin than it is a Warrior actually helps my point.

WAR is just garbage. The utility it offers is fake and there's absolutely no benefit to bringing one until you already have a fight mastered. And when you do have a fight mastered, its still only slightly better than something that's good in all scenarios (Paladin). Its only true benefit is that it outclasses Dark Knight when farming, but DRK has its fair share of problems as well. It needs significant buffs, whereas WAR only needs minor buffs and some significant QoL changes.

You could actually make a sound argument that DRK should do more DPS than WAR, given it lacks defensive cooldowns and TBN isn't actually that great, but that's just my bias showing, and another issue entirely.

The problem isn't Paladin, though. In a vacuum, Paladin is only slightly better than it was HW in terms of what it offers to a raid. It doesn't offer any truly overpowered utility like Path or Reprisal, and doesn't offer anything that's really all too convenient to other jobs, like a slashing debuff was in 3.0. The problem is that the other two tanks are bad.

This isn't even "tee hee buff everything instead of nerfing it xD" logic. The other two tanks are just actually, objectively garbage.

[Lyth]

...

Hi there. Not sure what's got you riled up, but leave the ad homs and weasel words out of it. I'll happily debate you on the content of your arguments, rather than the rhetorical fluff.

The mobility on Plunge is pretty important. The average GCD on DRK is worth 280 potency under Darkside (327 when you factor in resource gains) compared to 240 potency on Plunge. So you have to trade off the cost of a lost GCD against the cost of potentially losing a recast on Plunge (Total casts = fight duration/recast is what matters at the end of the day.) You're certainly going to hold Plunge if there's a knockback in the next few seconds, unless you like leisurely rp-walking back to the boss. With regards to Tempered Will, while it was a finicky action that didn't always work when you expected it to, part of optimisation involved testing it out and seeing where you could put it to good use. It wasn't always on non-raid content, either; you could use it to good effect on A6S, A8S and A10S. Either way, knockback negation is pretty important for improving uptime.

Also, did you really just try to claim that a gap closer shouldn't be used as a gap closer?

Sprint is important too, but it's on a longer recast, gets you back slower, and is equally important as a gap extender. When you have arena-length knockbacks like Vacuum Wave, it's generally preferable to prevent the knockback than it is to jog back to the boss.

The thing with IR is that, like any buff window, you should be planning where it occurs. The argument that "IR interferes with mechanics where you need to be knocked back" doesn't really make any sense because you're not going to pop your big 2 minute cooldown on a section where you're expected to be losing uptime the boss. Why on earth would you pop it in the middle of Long Drop when you're going to be knocked away from the boss for 5 out of those 20 seconds? Likewise, if there's a knockback in a section of the fight that you are expected to negate, you can always try to sync your IR window with it and dps away. This type of thinking isn't new to WAR; it was actually commonplace in HW when at one to two of your defensive cooldowns were tied to your zerk rotation, so you'd try to take advantage of the fact when planning your mitigation cooldowns.

It's easy to say "X is not utility, it has disadvantages", but you have to remember that there are better players out there at the same time thinking "X is utility, let me see how I can take advantage of this to maximise my uptime and dps".

Invigorate was 400 TP every 2 minutes as cross-class, vs. Equilibrium's 200 TP every 1 minute. It works out to be the same. The big self-heals both have opportunity costs associated with them. That doesn't change the fact that you still have access to them. Utility doesn't stop being utility when you aren't using it.

With regards to WAR's mitigation, IB isn't really the issue (it's really just there for prog as your "on demand" cooldown). If IB was mandatory, it would be one thing. But WAR has had the largest number of cooldowns on the shortest recasts since HW. This is even moreso now, since WAR gained access to Rampart and since IR/Veng have been uncoupled from zerk. There's actually a lot of defensive cooldown bloat that has happened over the years. I'm all for the "buff the other jobs up to the same level", but there comes a point where you just need to start trimming out the surplus of cooldowns.

