Kneejerk reaction to PLD changes.

[Kabooa]

Realistically speaking, as someone that doesn't play tank much, how useful is the Shelltron trait? It's obviously very good in 5-mans, but outside of big pull scenarios like that, how many times will you even get attacked in 6 seconds? With Bulwark removed, it seems more like a net zero than anything.

It basically removes any chance of Shelltron getting thrown off because the boss cheated an auto attack before the tank buster, as well as removing Shelltron's weakness (multihit tank buster)

It's anywhere from a 100% to !21890759831759832759832798237985% increase in effectiveness.

[Ivellior]

Picking and choosing again. Sent 'nerfed' to 30%. Forgot to notice the drop in timer from 3 minutes to 2. Come on now. Try not to be that plainly biased.

Sentinel was nerfed. It went from 40% to 30%. The cooldown reduction is to elevate from trash to usable. Before it was on par (more or less) with vengeance. Now it's strictly worse.

It's not that the CDs were useless, it's that you had to combine multiple weak effects to match what you have now. "Tank busters coming better pop convalescence! That will save me! Oh wait. It wont. Maybe bulwark! Well that's not even guaranteed to proc.

You know what's better than bulwark for 15 sec every 3 min? (5 sec per minute uptime). A 100% block that lasts 5 seconds instead of 1 hit that you can use more than once a minute. Shelltrons buff upgrade alone easily replaces bulwark in overall mitigation, reliability, uptime, and frequency. Sentinel got a 33% uptime boost for a 25% reduced effectiveness. That's 3 tabkbusters in 6 min with 5sec shell+sent instead of now only 2 with sent and single hit shelltron.

Sheltron also needs 50 gauge (which you don't mention), unless they buffed the gauge generation that wont work.
Not to mention that if you don't have gauge you (for any reason) you can't use it. Before you just needed to press 2 buttons.

THEN you tack on a 25% (up from 10%) shield from your drk. Or a strong regen and small shield from gun. Or a 10% passive mit and regen from war.

Provided you have a 2nd tank. Those cooldowns where available in dungeons for mass pulls. Now they are not.

You lost buttons. You gained mitigation as a team and are more or less where you used to be when solo.

Not true. You have less mitigation solo and on 4-man group.

Did you also forget you have 20% mitigation PERMANENTLY as a level 1 trait without the penalties of tank stance? Of course you failed to mention that.

So they dumbed down stances and that's somehow a good thing? And that happened to everyone and I need to mention it for what?

Look at the big picture. You are only seeing what was lost and completely missing that it was given back in other ways by buffs to existing abilities, passive traits, and your team. Tanks will perform perfectly well in mitigation in 4 mans and easily much better off in pairs than ever before.

I am looking at the big picture, tanks are now blue dps. Enmity is non existent, defensive stats and abilities no longer exist and (no blind from flash, no pacificaction from, shield swipe etc, no more parry from anticipation). You have nothing to do but dps and press a button when the boss has a tank buster.
And according to you that is somehow good? You are playing a tank, if you want to do damage play a dps.

They should not have cut defensive abilities, they should have given more defensive abilities and utilities. And PLD got nothing but nerfs in both categories.

[Izsha]

You are shifting your argument from "Pld lost a buncha mitigation and that's bad!" to "tanks are just blue dps and that's bad".

Those are not the same claims and I'm not going to get goaded into an argument I wasnt making. I never commented on blue dps and simplification of tanks as a good or bad thing so dont try to pin me with an opinion I didnt state.

You dont have to agree with the direction tanks are going. That's an opinion. But dont walk around claiming tanks ability to mitgate damage just got nerfed when it didnt because you're salty.

Number of defensive abilities went down. Actual ability to mitigate did not nosedive with it.

[Ivellior]

You are shifting your argument from "Pld lost a buncha mitigation and that's bad!" to "tanks are just blue dps and that's bad".

