Give us back the old Paladin

[nia_saeli]

I highly disagree that PLD is a GNB clone.
Not to mention two of the hallmarks of GNB play are that it has a super rigid rotation (more akin to DRG and, honestly, OLD PLD was more akin to GNB in that sense) and a fast pace, high APM rotation.

This is probably a vibe thing so feel free to disagree here, but if we consider the following:

PLD Filler 1-2-3-4-4-4 is essentially two of GNB 1-2-3 (without the benefit of solid Barrel's healing/shield)
Goring Blade is Sonic Break (without the DoT)
Req is a damaging Bloodfest (with a less interesting resource generated in "Confetior Ready")
FoF is just no Mercy
Confetti is like Double Down
Blade of Faith Combo is like Gnashing Fang pre-Continuation that happens half as often.
(DM) Holy Spirit is Burst Strike with a cap of 1
Spirits Within/CoS are Blasting Zone/Bow Shock

If divine might stacked to three and they added a Holy Continuation that procced after Sword Combo or Divine Might Holy Spirit, it would be almost _exactly_ like a more flexible Gunbreaker.
(Yes, I am aware that you could probably do this with any of the tanks, but PLD and GNB feel especially similar in this regard)

I think considering "strictness" and "high APM" as a Hallmark of Gunbreaker play is fine and all, but that's why it's not a "gunbreaker clone" but instead a "more flexible, half-baked gunbreaker" (like a level 60 gunbreaker). It's a point of comparison similar to how post 5.0 DRK felt like a WAR with more oGCDs.

It's fine if you don't see it that way, but from my end I have my hotbars set up (mostly) the same between the two jobs so PLD just plays like a lesser version of GNB.

The old rotation had a lot of room for improvement, but it was satisfying to have about 45 seconds per minute of buffed GCDs where each felt impactful. Learning fights and how to min-max each of the buffs accordingly was the skill expression (I would argue that the fight by fight openers were 100% skill expression. The naive rotation for PLD was absolutely "good enough" for most content (yes, even savage prog).

The new 6.3 version, while flexible, has minimal skill expression since every fight will play out exactly the same. Divine Might doesn't provide skill expression, it just gives a slightly more damage and mobility than slide-casting previously. With only 5 meaningful GCDs per minute (Goring + Confetti combo under FoF) the other 75% of our rotation is just filler with minimal DPS impact. It doesn't feel at all like adding any more mastery or skill expression to me.

[Renathras]

This is probably a vibe thing so feel free to disagree here, but if we consider the following:

Right, but that's what I mean about if you pull things into too much of a vacuum, everything feels the same.

For example, what if we looked at it this way:

PLD Filler 1-2-3-4-4-4 is essentially two of WAR 1-2-3 (without the benefit of Storm's Path's healing)
Goring Blade is Primal Rend (without the gap closer)
Req is a damaging Inner Release (with a less interesting resource generated in "Confetior Ready")
FoF is just Infuriate (with only one charge)
Confetti is like Nascent Chaos
Blade of Faith Combo is like Fell Cleave spam under Inner Release (indeed, it's MORE like this than it is Gnashing Fang)
(DM) Holy Spirit is Fell Cleave when used to prevent overcapping Beast Gauge
Spirits Within/CoS are Upheval

...indeed, some parts (Req/Confet Inner Release/Fellspam) are PLD being more like WAR than like GNB.

And unlike GNB, WAR and PLD have a similar APM.

.

But that's my point: People are zooming out as far as the first TOP clear group and saying PLD and GNB look the same, when PLD from that distance looks just as much (if not more) like WAR. It plays more like WAR and has a cadence more similar to WAR, with a similar APM. And, personally, I find APM determines how a Job feels to me more than most other things.

From my end, I have all 4 of my Tanks (even the DRK I'm leveling still) and half my Melee set up the same way. And all four of my Healers are almost set up the same ways. That's not really a PLD/GNB thing, I don't think.

...but I'm not using that to say they're all the same. NIN and DRK arguably play very similar - a busy burst with lots of weaves followed by a really lax "filler" downtime period until the next burst phase - but no one's arguing that DRK or NIN are clones of each other, even though they have a lot of overlap in playstyle. Hell, NIN and WAR do! I think when people zoom that far out to make comparisons, you run into the problem of almost every Job in the game, and almost every design possible, will ultimately appear very similar.

