PLD feels underwhelming lately

[kukurumei]

EDIT: I don't mean utility in a certain situation which occurs once in a certain fight, but something that's useful in more situations.

And as I said, I'm curious how others distributed their stat points and what kind of accessories they use.
I'm on +30 VIT, accuracy and parry with as much det/crit as I can put in at the moment.
WAR is at +30 STR with half of the accessories being STR for dungeons, and going full VIT/parry accessories when tanking harder stuff. Also aiming for enough accuracy and as much det/crit as possible.

Play more end game. PLD just have more tools...for everything.

Wars have better upkeep but matters very little in endgame. SE doesn't like warriors...or perhaps they are continuing to evaluate how they design fights. 2.2 is far more fairer then 2.1, but still a far cry, from war anything.

Heck pretty much every content in 2.0 and 2.1 is completely war-phobic.

PLD is king of end game, and that's not on paper.

[Kyana]

Play more end game. PLD just have more tools...for everything.

Wars have better upkeep but matters very little in endgame. SE doesn't like warriors...or perhaps they are continuing to evaluate how they design fights. 2.2 is far more fairer then 2.1, but still a far cry, from war anything.

Heck pretty much every content in 2.0 and 2.1 is completely war-phobic.

PLD is king of end game, and that's not on paper.

And yet, you seem to prefer WAR while your PLD is only lvl35. No offense, just an observation.

Yes, I've yet to get to 2nd Coil, so I don't know how well WAR and PLD work in there.
But the difference I experienced myself, when tanking endgame stuff with either PLD or WAR, was minimal at best so far.

[Codek]

And yet, you seem to prefer WAR while your PLD is only lvl35. No offense, just an observation.

Yes, I've yet to get to 2nd Coil, so I don't know how well WAR and PLD work in there.
But the difference I experienced myself, when tanking endgame stuff with either PLD or WAR, was minimal at best so far.

That's pretty much the case the whole way through. Not sure why Kukurumei feels the need to turn an ant hill into a mountain but the Paladin toolkit is in no way a requirement for any fight.

If your raid nights are between a kill and a wipe based off the use of HG and Cover, then there is some fundamental issues going on there (Exclusion being T4 double dread strategy when people were in all i70 gear). They are a nice luxury to have but groups can also easily work around not having them just as well.


This is a fine tuning issue as there is literally nothing else to complain about between the two classes (in regards to balancing them). I'm far more concerned with the lack of on the go decisions players have to make while playing a Paladin then compared to a Warrior. If SE were to make changes to the classes, then this is what I prefer to be prioritized. It gets far too stale to play Paladin through the fights having only 1 go to combo and predetermined points in time where cooldowns should be burned.

[LOLyYOUcryin]

Play more end game. PLD just have more tools...for everything.

Wars have better upkeep but matters very little in endgame. SE doesn't like warriors...or perhaps they are continuing to evaluate how they design fights. 2.2 is far more fairer then 2.1, but still a far cry, from war anything.

Heck pretty much every content in 2.0 and 2.1 is completely war-phobic.

PLD is king of end game, and that's not on paper.

as it should be. i have both. but PLD for life yo!

[Umbeliel]

Play more end game. PLD just have more tools...for everything.

Wars have better upkeep but matters very little in endgame. SE doesn't like warriors...or perhaps they are continuing to evaluate how they design fights. 2.2 is far more fairer then 2.1, but still a far cry, from war anything.

Heck pretty much every content in 2.0 and 2.1 is completely war-phobic.

PLD is king of end game, and that's not on paper.

It stands true for pre-endgame as well. Additionally, a lot of people seem to be ignoring the RoH debuff which, though not effective as Path, is a thing that exists. On top of that, the fact that IB is effectively just shield block on demand and that it more or less just turns a Warrior into a paladin with just shield oath and 25% extra HP for six seconds is also a thing- While doing lower Coils on a Paladin, especially with Echo, if you legitimately need that extra Warrior 25% or 20% reduction your healer is probably a huge mess.

And yet, you seem to prefer WAR while your PLD is only lvl35. No offense, just an observation.

Yes, I've yet to get to 2nd Coil, so I don't know how well WAR and PLD work in there.
But the difference I experienced myself, when tanking endgame stuff with either PLD or WAR, was minimal at best so far.

