Give us back the old Paladin

[ForteNightshade]

And yet again an ability gets dumbed down because communication is too much to ask for in an MMO or because you'd loose *gasp* a GCD or whatever.
I wonder how many more abilities need to be streamlined until people realise that not that much actual game is left. It's always 'this is an inconvenience!' while I'd argue that's... just playing a game? Isn't (good) cooperation also some sort of skill expressions? Apparently not. It would also be convenient to just have only one ability on every single job called 'Resolve'. You press it and you win. Every time. Easy to balance, you always get a perfect parse and everyone is happy. lol I know that's taking things into the extreme, but honestly, looking from 1.0 to 2.0 to now that's pretty much the current trajectory.

Nice slippery slope you have going there.

As someone who has healed Savage, why am I going to give up a GCD when the trade off amounts to literally nothing? I can and have healed P5-7 without touching a single GCD. And no, that wasn't in an optimized setting but weekly PF clears. On the rare chance I need to GCD heal, it's because either I messed up my oGCD usage or someone took excess damage/died and I had to dump more resources than I planned to keep them alive. Even in the latter example, Healers have so many options nowadays, it still takes a while before they have to fall back on GCD heals. The end result of this is I'll almost never proc old Veil. The outgoing damage doesn't require it and my kit can handle everything the bosses throw out without a single GCD.

So once again that "unique" ability that was supposedly "dumbed down" simply got ignored. No amount of communication would change that because I'm only ever touching a GCD if I absolutely need to. Meanwhile, the other three tanks just get to press their buttons.

I agree with the bulk of your points, but I feel like you can flip point number two around as well as "Plenty of people liked to play PLD before the changes, is it fair to them that they have to change how they play the entire game just because it was locked out of 5 (soon to be 6) instances of content?"

While in a vacuum, I'd say no. However, with the current landscape, yes.

Many of those same players or players with a similar mindset have demanded changes which negatively impact the enjoyment for raiders or even midcore players. Bard and Summoner have been absolutely gutted from their heydays due to casual players whining they were too complicated. Dark Knight went through several iterations due to casual players refusing to play the easier tanks in Heavensward. Machinist has been a hot mess for years when they abandoned the much beloved ammo system. All of these players were told, on this very forum even, to simply "get over it." That "the majority of players prefer the new version!"

To those players now complaining their favourite job was neutered, I say, welcome to the other side of that argument. Frustrating, isn't it?