PLD changes; thoughts?

[Sparkthor]

Kind of like they already make animations mid expansion for the new content in the patch, almost like they gave Divine veil a updated animation to fit the changes... Not saying they "need" to make new animations for every ability but a lot of PLD's look bad and outdated to me. To name a them: Royal authority, Goring Blade, Intervention. I think it's clear they could likely make a few in the next few upcoming major patches.

Divine veil didn't get new animations but new VFX. And maybe some animations looks old (the same as VFX on them), but i think the winner in the category oldest animation is the Warrior Storm Path.

has it really been so long that shield swipe is forgotten

I indeed fully forgot this one. And I agree on your thought about a 2nd combo.

[ForsakenRoe]

Divine veil didn't get new animations but new VFX. And maybe some animations looks old (the same as VFX on them), but i think the winner in the category oldest animation is the Warrior Storm Path.

Path has got to be one of the crappiest animations in the entire game. #Bring Back Butchers Block

edit: Just been looking at things about PLD, namely Rin Karigani's 'clean loop' video. He has this very nice graphic to illustrate:



I see 24 GCDs, 7 of which are Atonements, in a pattern of 3, 1, 3 (or 3,2,3 with any amount of skillspeed). So i'm thinking, if we cut Sword Oath to just one stack, we'd move down to 1,1,1 and save ourselves 4 (5 with SS) GCDs. And what is 5 GCDs long? Fast, Riot, Royal, Atonement, HolySpirit. So maybe we can finally get rid of the weird unintuitive 'btw you have to purposely drop Atonements from your combo' thing. Also, if I could, I'd make Atonement not break combo, and have range to it (give it a VFX where a big spectral sword of light thrusts forward, so it is distinct looking from Riot Blade's animation), so that it and HS can both be used at any point before the next RA for versatility in peeling off for mechanics. Yeh it'd maybe suck to go to 'lmao spam 12345' but I don't see much difference between it and 'lmao spam 1234555' which is what we have now.

[Gserpent]

I see 24 GCDs, 7 of which are Atonements, in a pattern of 3, 1, 3 (or 3,2,3 with any amount of skillspeed). So i'm thinking, if we cut Sword Oath to just one stack, we'd move down to 1,1,1 and save ourselves 4 (5 with SS) GCDs. And what is 5 GCDs long? Fast, Riot, Royal, Atonement, HolySpirit. So maybe we can finally get rid of the weird unintuitive 'btw you have to purposely drop Atonements from your combo' thing. Also, if I could, I'd make Atonement not break combo, and have range to it (give it a VFX where a big spectral sword of light thrusts forward, so it is distinct looking from Riot Blade's animation), so that it and HS can both be used at any point before the next RA for versatility in peeling off for mechanics. Yeh it'd maybe suck to go to 'lmao spam 12345' but I don't see much difference between it and 'lmao spam 1234555' which is what we have now.

Or just turn Atonement into Raiden Thrust. Complete the combo, your next Fast Blade is instead Atonement with a higher potency and the MP recovery. Would look pretty funny doing Atonement into Riot Blade since they're damn near the same animation (diagonal slash into thrust, then just thrust) so remove Riot Blade and turn Shield Bash into what Riot Blade used to be since we're playing pretend anyway.

Or just copy Warrior and retain the Goring Blade combo, remove Atonement, and Goring Blade combo gives some kind of buff or other to maintain. There's multiple different ways they could have addressed the whole "drop an Atonement" problem and they did absolutely none of them.

Lazy.

[ForsakenRoe]

Or just copy Warrior and retain the Goring Blade combo, remove Atonement, and Goring Blade combo gives some kind of buff or other to maintain. There's multiple different ways they could have addressed the whole "drop an Atonement" problem and they did absolutely none of them.

