Paladin get's skills WAY too late.

[Thanad]

Cover is a situational skill but that doesn't make it bad. The idea that skills are only valuable if they are not scenario-specific reinforces FF's overly scripted design philosophy. No thanks to that. Randomness (which we have far too little of in this game) is often the factor that spices things up but that also means that not every fight will feature every scenario. And some scenario will happen more frequently than others.

Situational skills allow for at least a little bit of job identity and gameplay moments that break out of the mold of FF's perfectly choreographed fights. If a fight goes well there are many skills that will never be used. There might be no res, no provoke, no shirk, no stun, no spell interruption, no invuln. Sometimes you don't even need big heals. See the issue of healers pressing 1 for the majority of an encounter.
Unfortunately that's the nature of FF's current battle design.

That doesn't invalidate the existence of skills that can be used in situations when a fight doesn't pan out according to its script, like when players make (repeated) mistakes.
Those occasional moments where you get to press your "oh sh*t" button make the 99 sleep-inducing runs where nothing happens more bearable.
I don't think the gameplay experience will really be improved if they cull the last traces of unique job flavour even further.

I'd much rather have have them create content that makes using cover (and healing lol) more meaningful again.


Also, that's your anecdotal statistics. Personally I both use cover and see cover used frequently enough. So whose anecdote is right?

Clemency is always useful, all the time. You must be running not that many dungeons if you don't need it or are blessed with competent healers. In later case i envy you. I have to spam Clemency regularly in dungeons.

[Rithy255]

Personally what I'd want for early level Paladin
1. Holy Spirit, to be learnt at 30-50, I'd also add a small heal effect (such as 200) potency because PLD is the only tank that lacks self healing in combo until way later. Holy spirit would upgrade into Holy circle which is now a cleave aoe attack (similar to your conf combo in the way it cleaves).
2. Small sustain to Normal Sheltron 50-60 (100 Potency Regen), keeping it more in line with GNB in having a small amount of sustain in early content.
3. Rework Shield bash into a OGCD attack that stuns targets in a cone aoe, Gap closer damage removed, you can gap close to allies, gap closer around 50-60. (2 charges upgrade at 72).
4. Atonement combo moved down earlier around 60-70.


Personally when I think of "Paladin" I think of a powerful knight with holy magic that's used for offensive and supporting purposes, level 50 Paladin feels like a Gladiator to me still. Early Paladin really has nothing that stands out as a fun tank hence why people assume paladin is boring.

[Mikey_R]

Just to point out, PLD as it is now up to level 50 is essentially the same as it was back in ARR. There are a couple of things different/improved, but overall, not much has changed. Not that that is an excuse to not change anything.

If we are to bring things to an earlier level, we also have to consider where to put it in the level list. Just saying, Bring Holy Spirit to level 50, doesn't cut it as PLD already learns Circle of Scorn and Hallowed Ground at level 50, so something else has to change. However, I do agree that Holy Spirit should be below level 50 (or at least a weaker version of it. 200 potency base, 300 under Divine Might is still a DPS gain[~5%], even at level 60 with Royal Authority). Holy Spirit doesn't feel like a GLD action, so it would need to be on the PLD job actions. I would instinctually get rid of Cover and place it there (level 45), though I know people do like Cover as an action. An alternative would be to bring Prominence to the GLD kit and have Holy Spirit at level 40 instead. This is all under the assumption we sort out MP and how that is handled. I won't go into that here though.

Something else that was said, Fight or Flight upgrading into Requiescat (and eventually Imperator). I'm honestly surprised this didn't happen. Though, if we were to do it, there are two considerations. The first being that you can currently use FoF without a target and Requiescat requires a target. I cannot think of a situation where this would be an issue, so we can effectively ignore this. The other is that FoF can be used at range, whilst Requiescat cannot. A simple fix to that is to make Requiescat ranged, just like Imperator.

As for the gap closer, for a reference, the tanks learn their gap closers at 74 for PLD, 62 for WAR, 54 for DRK and 56 for GNB. Bringing PLD's gap closer to 66 (it already has a 'hole' there with nothing learnt) would help. If we also bear in mind it does have a stronger ranged attack in Holy Spirit the other tanks do not have, it does give them a slight advantage in that aspect. I would also be fine removing the damage component (and take it off of WAR in the process).

As a reference to the OP, I think the blade combo and the sword oath combo are fine as they are.

