Possible Paladin Rework...

[Sipherous]

Hey all, I was looking and talking with my FC the other day about PLD vs WAR tanks. I have played a bit of both across 2 characters and despite the fact I like my PLD better the WAR has much more fun when it comes to group make up.

In 2.1 the WAR received a pretty decent rework that put it up to par with PLD and surpassing it even in a lot of situations. Looking at a PLD you don't have the luxury of the combo potential at your fingertips that a WAR does so I thought I'd throw some ideas to spice up a PLD's life from the same old repetitive combos (Halone Combo) with a lucky shield swipe if your enmity is high enough.

[Sipherous]

Shield Swipe

Next to a proc'd Halone, Spirits Within and Circle of Scorn this is our next highest dmg based skill. at 210 potency off every block this skill become very tempting to throw out. It is also one of the few GCD skills that won't interrupt a Halone Combo due to it not using the sword. Biggest problem is it give no enmity generation and unless you are not in shield oath it does little dmg with next to no enmity generation.

Two things can be used to fix it and make it a staple in PLD rotation upping our DPS slightly and giving us better options.

1. Take Shield swip off GCD and add a 3-5 sec CD to it. This makes it perfect to use between GCD's doesn't over power the skill and allows for some rotational mix ups while maintaining enmity.

2. Give Shield swipe an enmity generation passive but turn potency down to 190-200 making it weaker or equal to savage blade. This would allow us to use it more in GCD rotations without making it completely overpowered.

[Sipherous]

FLASH

Who doesn't love this skill, although after a prolonged fight it doesn't have much uses except maybe picking up the next big thing that happens to spawn quickly and effectively. A lot of talk about taking it off the GCD is needed but this would honestly hurt the skill more than you think. I would rather switch it around to have a combo potency off say riot blade making it the third combo in a chain.

Fast Blade > Riot Blade (gives MP) > FLASH (blinds target ignoring diminishing return and triples the enmity generation)

This would allow for more fun during mass pulls also during those pulls we flash so much as it is that the blind passive is effectively useless after it off from the third hit. Also Buckler type shields would become more popular due to their block rate for more DPS.

[Sipherous]

Tempered Will

This skill many regard as a niche skill, and its true. Outside of 3 fights I barely use it, except maybe when traveling on a mount and a mob heavies me. Jump off pop this jump back on and go. I would like to try this out instead although it might need some tweaking also because the game pushes so much on movement I doubt this would work well : but feel free to comment.

Turn the buff into a stance, like shield oath and sword oath. When activated you can't move but your DMG/Enimity and Def increase by 10-20% respectively and u are unaffected by knockbacks.

It would give the best of both at maybe a reduced effectiveness but basically make u a rock.

[Sipherous]

Awareness

This skill is strange, I can never tell when a boss crits me to begin with as my numbers fly around my screen at ridiculous pace. Either they need to make a Crit more noticeable so you see awareness work or maybe change it to give a 10-20% enmity increase while active so it has other uses I mean you are aware right? I don't know I'm just playing with this one XD.

The Oaths

For the love of god take these off the GCD. Maybe its just me but sometimes wasting a GCD to put these up can cost me precious seconds. Also maybe take off the MP cost as it unfair a WAR can just die res go defiance like he never died and a PLD has to wait or pop and either to get back into a stance.

COVER

I would maybe like this to apply magic DMG as well. Its another Niche skill but a lot of mobs at end game dish out magic DMG and is rather annoying when u use this only to realize your party members going die anyways

[SwordCoheir]

The Oaths

For the love of god take these off the GCD. Maybe its just me but sometimes wasting a GCD to put these up can cost me precious seconds. Also maybe take off the MP cost as it unfair a WAR can just die res go defiance like he never died and a PLD has to wait or pop and either to get back into a stance.

I'd like to add how about the removal of the effect that interrupts combo's, something both MRD/WAR and CNJ/WHM has over PLD is the fact their stances not only can be swapped out on a whim without GCD being a thorn in their side is they can do it mid-combo and not have it break their chain.

