Paladin Updates

[Evaddaragon]

I'm not saying PLD sucks, I can do just fine with it after this update. It's just that WAR is still better.

It's not like nobody is trying out PLD and WAR - it's that we have and see that PLD is nearly useless as far as tanking goes.

So which is it : It doesn't suck, or it's useless ?

I held back on your last answer towards your telling "not getting the point" just to see what people (including yourself) would add to the discussion.

Most people have done nothing but proving my argument about people wanting PLD to pretty much be WAR with a sword and shield.

Just look at the more common complaint that people (including you on that one) have : The lack of HP. Fine. Let's say we solve that. PLD now has the same HP as WAR.

That brings us to top complain no.2 : The lack of damage from PLD vs WAR. Fine, let's solve that too. PLD now deals damage equal to WAR.

But wait, if we solve both of these things, what's the difference between PLD and WAR, then, if both tank well and do decent damage ? Right, the weapon type… My point exactly.

While I agree with you that it would be very interesting to bring something like native magic damage mitigation in order to make it so that PLD takes far less damage overall, "excusing" the lack of HP, let me ask one simple question : How is that going to help with the current habit of doing dungeons in speed-runs, if at all ? Right. It won't help one bit. Unless PLD works exactly like WAR (which it probably never will), people will still pick WAR over PLD in the current content and playstyle of the community.

I'm going to agree with you one one thing though : Anyone that says PLD can't hold hate has only been playing with bad PLDs. It currently holds hate fine. For all intents and purposes, the jobs works. We, the community, however, play in a way that doesn't suit its design. So either SE adapts PLD to us, or makes content that requires us to change our playstyle. The former will probably be easier to do.

What PLDs needs to make it a better "tank" is indeed magical mitigation, or higher HP than WAR. It doesn't need more enmity generation. But even THAT won't make people prefer it over WAR. It still won't be optimised for speed-runs.

EDIT : Oh, right. I meant to address that point as well. Defense. Even if we increase its usefulness, that's going to also benefit WAR. Let's be reminded that there isn't that great a difference in defense between the two, seeing as they can also pretty much equip the same gear. So if you want to make PLD stand out from WAR, I regret to say that defense will not be a solution. Straight up damage mitigation will. Divine Veil's current status is a step in the right direction. Now we need something about magic damage. Making it blocable would be an idea. Buffing gladiator abilities is also not a good idea, because WAR can use most of them too.

[Phobos]

So which is it : It doesn't suck, or it's useless ?

I held back on your last answer towards your telling "not getting the point" just to see what people (including yourself) would add to the discussion.

Most people have done nothing but proving my argument about people wanting PLD to pretty much be WAR with a sword and shield.

Just look at the more common complaint that people (including you on that one) have : The lack of HP. Fine. Let's say we solve that. PLD now has the same HP as WAR.

That brings us to top complain no.2 : The lack of damage from PLD vs WAR. Fine, let's solve that too. PLD now deals damage equal to WAR.

But wait, if we solve both of these things, what's the difference between PLD and WAR, then, if both tank well and do decent damage ? Right, the weapon type… My point exactly.

While I agree with you that it would be very interesting to bring something like native magic damage mitigation in order to make it so that PLD takes far less damage overall, "excusing" the lack of HP, let me ask one simple question : How is that going to help with the current habit of doing dungeons in speed-runs, if at all ? Right. It won't help one bit. Unless PLD works exactly like WAR (which it probably never will), people will still pick WAR over PLD in the current content and playstyle of the community.

I'm going to agree with you one one thing though : Anyone that says PLD can't hold hate has only been playing with bad PLDs. It currently holds hate fine. For all intents and purposes, the jobs works. We, the community, however, play in a way that doesn't suit its design. So either SE adapts PLD to us, or makes content that requires us to change our playstyle. The former will probably be easier to do.

What PLDs needs to make it a better "tank" is indeed magical mitigation, or higher HP than WAR. It doesn't need more enmity generation. But even THAT won't make people prefer it over WAR. It still won't be optimised for speed-runs.

EDIT : Oh, right. I meant to address that point as well. Defense. Even if we increase its usefulness, that's going to also benefit WAR. Let's be reminded that there isn't that great a difference in defense between the two, seeing as they can also pretty much equip the same gear. So if you want to make PLD stand out from WAR, I regret to say that defense will not be a solution. Straight up damage mitigation will. Divine Veil's current status is a step in the right direction. Now we need something about magic damage. Making it blocable would be an idea. Buffing gladiator abilities is also not a good idea, because WAR can use most of them too.

I think we've been misunderstanding each other and arguing senselessly; perhaps due to my not explaining my thoughts fully.

I'll say it again. I don't want PLD to be like WAR at all. Personally, the idea of a DD tanking better than the job who's only role is to tank just seems ridiculous to me. I don't understand all the people who seem to think that WAR should be able to tank better than PLD in some things, I think it's kind-of like how NIN in FFXI was unintended to be a tank yet it ended up being one. I simply want to see the intended tank job be good at tanking.

As for the lack of HP, I really don't care if we have less HP - but there was this unanswered promise of boosted defenses to make up for it. This is the problem - WAR got boosted HP, and PLD was supposed to get boosted defense to make up for its HP difference; this just was not the case.

While I don't think WAR should be the best tank in ANY tanking situation, I think it should be a viable tank for both when you cannot find a PLD, and for if you're trying to squeeze out some extra DD because you have extra support or superb support players. I think people misunderstand me on this sometimes - you mention speed runs and I think you're spot on in fact. People should be using PLD when they want to be safer - it should take hits much better than WAR, need less curing, and hold hate better. WAR should be the DD that can tank and if you have good healers you can blast through a run with it. PLD even has some decent DD boosting tricks to it (bleed and defense down) so I don't see a reason to not use both. I have a WAR friend and our most common method of doing things is he tries to stay high on enmity so that if I die on PLD it's not instant lose.

What I bolded in your post is what I think should happen. PLD should be tank king, as I've said before. I'm fine if its less viable in speed runs - that just makes sense. It's still possible to win a speed run with all jobs as Mog has shown us, but if PLD is out of the optimal setup for some fights so be it. My issue is even with single tank fights like Ifrit, WAR seems to have an overall easier time survivng and keeping hate. As someone who has WHM and has cured both, I can say its much easier and less stressful curing a WAR than a PLD. I would compare it to in XI, in situations where DD's could tank using /NIN perfectly fine you wouldn't bother with a tank in the party. That doesn't mean that a tank would take less damage, just that being able to not use one and use a DD let you squeeze out more damage for faster kills.

Personally, I view a tank as something that can do a combination of two things, and do them well. Hold hate, and not die. With the update, we can hold hate pretty well, though I still see some people who seem intelligent enough saying WAR can still do it better. I have not seen this personally yet, though I'll concede that the average WAR holds hate better than the average PLD. To hold hate on PLD you need to be doing a lot of work. The real problem I have is that the job that wields a great-axe and has an ability that reduces its defenses has an easier time staying alive than the job that holds a shield.

I haven't said too much on the usefulness of defense myself, though it does need to be fixed. What I'm trying to get at is that PLD has this promise from the original dev posts that it sacrifices HP for increased defenses, and yet WAR gets ~1k hp more and PLD doesn't seem to have any defense boost to it (magical or physical).

As for buffing GLA abilities, the only things I would suggest would be Outmaneuver and the traits - almost everything else is fine. I've also commented that magical attacks should be blockable, which would honestly fix a lot. There should be some passive damage mitigation though, as you say. PLD should be at a static 10~15% reduction of damage from traits alone - otherwise WAR will remain on top.