New tanking abilities in the expansion thread!

[SpookyGhost]

I don't think people fully understand why PLD is so dull.

Firstly, it barely qualifies as a tank. It barely qualifies as a job. It barely qualifies as anything. There is more thought involved in playing BLM/BRD than ever playing PLD in any encounter. People joke about it all the time, people use it as a mark against PLD, but seriously: it's 123 cooldown. You can try to make PLD as complex as you want, but you will have the exact same result every time. People are literally grasping at straws, attempting to use Oath swapping as an excuse to make PLD seem like more than it is. I have to try so hard to keep my brain on when I play PLD, I always drift off and start looking at everyone else while I'm tanking. That's not a good sign.

Secondly, it has no "mechanic". Let's take a look at other jobs: WAR has Wrath, BRD has songs, BLM has Umbral/Astral, SMN/SCH have Aetherflow, and MNK has Greased Lightning. DRG has no real mechanic but it survives on being an enjoyable DPS job with a lot of buttons to press. WHM doesn't have a mechanic but survives on being a healer in a game where there's very little versatility/change from fight to fight. PLD has no mechanic, has nothing interesting to do, and is just 123 cooldown. If you love playing PLD, it's because you literally don't want any responsibility to learn even a semblance of a mechanic, you want the easy ride to Final Coil. Be honest with yourself, do you really think you're jumping through hoops to play PLD? Do you feel like you have just as much of a right to brag about downing something as everyone else? When I had to play PLD in BCoB I literally felt cheated out of my victories. I felt like I just rode by on everyone else's accomplishment. Oh, cool, I pressed the cooldown when the big hit was about to be cast... yay... back to 123.

I've seen/heard a lot of people suggest that PLD needs a Riot Blade ender. While this would be nice simply for some versatility, I don't think it's the solution. What PLD needs is a mechanic, something to set it apart from everyone else and make it feel like a fun job to play. I don't know what that mechanic would be as I'm no game designer and I don't want to talk with authority like I've any idea what the solution would be, but just give us something to consider when we're pressing 123 500 times besides "did Shield Swipe proc?".

[VargasVermillion]

What PLD needs is a mechanic, something to set it apart from everyone else and make it feel like a fun job to play.

This is exactly what I want, once DRK comes out we are going to have 2 tanks with their own identities and mechanics, paladin is literally 'a tank'. It has nothing unique. People like to argue about whether they should get more aoe, damage or whatever but I don't care about all that I just want it to have it's own play style, 'simple' doesn't count. You can have simple design and still make it interesting/unique.

Now you can say 'play warrior/dark knight' which I already do/will do but it still doesn't change the fact I like the sword and board tank. just needs to have more thought put into how it plays, not just more complex.

[Brannigan]

Paladin's mechanic/special resource should have always been MP since we have so much and have a way to restore it, but that's going to dark knight. So who knows.

[Feylie]

Paladin's mechanic/special resource should have always been MP since we have so much and have a way to restore it, but that's going to dark knight. So who knows.

TBH, it really comes down to the combo system. Input A>B>C, where each is worthless without following the sequence. It's more fun on DPS because of all the buttons they get to press to do it, but with PLD and WAR it's so streamlined that it doesn't even take thought.

Like you already mentioned, the expansion of PLD isn't an extended riot blade combo, or a new type of AOE. It's having more weapon skills to make us dynamic. I would go as far as to say that they should all be offensive oriented weapon skills, because we really don't need any more tools to hold aggro.

Tank PLD? Shield Oath, 1-2-3+Circle+Spirits.
DPS PLD? Sword Oath, 1-2-3+Circle+Spirits.

RIP.

[Shurrikhan]

-A way to spend MP that isn't cross-class, flash, or stance switching. Stoneskin is alright, but it punishes you pretty harshly for using it by breaking combos, stopping autoattacks, being easily interrupted, and applying very slowly. It doesn't have to be a heal. It could even be a damaging ability

I have to wonder what could be done with the addition of a some dynamic abilities, such as Riot Blade consuming MP for bonus damage (with a large bonus for each debuff you've placed on the target) instead of restoring it when over 70% mana, or all mana-costing abilities charging either oath for a mana-free ability that is adjusted with Oath - placing a much quicker, 1-move physical full cover and a short magic partial oGCD cover on an ally in Shield--call it Aegis Boon or whatnot--that causes some healing to both you and the target, shared proportional to health, based on your block value, and some manner of offensive debuff (brief bonus magic damage, up to a certain total bonus, and deals bonus damage to target and any nearby enemies if affected with Flash; may increase Flash duration on the target)--Luminous Spire, maybe?)

