Tank Balance

[Shining_Tiger_Excalibur]

I'd like to ask the forum goers to please avoid discussion about supposed "useless" skills and focus on factually verifiable issues that are either present or may become prevalent in the future. The use of some skills like Shield Swipe may not be optimal in their current state but they do reduce incoming damage by forcing enemies to only auto attack for a certain amount of time.


A thought occurred to me last night with how the STR debuff will more than likely need to be moved to Savage Blade if the next raid tier is "more physical." There's never not a need to do more damage to the enemy and the STR debuff "might" be needed next raid tier as well, so why not maximize enemy damage reduction and DPS at the same time. It guarantees 100% application while allowing you to either build aggro or do damage from the various skill trees a Paladin has. My main focus with what I speak about now and in the recent past is preparing jobs for the future and this is HIGHLY suggested. If this change is made I'd also like to suggest buffing the Savage Blade enmity modifier to/or close to that of Rage of Halone's enmity. The other jobs will still be able to bury Paladin in aggro because of the 'PLD doesn't do DPS, it's "mitigation king" status that the developers have forced onto Paladins.

Obviously some other changes need to occur such as quality of life changes on Shield Swipe, possibly Sheltron, slight potency tweaks, maybe enmity multipliers, etc. but that's up to the developers since they force roles for jobs anyway.....

[Sapphidia]

I'd like to ask the forum goers to please avoid discussion about supposed "useless" skills and focus on factually verifiable issues that are either present or may become prevalent in the future. The use of some skills like Shield Swipe may not be optimal in their current state but they do reduce incoming damage by forcing enemies to only auto attack for a certain amount of time.

This is very short sighted to say (i wont be pedantic and point out that shield swipe's pacification -is- basically useless on all bosses, important mobs and a lot of trash, i know what you meant), because you can't look at things in isolation. You can't just ignore Shield Swipe which is a tool the paladin has but is basically worthless in its current incarnation PURELY DUE TO THE NUMBERS, and then try and fix the class by suggesting big changes to things like strength debuffs being moved around.

Shield Swipe is very very important to look at because it's a skill that has -become- useless in the space of an expansion. It saved TP whenever it procced. It increased your DPS whenever you pressed it because it did more potency damage than your average rage of halone combo (210 vs 203.3). You WANTED to press it as much as possible provided you had a threat lead because it increased your damage! It made Bucklers a viable shield type because they'd result in more procs, and made Bulwark almost a DPS cooldown.

In 3.0 they added bonus threat to it but failed to realise that because they didnt increase the potency it's now rendered worthless. In a dps-heavy meta, the focus is much more on tanks outputting as much damage as possible. In 2.0 it would have been a great part of the kit. In 3.0 it's a dps loss to press shield swipe. It's also a threat loss per GCD to press shield swipe instead of just using Halone combos. That's ridiculous. This skill has become worthless simply due to numbers not being tweaked.

The reason it's brought up so much is because anyone should be able to see that tweaking the damage value (and maybe threat value) will fix a LOT of the issues paladins currently have. It's a three-birds-with-one-stone. Make Shield Swipe a button you want to press as much as humanly possible due to doing higher damage and you'll increase paladin threat over a pure goring/royal/royal rotation, reduce paladin TP consumption as you'll be using more 40 TP skills AND do more damage when tanking to bring the class a little closer to WAR/DRK without eclipsing them. Something like a 260 potency on the swipe would likely be enough, as the average potency of the entire goring/royal/royal rotation is 251-256 depending on skillspeed and how much the dot clips. 260 would make it always a dps boost to press.

It's by far the most flawed part of the kit, especially compared to how it was used at 50. It should NOT be ignored because making it viable has a good chance of fixing a whole host of issues with the class.

[LadyCeles]

That would make it more viable. Would be a better dps increase if made ogcd, but i would take a 260 potency on gcd. But that would be the lowest to make it worth it, 265-270 and im sold