Reintroduce Goring blade it as a combo

[Rithy255]

Eh it's not like Paladin has too few buttons, quite the opposite. Hence having Goring Blade be able to be pressed more often isn't really helpful, although it wouldn't be a problem either I suppose. The biggest question is whether it shouldn't just be removed without replacement. Because again, plenty buttons already, see the commenter above who recommends a lot of folding/removing skills, and I fully agree with that!

Paladins issue is that it has few too actual buttons, along with other tanks, compared to DPS rotations are slower, theirs way less buttons and because every tank is a Super Tank they don't really have to manage defensives that well outside of anything that isn't Savage+ So you have the gameplay loop of a DPS who's slow.

Goring blade and more combo actions (like a melee DPS) is exactly what tanks need to have rotational varity, PLD is slower then DRK/GNB but had more actual GCD buttons and complexity for this reason, now Paladin is a super slow bland job with a bland rotation.

Why can't we remove Actual Bloat skills Like Shield Bash, having magic AOE/single targets not be separate, Having both intervention and holy sheltron, Having a bunch of defensives that all do the same thing, Theirs so many examples of actual bloat, a GCD skill to manage is not "bloat" it's actual gameplay.

Tanks (and healers) as I see it need to be reworked from the ground up, but Lets not pretend we have damage button bloat, the actual issue is those serval skills that all serve the same purpose or outdated mess skills like shield bash, that only get justified because some guy will cry about deep dungeon paladins.

Meaningful GCD skills need to be added, goring blade should be reverted to a gcd rotational button as paladins rotation is very bland, Though a larger rework that adds depth and complexity is more or less needed for every tank, even some procs and RNG would be great.

[PyurBlue]

Why can't we remove Actual Bloat skills Like Shield Bash, having magic AOE/single targets not be separate, Having both intervention and holy sheltron, Having a bunch of defensives that all do the same thing, Theirs so many examples of actual bloat, a GCD skill to manage is not "bloat" it's actual gameplay.

I feel like the actual problem with a lot of those things is encounter design. Single and AoE target separation is necessary if you care about precision targeting. Shield Bash is a pretty unique defensive that can provide heavy mitigation in combination with Low Blow, but it's almost never warranted. Keeping Low Blow and Interject separate means a player has to interpret what is happening and respond correctly instead of smashing the universal "stop castbar" button. Defenses that work differently warrant having different defenses. Original Bulwark was terrible for TB but great for mob packs. Guardian having a shield gives it something that Rampart can't do, which is negate damage based status effects. I think all of these are interesting to some extent but they require content that is also interesting. Sheltron and Intervention are the only two that I can safely be consolidated though I personally don't mind having them on separate buttons.

We could go the route of giving tanks deeper DPS rotations, but then I feel like there would be no meaningful distinction between tanks and DPS.

[Rithy255]

I feel like the actual problem with a lot of those things is encounter design. Single and AoE target separation is necessary if you care about precision targeting. Shield Bash is a pretty unique defensive that can provide heavy mitigation in combination with Low Blow, but it's almost never warranted. Keeping Low Blow and Interject separate means a player has to interpret what is happening and respond correctly instead of smashing the universal "stop castbar" button. Defenses that work differently warrant having different defenses. Original Bulwark was terrible for TB but great for mob packs. Guardian having a shield gives it something that Rampart can't do, which is negate damage based status effects. I think all of these are interesting to some extent but they require content that is also interesting. Sheltron and Intervention are the only two that I can safely be consolidated though I personally don't mind having them on separate buttons.

We could go the route of giving tanks deeper DPS rotations, but then I feel like there would be no meaningful distinction between tanks and DPS.

Well lets break it down.

• Single target & Aoe are clearly not important to keep seperate because A lot of paladins rotation is already cleave, confiteor doesn't have a AOE Varation. Cleave AOE good for skills like Holy spirit imo.
• Shield bash is a skill that is never useful in 99.99% of content it's only usecase is deep dungeons, it's unique in the fact it's never used, it holds back space for abilities that could actually be useful/fun.
• I don't know what your even talking about with Low Blow and Interject honestly, both should be merged, both are very niche and should be merged for the sake of having actual room on tanks to put interesting skills.
• Rampart doesn't need to exist mostly because we already have bulwark, sheltron & Guardian Having so many defensives to the point they become useless is bad, I'm mostly in favour if making it so tank has one short defensive and one long + invul, we do not need a bunch of different defensives that just mitigations.

I'm not really convinced by much of what you've said

And just to add theirs already no meaningful difference between tanks and dps, Tanks are already boring slow DPS, they should at least be given fun rotations.

