Paladin Cross/Class skill changes please

[Taj]

As many people have noticed Paladins have some of the worst cross class skills imaginable. As such I thought of what skills/skill changes I'd like to see added to our skilltrees.

Cure II- Cure can save your ass in a tight spot but I read most Paladins sub this skill out for stoneskin. I personally feel Cure II would be more useful, and provide more of a reason to use Riot blade. It would also help us support the healer in instances where we are playing OT.

Protect- Give us Proshell or take it away. This skill is honestly pretty pointless outside of solo play and even then you don't need it. Better left to the healers.

Holy- An aoe skill that binds at the cost of all your mana. I don't see why one of the Paladins Iconic skills are not in his skillset. This looks like it was MADE for a Paladin. Happily trade Protect for this skill. (Or since it's a WHM skill let us have an equivalent called Holy Blade/Holy Flash/Holy Flare idgaf)

Raise- Let us raise in combat. No reason that we should not be able to raise the healer yet a Summoner (dps) can cast raise in combat.

Cover- Longer duration or shorter cooldown. Preferably the latter.

Riot Blade- Potency increase please. Maybe I'm spoiled from my memories of Riot Blade in Final Fantasy 6 but it would be nice to have at least ONE dps skill if for nothing more then solo purposes.

[Cassandaria]

Please forgive me, I don't mean to come across as rude in my replies but I feel you're looking at this from the wrong perspective. Many of the skills you suggest don't belong on a tanks bar at all (from my perspective). Take cure II, paladin doesn't have the mind to make it as viable as you think, instead you are taking the major healing away from another job that should be handling it in the first place. Protect is something that a paladin shouldn't have either, again, that kind of mitigation is the healers role. Holy? Why would you put the iconic whm skill that has BEEN a whm skill since FF1 on a paladin? Raise, again, while I can see the value of having that, your cast times would be ridiculous as you can't pair it with swiftcast and you will lose hate to do that raise. Nor does it generate enough hate to be a good thing. Cover should be easier to use, I agree with that. As for riot blade? I feel you there, but they use it for a different reason, it just happens to have a similar name is all.
Again, I'm sorry if these come across as rude, I just wanted to add my thoughts on it.

[Taj]

I appreciate your Opinion Cass. However I feel that the tank role in Final Fantasy shouldn't be the same cookie cutter design as themajority of other MMORPG's. I personally have always liked the versatility of Paladin and in instances where we are not the main tank the skills I listed would greatly support party survivability.

Holy has been usable by Paladins in many Final Fantasy games across the board. It's not as useful, but I feel an AoE bind skill that saves the party belongs on a tanks bar. We both hate protect, but Cure generates aggro. In times where the healer is (somehow) running low on mp it would be nice to help take some of the heat off them while they regain mp. This will only suffice in mitigating the damage rather then actually healing it up but it could buy the healer some much needed time. I'd still rather be able to raise and risk losing hate for a moment then guaranteed wipe.

[TaneshimaPopura]

Your Cure 2 will only be more potent than Stoneskin if cast on a non tank. Proshell is meant to be provided by a WHM, take that away then the SCH & WHM synergy balance tips. Holy is not a base conjurer skill, if taking your Magic Potency it is worst than your Circle of Scorn, and the cast time makes it impossible to cast in situation where you need multiple enemy stun. Yes Raise in combat, but can you cast it in the first place without being interrupted? Cover is a good skill but too limited usage due to the coding of the skill and most bosses having cleave attacks until they fix that Duration increase or CD reduction means nothing if cover is going to make you as squishy as the BLM you are covering and your CDs do not reduce the covered damage.

I fail to see why you would want to use Riot Blade in a solo situation, out current mana usage is either Flash or Stoneskin neither of which you'd use much in solo content. Sure giving it more damage is nice and all but Riot Blade is TP ineffective in the first place it would have to be a substantial potency increase to really replace RoH combo or unless they give it a step 3 combo.

If a paladin was made to be able to heal 75% strength of a WHM I'd dare say things will get really broken and you get to see Paladin soloing contents not meant to be solo-ed.

