Is Paladin the least fun class to play?

[Vortok]

It's the fight mechanics that make the fights interesting or not.

A thousand times this. I don't need a tank (or dps) rotation that requires me to hit 25 different abilities with multi-branching split second decision making. The fight is what provides the complexity, and also the variety.

Look at something popular like Zelda or Pokemon. The actions available to the player are fairly straight forward. Enemy variety plays a huge part in making the game interesting from one encounter to the next.

Now some people really love classes that require you to manage 20+ abilities, so it's great to have them around as well as an option - but the encounters should be providing the meat of the experience.

[TouchandFeel]

To me this is a really tough question to answer.

I wouldn't say that it is the most boring class since, as many others have expressed, I love playing a tank and find the gameplay involved in tanking to be more interesting than playing DPS or Healer. Now if they had more quirky Support or Utility style classes, I might find those really fun but since support has been sort of watered down and lumped into DPS, not so much.

Now comparing the two tanking classes currently available, that is a bit of a different story. On one hand PLD has very simple and basic skillsets that are detached from each other and many of the defensive abilities are detached from the offensive ones. On the other hand with WAR you have more complex ability rotations that have many of the defensive aspects built into the combat/offensive ability rotations. I can see the two different styles of play appealing to different types of players, and in truth I am not entirely certain which one I like more.

I like the PLD more conceptually as I like the whole holy knight and sword+shield schtick so that makes me enjoy them, but as far as gameplay mechanics I think I might like the WAR a little more.

If I were to say what could be done to make PLD more enjoyable to play (not buffed, but tweaked/fixed) I would do the following.
- Fix broken/bugged skills such as Awareness.
- Tweak some of the very underwhelming abilities such as Shield Swipe ( I like idea of removing pacification and changing it with a different buff/debuff), Cover (shorter cooldown and greater range so that we can actually protect people), Tempered Will (This one needs to either be lumped into another skill like Awareness or completely redone as it has very little use).
- Take another pass at the cross class abilities as many of them are not really useful in high level group content, for example tweak Mercy Stroke so that it has a larger buffer for it to proc the heal and maybe make the PLD crossclass Cure healing based off of STR instead of MND so that it isn't so weak.
- Adding another attack ability that combos off of Riot Blade so there are two different 3 ability combos to rotate between, one being the tanking/enmity one and the other being the mp regen+dps/ot one.

Mainly it is tweak/fix broken and underwhelming skills and add in a little more complexity/flexibility and I feel the class would feel and play a lot better.
Many of these things have been stated by others already but that is my 2 cents.

[PiedPiper]

It has a lot of really powerful buttons that are pretty boring and a few really crappy buttons. Additionally, most of our subclass skills are pretty underwhelming.There's little reason to ever use Riot Blade. Shield Swipe is similarly mediocre. Awareness, even without the bug, is one of the worst skills in the game. Two of our five job abilities are passive stances, cover is very situational, and Hallowed Ground, while strong, has a very long cooldown. If you compare our current defensive cooldowns to 1.23's paladin, there's a pretty huge difference. 1.23 cds were generally multi-function and shorter cooldown compared to what we have now. In addition to mitigating damage, Old Rampart generated enmity if you hit allies with it, Old sentinel gave an enmity bonus, Divine Veil caused an AOE regen, and Aegis Boon healed you. Current [cds] mitigate only, so there's no choice to make there. "Am I going to take a lot of damage soon? Guess I better hit one of these."

Both the OP and this suggestion are wonderful.

No one has said this yet, but I love the OP's stance dance option. I would kill for holy oath. Particularly the quoted post really highlights the problem with pld. All our cds do more or less the same thing. "I get hit for less / am easier to heal for the next x seconds."

People say the fun is in managing agro, or managing cool downs... what fight do you know about that i'm not doing? Aggro is never an issue for the paladin (only time you even can loose threat is in titan to the whm, and they are in control of that via shroud and not medica 2 before jump, pld can't do anything about it). I did a 10 minute 32 second wp last night with no oath on, and never lost hate to any boss or aoe pull (baring two mobs that changed as they died cus the brd was blood lettering the same target rather than cycling). With shield oath up its even more effortless. The ONLY time cool down management comes into play is during conflags on Twin. If you pre-use rampart and conv correctly, it is possible to use a major cool down for every single death sentence in this phase. Or, you could just time her DS to go off during conflag (which is more or less what you should be doing) and dodge them, completely eliminating this need. Other wise they are just panic buttons you sit and wait to use.