Those are not the same claims and I'm not going to get goaded into an argument I wasnt making. I never commented on blue dps and simplification of tanks as a good or bad thing so dont try to pin me with an opinion I didnt state.

You dont have to agree with the direction tanks are going. That's an opinion. But dont walk around claiming tanks ability to mitgate damage just got nerfed when it didnt because you're salty.

Number of defensive abilities went down. Actual ability to mitigate did not nosedive with it.

How exactly did paladin not loose mitigation? Sentinel is nerfed, cover is nerfed, tempered will nerfed (and given to everyone) an we lost a bunch of cooldowns?.
It's things you used to have had and you no longer have. You say mitigation is the same now, I say it isn't.
They tried to compensate by buffing sheltron.
But you ignore that:
1. Sheltron needs gauge.
2. sheltron doesn't increase healing like conva.
3. sheltron doesn't make you immune to criticals.

You also claim that another tank can now give you mitigation. Which only works in raids. You don't account for solo or dungeons, in which when mass pulling, you always using more cooldowns and getting way more mileage from your cooldowns than raids.
Also in most raids you don't even need to use all your cooldowns, so what's the point of having extra mitigation in raids?

It still doesn't change the fact that PLD lost most of it's cooldown while WAR kept them almost all.

[Bright-Flower]

Somehow I think we'll be just fine in dungeons.

[mrt617]

I love the DPS changes for PLD, but I hate that we are losing some mitigation tools (we are really behind on Warrior in that department now). I also think the cover change is too drastic. I would be fine with it costing gauge but still doing 20% mitigation or costing no gauge and just directly taking damage.

Looking at all the tanks it seems like Warrior is far and away the best tank this time. At least in Stormblood PLD had far superior utility so we had our role. Seems to me double warrior is the best tank combination now.

[Izsha]

Shelltron always needed gauge. But it's still provides more mitigation for the same cost as now. That's called a buff.

You keep calling sentinel a nerf when it's a buff in uptime and net mitigation over a fight. 50% more uptime for 25% reduction (which was largely overkill at 40% for anything the game could throw anyway). Mathematically its a buff. Practically it's a MAJOR buff because frequency of CD is far more impactful in actual gameplay. Buff.

When the game focused on using as little tank stance as possible the 20% mitigation backed in is a buff. Plain and simple. Buff.

Conv isnt even mitigation. Parry procs after shield making pld the least affected by loss of party of all tanks. Awareness has very niche uses, thus very small actual mitigation. All 3 are incredibly weak mitigation tools that are easily countered by buffs to core defenses (baked in 20%, sent buff, shell buff).

Dungeons will be fine. Enjoy your baked on 20% mit on mass pulls without taking a damage penalty comnined with actual aoe damage on pld for once. Dungeons are going to be smoother than ever defensively and offensively.

8 mans will be even stronger with co tank support that used to he nonexistent. Pld can actually MT now if you want as all their weaknesses have been shored up.

The only thing we dont know at this point is where everyone falls on dps until the math wizards get to work and we see what type of encounters SE designs. But the ability for pld to do tank things (mitigate damage, generate threat, assist individuals and groups) have all either stayed roughly the same or been buffed.

If you dont like simplification, be my guest. But the effectiveness of pld to perform as a tank in tank functions is extremely high in all categories as it retained most of its strengths and eliminated it's current weaknesses.

[Cabalabob]

In regards to "Why ever use Cover?", the reason is because you can use it to get total greater mitigation for a period for 50 gauge by stacking Sentinel or Sentinel+Rampart.

Intervention + Rampart: 10% + 10% = ~20% total mitigation for the player taking the damage.
Intervention + Sentinel: 10% + 15% = ~25% total mitigation for the player taking the damage.

Cover + Rampart: 20% total mitigation for the player taking the damage. Approx. the same as Intervention.
Cover + Sentinel: 30% total mitigation for the player taking the damage. ~5% more than Intervention.