Well, my preference would have been to merge Req and Confiteor (Req is GCD, upgrades to Conf at 80) and have 3 combos, Conf-Faith-Truth-Valor, Fast-Riot-Goring-HS, and Fast-Riot-RA-Atonement. Each of these 3 combos would be 10s long, so you just build a rotation out of 6 of them. HS combo would spend MP, Atonement would regen it. Average 100% uptime gameplay requiring 2 Atones for every 3 HS's (the third is covered by natural MP regen), or 3 Atone/2 HS if Conf combo still requires MP. If you know you can't hit the boss for a while (High Concept), you'd be able to swap out Atones for the stronger HS combos, and make up the difference in MP economy via natural regen in the downtime.

Now, I'm thinking maybe we change the other combo into something like Shield Bash - Savage Blade - Royal Authority - Atonement, so there's one stabby animation in each combo, instead of this weird slash-stab-spinny-stabstabstab-magic we have now. And it'd make Shield Bash actually useful for something! The idea you quoted in the quote I'm now quoting is not like, the solution I'd necessarily want, but it's trying to work around what we're lumped with currently. Clearly they want certain things, like Goring to be not-SonicBreak, and Req to stay as a limpdick OGCD to activate your Conf window, instead of just removing it or reworking it and making Conf the 'activator', and we have to try and work around that unfortunately.

[Rithy255]

Divine veil didn't get new animations but new VFX. And maybe some animations looks old (the same as VFX on them), but i think the winner in the category oldest animation is the Warrior Storm Path.

PLD's Divine veil had no barrier animation on all targets, It didn't have that before, it also has a holy circle to indicate the area of effect.

Again they've clearly shown they can add animations to classes mid expansion, obviously they shouldn't put too much resources towards it but PLD should get some general animation updates, considering it's I don't know the Poster boy? a Job people might default to playing.

Animations are very important to how the class feels.

[Nifla]

Literally my first post ever on these forums. The pld changes make me sad. I've been a pld main since ARR beta, and i can honestly say absolutely none of what they implemented in regards to a new pld rotation feels good to me. The original pld rotation had a beautiful intuitive flow to it, this new thing has none of that. I did not need to fit into a 2 minute burst window. Hell i didn't even need a damage increase. I liked having 8 gcds in a row for pulling away from the boss, now NOTHING lines up, which is frustrating. Really hoping they do something about it. DV and Sheltron getting better (plus getting back bulwark) are not worth the entirely horrible new rotation I've been saddled with.

[Gserpent]

Well, my preference would have been to merge Req and Confiteor (Req is GCD, upgrades to Conf at 80) and have 3 combos, Conf-Faith-Truth-Valor, Fast-Riot-Goring-HS, and Fast-Riot-RA-Atonement. Each of these 3 combos would be 10s long, so you just build a rotation out of 6 of them. HS combo would spend MP, Atonement would regen it. Average 100% uptime gameplay requiring 2 Atones for every 3 HS's (the third is covered by natural MP regen), or 3 Atone/2 HS if Conf combo still requires MP. If you know you can't hit the boss for a while (High Concept), you'd be able to swap out Atones for the stronger HS combos, and make up the difference in MP economy via natural regen in the downtime.

Now, I'm thinking maybe we change the other combo into something like Shield Bash - Savage Blade - Royal Authority - Atonement, so there's one stabby animation in each combo, instead of this weird slash-stab-spinny-stabstabstab-magic we have now. And it'd make Shield Bash actually useful for something! The idea you quoted in the quote I'm now quoting is not like, the solution I'd necessarily want, but it's trying to work around what we're lumped with currently. Clearly they want certain things, like Goring to be not-SonicBreak, and Req to stay as a limpdick OGCD to activate your Conf window, instead of just removing it or reworking it and making Conf the 'activator', and we have to try and work around that unfortunately.

I'd have to look at all the guides and actually use my brain, which is something I try to avoid doing whenever possible, but aren't most burst windows initiated with an oGCD? Confiteor opening the window on a GCD seems like it would be odd man out.

