Kneejerk reaction to PLD changes.

[mrt617]

I don't understand all this passive agressive WAR bashing in general, we play the same role, how about we just get along and wish for the best for all of us. We all just want to be viable and have fun in this game.



The changes were not made because Warrior had bad DPS, they were made because they completely screwed WAR up in the beginning of Stormblood. This job was a mess in a gameplay perspective.

My intention is to not bash Warrior so much as that Warriors are constantly favored over the other tank classes it seems. War came out lacking a little in 4.0, and got uber buffed with shake it off, a big change in its dps mechanics, and big dps numbers. Meanwhile DRK was barely touched even though it was far behind the other two tanks. So it's easy to compare PLD to WAR to see where the class is lacking at least compared to what WAR has now coming out in Shadowbringers. WAR looks to be in a great spot heading into 5.0 and I think PLD could be right up there too if they give us one more source of mitigation (like giving us back the 20% mitigation from cover again).

[Aurelius2625]

You still get enhanced cover, its callee tank mastery. Dmg gets filtered thru it.

Sheltron is a 25s cooldown that is a minimal cost Inner Beast that doesnt lower dps.

You have passive blocking, no other tank has that.

Pld has Veil, cover, passage, 1200 potrncy, 1800 under req clemency, intervention giving ur cotank massive mitigation.

So much derpage in this thread lol.

[mrt617]

You still get enhanced cover, its callee tank mastery. Dmg gets filtered thru it.

Sheltron is a 25s cooldown that is a minimal cost Inner Beast that doesnt lower dps.

You have passive blocking, no other tank has that.

Pld has Veil, cover, passage, 1200 potrncy, 1800 under req clemency, intervention giving ur cotank massive mitigation.

So much derpage in this thread lol.

First off it's not really enhanced if you are covering the tank because the other tank already has tank mastery so there's no difference. Plus on top of it costing 50 gauge it is better to just tank swap. So it is still useful to cover a dps or healer but using it to cover the tank for busters to spread out cooldowns better is no more..

While yes we do have passive blocking ever other tank has an attack that regains hp or gives them a shield and hp (Gunbreaker) which at this point looks to be a wash or in slight favor to the tanks that get heals from their moveset

Veil is a really great ability and passage is pretty good too. No complaints on that.

Not sure if have read but my main issue is losing mitigation sources compared to the other tanks(cover, bulwark/awareness) and not getting anything much to make up for it except a sheltron that you don't have to worry about an auto knocking it off. The other tanks get just as good or better versions of intervention and on top of that also get more sources to mitigate damage to themselves than we do and raid wide shields as well that they don't have to stand still for or have a healer heal them to initiate (also they are on 90s cooldowns instead of 2 mins).

When the savage tier comes out thought all this may be pointless. Maybe with all the changes we are going to be op compared to the boss damage and won't need cooldowns to help with autos and such.

[Kabooa]

Raid patch also tends to implement the first balance pass, after they get to see some hard data and players properly break things.

[MaraD_]

There is no flaw in the logic.

Right now, OTs in Sword Oath that Cover get 20% mitigation from Cover itself.

In future, OTs that Cover will get that 20% mitigation because they have it already in their traits.

All enemies will just have their damage scale upward to compensate. Its like raising minimum wage, everything else goes up in price.
Also, you forget current tanks can put up tank stance, and use cover for 40%~ mitigation.
So the future 20% mitigation is still less.
(Not that I care if cover has mitigation on it or not)

To give another example, current tanks have increased HP and defense compared to other jobs.
Does this mean the current cover also adds HP and defense?

SE is going to balance damage given to future tanks, as if thier -20% dmg taken, was the standard non mitigated damage. So its the same thing as not having any built in mitigation, other than non tanks getting hit harder than a tank, which shouldnt happen outside of raid wide dmg anyways.