This is because there are only so many kinds of damage rotation profiles: Proc based, priority system, builder-spender, resource based. Almost every damage rotation can, in some form or another, be put under the umbrella of one of those four. And there's often overlap between them, such as proc based leading to a priority system (RDM) or that a resource can be set up in a builder-spender system (like Arcane Mage used to be in WoW with its mana). But those aren't meaningful ways to look at things, because at that "altitude", everything looks the same anyway.

.

Again: I get some people liked Old PLD. I'm not speaking against that.

What I'm speaking against is that Old PLD was good or that New PLD is bad; New PLD offers more flexibility, choice, agency, and skill expression than Old PLD did. The main differences are that Old PLD was less intuitive (you HAD to read guides to play it well), was more clunky (so "mastering clunk" was required to play it well), and was more punishing to failure (so you were more actively griefing your party if you fat-fingered something on Old PLD). And I know it's a feel thing...but I NEVER felt Old PLD's buffed GCDs "felt impactful". Nothing "felt impactful" about landing Goring under FoF.

The new version is more flexible and has far more skill expression, since you have actual choices, and those choices aren't "Do you wish to play wrong today?" The entire rotation before was filler outside of Requiescat, so that's really no different. Old PLD didn't feel like adding any mastery or skill expression to me. But that's because I've never considered "mastery of clunk" to be skill. I consider it more "fighting the controls". A lot of old games were considered hard if they were challenging but had tight controls. Stuff like Battletoads. But then you had games like Superman 64, which were hard to beat because they were just so bad with such horrible controls. Then you had the games that were easy but also had good controls that were smooth as butter and a joy to play, and so were fun, stuff like Kingdom Hearts, I guess.

I don't mind Jobs being like Battletoads (some being like that are good for the game, imo), I like Jobs being like Kingdom Hearts. I'm not really in favor of Jobs being like Superman 64.

Don't mistake me, though:

I don't like homogenization, and would be fine if Old PLD remained. The 2 min meta is killing the game, imo, since it's forcing all Job designs into a 2 min burst cycle system, which prevents a lot of other types of Jobs (DoTs, sustained damage, etc) from being viable.

I'm just saying that, objectively, New PLD is actually NOT a botched rework, and is a decent Job in vacuum (e.g. if they had added an entirely new Tank and it was New PLD, it would be fine; I just don't like things being taken away from players that did enjoy them, felt the same way about SMN, too), and it's not a GNB clone any-more than WAR is.

EDIT:

PLD had buffs in 6.2 which is when the new tier released making the old one locked out. You are comparing data from a pre-buffed old PLD to a buffed old PLD.

No, I'm comparing actual data, not cherry-picked data.

It's kind of weird because there was no new Savage released in 6.2, but if we're talking PLD's overall performance, that shouldn't matter anyway. All the data agrees that PLD was on the bottom, either slightly above or slightly below WAR (when WAR wasn't top, which it was in Ex4 - the example you brought up had PLD at the bottom!). The P1-4S data says this. The Ex3 data says this. The Ex4 data says this. Hell, the Aglaia data says this.

Literally every piece of commonly run content in 6.2 had PLD at the bottom in terms of damage. I can't find a single boss fight that shows PLD consistently topping the charts. Can you find any one and actually give me a pointer to it? Because I can't find any. I can find a few isolated cases where a PLD was topping the charts for brief periods, but those seem to be highly volatile and not representative of the Job as a whole. All the general metrics say the opposite, and I can find just as many individual cases where PLD is not the top Job. If Savages, Extremes, Alliance Raids, and Ultimates are all saying the same thing, I'm sorry, but I don't see how you can be right.

I DID say that New PLD seems to be doing even less damage than Old PLD (which is in direct opposition to the goal of the rework, meaning they'll probably patch it to boost its burst), but there's not a single site or fight I can find where PLD was the Tank Job topping the others overall.

It's rather disingenuous of me to call PLD a GNB clone ... when in reality it's the offspring of all the tanks combined into a disaster of a job.

