PLD 6.2: Take Away and Rotation

[nia_saeli]

As opposed to 'get 50 and Sheltron'? A suggestion I had made was to make Atonement the Gauge consumer, ...

It's the difference between only having to check "Is it raid buffs yet? No? Am I overcapping?" to "How much gauge do I need to keep for the next mechanic?" it's just something that allows us to play ever so slightly differently from the other tanks that just go "Do I need it in 25 seconds? no? Use it" on their mits. We still end up doing that when we'd overcap, but there's at least some leeway which makes it interesting to use defensively for me.

Granted, the oath gauge is basically a 25 second cooldown with two charges and the extra requirement to be in melee range or your cooldowns stop, so not great.

Overall, I just don't trust SE to leave the flexibility in if they remove the oath gauge and repurpose it for something else. I doubt they'd give it charges to compensate. I'd prefer if they just made it so that we generated our gauge from our GCDs and spells (including clemency for when the boss is untargetable).

But 'Paladin's defensiveness via Sheltron is scuppered by the boss using the hidden jutsu of walking away from the arena'' is not a cool unique trait. It's a bloody annoying trait.

This is more of a problem with SE encounter design, but it could also be resolved by generating gauge via spells including clemency or something.

I'm just overall not a fan of further homogenizing stuff that is unique to PLD that can be resolved while retaining PLD's identity.

I would love to swap to "active mitigation" where your damage is a bunch of builders and your spenders are defensive tools. WoW went that direction and while it's had a few potholes, it's been a roaring success and is *dramatically* better than what they were doing before.

But that would require an immense change in XIV's combat system and how it's laid out. I don't see it happening anytime soon.

I think that's fair.