Literally my first post ever on these forums. The pld changes make me sad. I've been a pld main since ARR beta, and i can honestly say absolutely none of what they implemented in regards to a new pld rotation feels good to me. The original pld rotation had a beautiful intuitive flow to it, this new thing has none of that. I did not need to fit into a 2 minute burst window. Hell i didn't even need a damage increase. I liked having 8 gcds in a row for pulling away from the boss, now NOTHING lines up, which is frustrating. Really hoping they do something about it. DV and Sheltron getting better (plus getting back bulwark) are not worth the entirely horrible new rotation I've been saddled with.

Having to drop Atonements due to a split between skill speed and spell speed was anything but intuitive, but I get where you're coming from :P

[ForsakenRoe]

I'd have to look at all the guides and actually use my brain, which is something I try to avoid doing whenever possible, but aren't most burst windows initiated with an oGCD? Confiteor opening the window on a GCD seems like it would be odd man out.

The issue is that PLD now has a burst window within it's burst window. when we consider that FOF is the 'burst window initiator' OGCD, as with No Mercy, then it becomes apparent that really, we don't need Req as such. It'd be like if Gnashing Fang required a specific OGCD before it, and we called that 'the burst window initiating OGCD'. Conf-Blade-Blade-Blade is like DoubleDown-Gnashing-Savage-Wicked, if we keep the GNB parallels going.

[Rithy255]

The issue is that PLD now has a burst window within it's burst window. when we consider that FOF is the 'burst window initiator' OGCD, as with No Mercy, then it becomes apparent that really, we don't need Req as such. It'd be like if Gnashing Fang required a specific OGCD before it, and we called that 'the burst window initiating OGCD'. Conf-Blade-Blade-Blade is like DoubleDown-Gnashing-Savage-Wicked, if we keep the GNB parallels going.

it's more we don't need fight or flight, it does nothing for the job right now for PLD, I think it just needs to be removed buff req burst buff goring blade, FOF is a ability you just press with req to buff it basically it's a pointless 1 minute weave, Surprised they didn't make it 2minutes to fit more with raid buffs really. In general FOF makes no sense as a buff, it will only make sense if PLD still had two separate buffs that couldn't effect each other, or was on a longer CD and made PLD have a bigger 2 minute burst.

Magic, Divine might and possibly req should be gained pretty early to compensate for this change, allows pld to do more then 1, 2, 3 in ARR/HW content, I think you could also change it so Confiteor, the following blades also just work without req but that makes PLD feel even worse at lower levels (Stormblood/SHB Pld) so I rather they just remove FOF and lean into the magic part of PLD a lot eariler.

It's apparent that stacking both self buffs just feels really weird and pointless, other then goring blade FOF is my main issue with the rework as it stands... ok maybe more "main issues" but I defiantly feel like new PLD just needed more time being worked on really, I hope we're going to be seeing adjustments in the future patches 6.4 especially I don't expect something Major but I think they should, still look into changing PLD, they got down the basics in 6.3, I'm really hoping for some real polish in 6.4, current PLD feels good... just rushed honestly? I think that's the right way to describe what we got.

[Riion]

Literally my first post ever on these forums. The pld changes make me sad. I've been a pld main since ARR beta, and i can honestly say absolutely none of what they implemented in regards to a new pld rotation feels good to me. The original pld rotation had a beautiful intuitive flow to it, this new thing has none of that. I did not need to fit into a 2 minute burst window. Hell i didn't even need a damage increase. I liked having 8 gcds in a row for pulling away from the boss, now NOTHING lines up, which is frustrating. Really hoping they do something about it. DV and Sheltron getting better (plus getting back bulwark) are not worth the entirely horrible new rotation I've been saddled with.

I know your pain. Feels like I don't even recognize the job anymore. The new rotation pales in comparison to how intuitive the old one was.

Having to drop Atonements due to a split between skill speed and spell speed was anything but intuitive, but I get where you're coming from :P

The new optimal rotation has you dropping two Atonements, so it's even better!