Opinions on WAR and PLD

[Brannigan]

HG is just not designed to be an 'oh snap im in trouble' button. It's designed to be used as a major strategic relief in damage incoming.

Also, it's REALLY REALLY ambiguous on the damage it will mitigate. There's a lot that it will just simply not cover.

Yeah, exactly. You can plan around Hallowed Ground. You can't use Holmgang like that. It'd be cool if it could be buffed so that was still unique from HG but let you actually plan around using it.

Also it's kind of funny to see what Hallowed Ground works on. It's pretty clear they don't want you using it to skip mechanics, but it's still a bit arbitrary. It'll make the Iceball in t9 hit for 0 even if you already have an ice stack, but it doesn't prevent landmine damage at all (even though Sentinel, etc will mitigate it). There's also at least one damage+knockback skill in the game where it prevents the damage but not the knockback, but on like Landslide you just take 0 and don't move.

[LukeyP666]

I don't play Paladin very often but there are certain fights where I feel more comfortable, such as Ifrit XM, and this is purely for Hallowed Ground and Stoneskin spam. If as OT you're required to be doing damage, you need better DPS, so I just spend my time when not tanking spamming Stoneskin on the MT until we need to switch.

I also never use Hallowed Ground in a panic situation for the previously mentioned reasons. Server lag is a bitch. It's purely used at a strategic point in a fight when you know that you will take no damage, allowing the healers to concentrate on something else, or to mitigate a known massive incoming spike of damage. Again, on Ifrit XM, I pop it just before I switch in as MT when in the final Nail phase, which allows me eat five or six fire breaths before the other tank needs to switch in. If they also use their Hallowed Ground as they switch in, and it removes a lot of the annoying switches during that phase with the tether. My Static Paladin buddy also uses it for the Super Slug in Turn 6, for the Prosecutor in Turn 7 and for the second Dread in Turn 8, in order to premeditatively mitigate the known spike damage that is about to hit.

I also agree that Paladins need something other than just the 1, 2, 3 spam when tanking. An additional combo skill after Riot Blade would be nice, with maybe an additional debuff to magical attack power to go with the strength down debuff from Halone. Brannigan's suggestion of Paladins being in Shield Oath by default when they have the Paladin Soulstone equipped is a good one, I feel, as it would free up a Job Skill for that additional weapon skill as suggested. This would also be good for fights such as Ramuh XM, where Halone's debuff is completely useless because all of his attacks are magical.

Tempered Will is another one that I use more out of laziness or when I know there's potential for knockback. Titan XM PUGs are where it comes in handy, where the five-way landslide is sometimes not baited south, you can pop Tempered Will before you know it will happen, in case any DPS or healers get targeted that aren't currently stacked south. Using it on Levi XM when positioning the blue Spumes also lets you get into position earlier for when they burst as you don't need to avoid the tipping of the boat, but that's more just being lazy :P

When it comes to Warriors, Holmgang is the biggest problem for me, and is probably my least used skill. The idea in principle was interesting, but there are far too many things that are immune to the bind and it's trying to do too many things at once. Six seconds is also not a lot of time to use it for anything premeditated, with about the only one being the above mentioned five-way Landslide and being able to prevent the knockback if you have nowhere to go, or if you're feeling lazy, for the two Gaoler's Landslides.

But then who's to say that they won't go back to trying to make each class use more of their utility skills in the next Coil. Second Coil for me has felt way more about the whole team's cohesion together, as opposed to one or two key members in particular (silencing ADS, chain-stunning the Dreadknights, etc.). There's very little room for members of the teams to just tunnel vision and not have to worry about mechanics like there were in the Binding Coil.

[Kydi]

I suggested the possibility of giving flash a DoT effect (with a 3x modifier on the DoT effect) when used after riot blade, which would also gain a 3x enmity modifier. A 40 potency DoT over 21 seconds (7 ticks) would mean that, assuming you kept it up permanently, you would get a dps increase of 4% and a threat reduction of 6% on a single target, over RoH spam, not an unreasonable trade off in my opinion. However, you would obviously see a significant increase with AoE threat generation.

[LukeyP666]

I suggested the possibility of giving flash a DoT effect (with a 3x modifier on the DoT effect) when used after riot blade, which would also gain a 3x enmity modifier. A 40 potency DoT over 21 seconds (7 ticks) would mean that, assuming you kept it up permanently, you would get a dps increase of 4% and a threat reduction of 6% on a single target, over RoH spam, not an unreasonable trade off in my opinion. However, you would obviously see a significant increase with AoE threat generation.

That's an interesting suggestion, but Paladins do already have Circle of Scorn as an AOE DOT skill. My idea that I've suggested in multiple threads before now would be for the combo skill following Riot Blade to deal magical damage (based on Strength, not Int or anything daft), which consumes MP. You would have it cost more MP than Riot Blade replenishes, so that you would, over time, still run out of MP in the same way that you would TP. You could have it as an AOE attack which generates additional enmity in order to attempt to balance Warriors' Overpower and Steel Cyclone.

[Kydi]

That's an interesting suggestion, but Paladins do already have Circle of Scorn as an AOE DOT skill... Snip

It could certainly work. The alternative is just have flash damage if combo'd with riot blade.

My main thought was to just keep the skills exactly the same so minimal effort required to change things (although I'm not a programmer, a combo could be hell to program), but also to set paladin aside a bit with extra dot and debuff effects rather than just a flat damage effect. I also wanted there to be a use for it in single target fights, as at present we only have 1,2,3 to work with.

A fixed damage would also work though. I think about 175 potency would make the combo slightly less powerful than a halone combo per GCD, but would add the area benefit.