Paladin Evolved (Dev Panel US Fan Fest)

[ZaqueXIII]

So; the game has 0 strategic depth which is the core issue, the other core issue is that if every interaction isn't random why bother playing. So you want to load into a fight against an ambiguous boss, that does a random spread of attacks in a non-specific order where your abilities and actions will produce unknown effects? I'm exaggerating a bit, but randomization does not allow for strategy, basically your two core issues are at odds.

I think even in its current form, especially recently we have seen the most interesting Tank gameplay perhaps since ARR, and its almost entirely done through fight design. That is to say that regardless of you interest you need not lose interesting aspects of one part of your game for another.

I'm really glad there are people who saw the presentation and are happy, I'm also glad that they willingly showed us such an early concept to allow us to even begin formulating feedback. But I'm not convinced that their implementation matches their intention with what was shown. Sure you can argue that the abilities seem more meaningful but I would argue that such is view is like saying my hand is meaningful, yes it is a core part of my being but it provides me no unique experience to most everyone else who has a hand. In the current design, the recent updates to the 120s tank mits were meaningful, in general they provided opportunities to access mixed mitigation types further enhancing the self protective/sustain abilities of the tanks.

[Mikey_R]

With time to let things sink in, I do think it is worth talking about how the job is likely going to be played rotationally.

First, with everything being more flexible, we cannot necessarily talk about a fixed rotation, but instead, we should look at 'averages'. Imperator is our 'burst', the big thing to work towards and that happens every 40 seconds. Rough estimates put the base GCD at 2.5 seconds still. The blade combo is 3 GCDs long, with the buff to upgrade Holy Spirit to Confiteor for a total of 4 GCDs, or 10 seconds total.

This leaves 30 seconds to fill in with the 'filler', this being Fast Blade, Riot Blade and Divine Authority, a total of 7.5 seconds. As of this build, it grants no other GCDs. That means, on average, you will be doing 4 Divine Authority combos between each Imperator. I don't know about anyone else, but I think this is a bit much. There needs to be something to break that up, just so it doesn't get too samey. Even if it is just something simple like, Divine Authority now gives a buff where the next combo is the Atonement combo, with Sepulchre also giving a different 'continuation' skill to use.

There is one thing that will break up the above though, and that is the counter moves, Answering Strike and Satisfaction. However, as far as we know, they are tied to Holy Sheltron, especially Satisfaction, and that effectively has a 20 second cooldown, or, 2 uses per Imperator cast. At most you cut down the use of the filler combo by 2 GCDs, making it 3 combos + 1 GCD long between each Imperator with the counter filling in the last 2 GCDs.

Just as a note though, there is another option and that is the counters will proc off of ANY block the Paladin achieves. You naturally block an attack, you get a counter. In this instance, it would be Answering Strike, or, they might have an even weaker version for general blocking. If this is the case, it will start to chew away at the filler combo, which could cause it to fall away in prominence, however, that does come at the cost of seeing more counters and, depending on how many we get, we would just get bored of that animation instead, not to mention seeing Expiacion less.

I do think more info is needed to know exactly how it all works however, I do think this is my biggest worry so far.

However, we also need to talk about the elephant in the room. AoE. By what we have seen, we have no basic AoE combo. The blade combo is locked being Imperator at 40 seconds and Expiacion is locked behind the single target combo. In theory, you have Shield Lob and Shield Bash, but if we had to spam that, I would consider that a step down from what we currently have. There are 2 possible solutions, 1. they just didn't have it on the bar, which is unlikely as it wasn't shown in the slides either, or 2. there is context sensitivity as to whether you single target or AoE. Fast Blade, Riot Blade, Divine Authority gets replaced by Total Eclipse, Prominence, and a 3rd AoE, with that 3rd AoE also procing continuation, just like Divine Authority does. If this is case, then I do hope that they treat the combos as 'the same', by that I mean, If I Total Eclipse, Prominence, enemy dies leaving enough to bring it down to where it will change to single target, it will use Divine Authority rather than resetting the combo.

Basically, like this:
Total Eclipse > Prominence > Divine Authority
Total Eclipse > Riot Blade > Divine Authority

And not this:
Total Eclipse > Prominence > Fast Blade > Riot Blade

The same would be true for going from single target to AoE, so you could, in theory, end up with this:
Fast Blade > Prominence > Divine Authority.

As for how this is going to work in fights, we will have to see. The increased flexibility is interesting and, IIRC, they said they were designing fights more with the evolved kit in mind, so maybe the fights are less rigid and there is some small level of randomness, meaning you have to work the kit around the fight more, so proper planning and reacting could be key.

[Valence]

I'd genuinely enjoy if they had the basic Answering Strike for countering autos or blocked attacks outside of Sheltron. That would break the monotony and add more "tank gameplay" to the loop.

[caaam]

I'm glad the developers are experimenting. However, after thinking about what I saw I have some concerns. What we were shown looks like it will be mildly interesting for a month simply due to novelty, but not fun and engaging for two or more years.