Button reduction. Going by what we have in my post, the only one here is merging Fight or Flight with Requiescat. Now, currently, both already change into something else. However, there is nothing stopping Imperator changing into Goring Blade, then Confiteor changing into Blade of Honor after Blade of Valor. I cannot think of any reason this could cause problems. Out of Cover and Intervention, I would get rid of Cover and no, merging them is not the answer. You want to be able to mitigate damage for someone else without necessarily having to take that damage yourself.

Shield Bash is interesting. It is the only chainable stun, but where are you realistically going to need it? It had uses in the past in Twintania and Leviathan EX, but I know of nothing else. Even in those situations, how useful is it really? Either get rid of it, or change it into something else. One suggestion is to make it an oGCD AoE stun, basically another oGCD to use for damage with a form of damage mitigation for mob packs. Alternatively, it could be a low level Goring Blade. Either way, making it useful is a benefit.

Those alone bring PLD from it's current 33 actions, to 30-31, note that this does not include LB, Sprint or Potion. Having Holy Spirit upgrade to Holy Circle (as has been suggested) can also bring it down another one. However, you cannot really do much more without changing how PLD plays (not counting combo consolidation, which PLD already has the Sword Oath combo and Blade combo so why not the basic 1,2,3), so we have hit a limit.

And, one last note:

Clemency is always useful, all the time. You must be running not that many dungeons if you don't need it or are blessed with competent healers. In later case i envy you. I have to spam Clemency regularly in dungeons.

As someone who runs a lot of content through the DF, you either need to plan your defensives better, or, you are way too trigger happy with Clemency. Maybe both? Either way, I rarely use Clemency.

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

Clemency is always useful, all the time. You must be running not that many dungeons if you don't need it or are blessed with competent healers. In later case i envy you. I have to spam Clemency regularly in dungeons.

I play Paladin a lot, with and without good healers, I make it a point to use Clemency as little as possible because I trust the healer to keep me alive, if that fails, I'll improvise, but I have never and probably will never spam Clemency unless the fight has gone properly tits up (like healers dropping and needing to keep myself and others alive) but if the healer is still standing, I'll trust them to do their job. I see Paladin's use Clemency when they are nowhere close to being in danger of dying, so I doubt you 'have' to spam it to stay alive, even in big pulls, its very rare I feel its a necessity.

[Supersnow845]

People who regularly think they need to use clemency are people who think 80% HP is too low

I regularly leave the tank on sub 20% HP, I know my CD’s, I know yours, I attune myself to how your HP drops on an average pull and build my CD useage around it. If you are using clemency on anything besides me being dead you are wasting both our time

[Thanad]

good for you. i'm getting healers who can't heal even when Hallow Ground is up and HP is critically low. So yeah. I find Clemency very useful. But most importantly it's not "healers bashing thread", but PLD skills levels thread. More important topic.

[Supersnow845]

good for you. i'm getting healers who can't heal even when Hallow Ground is up and HP is critically low. So yeah. I find Clemency very useful.

There is a problem right there, why are you waiting to use hallowed ground. It’s free the more you use it the more times you get to use it. Hells if you use hallowed ground imma actively ignore you for 10 seconds whatever your HP is on

Not to mention PLD is drowning in incidental heals, are you using holy Shelton, that’s a healer level heal right there, not to mention your conflitier combo. How are you taking so much damage PLD is basically self sufficient even without clemency

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Outside Intervene that I agreed we should have it at lower level, I honestly don't know what to feel about the rest of the suggestions. It might make MP 'management' on lower level more interesting because Divine Magick mastery isn't learned just yet. But how enjoyable would that be? Idk. I'll leave that to the veterans PLD enjoyer to decide.

Also Clememecy is useful... until it's not. You're almost always guaranteed to generate at least 3k to 4k cure potencies from Spellblade (1600p) + Holy Circles (400p*uses) + Proper use of Holy Shelltron (1000p*uses). Coupled with other mitigations, you're certainly not needed to 'spam' that Clememecy unless your goal is to have more than 60% HP all the time (hint: you don't need to). Even at lower level when you don't have all those built in cure potencies, a Cure I spamming WHM has enough HPS to heal you through wall pulls so long you properly rotate cooldowns.

[Carighan]

Yeah with Clemency I wish they'd at least make it so that it's an expected part of our kit or so.

Like in, we use the spell procs on Clemency, we ourselves take slightly more damage, we're expected to use Clemency to offset us and we get the self-heal part free if we heal somebody else so as needed we might as well do that. Something. Anything really. Something that integrated Clemency as an important part of our toolkit instead of something that feels like the devs begrudgingly keep it around.

[Seku]

I agree with baking cover into intervention. Cover on it's own is too niche for this game. Maybe get rid of or rework shield bash as well. Also agree with skills coming earlier.