Paladin balance changes suggestions

[AbremSev]

Paladins are better at dealing with autos than other jobs just by having Blocks...

In what Content? Paladin also has a scaling problem. They're way too strong in normal content and way too weak in Ultimate/Savage. They're just inferior to the other tanks when it comes to taking hits in high end content which is why nobody uses PLD for MT. Like really think about what you just said and ask yourself if that's true why PLD is never MT unless there's no other option? Keep in mind I'm only talking about for high end content.

[Vidu]

Well it's just Paladins are a lot more of a pain to heal in certain content in the game than any other tank. Why would the devs give a sus-sustain tool to Paladins if they didn't want Paladins to use it? Like clearly the spell exists for Paladins to actually use. This coupled with the fact that without using clemency they're just so much worse than the other tanks at taking autos makes it apparent that the job was at some point balanced around using Clemency.

You should look at Clemency the same way you look at a raise-skill for healers, RDMs and summoners: Its there to be used when stuff goes wrong, not on a regular basis.
The fact that we have Holy Spirit to spend mana on to deal damage is a very, very clear nodge that Clemency is not to be used regularly, but situational (healer is dead, healer is overwhelmed, healer is not paying attention and someone is about to die, healer is not paying attention but divine veil needs to be triggered...)

You wouldnt argue that a healer should let party memebers die, just because they have rescuret - and why would they have it and be able to cast it all the time if the devs didnt intend for them to use it, right?

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

In what Content? Paladin also has a scaling problem. They're way too strong in normal content and way too weak in Ultimate/Savage. They're just inferior to the other tanks when it comes to taking hits in high end content which is why nobody uses PLD for MT. Like really think about what you just said and ask yourself if that's true why PLD is never MT unless there's no other option? Keep in mind I'm only talking about for high end content.

MT/OT hasn't been a thing for a long time now anyway. When 95% of tank busters have some sort of vuln that forces a tank swap and enmity is all but eliminated, there's only 'who's tanking at this moment and who isn't.'
Then plenty of the high end fights have both tanks simultaneously tanking (TEA: LL + liquid hand, BJ + CC, UCOB: Nael + Twin phase, Shiva: she autos both tanks during a certain form, Eden's Promise: her tank buster targets both tanks) or involve shared busters (TEA: Perfect Alexander's TB, UCOB: Ahk morn), further diluting MT/OT lines.

Also saying they're too weak is amusing, considering you can check a certain website that logs stuff to see the latest savage tier has about 2000 more PLD parses recorded than WAR or DRK...seems like they're a way more popular choice :^)

[AbremSev]

You should look at Clemency the same way you look at a raise-skill for healers, RDMs and summoners: Its there to be used when stuff goes wrong, not on a regular basis.
The fact that we have Holy Spirit to spend mana on to deal damage is a very, very clear nodge that Clemency is not to be used regularly, but situational (healer is dead, healer is overwhelmed, healer is not paying attention and someone is about to die, healer is not paying attention but divine veil needs to be triggered...)

You wouldnt argue that a healer should let party memebers die, just because they have rescuret - and why would they have it and be able to cast it all the time if the devs didnt intend for them to use it, right?

See that argument would hold water if Clemency couldn't be used to accomplish both, it's not a one or other thing like raise. If you were to compare the mana dump of holy spirit to another job's abilities the better comparison would be SCH's energy drain. Just because a Scholar can dump all their stacks into energy drain doesn't mean they should, or that the rest of their healing kit isn't supposed to be used. The two things aren't mutually exclusive in this case. Also consider why Paladin is the last pick for MT in any high end content scenario. It's because they're just so much weaker than the other tanks nobody ever wants them to MT. Now consider that Clemency exists.

[lezard21]

"Oh a PLD balance thread, this might be an interesting read"

1) Paladin is currently balanced around players using Clemency a certain number of times per minute.

[Vidu]

See that argument would hold water if Clemency couldn't be used to accomplish both. The two things aren't mutually exclusive in this case. Also consider why Paladin is the last pick for MT in any high end content scenario. It's because they're just so much weaker than the other tanks nobody ever wants them to MT. Now consider that Clemency exists.