Shield Bash
Great as is, but like what I was saying about Shield/Sword Oath is it interrupts your combos. Tactically I know of the advantages Shield Bash has, but at the same time if PLD's have to double down and both tank and stun enemies it makes major gaps in their enmity generation if they keep having to break their combos.

[Daniolaut]

Please please please Square'Enix take note of this thread and make PLD fun/even with WAR.

I 'main-ed' PLD from 2.0 to 2.2. Upon 2.3 i 'main-ed' all 9 jobs. I found a new static that was looking for a warrior and i picked the job up.

Since playing warrior i see that warrior can not only do what PLD could do before warrior was reworked but since the rework it can now do much much more.

Warrior's Overpower is ... well way overpowered compared to PLD's flash.

I personally hate flash. The animation is horrid, and the enmity generation is useless until shield oath and even with shield oath its still a joke compared to overpower.

So not only does flash not generate as much threat as overpower it also doesnt deal damage. So here WAR doubles over PLD in aoe. If flash dealt twice the enmity that it currently does then it would match up to war and wouldnt need to be spammed and would be an effective skill.

Circle of Scorn, Cover, and Shield Swipe all really need attention. I dont know how they can make these skills more useful without totally reworking them.

Shield Swipe, nearly no enemies outside of trash mobs are affected by pacification, and even trash mobs in the world only take a 6s pacification which is the time between one weapon skill to another anyway so the 6s pacification is 100% useless imo.

Cover, i've only found minor use for it in brayflox speed runs, on the second pull and the second boss.. only.. in the entire game. Thats sad imo.

Circle of Scorn is just not very good either. Its usefull since its off the GCD but thats probably the only nice thing about it aside from its actually really nice animation. I'm sure they, since SE doesnt want PLD's to deal massive damage, could cause it to deal some actual useful debuff such as bind..... actually that would make it next to perfect if it could bind.


Some ways to make PLD more interesting: (kinda repeating just whats been said.)

Shield Swipe: To work much like blood letter, Be off the GCD, deal 210 potency and either 1: have real enemies be affected by pacification or 2: increase enmity or some other useful effect.

FlashOut of combo after riot blade no blind affect and its normal enmity gain. In combo after riot blade cause blind and deal double enmity. (this combo is desperately needed imo for low level pld's/gld's who dont have shield oath.)

Circle of ScornAddtional Effect: Binds enemy.

Shield Bash Should not interrupt combos.

Shield/Sword OathYes please take them off the GCD or remove the MP cost.. one of the two. Its very silly to have both on the GCD and cost so much.

PLD generates more single target enmity than a warrior.

I play both PLD and WAR and this is just not true.

A WAR doing just Butchers Block combo and a PLD doing just Rage of Halone combo, WAR generates more threat due to crit hits from wrath being at 5 stacks.

[Kitru]

If flash dealt twice the enmity that it currently does then it would match up to war and wouldnt need to be spammed and would be an effective skill.

Flash generates roughly 480 ePot per use. Overpower is 600. Flash is basically free; Overpower costs an arm and a leg.

The enmity generation on Flash is fine. The only issue PLD has is low AoE damage.

A WAR doing just Butchers Block combo and a PLD doing just Rage of Halone combo, WAR generates more threat due to crit hits from wrath being at 5 stacks.

lolnope. I suggest you actually do some math (or, hell, even check against an equally geared PLD) before making bad conjecture that the entire community already knows is wrong.

5 stack Wrath is ~5% increased damage (slightly less actually), and Defiance is a 25% damage penalty, which ends up reducing damage to 78.75%. Berserk is 40% for 20 seconds every 90 seconds with 5 seconds of no special attack damage (basically -66%), which is only a ~5.17% increase in damage over time. The only off-GCD attack WAR has is Brutal Swing, for 100 pot every 20.

As such, just doing BB spam and using Berserk on CD, a WAR is going to manage 1345.84 ePot/GCD over time (2 * .75 * 1.05 * 1.0517 * (83.33 + (150 + 200 * 3 + 280 * 5) / 3 + 100 / 8))).