[saber_alter]

just going to take this slow...

cure II - completely unneeded. my average heal for cure is 250, cure II would still be less useful than stoneskin (which i find better for tanks than cure anyway, as it prevents damage from coming through than heals after the fact.) as a person playing a mitigation based class, i would rather have a hard hitting move mitigated with stoneskin than self heal it after. trust me, cure II on paladin less useful than you think it would be.

proshell: scholar doesn't get it either, i don't see why paladin should get special treatment. (proshell only adds a magical damage resist buff anyway)

holy flare: no. it doesn't even fit in the class anyway. lore wise and gameplay wise. lore wise because paladins (knights) in this game do not have access to white magic whatsoever, and gameplay wise because the way holy is designed is meant to be a defensive skill for healers. in addition it, as someone said above, would be effectively useless with paladin's weak magical potency stat (and we already have 3 interrupt moves, we don't need a fourth).

combat rez: lets keep it with the healers and summoner. if i have the time to drop a rez on someone as a tank, i'm doing it wrong. too easy to interrupt mid-combat anyway.

cover: would rather negate magical damage as well.

riot blade: it needs a 3rd skill in its combo instead. other than that its just easier to wait a few seconds for the MT (if in a raid) to build hate and then rage away.

If a paladin was made to be able to heal 75% strength of a WHM I'd dare say things will get really broken and you get to see Paladin soloing contents not meant to be solo-ed.

pretty much sums up my opinion.

[TehKloppy01]

Honestly, I think our cross class skills from Conjurer are fine for the most part. In fact these all fall in line with almost the same spells used by the first Paladin seen in the series, Cecil Harvey. The only thing I would probably change is swapping Protect for Esuna, cause debuffs suck and it would more beneficial in a party situation. I will agree that Cover needs to be changed to be more appealing, like was mentioned earlier in negating all damage rather than physical. As for Riot Blade, I would like to see a third ability combo off of this skill, mainly for variety sakes. But damage wise Riot Blade only does 30 less damage that Rage of Halone for combo potency. Damage wise we have sufficient self buffs through Sword Oath and Fight or Flight. In short, the reason why we do so little damage is because we take ages to kill.

[Enfarious]

I agree sort of with most of what you've said.
The well established identity of Paladins in the Final Fantasy franchise has been lost in this iteration. Somehow we've all but lost the ability to cure, raise, buff, and otherwise support a party.

Of course this has made us into a simple "knight" class analogous to what many know from other games, RPG and MMORPG alike, which is probably viewed as "good" by some as it means the majority of people understand it without thinking too hard. Of course to long time FF players, we are interestingly a minority in the gaming world even in an FF game, it feels all wrong.

Paladin should have a useful cure, not one cast on itself though, Holy Succor from 1.0 was a good example. Cast on yourself it wasn't worth the MP most of the time, cast on another it was potent and also healed you, generating a good amount of enmity in the process.

Battle raises should also be a Paladin thing, casting raise in an "Oh shit" moment after popping Hallowed Ground can turn a wipe into a win, and is what Paladins do.

Due to the 2x tank nature of this game, where one is often found in a DPS role a change to Sword Oath to generate less enmity from all attacks would be great, and seeing a Riot Blade > Shield Swipe[or a diff attack] combo that isn't an enmity generator would be nice. I mean really, we have ALOT of rarely used, or never used skills sitting there.

Holy isn't needed, but to balance against steel cyclone probably wouldn't be terrible, Circle of Scorn alone doesn't compare to War AoE output, honestly idc about that very much though.

I'd really like to see a useful Cure variant, Battle Raise, and Cover modified to be useful, again this is what Paladins do, they support parties by keeping enmity, healing, buffing, and when shit goes sideways covering the weaker members, pulling out the "Oh shit save a party button" and tossing the dead healer a raise.