I dont think Paladin is less picked as a MT because the job is weak(er), but because they make for better OTs with their current toolkit - which has been the case for a couple of expansions now and isnt really a problem in my book?

Besides: Even if paladin might be a slightly worse choice for MT, its still absolutly possible to have a paladin MT - as is pretty much any party combination in the game. People really need to get unstuck on their meta and thinking that just because the meta dictates something, thats the only way to do it...

I'm half expecting paladin to become a dedicated OT with Endwalkers, to be honest (and again: Nothing wrong with that and no, you're still not expected to use Clemency to heal yourself. Thats an "oh shit"-button. Which is fine.)

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

"Oh a PLD balance thread, this might be an interesting read"

You beat me to it.
Like WUT

[AbremSev]

I dont think Paladin is less picked as a MT because the job is weak(er), but because they make for better OTs with their current toolkit - which has been the case for a couple of expansions now and isnt really a problem in my book?

Besides: Even if paladin might be a slightly worse choice for MT, its still absolutly possible to have a paladin MT - as is pretty much any party combination in the game. People really need to get unstuck on their meta and thinking that just because the meta dictates something, thats the only way to do it...

I'm half expecting paladin to become a dedicated OT with Endwalkers, to be honest (and again: Nothing wrong with that and no, you're still not expected to use Clemency to heal yourself. Thats an "oh shit"-button. Which is fine.)

Sure it's possible for PLD to MT they're just so much more of a pain in the ass to deal with than the other tanks though. Also being an OT isn't always an option in every fight, like Leviathan Unreal basically has two MT, M/F from O12s, TEA, even the time they have to hold the boss in UCOB they're just a worse experience to deal with as a healer and there's no real reason for them to be so squishy.

On top of that their kit is just jank.. Veil for instance requires a GCD heal to pop except I'll never heal with a GCD unless we would wipe without it. It's literally cheaper for me to pop a bunch of ogcds than to gcd heal the tank and pop veil even with the mitigation gains. The only time it's helped this tier was on Shiva ice phase on E12s and shadowdog melee uptime cheese. Consider that this is supposed to be the ability that paladin gets one less personal mitigation cd for the other poster in this thread mentioned.

But yeah it's pretty obvious now that the reason they're so much of a pain in the ass heal is because their job is actually balanced around using Clemency at least occasionally. The fact that they don't just means that the healers have to make up the difference and this costs healers a ton of DPS in the situations that Paladin actually has to tank something for a longer period of time.

[AleXwern]

3) I'd like for Passage of Arms to get the same fix as AST's Collective Unconsciousness instead of needing to be channeled. The ability is already limited by the need to be positioned behind the PLD when it's used and right now it's just janky and not as competitive with the more versatile and consistently useful Heart of Light, Shake and Dark Missionary.

This is how it already works though. You flash PoA and it applies immediately and for 5 seconds. All buffs that don't have timer on them last at least for 5 seconds. If you are channeling PoA you are using it wrong.

[Jeeqbit]

1) Paladin is currently balanced around players using Clemency a certain number of times per minute. The problem is no Paladins doing Savage/Ultimate actually plays this way resulting in them being worse at taking damage and generally just annoying for healers to deal with in fights like TEA and Leviathan Unreal. It's not just “my Paladin” either, all Paladins play this way in high level content. I believe this job needs to be adjusted for how players actually play the game rather than how the devs think Paladin should be played. My suggestion is to make Clemency an ogcd and give it a set number of regenerating charges.

I agree with you. As a former Paladin main, after switching to Dark Knight, Paladin feels weak and squishy. Blackest Night makes its equivalent, Sheltron, seem like nothing. I absorb whole tankbusters with Blackest Night while on Sheltron the healer actually has to heal me.

Even GNB feels better with its partial combo heals and shields and Aurora, and WAR just heals itself with some very powerful heals, a lot of which are not on the GCD.

Paladin could be balanced better with a 100% block rate to make up for not having self-heals and shields in its combo. Sheltron's effect could be to increase how much is mitigated by the blocks, such as doubling it.

I think Paladins have less mitigation cooldowns because Bulwark was merged into Sheltron. Bulwark was the "extra" mitigation like Dark Mind, Camouflage or Thrill of Battle. Nothing replaced that.