You could just as easily say they're the offspring of PLD. As I point out above, WAR and PLD are actually more similar than PLD and GNB in a number of ways. Inner Release is far more similar to Requiescat than Bloodfest is.

In the current spread yes, PLD IS doing the worst because they nerfed the job from what it was in 6.28 going into 6.3, which is what I am referring to.

Yes, but this is what I'm saying you're wrong about:

PLD was ALREADY the worst in 6.28. That's why they even did a rework in the first place. Why do you think they reworked PLD and not WAR, GNB, or DRK?

The simple answer is the obvious one - because PLD was doing worst in the meta and they were trying to prevent it being shut out for the entire expansion until they do...whatever they're going to do in 7.0.

It wasn't in a good position in 6.28. That's WHY they nuked it.

Note that WAR wasn't doing fantastic either, but they buffed its potencies and it was doing decently. PLD was not and had a wider spread, meaning people below 75% were often doing less damage than the average WAR was.

So there should be no difficulty in the jobs at all then?

I hate it when people do this bad faith argument nonsense. "When did you stop beating your wife?"

I ask you, where in...

"But in objective terms, Old PLD was not just fine or anything. It was not topping the charts, it wasn't in a happy place, and the nuance was often not actual choice but a binary "doing it right or doing it wrong" situation."

...are the words "there should be no difficulty in jobs"?

I didn't even MENTION difficulty. I mentioned that there was no choice - YOUR ARGUMENT - and instead of making an argument for how you thought there was, you asked me when I stopped beating my wife.

[Lamarcy2699]

Right, but that's what I mean about if you pull things into too much of a vacuum, everything feels the same.
No, I'm comparing actual data, not cherry-picked data.

You're not, you're comparing something completely different. If I was cherry picking data, I would only choose the fights that make PLD look good. Just because PLD had a shaky start at the beginning of EW until 6.2, does not mean PLD was in a bad state in 6.28 just before 6.3 was released.

[Lamarcy2699]

PLD was ALREADY the worst in 6.28. That's why they even did a rework in the first place. Why do you think they reworked PLD and not WAR, GNB, or DRK?

I didn't even MENTION difficulty. I mentioned that there was no choice - YOUR ARGUMENT - and instead of making an argument for how you thought there was, you asked me when I stopped beating my wife.

PLD absolutely was NOT the worst in 6.28, if you did your rotation properly you'd be around DRK damage and if you've experienced players who can't get that high then that's not the jobs fault, it's quite literally (and I do not mean this in the memey sense) a skill issue. People found PLD "too complex" that they messed up their rotations and started to fall off hence why the spread of dps was so big. PLD got the rework because of its reliance on even spread of damage which set it apart from other jobs because it didn't fit well into the meta so they made it a "bursty" job to fit. Keyword here being well because yes WAR still underperformed that is true but PLD was absolutely fine where it was in damage, it just didnt give that much out during raid buffs due to its natural drift and different nature to its burst structure. The only people who suffered taking a PLD over GNB/DRK were damage buff givers like DNC but even then the difference would be (from what I have seen going from 6.28 to 6.3) ~30-40 dps gain for their respective buffs. That doesn't even cover the amount of dps PLD lost going into 6.3.

[Lamarcy2699]

I hate it when people do this bad faith argument nonsense. "When did you stop beating your wife?"

I ask you, where in...

"But in objective terms, Old PLD was not just fine or anything. It was not topping the charts, it wasn't in a happy place, and the nuance was often not actual choice but a binary "doing it right or doing it wrong" situation."

...are the words "there should be no difficulty in jobs"?

I didn't even MENTION difficulty. I mentioned that there was no choice - YOUR ARGUMENT - and instead of making an argument for how you thought there was, you asked me when I stopped beating my wife.

First off, that's the most atrocious analogy I have ever seen. Second, everything you have been saying has been heavily implying that you don't want difficulty so that is an error on my part if you didn't mean to make it come across like that. While difficulty is subjective, my idea of "rotational difficulty" is a rotation which is rigid enough to where you can either do it right or you can do it wrong and actually requires you to think so that's just my interpretation. There can exist nuances within a rigid rotation like openers or how to recover if you mess up or if you should DoT or get some instant damage out. If anything new PLD has less nuance than old PLD. The rotation is just as rigid with the exception of DM HS.