Quote Originally Posted by Ayan_Calvesse View Post
If your level 88 Paladin you do not have the entire blades combo; 3 steps of it are earned at level 90...

I think the issue is that "Good" paladin play just isn't really rewarding; its just lukewarm - but to people who sucked at playing old paladin - new paladin is something they can play "good". The result was the good players being brought down and the low ones being brought up to a very vanilla experience.
Personally I dislike Paladins rework more so because I hate the instant cast "Holy Spirit" animation - it feels awkward and clunky and out of place and not like a "instant" but more like a very fast cast but still far less fast then a swing of my sword - with divine might we are seeing more "Holy Spirit" casts consistantly outside of Requiscat burst so it just makes the entire melee flow feel wrong....and not even sure why we have Goring blade still.
I think people were expecting Paladin to gain a identity from the rework; not be watered down to "Tank with shield" next to "Tank with Axe" and "Tank with Gunblade" and "Tank with Greatsword"
I think I messed up on my wording for the level 88 part, I meant to say that because you don't have the blades combo at that level that the rotation is "harder" because you have to think to press different buttons and not just spam the same button 4 times.
I definitely agree on the GNB light and Goring Blade comments though. Goring feels like it was designed to be sonic break with no DoT and all damage but it feels completely underwhelming, clunky and out of place to use. Divine Might is alright when doing dungeons for a slightly more interesting aoe combo than just 1-2 (this is the nicest thing I can say that came out of the PLD rework, and it just adds to the GNB light) but for single target HS just feels so out of place to use after an atonement or RA.
I also see your point about good paladin gameplay, I guess it's just my opinion that jobs shouldnt be reworked because people feel obligated to do that most amount of damage for the least amount of effort (even if that wasnt the reason for this update) the jobs were already there and you could use them in sooo much of the games content without knowing a thing you were doing, just press buttons and win. I don't mean that as in I dislike simpler jobs but rather completely stripping jobs of their identity/uniqueness because of it I really dislike. It was the uniqueness and quirkiness of paladin that I loved. P4S phase 2 for example, my group wanted one of the tanks to do the 2nd bait for Act III so i swapped to the less optimal opener and had my magic phase ready. Same as P8S p1, we have a really good BLM who took the front melee spot for easier uptime and I did the same thing there so I could do my magic phase and take the range position. Less optimal? Sure. Was it fun? Absolutely. Little things like that are what made Paladin feel really good to me and now all of that has been replaced with hardcast HS spam.