Why is everyone anxious about a PLD Rework?

[ForsakenRoe]

Will Atonement become our Fell Cleave?

no, that already exists: holy spirit. holy spirit = fellcleave, holy circle = decimate, requiescat = IR, and confiteor = primal rend, atonement right now in WAR terms would be like if SE said 'ok if you press storms path, you get to use butchers block 3 times (it has the same damage as path)'. atm we use 4 holy spirits then confetti, and have a 63s loop so we have to drop an atonement/holy spirit, depending which is weaker cos of SE's balance, so it seems like the low hanging fruit SE would go for, to make us use 1 less holy spirit per requiescat window, and buff something to compensate for the lost potency. it's 600p per holy spirit, and we would (after this change) have 3 holy spirits, confiteor, 3 blade hits, so i expect they would buff HS and each of the blade hits by 100 and job's done (confiteor is already bad for crit variance so please SE lets not buff that any more). it'd also make the full req window 7 GCDs long, which makes it more comfortably fit inside a 20s raidbuff window. anything more than that would be quite a surprise to me

[dspguy]

no, that already exists: holy spirit. holy spirit = fellcleave, holy circle = decimate, requiescat = IR, and confiteor = primal rend, atonement right now in WAR terms would be like if SE said 'ok if you press storms path, you get to use butchers block 3 times (it has the same damage as path)'. atm we use 4 holy spirits then confetti, and have a 63s loop so we have to drop an atonement/holy spirit, depending which is weaker cos of SE's balance, so it seems like the low hanging fruit SE would go for, to make us use 1 less holy spirit per requiescat window, and buff something to compensate for the lost potency. it's 600p per holy spirit, and we would (after this change) have 3 holy spirits, confiteor, 3 blade hits, so i expect they would buff HS and each of the blade hits by 100 and job's done (confiteor is already bad for crit variance so please SE lets not buff that any more). it'd also make the full req window 7 GCDs long, which makes it more comfortably fit inside a 20s raidbuff window. anything more than that would be quite a surprise to me

I love the PLD-to-WAR comparison. And that right there is why SE being so formulaic is hurting the game. I have my PLD and WAR hotbars nearly identical. The 1-2-3 Royal Authority combo is my Storm's Path combo. The PLD DoT combo is my Storm's Eye combo. Requiescat is slotted where Inner Release is. Holy Spirit/Circle are slotted for Fell Cleave and Decimate. Holy Sheltron is where Bloodwhetting is - Sentinel where Vengeance is. Etc etc etc. The differences are minor. While the rotation is different, it isn't that different.

[Gserpent]

I love the PLD-to-WAR comparison. And that right there is why SE being so formulaic is hurting the game. I have my PLD and WAR hotbars nearly identical. The 1-2-3 Royal Authority combo is my Storm's Path combo. The PLD DoT combo is my Storm's Eye combo. Requiescat is slotted where Inner Release is. Holy Spirit/Circle are slotted for Fell Cleave and Decimate. Holy Sheltron is where Bloodwhetting is - Sentinel where Vengeance is. Etc etc etc. The differences are minor. While the rotation is different, it isn't that different.

Having hotbars being nearly identical isn't a bad thing, IMO. That dramatically lowers the skill floor for any given class, as your hands are already somewhat used to what they'll be doing.

The issue is that Square-Enix has been lowering the skill *ceiling* of classes at the same time they lower the floor... and IMO, to a much greater extent than they lower the floor (since the floor in ShB was already fairly low.) About a thousand different issues with their current design of, "everyone uses everything in 20 seconds every 120 seconds." Hopefully they admit they screwed up and walk back some of these changes for 7.0, because the more things you sand off or homogenize away, the fewer things you can tinker with for the purposes of design and balance.