I've seen/heard a lot of people suggest that PLD needs a Riot Blade ender. While this would be nice simply for some versatility, I don't think it's the solution. What PLD needs is a mechanic, something to set it apart from everyone else and make it feel like a fun job to play. I don't know what that mechanic would be as I'm no game designer and I don't want to talk with authority like I've any idea what the solution would be, but just give us something to consider when we're pressing 123 500 times besides "did Shield Swipe proc?".

I agree that a Riot Blade ender wouldn't add much, but at the same time I think that right now even more than something unique, what we need is versatility among our core abilities; we can find a good direction for something a bit more unique from those results. (I also think that the emphasis on the unique mechanics you listed may be a bit overstated, as Aetherflow is used on CD, the chief objective of any Monk is to basically turn Greased Lightning into a passive ability (always up, always III), and jumps are no different, really, from any other free oGCD, albeit with a gap-closer on two of them. The rotational variance, such as saving AF stacks for Raging Strikes, how many non-stance moves one can use within a Couerl period, and how best to weave oGCDs, is usually the more interesting component despite being far from unique.) Shield Bash sees no use outside of stunlocking certain adds, the occasional interrupt, and the very rare mitigational stun (all at high TP cost). Shield Swipe is single-target while its procs excel only in AoE situations. The ability that makes it actually proc decently in single-target (Bulwark) still doesn't buff the blow itself, let alone make it strong enough to be useful except in a long fight, due to its poor enmity returns. Riot Blade is only used in oath-dances to avoid staying in Sword for an whole RoH and to make up for stoneskin spams that you were likely already only doing to save some TP (natural mp regen covers most MT stoneskin needs against bosses whose AAs tend to interrupt). Cover is commonly impeded by either its CD or duration being too long, the inability to easily cancel, and poor activation speed. More than even being 'situational' in the course of a fight--like modified rotations for dps/WAR--they're 'niche' in that they only even appear in certain fights. Modifying some of these abilities to at least move them into the situational/mostly-versatile range of attacks would be a large help.

Edit of edit: moved edit to next post.

[Domira]

I think the biggest issue PLD is many skills secondary mechanics no longer work end game. Meaning shield bash is useless, no enemies can be stunned, flash is mostly useless except on adds, blind no longer works, shield swipe is useless since pacification doesn't work. So the class ultimately gets stuck with 123 over and over since nothing else works.

[stoxastic]

Yeah, PLDs need to have fights designed around them to make them interesting. Levi Ex is actually pretty fun as PLD, you have a lot of mechanics to take care of and the design makes great use of many of PLDs skills: Shield Bash, Tempered Will, Hallowed Ground, hell even Stoneskinning yourself.

[Domira]

Yeah, PLDs need to have fights designed around them to make them interesting. Levi Ex is actually pretty fun as PLD, you have a lot of mechanics to take care of and the design makes great use of many of PLDs skills: Shield Bash, Tempered Will, Hallowed Ground, hell even Stoneskinning yourself.

Warrior vs Paladin is Consistency vs Situational

Paladin:

Tempered Will: Situational, rarely used. Levi Ex and Titan are the only times I recall using it
Cover: Rarely ever used except in pvp
Shield Bash: Rarely ever used except in dungeons and Levi ex
Flash (Blind): 95% of mobs outside of dungeons are immune
Shield Swipe (Pacification): 95% of mobs outside of dungeons are immune, making shield swipe absolutely useless

Warrior:

Storm's Path: Always works
Storm's Eye: Always works
Brutal Swing: Situational, 95% of mobs are immune to stun outside of dungeons
Maim: Always works

Nearly all of their skills always work.



