How to Get Players to Love PLD Again.

[SwordCoheir]

I like the idea of a defensive stance, but I'm not too keen on locking you out of your abilities. As stated by Hoshikogi, it would be an "Oh snap!" skill, which we already have in the form of Hallowed Ground.

Rather, I'd like to see them bring back the "Block" ability, where you raised your shield and could still use abilities. The trade off would be disabling auto-attack and hindering your TP generation.

In this block stance, we could have increased Phalanx damage, maybe a more potent shield bash, but a reduction in sword based WS potency.

There are plenty of options to go about something like this, but locking us out of our skills isn't a good idea I think, especially with trigger happy mages lingering around.

It was more along the lines that losing our auto-attacks would hinder our TP generation so much it would greatly reduce our ability to gain Enmity without the damage contributed from constant WS moves and auto-attacks themselves, which make up roughly half of our overall Enmity generation. Which is why I made the suggestion of an Enmity bonus based on damage taken (possibly getting the bonus before damage is reduced by block in the calculation.)

Hoshi brought up a good point however, I can see with the current trends people might favor the offensive stance over the defensive one, adding a bit more dynamic into the works. Like using the Offensive stance for initial TP and hate generation, and falling back on the defensive stance later in the fight for Astral Flow or low HP or something.

[Taggerung5]

It was more along the lines that losing our auto-attacks would hinder our TP generation so much it would greatly reduce our ability to gain Enmity without the damage contributed from constant WS moves and auto-attacks themselves, which make up roughly half of our overall Enmity generation. Which is why I made the suggestion of an Enmity bonus based on damage taken (possibly getting the bonus before damage is reduced by block in the calculation.)

Hoshi brought up a good point however, I can see with the current trends people might favor the offensive stance over the defensive one, adding a bit more dynamic into the works. Like using the Offensive stance for initial TP and hate generation, and falling back on the defensive stance later in the fight for Astral Flow or low HP or something.

S.Coheir, I would totally rip on you for saying that dmg output is half the enmity generation that PLD can accrue, but I know you're smarter than that. You're not the typical person I've seen so far ranting on about how PLD tanking is so weak and SE needs to overhaul the whole idea. I've agreed with you on most of your posts, so I'll just take a slight jab to the ribs for this one in saying: (bear in mind, I know XIV is nothing like XI, nor do I want it to be, I'm just bringing it up as a point)
Remember when PLD got that spiffy new Nyzule WS, the enmity based one. Can't remember the name of it, I quit like 3 years ago. Anyhow, people generally started trying to DD tank on PLD, and failed uber hard at it. It was a massive influx of "hey let's use Joyeuse and HASTE/ACC gear and not worry about enmity at all. omg this WS owns so much I can hold hate and do DMG now!" .....no. In some cases, it worked, because you had 4 /thf's pounding 1500's on you all day long. But the general rule of thumb in XI was that a PLD did not have it's enmity generation through damage output. It was minor, if even a factor. I usually did Flat Blade for the chance to stun and pop a Cure IV if I needed it. Dropping Cure IV's always was an epic way to generate some enmity if it got pulled.

But, I don't want to get out of line here. Generally, damage output has never been a strong point of PLD in the terms of tanking. You need to buff Enmity, HP and defense too much to stack offensive stats for it to be effective. If that's the route SE wants to take.. well then they just made a weak warrior with the ability to cure. That's about it.

[SwordCoheir]

S.Coheir, I would totally rip on you for saying that dmg output is half the enmity generation that PLD can accrue, but I know you're smarter than that. You're not the typical person I've seen so far ranting on about how PLD tanking is so weak and SE needs to overhaul the whole idea. I've agreed with you on most of your posts, so I'll just take a slight jab to the ribs for this one in saying: (bear in mind, I know XIV is nothing like XI, nor do I want it to be, I'm just bringing it up as a point)

Fair enough, I suppose I should have explained myself a little bit more on this point sense I know our damage output is pathetic. Basically with the defensive stance we would only have our spike hate abilities to generate hate with, they typically have a recast of 30 seconds or more, most wielding roughly 500-600 Enmity apiece. Keeping that in mind our DoT with auto-attacks provide maybe 10%-15% (maybe 20% in some cases) overall Enmity, with our Weaponskills making up another 20-30% Enmity from spamming Flatblade Combos every 10 seconds and Gorging/Spirits combos when the opportunity arises. Considering both Spirits and Flatblade combos have Enmity spikes attributed to them they make up a decent portion of our ability to control hate.