Paladin is boring. Warrior is a lot more involved and takes a hell of a lot more thought to do well. Preferences are sort of irrelevant on the matter.

Warrior is easy to compensate for by design, which in and of itself says a lot really.

A WAR can keep up Storm's Eye and Storm's Path debuffs while keeping hate, healing himself and dealing dmg.
No matter which combo used, the WAR builds up wrath till he can use Inner Beast.
That's -20% dmg for 6 seconds every ~13 seconds and additional heal. PLD's Rampart lasts for 20 seconds but also has a 90 seconds cooldown.
But that's not important.

This is just me nitpicking, but at best you can get IB on a 13 second cooldown (Providing you use veng and zerk specifically for wrath stacks and have Selene.), and with no cooldowns for Wrath you are looking at around 19 seconds bare minimum, starting count with no combo. IB is a huge tool towards equalization and we are in a better spot than we were 2.0, but it is by no means the be all end all that a lot of people seem to think it is.

The heal is trivial at best, but I'll give that if you keep spamming it maybe you'll get a lucky hit that isn't automatically overhealed anyway. Eye IS useful, without a doubt though and the 10% reduction on path(Though it really should never have been taken off Rain of Death) is good too.

Further, putting aside that it not being usable on most bosses(Which is simply not true), the diminishing returns only last for 20 seconds after the last successful stun was applied. That is, with twenty seconds downtime on stunnable bosses you have about nine seconds of not taking damage. Let's not even bring up the practicality of Stoneskin(It's actually amazing, by the way. Use it as much as you can.), the fact that your AoE enmity tool essentially gives you Featherfoot, or that post 2.1 nearly all Warrior skills are just are just adapted to do what Paladin can already do automatically with no extra effort. Heyoooooo

The part where Paladins don't have a second combo to use is because they -don't need one-, a Warrior on tank will deal significantly higher dps than a on tank Pally, and(Unless OT Pally is a jerk, especially on swaps, and refuses to stance juggle) enmity should outright be a non issue unless it's a 2x paladin setup. Which, even then, I haven't ever actually had any issues with. A Paladin does not need an equivalent to Storm's Path/Eye, because it already has the secondary damage down effect built in an the enmity when not tanking is(Or, again, unless your other tank is fairly bad.) completely irrelevant.



....Also, to answer what you asked earlier, the most effective way I've found to define the "vit/str Do you need it?" issue is to start with vit. Because vit is your HP and absolutely nothing else, every time you go into a fight and don't fall below a multiple of 15(or 18, on a Warrior) of HP is that much vit being totally worthless that you don't need. So you find you don't fall below 150 hp? That's 10 vit that could be better used as str. Never fall below 1500? 100 str you could be having without being dead. Of course, you should maintain a buffer of sorts but it's actually not possible to go low enough that you don't have one just by using a full str allocation at 50, i90 armor/weapon and gryphonskin accessories. Every piece of i100 armor just makes it a little bit more of a moot issue.

And more on topic, not that Paladin doesn't need tweaks too. But it is in a lot less of a "needs tweaks" position than Warrior which was more or less the point of the derailing, I think. Awareness should be tweaked, Savage Blade shouldn't be cross classable (The only job that crosses gladiator is...... Warrior. And Marauder has the identical cross classable Skull Sunder for everyone wanting to use classes instead.) Shield and Sword Oath could be condensed to a single skill that switches between the two.(And leaving with one or the other always on as long as you were a Paladin. Which should be the case anyway.) Enhanced Awareness is a completely wasted trait. Except Foresight and...... Sort of Bloodbath, maybe, there's really nothing for Paladin from the Marauder cross class skillset too. Most of these are borderline QoL though.

[BadRNG]

It stands true for pre-endgame as well. Additionally, a lot of people seem to be ignoring the RoH debuff which, though not effective as Path, is a thing that exists. On top of that, the fact that IB is effectively just shield block ondemand and that it more or less just turns a Warrior into a paladin with just shield oath and 25% extra HP for six seconds is also a thing- While doing lower Coils on a Paladin, especially with Echo, if you legitimately need that extra Warrior 25% or 20% reduction your healer is probably a huge mess.