Aside from brutal swing, all of warrior skills are useful and are not situational. There is no mob mechanic that prevents warriors from getting the 20% dmg buff from maim, nor are mobs immune to storm's path or storm's eye, ever. The result is warrior has a lot more things to do. Paladin on the other hand, their skills get literally gutted. Everything is immune to blind, pacification and stun resulting in paladin being limited to rage of halone combo and cooldowns. Furthermore, PLD cooldowns are on average a lot longer than Warriors, resulting in again less things to do.

Its terrible class design on SEs part, why give a class mechanics that nearly all mobs are immune to? It would be a better idea to turn those mechanics into something that can be useful at all times, like buffs. How many situations have required for PLD to use cover? None really. PLD just needs to be made less situational to give it more complexity. Also compared to warrior, pld has worse cross skill choices.

[Brannigan]

Warrior vs Paladin is Consistency vs Situational
...
Also compared to warrior, pld has worse cross skill choices.

Although the stun component of Brutal Swing is pretty much null on everything, Warriors still get to use it on everything since it's free and does damage. You can't say the same for stuff like Flash and Shield Bash. And honestly, while everyone uses Shield Swipe, it's very mediocre and only gets so much praise because the rest of paladin's kit is bad. It's like a 3% dps increase over your Halone combo and basically only lets you save TP while continuing your damage. Also yeah, paladin's cross-class is horrible. Probably the worst in the game.


What paladin really needs to be interesting in 3.0 is stuff like:

-A way to spend MP that isn't cross-class, flash, or stance switching. Stoneskin is alright, but it punishes you pretty harshly for using it by breaking combos, stopping autoattacks, being easily interrupted, and applying very slowly. It doesn't have to be a heal. It could even be a damaging ability
-WS that causes buffs on the paladin. It could be a stacking buff you want to maintain (+attack speed, double auto attacks, whatever), or a buff that is consumed (your next Riot Blade deals double damage and restores more MP), or something else. I don't know.
-A WS that debuffs the enemy. Honestly, they could just take the Rage of Halone debuff and stick it on Riot Blade instead.
-A WS that does different things depending on what Oath you're in. I'm surprised we don't have this already. Spirits Within isn't a WS, but it probably should change what it does with each Oath as well.
-More stuff that works on EVERYTHING and allows core changes to how paladin is played.

I think it goes without saying that stuff like this should be part of new combos and not stand-alone abilities. What paladin really, really doesn't need is stuff like

-New oaths. Passive crap.
-Set and forget stuff in general (oaths, poisons, "Protect"-like buffs)
-Cooldowns that don't do anything interesting and have no opportunity cost or other drawback. We have Rampart and Sentinel which already basically do the same thing (reduce damage by X%), along with Bulwark and Foresight which function very similarly against physical. Really, we don't need any cooldowns that have longer recasts than like 30 seconds.
-Amazingly overpowered debuffs that don't work on anything in the game (Hi Pacification)
-an AOE attack. Seriously, we're only getting like 4-5 abilities (if that). Hopefully one isn't wasted on dungeon speed running crap. If they really want to do this, they should just make Overpower cross-classable and give it a WAR-only debuff.

Anyway, I've kind of rambled on here, but I'm getting antsy since we've had nearly zero information about new abilities. Warrior got a complete overhaul in 2.1 or whatever and there's pretty much nothing they need now to be a "complete" class, so anything new they get in the expac is just awesome extras. Hopefully paladin gets reworked a little bit to be more a complete experience, but I'm not holding my breath.

[SpookyGhost]

CC never really made PLD that fun either to me. Chain stunning an add wasn't exactly any different than what you'd normally do. Instead of pressing 123, you pressed one button until the thing died and then went back to 123. Sometimes you had to watch for a castbar while you pressed that button, like Twister, and that meant you couldn't just close your eyes completely. The only time I remember using Flash for the blind was Titan HM if I was using a small CD like Foresight + Awareness. Silencing for T1/T2 was about as active as you could get and not many PLDs even did it since everyone decided to stack 2x BRD. I dunno, I've never felt that PLD's toolkit has made a fight any more interesting, but I guess some would disagree. I like Stoneskin and Cover a lot, and I'd actually like it if PLD was more focused on aiding the party since neither tank seems to have much focus on that (mainly just hitting the boss and using cooldowns).