You can cherry-pick parses if you like, but max values change fairly dramatically on a nearly daily basis simply because people are still collecting drops. You actually won't get a good sense of what the max is like for a few weeks. My own preference is to look at all the results, as I've done here: Link. Actually, if you look at the fights and the dps patterns of the three tanks, you can make a lot of sense out of it. WAR has a relatively lower sustained dps with very powerful burst. PLD has a high sustained dps with a relatively weaker burst. Losing a GCD outside of a buff window, on average, is a bigger dps on PLD. So when you look at the more optimised results, PLD will edge out WAR on high uptime fights when played near perfectly, while WAR will generally do better everywhere else as long as you don't pop IR-zerk at a silly point in the fights (like Long Drop).

DRK's problem is that while it represents a middle ground in combo potencies and sustained dps, the burst windows are where they fall behind. This points to more of an issue with Delirium and resource generation on DRK than anything else.

I think the biggest issue with "utility" is that most people don't really know what they want. They see another tank with a cool toy and decide that they really, really want it, more because they don't want to fall behind, than out of any real understanding of how they would optimise their play with it. The existing utility on the jobs goes disregarded, because people don't know how to push the limits of what they have: "Onslaught is bad", "IR's knockback negation is bad", "Equilibrium is situational/stance locked", etc. Either that, or a miscellaneous toy on one job gets used to justify a dps or mitigation advantage on another.

It's not the WAR job that's bad. If only we could buff the players.

[FallenWings]

Also with real world logic, WAR axes or DRK greatswords would be far too inefficient and would be easy for someone using a lighter weapon to counter. eg: real world battle axes are smaller than axes used for chopping wood yet WAR's are far bigger than both.

Lighter Weapons do more damage in duels where your opposition can dodge you due to the decreased speed of using a heavier weapon.

For all intents and purposes, Great Axes and Great Swords will do more damage than a Straight Sword due to their sheer size and weight. The only reason they're not prominent in real world is because the trade of the ability to cleave someone in half for reduced speed is not needed when you can practically one shot people with a stab with a dagger. Every weapon is lethal enough to humans so all you needed was the speed and probrably more importantly range.

Just like in real world, there are more variables to consider.

But when you're fighting a dragon that isn't going to dodge you and has probably relatively thicker scales. Then I'm going to take a big great axe to cut through their hide and do heavy damage.

Side note: There are battle axes, and there is the Danish Great Axe which is "bigger".

What you are thinking is that axes used for warfare are thinner rather than smaller. This reduces their weight enough so that they're not as cumbersome to use as a felling axe.

[AziraSyuren]

Hi there. Not sure what's got you riled up, but leave the ad homs and weasel words out of it. I'll happily debate you on the content of your arguments, rather than the rhetorical fluff.

I'm mad because both non-Paladin tanks have been gutted, and seeing someone say they're okay in any way makes me upset, because it's flat-out wrong.

stuff about utility

It's less about having disadvantages and more about the fact that these utilities are useful in so few situations that they might as well not exist. That's what I want from utility- something I can commonly use. Not something I can use in one in a million situations. It's not worthwhile if you can only use it once or twice a patch. Cover, Divine Veil, and TBN can be used in many different situations in almost every fight. Shake it Off has few such uses, and (almost) none in Savage. It's not real utility. It's a meaningless gimmick. You can't point to one or two occasions where WAR's utility is useful and say the class is balanced when the aforementioned skills are useful in almost every fight. You can commonly use the utility of the other two jobs to maximize your output, whereas you're more or less stuck with nothing more than a blue DPS who can take hits as WAR.

You seem to think the fact that this utility exists is good enough. It's not.

[Lyth]

WAR hasn't been gutted. Resource generation is faster than HW. The gauge is bigger, allowing you to bank double the resources. Storm's Eye has been lengthened by 10 seconds, allowing you to do a 1:2 rotation comfortably and allowing you to fit a Berserk inside it without reapplying the buff mid-window. Defensive buffs have been uncoupled from Berserk, and the pacification penalty has been removed. The actual Berserk rotations themselves have been mostly reduced to Fell Cleave spam. Unchained and IR are free, where Unchained would have previously have cost you 5 stacks (50 gauge). WAR gained access to Rampart. I would have been in agreement with you if this were 4.01, where there was still a resource cost attached to stance dancing (although DRK had, and still has costs attached to stance usage). But for all the dev interviews leading into SB stating that "WAR is too flexible, so we need to tone them back some to bring balance to the tanks", none of those changes actually ended up sticking. The main difference from HW is that WAR isn't completely uncontested for the top spot, due in part to a significant PLD overhaul. Nerfing PLD's dps, as this thread demands, would very quickly change this for the worse.

