4.2 Palladin - more to play as dps than ever ? Why say it's tank then...

[Hruodig]

Right, because pulling with a Paladin or not will determine whether you end up with a 4.1k parse or a 3.5k parse..... OH WAIT NO, IT WON'T! It won't even show at the end of the run. lol Let alone be a factor in whether you hit enrage or not. In other words, it does - not - matter. It's got nothing to do with playing well.

Unless you're trying to argue that if a Paladin ends up pulling, they won't be able to make it to the top, you literally have no arguments left.

To be fair, you don't have to be 100% optimal to clear almost anything. We had a drk clear a12s before stormblood launched using literally nothing but flash. You have zdps healers getting carried through content every single day. You have no trick attack ninjas, no dot samurais, heal-happy rdms, clearing content all the time.

Does the fact that they can still clear make any of that ok? No, at least not to me. I don't really like wasting other people's time, so I like to play optimally, and if I'm playing with someone who's clearly playing un optimally then I'll try to help them out.

[whiskeybravo]

Meh, for the most part I assume I'm going to be pulling as a War now. IMO it's not even about the DPS, it's just so simple for War to grab massive aggro, and at virtually no cost on top of it. I only ran into 1 PLD that refused to let me MT, mainly because they had only MT'd that fight. No big deal, they just turtled up in Shield Oath anyways lol.

[Thela]

I believe the point is that in a 10 minute fight, 3 'suboptimal GCDs' (ROH combo), and 1 dead one (Changing back to sword), totaling 10 seconds out of 10 min are not going to have any dramatic impact on hitting enrage, or even your parse. The amount of potency lost for those 4 GCDs (which still do some damage mind you) as a % of the thousands and thousands of potency spit out during a 10 min fight is pretty insignificant.

True, except you're forgetting that you're missing out on buffs such as trick attack and maybe even balance for your dps moves because you need to open the fight with a RoH combo, that is a huge dps loss. But you're right, as i also stated in the grand scheme of things it won't matter enough that its the thing you can point at and say hey that's why we hit enrage. Just pointed out that it was not optimal (you will have several hundred less dps in your opener which ofc will even out over the fight but even so) but you can certainly do it if you really want to.

Meh, for the most part I assume I'm going to be pulling as a War now. IMO it's not even about the DPS, it's just so simple for War to grab massive aggro, and at virtually no cost on top of it. I only ran into 1 PLD that refused to let me MT, mainly because they had only MT'd that fight. No big deal, they just turtled up in Shield Oath anyways lol.

This as well, ignoring the dps aspect, it is more efficient enmity wise to have warrior do the pulling

[Aana]

Its certainly more efficient to let war pull. That's not up for debate. But fi you are in a random PUG thing, it is often better to just say "I know wtf im doing so I'm tanking 20DPS be darned". Expecting the other tank to pull and swap it after 10 sec in a pug and do raid level meta is a bit optimistic in my experience. I save the fancy stuff for my raid static. Suboptimal is not only OK in lower level content, but often the smoothest way. Sure you can do zero tank stance in a rando pug for ex primal farms, but I can also ensure the groups odds of winning go up by spending some time in defiance and not trusting some pug healer like I trust my static healer.

Optimal play at all costs is not always the 'right' decision, and even if you don't, the side effects are minimal. Loosing smidges of damage here and there don't matter if you are a good player with high uptime and deal with mechanics properly in a pug. Fundamentals are the most important and suboptimal safe play can make runs much smoother. This isn't talking about being suboptimal because youre lazy. Its being suboptimal to be safe in pugs which is quite a different thing. Bringing the pro level raid meta attitude to everything in the game isn't always going to be the best decision.

[F_Maximillian]

Its certainly more efficient to let war pull. That's not up for debate. But fi you are in a random PUG thing, it is often better to just say "I know wtf im doing so I'm tanking 20DPS be darned". Expecting the other tank to pull and swap it after 10 sec in a pug and do raid level meta is a bit optimistic in my experience. I save the fancy stuff for my raid static. Suboptimal is not only OK in lower level content, but often the smoothest way. Sure you can do zero tank stance in a rando pug for ex primal farms, but I can also ensure the groups odds of winning go up by spending some time in defiance and not trusting some pug healer like I trust my static healer.

Optimal play at all costs is not always the 'right' decision, and even if you don't, the side effects are minimal. Loosing smidges of damage here and there don't matter if you are a good player with high uptime and deal with mechanics properly in a pug. Fundamentals are the most important and suboptimal safe play can make runs much smoother. This isn't talking about being suboptimal because youre lazy. Its being suboptimal to be safe in pugs which is quite a different thing. Bringing the pro level raid meta attitude to everything in the game isn't always going to be the best decision.

I agree with everything you said here. That said, if people were to more widely enforce a certain standard of play for things like pulling and swapping depending on your group comp we'd see an overall boost. To me having a war pull or a drk pull if paired with a pld is no more complex than having an ast not go nocturnal when paired with a sch. If anything there's more adaptation needed if the ast isn't used to playing diurnal than it is for someone to pull the boss/learn of the existence of shirk.

If nobody bothers to spread the info around it won't become widely known and people will keep using suboptimal yet easy to correct methods. I've run into quite a few people who just didn't know and when told they adapted and it worked out just fine. This game does a very poor job of teaching people how to do more than the beyond bare bones basics and it even fails at that the majority of the time. The closest I've seen to in-game instruction on proper play is the initial rdm quest and it's a single line of dialogue but it did capture the essence of the class. Obviously there's far more to it than that but you have to start somewhere no?

[Galactimus]

Please Note: Pulling =/= Main Tanking.

If you are a Paladin, and you prefer to Main Tank, there's nothing stopping your group from doing so after the first 15-20 seconds. There's no downside to letting a Warrior pull and then having a Paladin main tank the rest of the fight when your openers are done. Provoke+Shirk decides who the Main Tank is; -not- Tomahawk and Shield Lob.


That being said Paladins support skills slightly favor Offtanking:
- Passage of Arms and Divine Veil are easier to apply to squishy people when behind the boss
- Clemency also heals the Paladin whenever he heals others (such as a WAR MT)
- Intervention spam is just plain sexy (well.. so is Sheltron, but working together to mitigate a Tankbuster > working alone.)