[PyurBlue]

Well lets break it down.

All of that makes sense but it's not exactly addressing the point I was making. While there are a bunch of niche, useless, and redundant abilities this is because we don't have encounters in which to use them and not due to the abilities being inherently worthless. Shield Bash going from something to be avoided to having value in deep dungeon is an example of what I mean. We're not gaining anything just from having the skills, we also need the right environments in which to use them.

And just to add theirs already no meaningful difference between tanks and dps, Tanks are already boring slow DPS, they should at least be given fun rotations.

I would rather address this by differentiating tanks instead of giving up and accepting them as another flavor of DPS unless there is no way to improve encounter design at all.

[Rithy255]

All of that makes sense but it's not exactly addressing the point I was making. While there are a bunch of niche, useless, and redundant abilities this is because we don't have encounters in which to use them and not due to the abilities being inherently worthless. Shield Bash going from something to be avoided to having value in deep dungeon is an example of what I mean. We're not gaining anything just from having the skills, we also need the right environments in which to use them.



I would rather address this by differentiating tanks instead of giving up and accepting them as another flavor of DPS unless there is no way to improve encounter design at all.

1. Shield Bash being useful in content would mean other tanks would need a version of shield bash, I rather it become a generalist DPS Ogcd skill for that sake, Other abilities like bulwark (as I've pointed out) are already covered by skills like Sheltron, so I see no use of having multiple defensives that do bassically the same thing (mitigate damage). Their use case is "see tank buster and press button" but we already have buttons for that.

2. I agree but I also disagree, Tanks should get more interesting separate tank mechs, making use of skills like Cover unironically would make tanks pretty cool, but this doesn't mean tanks shouldn't also get to do more stuff DPS wise, I'm also in favour of Healers having more to heal but still having more dps buttons as both aren't mutually exclusive funnily enough. Giving tanks/Healers more fun DPS options is the safest bet to at least make these roles actually more fun in all types of content though.


As a side note, if you had any examples of how you would make tanks more interesting I'd be willing to hear you out, I think it's really hard to actually design meaningful tank mechanics that would justify keeping skills like Shield Bash.

[Carighan]

Shield Bash being useful in content would mean other tanks would need a version of shield bash

Why?

The idea would be that those other tanks have things Paladins don't have that is useful in various areas. Compare how each area in Unavowed has different solutions depending on which characters you bring along.

[PyurBlue]

1. Shield Bash being useful in content would mean other tanks would need a version of shield bash

Turning Shield Bash into a required ability would be the quickest path to making it useful, but it would feel forced and creates balance problems like you mentioned. If it were made helpful but not strictly necessary, I think that's the better implementation.

Other abilities like bulwark (as I've pointed out) are already covered by skills like Sheltron, so I see no use of having multiple defensives that do bassically the same thing (mitigate damage). Their use case is "see tank buster and press button" but we already have buttons for that.

I also see current Bulwark as unremarkable. The original at least had a niche that set it apart from the other CD's slightly. It was a gamble on a heavy single hit, but strong against many smaller hits. Reverting it would make it a little less bland. If blocking had some kind of special effect that would be another distinguishing factor and be even better.

Though you make a good point in that defensives boil down to a TB reaction in most cases. If we had other more varied ways to mitigate I wouldn't mind losing the existing CD's in exchange.

more dps buttons as both aren't mutually exclusive funnily enough. Giving tanks/Healers more fun DPS options is the safest bet to at least make these roles actually more fun in all types of content though.

I'm not necessarily against more DPS buttons, and I agree that we're not dealing with mutually exclusive changes. It's just that I'd rather try to preserve some of the underutilized features we have instead of stripping them away. I don't want tanks to feel like DPS. Beyond having far too much survivability and being too similar, I wouldn't say that tanks aren't in a terrible spot. What I find boring is not having to utilize the defensive abilities or use them in only the simplest of ways. Tanks are like healers in that they are the most fun to play when the party is making mistakes because that's the only time you get to meaningfully use your abilities.

As a side note, if you had any examples of how you would make tanks more interesting I'd be willing to hear you out, I think it's really hard to actually design meaningful tank mechanics that would justify keeping skills like Shield Bash.

Since Shield Bash is tied to stun, that status would need to find some way to be incorporated into raids. Stopping a boss for 5 seconds is too strong (however if fights had more adds, keeping stun as is might work too) so I think changing the effect to slowing down a castbar or redirecting an AoE might be better. This also helps to differentiate stun from interrupts.