While DRK has its share of issues, I don't think it's unfixable, and some degree of change was required. The parry mechanics never really fit the job, and WAR has the best parry ability in the game anyways (along with a parry buff on their tank stance, oddly enough). I think that a change in identity was in order. The focus on resource management was a good choice. The problem is that we've gone from being a job with high sustained dps and low burst to offering something more in the middle ground, but Delirium doesn't have enough of an impact on our burst to compensate. Likewise, the idea of tying in resource management to mitigation is fine, but when you're already at a dps disadvantage, spending resources/potency on an essential mitigation cooldown sets you back even further. This isn't about giving out vague "buffs": there are some very specific things that you can improve to make the performance results similar, without requiring a massive overhaul. I've detailed these in the rework thread. Change is needed, but it's still extremely fun to play.

I've said this before, but people keep throwing around the word "utility" without specifying what they mean by it. If it's raid mitigation, both DV and PoA together make PLD important defensively in prog, but individually, they're on 120 second recasts. I think it wouldn't really have been an issue if they'd done something different with DV, but that's just me. But we don't need every tank running around with a DV clone; that defeats the purpose of making Reprisal cross-role. If it's single target shielding like Intervention, that you're talking about, you'd probably have to crop back WAR's defensive cooldown set first, as it's the tank with the most personal mitigation by a sizeable amount. I can't think of anything else that you can copy over that hasn't already been done. WAR got a gap closer, knockback negation, an oGCD personal esuna, an additional 300 potency oGCD that is more potency efficient than Fell Cleave, and a whole lot more burst. What, were there not enough toys under the tree this time around? Hang on to your receipts, it's time to cash them in for something even better. If we can even figure out what "better" actually is.

Before you talk about "real utility", let's start by specifying what you actually want. Preferably in terms that offer greater clarity than "all the toys!"

[Umbeliel]

snip snip snippo

I don't have anything to actually add here, since I've more or less given up on getting through to people who don't seem to realize that it's a pretty far from perfect situation for non-Paladins, but you're a champ and I'm in total agreement. There's not actually a whole lot of room for argument here- the only objective benefit of a Warrior or a Dark Knight bring over Paladin is literally just the fact that they're a tank and not a Paladin for LB generation. They have different playstyles, but both Warrior and Dark Knight are majorly lacking on... anything but the barebones ability to tank.

Don't nerf Paladin though. Paladin is fine.

[Pileus_Storm]

PLD isn't overpowered. Most players don't understand how the attributes affect the weaponskills because they ignore the definition of the attributes or just plain old misiterpret the meaning. If you understand the jobs you would know that all of them are fundamentally different. PLD is a defensive job. WRR is offensive with less defensive skills but it's offense is it's defense. DRK is in idea offense is the defense. PLD(easy), WRR(intermediate), DRK(advanced). You have to know how to use your job skills to be good at either. Ppl contrate so much on knowing the fight that they suck at the job. If they had not loaded the new gear wit DET ppl would not know how strong the PLD is but because ppl suck at he other two jobs they come to think the PLD is overpowered. PLD highes potency is 400. Compard to the WRR's 500 potency and DRK 650 potency the PLD is still lacking imo.

[AziraSyuren]

Before you talk about "real utility", let's start by specifying what you actually want. Preferably in terms that offer greater clarity than "all the toys!"

I want abilities that have multiple different uses in many different encounters outside of explicitly catered fight design that are useful when both learning and optimizing a fight.

[Crater]

Before you talk about "real utility", let's start by specifying what you actually want. Preferably in terms that offer greater clarity than "all the toys!"

Maybe the better starting point would be "What are you willing to give up for that utility?"

I know that when I play PLD I'm pretty much categorically thinking "I really wish that I had Vengeance instead of Passage of Arms". Maybe they'd like that to be the other way around.