Honestly, I think our cross class skills from Conjurer are fine for the most part. In fact these all fall in line with almost the same spells used by the first Paladin seen in the series, Cecil Harvey. The only thing I would probably change is swapping Protect for Esuna, cause debuffs suck and it would more beneficial in a party situation. I will agree that Cover needs to be changed to be more appealing, like was mentioned earlier in negating all damage rather than physical. As for Riot Blade, I would like to see a third ability combo off of this skill, mainly for variety sakes. But damage wise Riot Blade only does 30 less damage that Rage of Halone for combo potency. Damage wise we have sufficient self buffs through Sword Oath and Fight or Flight. In short, the reason why we do so little damage is because we take ages to kill.

Except that Cecil's cure, and every other Paladin's, was actually useful, ours is like one of the adhesive portions of a bandaid, we don't even get the "good" pad in the middle lol.
A change there, and to Sword Oath to make it more viable, and to Cover (which I think everyone can agree with) would go a long long way to bringing it back to it's roots.

As for damage, it's not way way off, but a 3 hit combo maybe with less potency than RoH but a buff/debuff (a slashing damage increase for the pld perhaps):
As they are:
RoH combo (str debuff to mob) = 150+200+260 = 610
Riot combo = 150+230 = 380

For an equal number of GCDs (6 means 3 full Riots, 2 full RoH) you end up at:
RoH 610*2 = 1220
Riot 380*3 = 1140

Your DPS in a fight that lasts for just 6 GCDs is barely reduced, but over any significant time it's pretty big. Having a proper DPS combo while in sword oath and off tanking would help this significantly.

As they could be:
RoH combo = 150+200+260 = 610
Shield Swipe combo (10% slashing damage increase to pld) = 150+210+240 = 600

For an equal number of GCDs (6 means 2 full Shield Swipes, 2 full RoHs) you end up at:
RoH 610*2 = 1220
Shield Swipe 600*2 = 1200

You get a little less potency per combo, but with the damage increase your overall DPS would still be higher, but no enmity boost at all. Cycling between Shield > RoH keeps your buff up so RoH enmity gains could be boosted slightly, of course off tanking this could get you into some trouble so the Shield combo would remain the better choice more often than not.

[Lex_Luger]

stuff

You realize your shield swipe combo is completely unviable as a DPS combo because shield swipe requires you to proc a block to use it in the first place.

[Enfarious]

You realize your shield swipe combo is completely unviable as a DPS combo because shield swipe requires you to proc a block to use it in the first place.

So I should have said "Rework Shield Swipe to be a part of a combo." first. Meaning, make it no longer a proc that we ignore anyway. It's a waste of a GCD that doesn't effect most of what we care about stopping from using abilities anyway, a useless ability added to a bar so we can wonder why we have half a bar of uselessness.

[Lemon8or]

Cure II- Cure can save your ass in a tight spot but I read most Paladins sub this skill out for stoneskin. I personally feel Cure II would be more useful, and provide more of a reason to use Riot blade. It would also help us support the healer in instances where we are playing OT.

Not gonna do much with how much mind you have.

Protect- Give us Proshell or take it away. This skill is honestly pretty pointless outside of solo play and even then you don't need it. Better left to the healers.

What about SCH then? They might as well have proshell. It's fine as is.

Holy- An aoe skill that binds at the cost of all your mana. I don't see why one of the Paladins Iconic skills are not in his skillset. This looks like it was MADE for a Paladin. Happily trade Protect for this skill. (Or since it's a WHM skill let us have an equivalent called Holy Blade/Holy Flash/Holy Flare idgaf)

Because it's not iconic for a Paladin? You already have Flash that blinds.

Raise- Let us raise in combat. No reason that we should not be able to raise the healer yet a Summoner (dps) can cast raise in combat.

There're plenty of reasons to. As dps, there is less chance the casting will get interrupted. As a tank, there're plenty of chances you will.

Riot Blade- Potency increase please. Maybe I'm spoiled from my memories of Riot Blade in Final Fantasy 6 but it would be nice to have at least ONE dps skill if for nothing more then solo purposes.

Its potency is in-line with warrior's middle skill potency. What you need is a finisher and split that STR debuff from RoH.