Is this real life? "shield block on demand" is a ridiculously huge asset. A well played warrior can out perform any PLD in any fight with predictable spikes, aka all challenging content in the game. I should probably note that I don't believe this to be a bad thing given how the classes are currently designed, but I just wanted to point out you are massively downplaying something that makes WAR incredibly powerful.

This is a fine tuning issue as there is literally nothing else to complain about between the two classes (in regards to balancing them). I'm far more concerned with the lack of on the go decisions players have to make while playing a Paladin then compared to a Warrior. If SE were to make changes to the classes, then this is what I prefer to be prioritized. It gets far too stale to play Paladin through the fights having only 1 go to combo and predetermined points in time where cooldowns should be burned.

This is my stance too. PLD just doesn't have any complexity or choice in it, and is painfully boring as a result. In many ways 2.1's WAR changes were influenced by PLD's design, moving forward I would love for them to do the reverse and have PLD take some cues from WAR's design and add some much needed complexity. Certain classes will always have a higher skill ceiling or lower floor, but as it stands PLDs are stuck in fetal position to fit in the room. This is the most "underwhelming" aspect of PLD to me.

[Umbeliel]

Is this real life? "shield block on demand" is a ridiculously huge asset. A well played warrior can out perform any PLD in any fight with predictable spikes, aka all challenging content in the game. I should probably note that I don't believe this to be a bad thing given how the classes are currently designed, but I just wanted to point out you are massively downplaying something that makes WAR incredibly powerful.

The point isn't that it's somehow completely useless, the point is that it's not good enough. It's not equal. That 20% for six seconds is the same 20% a paladin has -anyway-, and in most cases is completely sufficient. Shield Block/Parry itself is just icing on the cake. Filed under "Things that can save you if something went awry, but not inherently necessary." It comes out to be comparable to Shield Block in term of effectiveness, but the 20% "on demand" is more directly comparable to the permanent 20% reduction that Paladins always have simply by being in stance (Which, no, even with 2.1 buffs Defiance does not match perfectly and even then, most of the benefit is only available via heals- which you should always have anyway, but the inequality is in usefulness and versatility. A paladin survives and clears content by simply not taking a whole lot of damage. A warrior clears content because...... At least they don't die.) Inner Beast, with that in mind, is serving the exact same purpose it always did even pre 2.1 when it was just a self heal, except we don't lose the bonus heals and the net damage nullified in high level content is increased, but the overall utility is lower. It is and always has been compensation for lack of what a paladin does automatically anyway.

Also just to establish, that first bit isn't true at all. Ultimately the old status quo is maintained- a bad paladin will do better than a bad warrior. A good warrior can maybe outperform a good paladin. A perfect paladin will outperform a perfect warrior.

[Karilyn]

The part where Paladins don't have a second combo to use is because they -don't need one-

You say this like it's a downside, when in reality it is the single biggest upside to playing a Warrior tank. Forget the Brayflox Speedruns. Forget the Inner Beast. Forget the everything else. Forget the AOE threat and damage. The single biggest pro to playing a Warrior, is that they have to use a second combo.

Because oh my fucking god, a Paladin will put you to sleep faster than a 3 hour lecture on the exciting world of toe fungus, hosted by Ben Stein. It doesn't matter if you drink a gallon of coffee before beginning a raid. A tank that's asleep is a dead tank, and if you can stay awake while tanking as a Paladin, science should extract your blood and inject it into the human population so we can get an extra 8 hours of being awake per day, because you are the next evolution of humanity.

Dat quality of life perk of having something besides Rage of Halone combo.

[Instrumentality]

A tank that's asleep is a dead tank, and if you can stay awake while tanking as a Paladin, science should extract your blood and inject it into the human population so we can get an extra 8 hours of being awake per day, because you are the next evolution of humanity.

Where do I go to donate? I feel pretty alive when playing my Paladin.

[Xsavior]

I agree 110% Paladin's in Final Fantasy's past have always been able to cure themselves very well. I mean look back at most FF's, Paladins had Cure I, II, III, and even Cure IV. I think that Paladins should at least have Cure II. Even if the most it would cure depending on your stats is lets say 700-800 health, at least thats better than a measly 200-300 Cure that wouldnt even make a difference. Please, can we have Cure II?