Some are saying "dps rotations aren't any more complex." Have you met dragoon? 3 Dots and a self buff and an entirely separate max damage rotation plus myriad off gcd skills. For a stationary mechanic-less target its a 27 button long rotation to maximize the class. Since those fights don't exist, its even more dynamic than that as the drg has to track 4 timers and realize they need to be 3 gcd's ahead at all times to maximize their damage. Its probably the most complex dps in any mmo I've ever played. Bard has a laundry list of self buffs, as well as 3 off gcd damage boosts one of which requires positioning plus an entirely dynamic rotation. Summoner is also a class whose timers are quite complex and interact in a fluid way (despite not having anything proc based). These three classes all require constant decision making and planning ahead (for drg and smn that planning is often 10-15 seconds ahead) on top of tracking fight mechanics. And their rewards are high, people who maximize these classes crush those who don't. Even blackmage, though much simpler, has a very fluid rotation that isn't just spam the same all the time and has two fun proc based elements.


People say that these changes all buff paladin. So what? Aggro isn't really a thing in this game. Increasing the amount earned by either tank won't change the fact they never loose it to start with. Even facing full i90 dps, its pretty much effortless to hold threat. Similarly, adding healing to paladin (either via the boon idea, which dear god I miss ageis boon so much or via holy stance) is still really just one more cool down, and both posters suggest sacrificing another cool down to get these. At least I'd feel like I actually had magic (flash doesn't feel like magic, in 1.0 it wasn't even magic it was a static hate grab). I still wont ever get truly one shotted by anything in the game (I have 6.8k health, twin cannot out right kill me in any two hits). I still wont loose threat. It'll just give me something to do.

Current pld is so straight forward that even in the hardest fight in the game, I was able to go afk an answer the door for 2 minutes during conflag phase and come back to still have threat and still not be dead. I earn so much enmity, and have so much effective hp relative to boss damage, that I literally don't need to play at all even on the hardest fights once I have engaged for a few minutes.

Stuff people cite as the mark of good tanks--marking, running through spells, positioning cones and for aoe, etc--all of these are independent of the class. They don't make paladin any more or less interesting, they are basic parts of tanking that wouldn't be affected by either set of proposed changes. These are just what make tanking in general fun. Playing paladin is itself pretty dull.



As a side note: Shield swipe gets a bad deal. I think many people underestimate it. For one, its our highest potency move, and it is our resourse restoration move (using it results in a net tp gain). So for long static phases (conflag for instance) its quite useful. Also, using fof + bulwark can skyrocket your dps for short terms. That said, I do wish it was more like 1.0 phalanx (long cd for big enmity, required trying to use boon and veil and bulwark to force a block to keep it on cool down).


I rolled gld in 1.0 pre-order, was 5th gld 50 on besaid. I have played thisclass forever because it is the style and flavor I love. Right now, it hurts to play. I dread tanking anything other than coil.

[Crimess]

Sword Oath does helps. You have to learn your skills. I use it often. Once I know for sure that I have total aggro and control of the boss. I switch from Shield Oath to Sword Oath. It helps a lot just learn to play you class.

[PiedPiper]

Sword Oath does helps. You have to learn your skills. I use it often. Once I know for sure that I have total aggro and control of the boss. I switch from Shield Oath to Sword Oath. It helps a lot just learn to play you class.

Either 3/10 for troll quality, or 10/10 for bafflement quality.

Assuming you're being genuine... lolwut? This thread is clearly authored and heavily contributed to by people who know a great deal about paladin and what limited room there is for finesse play with the class. That said....

You do realize that shield oath comes with a 20% reduction to the damage you receive.. so on.. .like nearly every fight it would be an awful idea to be in sword oath. Titan, Coil, even ifrit and garu depending on your gear (a full af pld shouldn't use sword while tanking garu for example). If I turned on sword oath while tanking twin I'd be dead within moments.

[zdub303]

After playing warrior and dragoon... yeah paladin is quite boring to play.

All the class really needs is a good finish to the riot blade combo. Would love to have an ability like... "Spell Blade" which has Combo Potency: 300 and Combo Bonus: Next spell cast time reduced 1.5s and costs 90 TP. Gives us a supporty flavor allowing us to toss out stoneskin and cures here and there. Maybe have shield oath increase our cure potency by 200-300 as well to make cure actually useful.

In this way we would have to make a choice between Rage of Halone and Spell Blade, agro or support? Also can't spam Spell Blade combo forever has Riot Blade and Spell Blade are 80/90 TP, forcing us to consider how to manage our TP.

That is pretty much all PLD needs to make it interesting.

Spell blade could also put us in a good position to have a 'fighter-mage' like dps class in the future as a second job off GLD. Something like 30 GLA/15 THM.

[PiedPiper]

.