As shown, the evolved Paladin spends too much time pressing the same button, and seeing the same animations. The current Paladin doesn't have this issue, even if the basic combo was merged. A possible improvement to this could be to have the current Atonement combo follow up the new counter attack. In that case, you would press the counter attack button 4 times every 20 seconds, just to change things up. I do not believe pressing the same button and seeing the same animations so often will be fun, so anything to improve this situation would be welcome. Right now it looks like in the worst case scenario we could be pressing the basic combo and Expiacion for a whole minute (after using two 'honor combos' back-to-back, and having nothing to counter).

The implementation of Expiacion is mechanically uninteresting, and the animation doesn't look correct as a 'finisher'/'follow-up' action. Despite the 30 second timer of the Expiacion Avowed status, the action cannot be held in most circumstances more than 7.5 seconds, and there are apparently no synergy buffs to hold it for anyways. In other words, this input is just a button you press when it lights up. It seems to me that the 'Continuation' input in the demo is supposed to be a 'finisher', which Blade of Honor is, but Expiacion is not. Unlike actions like Hypervelocity or Blade of Honor, Expiacion will not sync up with the new Divine Authority animation, so it will just look bad. I like the design found on Viper and Gunbreaker of having arbitrary follow-up inputs for certain actions, but the animations and sound effects need to sync for that to work.

Expiacion should be remade to visually pair with the action which activates it, so it can be a proper finisher, or be mechanically interesting. By that I mean something you are thinking about, even a tiny amount. For example: having it only activate after two Divine Authority usages, or every 30 seconds as it does right now. It could even be associated with the counter attack instead, to reduce how often we see it, and make the button seem more special. Even changing Expiacion to a Weaponskill/GCD would be better than the demo, so we press a different GCD every fourth input.

Lastly, attempting to cover someone will turn or move the boss, which is arguably worse than letting someone get KO'd in casual content. To be honest, I will probably not use it if I am currently tanking the boss just to not annoy other players. However, the implementation of Cover in the demo is better than what we have right now. I also hope Intervene (Intercession in the demo) does damage. If there are truly no synergy actions, then there's no reason not to do damage I think.

[Carighan]

As shown, the evolved Paladin spends too much time pressing the same button, and seeing the same animations.

I don't know, I kinda see that as a non-issue. A lot of players here disagree I know but to me pressing 1-2-3-4-4-5-4 is no more interesting since I statically stay in that sequence than pressing 1-1-1-2-1-1-1-2 instead. Both are equally flat, without any meaningful design, hold exactly zero gameplay value and provide no depth.

Given that, using only 2 buttons for it instead of 5 is strictly superior. It's bad design, so the second is inherently less of the bad design, and hence less bad in total.

Seeing only ever the same animations is a bit of an issue, and I feel this is something where they could do some cool stuff by e.g. making it so that despite exactly the same gameplay value and damage, the rotation would do like you press 1-1-1-2 but animation wise it plays 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-1-2-3-9-5-6-7-4 (etc). Lots of different animations cycling, despite always doing the same damage (this is functionally what the current live design is, only needlessly spread over half your keyboard - lots of buttons exist only to play fancy animations and have 0 gameplay depth).

Gameplay wise I don't mind reducing the hotbar bloat at all. If anything, they're not doing it aggressive enough yet. Animation wise I kinda agree, it's a bit sad to see all the cool animations gone.

[Atreus]

It all looks pretty cool. I think a few things are on my mind right now:

• Do you start with partial or full gauge? You can see them switch to PLD toward the end of the demonstration, then use a dev tool to immediately get a stack of Honor and Defense
• If you don't start with gauge, then is 40 seconds a bit long to get your first round of Blade combo? And 20 seconds a bit long just to get your first counter? That's a lot of time to just be hitting your basic combo.
• Conversely, if you do start with gauge, is there any real reason to not just start with burst or will there be a purpose to your basic combo beyond filler?
• What does "Satisfaction" and the other 15-second buff after countering actually do? Like the OP, I don't see a regen. Does it buff damage in that window? That would be a good setup for Blade combo if so.

Too many questions, too much time until Berlin. I just hope that the kit feels like it actually interacts with each other, rather than just filler 'til you burst and repeat.

[Nami_siero]

Lastly, attempting to cover someone will turn or move the boss, which is arguably worse than letting someone get KO'd in casual content. To be honest, I will probably not use it if I am currently tanking the boss just to not annoy other players. However, the implementation of Cover in the demo is better than what we have right now. I also hope Intervene (Intercession in the demo) does damage. If there are truly no synergy actions, then there's no reason not to do damage I think.

What if instead of combining cover with intervene, what do you think about instead merge "Passage or Arms" with it? That way it doesn't move the boss, and both skills are made to cover/protect allies from damage.
Edit: What I mean is "Cover" to happen when targetting ally, and "Passage of Arms" when targetting anything else.