If you were then to stack both Rampart and Sentinel with Cover, you would see even bigger gains over using both with Intervention.

In addition to that, Intervention only has a duration of 6s while Cover has a duration of 12s, so you get more out of the extra defensives you burn for it. 6s works fine for single hit busters but for situations where the high damage may be over a period of time, like busters that are a sequence of hard-hitting attacks, that 6s may not be enough but 12s will cover it (no pun intended).

While I agree that Cover definitely got hit with the nerf bat, it seems like it still has it's uses and as long as you are pairing it with Sentinel or Sentinel and Rampart, it is actually preferable to Intervention.

The way I see it working is that Cover is planned for the big hits that you will be assisting as OT, planning to stack Cover+Rampart+Sentinel, while Intervention and Intervention+Rampart is used whenever you have the gauge.
Basically frequent and consistent with Intervention, and planned but infrequent for Cover.

But again, why use cover over just tank swapping? Cover + sentinel vs. Swap + sentinel + sheltron. Cover no longer has any value for covering a tank because no matter the situation, you’re better off just swapping or using intervention.

Cover needed a nerf, that much is true, if cover was untouched based on the current tank kits then we’d have PLD OT and all the rest fighting for MT. But they went too far with the nerfs. Either add the gauge cost and keep the mitigation, maybe increase the recast, making it a more powerful alternative to intervention with a CD.

Or remove the mitigation and nothing else. Putting it back into the emergency button niche that won’t eat our resources.

But not both! Removing the mitigation and adding a resource cost just makes it so that there is no situation where using cover is better than just tanking the monster and in emergencies you might not even have it available because of the cost, hurting it’s prospects as both a planned CD and a snap decision in emergencies.

[Galactimus]

"1, 2, 3 Rage of Halone"
has become
"Goring -> Authority -> Atonement x3 -> Requiescat Holy Spirit x4 -> Confiteor" Sexy

"Flash, Circle of Scorn"
has become
"Total Eclipse -> Prominence -> Requiescat Holy Circle x4 -> Confiteor" Super Sexy

Still have five party support abilites (Cover, Divine Veil, Passage of Arms, Intervention, Clemency)

Can now block and auto attack while casting thanks to instant-cast spells.

Requiescats 50% buff replaced Convalescence.
Sheltrons sustained buff replaced Bulwark.
Arm's length replacing Tempered Will.
Removing of Rage of Halone combo.

No more clunky Oath swapping
Gap closer x2
Huge Win

Paladin has never been in a better position.

[mrt617]

"1, 2, 3 Rage of Halone"
has become
"Goring -> Authority -> Atonement x3 -> Requiescat Holy Spirit x4 -> Confiteor" Sexy

"Flash, Circle of Scorn"
has become
"Total Eclipse -> Prominence -> Requiescat Holy Circle x4 -> Confiteor" Super Sexy

Still have five party support abilites (Cover, Divine Veil, Passage of Arms, Intervention, Clemency)

Can now block and auto attack while casting thanks to instant-cast spells.

Requiescats 50% buff replaced Convalescence.
Sheltrons sustained buff replaced Bulwark.
Arm's length replacing Tempered Will.
Removing of Rage of Halone combo.

No more clunky Oath swapping
Gap closer x2
Huge Win

Paladin has never been in a better position.

I like a lot of the changes with PLD, and in a vacuum it is a huge win, but looking at what Warriors got it seems like we are getting left behind. Warriors got a better version of intervention (nascent flash which reduces dmg by 10% and heals), a better version of veil (shake which has a lower cooldown and can be scaled up by sacrificing other abilities), and an equal version of sheltron (raw intuition which costs no gauge and can be used every 30s). Plus on top of that they get Thrill of battle which heals them by 20%, increases their max hp by 20%, and increases incoming healing by 20%. On top of that they get equilibrium which is a free heal ogcd. What is it with SE's love affair with Warrior.