Shield Oath is a 20% reduction in damage dealt, FoF is 30% for 30 secs every 90 secs for a 10% increase to total damage, and CoS and SW are both off-GCDs that provide 25 pot/GCD.

As such, with RoH spam and FoF/SW/CoS on CD, a PLD will manage 1437.33 epot/GCD (2 * .8 * 1.1 * (83.33 + 25 + 25 + (150 + 200 * 3 + 260 * 5) / 3)).

The only way that a WAR generates more enmity than a PLD is if they use their CDs properly (optimal UBIR) and are using the SE>BB>BB high enmity rotation. In every other case, WAR is going to generate less.

[Daniolaut]

stuff all the time only stuff

Kitru do you even play FFXIV? All i ever see you doing on the forums is -attempting- to prove people wrong. Seriously

I did an HIJKLMNOP test and put my CDEFG on and added WTFDOUEVENFFXIV to my PLD and WAR and here are my results, you CANNOT argue these numbers so go away. (i70 giantsgall nq from skirmish in 1.0 on war vs i70+i100 {sword shield})

PICTURES so you cant get confused!!

This Paladin in shield oath!






This is Warrior in Defiance!




Same character! same gear! except PLD has better gear seeing as the shield is i100

WAR was about 1/6 crit hits where as PLD was 1/10 or so. Roughly I'm not going to spend all day hitting a freaking dummy to prove a point. (Auto attack was included in these ratios.)

I even made sure to include the auto attack.

Also both PLD and WAR are 30 points in vit. WAR's gain an automatic str bonus over PLD.

So non refutable WAR deals more damage thus gains more enmity over PLD. Thanks

What now??


Edit: i100 shield oops.

Note:

Your conversation with Giantbane is also ridiculous. this statement:

"It's getting kind of old to see PLDs whinging on about Flash and about how amazing Overpower is when they're completely ignoring the fact that Overpower is expensive as hell which is *why* it's so strong."

Is absurd. I cant think of a single pull in this entire game where the length a PLD can flash in relation to a WAR using overpower would lose threat because of loss of TP where a PLD would eventually win the threat race.

Flash is trash and needs to be on par with Overpower's threat generation. Never, ever, ever will PLD win a threat race where there are dps actually attacking the mobs.. that statement is absurd beyond absurdity.

[Giantbane]

I play both PLD and WAR and this is just not true.

A WAR doing just Butchers Block combo and a PLD doing just Rage of Halone combo, WAR generates more threat due to crit hits from wrath being at 5 stacks.

Defiance is -25%, Shield Oath is -20%, crit can't make up for that. PLD also has much strong off GCD moves that should be included in base threat generated. EDIT: Kitru beat me to it

Kitru corrected me earlier, the WAR *can* generate more threat. But the WAR pulls ahead due to the ability to stack buffs and generate an insane amount of threat during unchained, berserk & internal release.

It should be noted that in order to generate max threat, the WAR needs to be limiting which debuffs it applies. SP>BB>BB will mean you drop SP for a few seconds per rotation. SP>BB means 100% up time on SP, but you generate much less threat. Both of those means losing the SE debuff entirely. SE>BB for 100% up time on SE or SE>BB>BB for max threat are other options, but the result is everyone taking more damage since you aren't maintaining the SP debuff. BB spam is only for terrible WARs that would be better off playing PLD. PLD is able to maintain threat and the halone debuff in one combo. No trade off, so you get max threat and max debuff all the time no matter what.

Either way, it makes no difference whatsoever. Both classes can generate so much more threat than any other class you should need to worry about (save a WHM that spams medica 2 all day and can't find his shroud button), that it's sort of a moot point. As long as you hold threat, you don't get any bonus points for holding 10% more threat than the other guy.

And it wasn't the real point I was trying to make. The imbalance is AoE threat and damage, where the PLD is currently thoroughly outclassed by the WAR in both areas. PLD could really use some love there.