[Bright-Flower]

All enemies will just have their damage scale upward to compensate. Its like raising minimum wage, everything else goes up in price.
Also, you forget current tanks can put up tank stance, and use cover for 40%~ mitigation.
So the future 20% mitigation is still less.
(Not that I care if cover has mitigation on it or not)

Well it depends on if they were balancing enemy damage based on tanks being in tank stance or dps stance before. If they were balancing it based on tank stance there shouldn't really be much of a change at least for this reason.

[Maneesha]

"there are 3 things that caused the pld/war meta in sb and drk/war meta in hw:
as for hw its mostly what ppl told me, so its not 100% my experience ( i started at mid hw exp with the game and reached max lvl at the end of it). paladins dmg combo was also his aggro combo, so when tanks go into off stance paladin rips aggro from them if he wants to do optimal dps, which is annoying and ppl didn't like it, also paladins dps was a tad bit behind the other 2 tanks. still paladin had great defensive capability's,but this didn't help him get a main tank spot because the other 2 tanks capability's were still enough. warrior had (and still has) a greater enmity generation on pull thanks to unchained (negating the negatives from def stance) and equilibrium, which allows the other tanks to gain dps since they don't have to use enmity combos if they were to pull.not to forget that holmgang allowed for some tankbuster cheeses thanks to its low cd.

sb released with a lot of pld changes which were great and deserved, but it looked like the dev team put almost all effort into pld and left out the other 2 tanks a bit.
after some balance changes and skill changes and ofc the 1st clears of the 1st raid tier with all classes and very small differences in tank dps between all 3 tanks, the pld/war meta was born due to 3 reasons, warrior still had his greater enmity generation, now with onslaught added to the mix, a raid support skill thanks to shake it off change and ofc he kept good dps and his low cd holmgang. pld had rly good dps and to top it off all the utility in the world. dark knight didnt get anything new to support the raid, maybe the devs through the blackest night is enough..., and only had similar dps to the warrior/pld to offer,so he was left out.

also all tanks( not only , all classes) can clear the content, but since a lot of players are "sheep" and jump on the "meta" bandwagon u see such things as party finder groups not wanting certain classes or some "about to be formed" statics excluding some classes, because its easier this way. now if everyone is a hardcore min-maxing raider, then i can understand switching constantly to the "favor of the expansion/patch" job.
for none of those reasons can you blame warrior players. did we want changes to the gauge system and shake it off in 4.0 and 4.05? sure we did, but it wasn't our idea to make shake it off into a raid wide bubble, it was the devs idea, also not our fault that the devs didn't want to change drk or didn't know how to change him during sb.

[Maneesha]

so all this "job" animosity or hostility is pointless. if you mean it as a joke or want to tease, at least let us know (i know there are ppl who like to tease this way or joke around this way, but usually they also say so).

copied from another thread, i think it fits well here too, also double post because of limitations.

now OT, i see most ppl are upset about cover changes and i think most blow it a bit out of proportion. yes there are valid statements that the gauge cost and the loss of mitigation puts it in a similar place like intervention, but i think cover will still be used and is still better then intervention in some cases(other already mentioned the reason why cover>intervention). also i suspect that it was nerfed, not only because already amazing skill and allowed tankbuster cheesing (similar to holmgang), but also so that the skills which other tank jobs get, for main tank support, are very close to each other. paladin still has more support skills then drk and warrior (poor drk, because his skills is magic only, he might get shunned again), even if for using some of them one has to sacrifice personal dps (dead ppl dont dps, so its still a dps gain)

[Izsha]

We will have to wait and see if they scale damage or not. Also, you 'could' cover with shield oath on, but that means you are main tanking and using cover.....unlikely, or you wasted 2 gcds to turn it on as an OT. Also silly. "Pld can turn on tank stance for 40% and now it's only 20%" is a BIG stretch to make updated cover seem worse than it is.