To give an example, a boss might have a proximity circle AoE that is larger than melee range. If Shield Bash could move AoEs, a tank could use it to push the AoE off center and provide a spot for melee to stand safely while in attack range.

Movement is another option. If Shield Bash had some limited ability to move enemies it would give PLD a slight edge in boss positioning. If moving the boss is too strong, the push could be limited to adds.

Circling back to the start of the post, these abilities would need to be balanced against the other tanks. If those tanks had their own unique traits and enemy behavior was randomized then on paper all the tanks would have value and there wouldn't be a situation where every party wants a specific tank for a given fight. There is also the issue of Bash being a 0 damage skill. This could be negated with a vuln up for the PLD's target, though I'm not the biggest fan of that idea. If there were more environment interactions in combat, like bashing a wall to make it collapse and aid the party in some way, the damage loss would be less of an issue.

This of course is all a lot more work than tweaking rotations. I admit that your idea is much more inline with what SE has done in the past.

[Rithy255]

Why?

The idea would be that those other tanks have things Paladins don't have that is useful in various areas. Compare how each area in Unavowed has different solutions depending on which characters you bring along.

It's easy to say that you can just add things useful to tanks that would make them stand out in raids then actually implementing it, If you want to argue tanks can each have a unique importance then I would like to actually see examples rather then just hearing that it can be done, Shield bash being important would almost always require Paladin being mandatory in that fight because for shield bash to ever be useful it would have to be a situation where without it the raid wipes, wasting damage on a stun is not something FF14 is designed around.

Snip

Problem is Shield bash will never be helpful enough as a GCD action that is a damage loss, unlike clemency which can be flexible for prog situations (though is still a niche skill), a gcd stun action would require such specific fight design where it's either required or not that useful.

I think tanks are fun when you're juggling your DPS offensive abilities with party/group protection abilities, Most fun I've had was on PLD where Healers were struggling to stay alive, so I was able to spot heal and cover/use heavy self mit on raid wide stacks to keep a rezzer alive for lb3, That's a lot of fun, of course It's really difficult to design every fight like that because it would reach levels where people would complain about it being too difficult, Rotations are the easiest way of making sure a Job is fun in all types of content.

If fights were designed more around tank kits, protecting allies ect. It would be more fun that way but I don't really see SE moving towards that direction especially for casual content, I see adding more dps complexity as the next best thing, though I'd love to feel like a actual team protector as a tank.

It's also easy to say balance tanks around having unique traits but actually implementing fun and interesting utility (like shield bash) being useful in practice is very difficult task, How would you envision tanks having unique mechs? is my question what would all 4 tanks do that's unique and different but doesn't cause one tank to be a must pick.

Not to say i don't want some uniqueness and upsides added to tanks, but I don't really think you can implement a system where skills like Shield bash are standout abilities on a job like PLD that would get you to consider it over other tanks, without it being a must pick skill.

[Misdes]

Paladins issue is that it has few too actual buttons, along with other tanks, compared to DPS rotations are slower, theirs way less buttons and because every tank is a Super Tank they don't really have to manage defensives that well outside of anything that isn't Savage+ So you have the gameplay loop of a DPS who's slow.

Goring blade and more combo actions (like a melee DPS) is exactly what tanks need to have rotational varity, PLD is slower then DRK/GNB but had more actual GCD buttons and complexity for this reason, now Paladin is a super slow bland job with a bland rotation.

Why can't we remove Actual Bloat skills Like Shield Bash, having magic AOE/single targets not be separate, Having both intervention and holy sheltron, Having a bunch of defensives that all do the same thing, Theirs so many examples of actual bloat, a GCD skill to manage is not "bloat" it's actual gameplay.

Tanks (and healers) as I see it need to be reworked from the ground up, but Lets not pretend we have damage button bloat, the actual issue is those serval skills that all serve the same purpose or outdated mess skills like shield bash, that only get justified because some guy will cry about deep dungeon paladins.

Meaningful GCD skills need to be added, goring blade should be reverted to a gcd rotational button as paladins rotation is very bland, Though a larger rework that adds depth and complexity is more or less needed for every tank, even some procs and RNG would be great.

I agree with so much of what you've said in this thread but I think this is the most important bit. Paladin's button bloat is insane right now and so much of the kit serves little to no purpose ESPECIALLY outside of High-End. (I still wanna pull my hair out every time I use Bulwark)
I would love to see Shield Bash reworked, maybe into an OGCD (Perhaps Shield Smite from the PvP kit?), Bulwark put back on Sheltron and at the very least make Goring Blade a filler skill again. Keep preaching!