How to Get Players to Love PLD Again.

[Arkine]

I love the idea even though it needs some tweaking to prevent it from being OP or making PLD a low skill pick up and play job. (not that it shouldn't but tanking needs some degree of skill to do, right?)

I can see the defensive stance kicking ass on bosses and such but in situations like Ifrit when he jumps and you need to move a few steps forward to prevent him from standing behind you or when Garuda's area does its "thing" and you have to keep moving, or needing to run to take cover behind a rock.

Maybe when you're in shield stance you're limited to slow walking? (why can't we walk in active mode anyway? this needs to be addressed!) or just out right being deactivated if you move? (in that case it needs a short recast)

The Gladiator stance on the other hand I have nothing to add to.


Lets hope a rep take a look at this thread.

[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.

[Duelle]

I'm all for utilizing my shield more.

That, my friend, has been done before, and worked like a charm. Good pulling tool, too...

[Vaer]

That, my friend, has been done before, and worked like a charm. Good pulling tool, too...

Was annoying to get hit by it in PvP before they took Vengeance out of PvP. Man it hurt.


I think a 40% general damage reduction (I'm assuming this is magic, too) for block stance is too much, (Just think of Sentinel on Ifrit vs. Hellfire) I think SE is hesitant to buff PLD too much because they don't want to make the game too easy. Maybe 40% physical damage reduction, but lower for magic.

Maybe 10-20% for magic since block rate is already 100% in that stance and due to recent changes, this means according to the writeup, the stance will grant MP AND you can just sit there and cast cures on everyone without being interrupted at all.

[PiedPiper]

I know this thread was started before the recent updates, but I would like to point out that we more or less got a defensive stance in divine veil. 100% block rate 1/3 of the time. So, as you said, you can use it to tell coincounter to get stuffed. It also made outmanouver useful cus it gave a steady supply of blocks to get our MP back. Perhaps a similar cool down, maybe also on 1min recast and up for 20 seconds, of your offensive variety would be enough to bring this into check. It would provide the slight single target threat increase we need (I know you aren't interested in hearing too much about increasing pld's emnity, but if you can do it without relyiing on warrior like damage, then it shoudl be done, because really that's why no one uses pld--they are great defensively, but they slow the runs down and make them more dangerous because threat is too low). Aesthetically, I LOVE the idea of our shield being part of the auto attack sequence, cus that just is how you fight with a shield. Maybe we could get a "Shield Assault" skill that is similar to spinning heel, it brings in shield (kick) attacks for a short time with all individual hits doing a little less. It would be a good TP charge cd, for when you don't need to worry too much about staying alive and just want more TP. This would aslo make a "dd pld" more potent... though lol at that idea almost entirely.


Still think we should just see wardrum doubled and riot blade made aoe!