Possible Paladin Rework...

[TouchandFeel]

Paladin changes are something that I have been thinking a lot about lately and here are some of the changes that I thought would really make PLD better/more enjoyable to play.

1) Better dps when solo or main tanking. WAR has a huge advantage here and something should be done to help bring them closer together. One idea I had was to make Spirits Within ignore the damage reduction from Shield Oath similar to how some WAR abilities ignore the penalty from Defiance. That is all I've come up with so far, so if anyone is so inclined please post ideas. It should only increase dps when in shield oath and not sword oath as OT warrior and PLD damage are not too far apart. Also, I'm cool with WAR having a little better dps than PLD, just not to the level of disparity that exists now.

2) The Oaths should be taken off GCD. I have been experimenting with oath/stance dancing in order to make playing PLD more dynamic and interesting, for example popping a defensive CD and swapping to sword oath for the duration of the CD to squeeze out a bit more dps and then switching back to shield when the CD is done. However, with the oaths on gcd I find myself often not able to make the quick oath swaps that I want because the gcd has locked me out. So let's say I'm OTing in SwO and adds spawn that I need to pick up, its approx. 2.5 sec until I can swap to shield oath and then another 2.5 until I can properly engage the target. 5 seconds is a long time to have to wait and a lot can happen during that time. Taking the oaths off gcd would allow for quick on-the-fly swaps which would make strategic stance dancing to maximize dps more viable.

3) I am combining two into one for this suggestion. First is the most asked for suggestion for PLD, a second 3 part combo from riot blade. Second is a "takes more damage from x" debuff like WAR's slashing damage debuff. What I was thinking was to add this debuff to the 3rd attack in the combo and having it something that makes sense with riot like "reduces targets magic resistance by 10%".

4) Cover needs to be improved. First, it needs to not only redirect physical damage but any type of damage. It is already incredibly situational as it is, it doesn't need anything else to narrow its potential usefulness. Also it needs its range increased, sometimes my cover target just being on the other side of a larger mob places them too far away from me to use cover on them and since as a tank you are usually on one side of such a mob and facing it away from everyone else, that situation happens more often than it should.

5) Awareness, its a bit of a waste of an ability AND a trait. Just remove it as an ability and add its effect as a trait advancement to another ability like Bulwark. This would then open up an available ability slot for the new combo attack that I brought up in #3.

3+5 Alternative) A potential alternative to suggestions 3 and 5. Instead of removing Awareness as an ability, keep it as an ability and have the duration granted by the trait just built in. Then by freeing up that trait slot have it used for "Enhanced Riot Blade", which would allow you to combo another Riot Blade off of a comboed Riot Blade and then apply the debuff brought up in #3, essentially giving you a 3 part combo (Fast Blade>Riot Blade>Riot Blade) that applies the damage resistance debuff without exactly creating a new ability. However this "enhanced riot" blade may need a different animation than the regular riot blade as doing two back to back could look weird. While I list this as an alternative, just doing suggestions 3 and 5 would probably be better.