Now keeping that in mind, without our ability to reliably gain TP through auto-attacks there won't be as much WS spamming, even with our pathetic damage losing our ability to spam Flatblade/Spirits reliably takes out a good chunk of our threat generation, unless there was a good TP generation bonus outside of Outmaneuver on blocks to let us keep throwing WS's out, or at least a heavy Enmity bonus when you block damage with your shield to help make up for it.

I hope that clarifies what I was getting at a bit more reliably.

[Taggerung5]

I hope that clarifies what I was getting at a bit more reliably.

Yeah, totally. See I knew you had it in ya!

[Arkine]

S.Coheir, I would totally rip on you for saying that dmg output is half the enmity generation that PLD can accrue, but I know you're smarter than that. You're not the typical person I've seen so far ranting on about how PLD tanking is so weak and SE needs to overhaul the whole idea. I've agreed with you on most of your posts, so I'll just take a slight jab to the ribs for this one in saying: (bear in mind, I know XIV is nothing like XI, nor do I want it to be, I'm just bringing it up as a point)
Remember when PLD got that spiffy new Nyzule WS, the enmity based one. Can't remember the name of it, I quit like 3 years ago. Anyhow, people generally started trying to DD tank on PLD, and failed uber hard at it. It was a massive influx of "hey let's use Joyeuse and HASTE/ACC gear and not worry about enmity at all. omg this WS owns so much I can hold hate and do DMG now!" .....no. In some cases, it worked, because you had 4 /thf's pounding 1500's on you all day long. But the general rule of thumb in XI was that a PLD did not have it's enmity generation through damage output. It was minor, if even a factor. I usually did Flat Blade for the chance to stun and pop a Cure IV if I needed it. Dropping Cure IV's always was an epic way to generate some enmity if it got pulled.

But, I don't want to get out of line here. Generally, damage output has never been a strong point of PLD in the terms of tanking. You need to buff Enmity, HP and defense too much to stack offensive stats for it to be effective. If that's the route SE wants to take.. well then they just made a weak warrior with the ability to cure. That's about it.

Atonement.

The way it was used was not by entirely focusing on DDing, you played the same way. PLD's TP was used mostly for 2 things, Chivalry (Turn TP to MP) and Spirits within (@full TP you deal damage equal to 45% of your current HP), what Atonement did was take Spirit's place since it can be used at 100tp for 750 damage so used three times you did 2250 damage which is ALOT more than what spirits did and that much damage was a massive enmity boost and most optimizing anybody did to effectively use Atonement was use a Joyeuse (occ.atks twice) over the Mac+1 enmity sword and a haubergeon over AF2 body (+atk +10-12 acc) and accuracy food (sole sushi) over Tav tacos (DEF food) just so more attacks landed to speed up the TP building to use it more, however PLD/NIN relied on haste to keep shadows up and spam flash instead of stacking HP and blood tanking, and it worked great.

[Taggerung5]

Atonement.

The way it was used was not by entirely focusing on DDing, you played the same way. PLD's TP was used mostly for 2 things, Chivalry (Turn TP to MP) and Spirits within (@full TP you deal damage equal to 45% of your current HP), what Atonement did was take Spirit's place since it can be used at 100tp for 750 damage so used three times you did 2250 damage which is ALOT more than what spirits did and that much damage was a massive enmity boost and most optimizing anybody did to effectively use Atonement was use a Joyeuse (occ.atks twice) over the Mac+1 enmity sword and a haubergeon over AF2 body (+atk +10-12 acc) and accuracy food (sole sushi) over Tav tacos (DEF food) just so more attacks landed to speed up the TP building to use it more, however PLD/NIN relied on haste to keep shadows up and spam flash instead of stacking HP and blood tanking, and it worked great.

My point was simply that when people realised that Atonement could do some nice dmg previously unseen by normal plds, that's all people were concerned with.

[Alerith]

My point was simply that when people realised that Atonement could do some nice dmg previously unseen by normal plds, that's all people were concerned with.

When not tanking, I'm a greatsword paladin and I do decent damage.