In this way we would have to make a choice between Rage of Halone and Spell Blade, agro or support? Also can't spam Spell Blade combo forever has Riot Blade and Spell Blade are 80/90 TP, forcing us to consider how to manage our TP.
.

I think we are all saying the same thing with different ideas.

Paladin is a holy knight with magic. Current pld uses no magic. We want some form of holy magic. Anything. Ageis boon per Brannigan's idea, Holy Oath per OP, Spellblade per Zdub. ANYTHING. Give us a reason to actually cast a holy element spell. Every pld in the series, all the way back to genesis with Cecil has had meaningful curing magic. All we want is what many consider the very essence of the class: a reason to use white magic on the white magic tank.

[Despite]

I find the gladiator and melee classes rather underwhelming tbh. Need more mobility and just plain oomph. Hope this changes at higher lvl!

[Duelle]

A thousand times this. I don't need a tank (or dps) rotation that requires me to hit 25 different abilities with multi-branching split second decision making. The fight is what provides the complexity, and also the variety.

Look at something popular like Zelda or Pokemon. The actions available to the player are fairly straight forward. Enemy variety plays a huge part in making the game interesting from one encounter to the next.

Now some people really love classes that require you to manage 20+ abilities, so it's great to have them around as well as an option - but the encounters should be providing the meat of the experience.

This. Simplicity and straight-forwardness are not cardinal sins of game design. They are also not taboo to the point they should never be present in a game. You can feel as awesome as you want pressing 20 buttons and managing 10 buffs on some other class, so long as my straightforward tank gameplay remains unscathed and can still get through content. KISS (keep it simple, stupid) exists for a reason. Sadly, some people do lose sight of this, start demanding complexity due to misguidedly confusing "complex" with the word "fun" and then we get a mess in our hands and a very pissed off Duelle.

[PiedPiper]

This. Simplicity and straight-forwardness are not cardinal sins of game design. They are also not taboo to the point they should never be present in a game. You can feel as awesome as you want pressing 20 buttons and managing 10 buffs on some other class, so long as my straightforward tank gameplay remains unscathed and can still get through content. KISS (keep it simple, stupid) exists for a reason. Sadly, some people do lose sight of this, start demanding complexity due to misguidedly confusing "complex" with the word "fun" and then we get a mess in our hands and a very pissed off Duelle.

Drg only has 9 gcd abilities that are always desirable to use. (All of them contribute to the primary purpose of the class) and yet is possessed of great complexity and depth. In some ways it is very simple (apply debufs and self buff, use big attack if they are up) but it manages great dynamic value owing to how they interact. 9 is really not that many. Plus two more aoe options, 3 jumps, an off gcd stun... the game play is not very complex but it is extremely dynamic. This keeps it engaging. Ultimately, "fun" is how "engaged" you are. Every dps class has 10-15 damage dealing abilities that directly contribute to their primary goal in all / nearly all situations.

Paladin has 7 gcd abilities. 7. Fast, savage, rage. Flash, swipe, lob, riot. 4 of them are extremely situational and contribute nothing / nearly nothing to the classes primary goal (earning agro on a single target).

Paladin isn't just a case of keep it simple, its a case of "a macro keyboard can play as well as I can." To play paladin, you hit 3 buttons and wait to be afraid, when you're afraid you hit one of 4 other buttons that largely do the exact same thing (make you slightly easier to heal for a time either by reducing damage received or increasing healing received, basically the same). Occasionally, you get to hit spirits and cos.

There is nothing dynamic about paladin. It requires no real decisions, nor even for you to pay much attention.

We aren't really asking to make the class complicated. We're asking to make it dynamic. Only when a class is dynamic is there opportunity for excellence. With drg, anyone can hap hazardly fire off combos and be passable. When someone really engages and manages their interactions masterfully, however, they stand head and shoulders above the rest. The same is true of brd and smn. Paladins, however, are only either competent or awful. There are no excellent paladins. There simply isn't enough to the class. There are no decisions to make, no room for finesse. The absolute hardest thing in the game for pld is to track the cool down on death sentence and use your cool downs early to make them rotate well. That's just counting. And it can and should be rendered unnecessary by group coordination on conflag.

More to the point, the OP's suggestion wouldn't make the class any more complex for its primary purpose. You could still sit in shield oath and spam ROH and hold hate forever. What it does add is depth, risk/reward. "I can step out of shield oath and go into holy and be able to heal myself and others, but i'll get hit harder. I can go into sword and do more damage to help pass this dps check but I will get hit harder and earn less enmity etc etc." The class would thus have a reason, or at the very least, the opportunity to do more than spam the same combo. The basic play of shield oath + combo would be as effective as it is now, only in OP's wonderful world, you could actually decide to care and have a chance to do more.