Cover is fundamentally the same as before in effect. All that's changed is it isnt free. So yes, there are times that cover would be used if it was free that wont be worth it anymore. The effect is as powerful as always, it just has a cost to reflect that power now, so it will be used less, but as long as it cheeses mechanics, saves people in trouble, prevents swaps, knockbacks, debuffs, etc it will find uses. Just not as many as the use must trump the >0 cost.

[MaraD_]

Well it depends on if they were balancing enemy damage based on tanks being in tank stance or dps stance before. If they were balancing it based on tank stance there shouldn't really be much of a change at least for this reason.

They never directly stated what their intentions/designs were for tanks in that regard, except in SB they indirectly referenced making content for tanks outside of tank stance, but most likely just because everyone was already doing it in HW, and didnt feel the need to change anything.

But you also need to look at why developers would make a "stance" in a game where the tank class cant be a pure DPS/healer (like in WoW)
Stances were invented in old western MMOs as a way for them to swap roles. (And eventually shying away from that, via other methods)
People think tanks werent meant to stance dance, or take hits outside of tank stance, despite forgetting SE said all tanks were viable at endgame. This includes 2.0 WAR which didnt have mitigation.

So how did they manage a double WAR PT clearing Twintania Twisers? (Which they said was possible)
Same issue they ran into with Alexander Savage1-4.

People couldnt clear harder fights with certain jobs, until those jobs were far more geared up. (nearly maxed geared)

WARs required way better gear, which was weeks worth of locked tomes in 2.0.
Why wait on a WAR, when u can bring a PLD, who lowers the enemies damage directly?

Now, if you noticed, WARs stances may have been oGCD, but the part that actually mimics the mitigation of a PLD, was on the GCD.
so a PLD can double up with stance and rampart while WAR couldnt (excluding the CDS on much longer CDs)

Tank stances are emergency CDs. If you didnt plan to handle the tank buster correctly, you have an emergency CD that penalizes you in your DPS.
Every boss could be handled without tank stances, but requires better gear and teamwork.
If you cant mitigate a TB enough, then you arent properly tank swapping, so as to maximize your CDs better.

Even now, when people ask yoshida how he intended people to play jobs, he refuses to answer. So its easy to say we dont know his intentions, but you can piece enough of it together based on what is presented.
Only four times have we as players ever come up with a strategy the Devs didnt think of, and they immediately addressed it, usually because it helpped the players make the content easier than intended. (that im aware of)
I'm fairly certain if players did something unintended, SE would mention it. (back when tanking w/o a stance was picking up, yoshida ONLY mentions the healers being asked to DPS, and doesnt mention the tanks. All he said is tank DPS is already taken into consideration. Which most likely means he was surprised by healers focusing on DPS, but not surprised by tanks)

is a BIG stretch to make updated cover seem worse than it is.

Only as much of a stretch as saying the baked in -20% is the replacement to cover, when its clearly not (all tanks get it, not just PLD)
its just easier to say the PLD can just use the better Sheltron as a means to lower dmg as an OT. (and proc shield swipe) this is more accurate from a development perspective.
But i picked current tank stance, due to the fact ist going away. sheltron isnt going away, just changed, so using that in the comparison makes no sense.

EDIT: to clarify why its not a stretch. He's assuming the baked in -20% is somehow not the standard, when its not possible to NOT have the -20% active in SH. That also assumes that the current devs plan content with tanks staying in tank stance. The -20% is removed because it was being used on the MT, rather than squishy allies. (You'll almost never see a PLD cover thier healer, to survive raid wide that would otherwise wipe the party, so they can then LB3.) By removing it, it can still be used to cheese mechanics, but the current PLD players will no longer feel it was wasted on a non tank. Currently you feel its wasted if used on a BLM, rather than on the MT. But non tanks take more dmg than tanks, so -20% was baked in, as if the squishies had tank stance on.
So if his idea that the devs intended tanks to stay in tank stance, and the fact they inteded the tank to protect non tanks, then it would be comparable, and not absurd.