Tank adjustments we can agree on?

[Litegrace]

Honestly, the main issue for me right now is fending gear. The fact that tanks are essentially required to ditch their "job specific" accessories in order to meet a dps check is stupid to me. With the gear we have now, stacking VIT becomes useless since the left side gear already has enough. I would personally like to see some kind of damage reduction or healing buff added to the gear (however small it may be), or just adding some STR to it (ie 10-20 STR per 40 VIT or so).

As for specific jobs, I would say Warrior is in a great place right now. DRK is still a bit weird (some abilities don't really make much sense), and PLD could probably use a little bit of love. I think both are still in relatively good places (certainly viable), the main issue again is the fending gear for me. The fact that i150 accessories are better than i210 just bothers me, and I really dislike mixing and matching slaying/fending gear.

[Khalithar]

I also have to disagree about shield swipe being useless, that being said though, I wish I had more of a reason to hit that button occasionally. =/

[Brannigan]

'Useless' is a bit of an exaggeration, but Shield Swipe is an incredibly underwhelming ability. Even back in 2.0, when it was almost always worth it, using it basically got you 7 potency/GCD and some TP. Now, you get even less than that and you start to go negative on damage if you use it more than once per cycle. What you end up with is an ability with a rare activation requirement (only DRK and MNK have equivalents) that ends up feeling like crap. It'd be like if Fell Cleave only did 220 potency. It's an increase over Butcher's Block combo and you save TP!

I think the counterattack mechanic of shield swipe should significantly influence how a paladin plays. If not, then at least make it always feel awesome to hit it. There are a bunch of ways to do this, but it's up to the devs to actually realize how absolutely mediocre current swipe is. Also, there are other paladin abilities that are in similar shape.

[Brian_]

Well, as always, the frustrating aspect of it is there are so many ways to deal with it but SE is deaf to the problem, blind to its solutions, and mute towards its community. Shield Swipe has been underwhelming since forever and even now, when it's a garbage tier ability, we still get no word from SE.

Seriously, whenever I see the proc light up for shield swipe, I feel more sadness than anything else. I'm sad that there is no joy in blocking since it's just a relabeled parry now. I'm sad that I'm losing DPS trying to conserve TP. I'm sad that I'm bottoming out on TP after ~2 minutes in the first place. And, it's not just shield swipe that is this collection of sadness. Numerous PLD abilities are like this. Every time I try to cast Clemency I'm just sad. I'm sad that the boss just interrupted my cast. I'm sad that for 3 seconds I will be dealing 0 DPS. I'm sad that the WAR just popped Equilibrium for an instant heal. I'm sad that by the time it finishes casting, it's just going to be over healing. I'm sad that... why the hell am I casting this spell?

Is that really an acceptable state for any job? Is it right for a class to be so utterly pathetic to play?

[Duelle]

It should be possible to parry and block critical damage.

I can agree with this.

Rage of Halone should have its potency increased slightly.

The potency penalty for keeping the Rage of Halone debuff up as OT is too high and hate generation could also use a boost now that PLD has 3 combos to juggle. Increasing the potency to 300 would make the potency gap 40 compared to Royal Authority (the same potency a WAR loses by replacing Butcher’s Block with Storm’s Path) so it would be worth thinking about the STR debuff. This change wouldn't increase PLD's max DPS at all, it's about how Halone fits in with the new skills.

I still say this would mess with tanking at lower levels. If we absolutely have to do this, nerf Halone's baseline enmity modifier and increase the potency (leaving it at about the same place from 26-40), then have Shield Oath give bonus enmity to Halone.

[B]Grit, Sword Oath, and Shield Oath should not cancel combos.

I think it’s fine that these cost a global cooldown and MP, but having them cancel combos is disadvantageous if you suddenly need to swap in when the MT dies or otherwise suddenly need to tank.

Considering the course of action when this happens is Swap => Provoke => Shield Lob/Tomahawk/Unmend, this isn't as big a problem as one would think.

A better change tho imo is reduce the general cast to 1 or 1.5 seconds. Anything over 2 seconds honestly renders it useless and the high MP cost already means you wont be spamming 1s heals all over.

Except making it easier to use on yourself takes PLD survivability to levels it should not be. You're making a clear choice to use it, and it has to have an opportunity cost. The ability was clearly added for use while not being the MT or for raid-damage situations.

[eagledorf]

I still say this would mess with tanking at lower levels [to increase Halone potency...]
Considering the course of action when this happens is Swap => Provoke => Shield Lob/Tomahawk/Unmend, this isn't as big a problem as one would think.
Except making it easier to use on yourself takes PLD survivability to levels it should not be. You're making a clear choice to use it, and it has to have an opportunity cost. The ability was clearly added for use while not being the MT or for raid-damage situations.

The thing with Halone potency is you don't even get it at the lowest levels (when Flash is actually your greatest hate generator) and Paladin doesn't get Shield Oath until way later than the other tanks get their tank stance (Sword Oath comes first). If anything, it would improve balance in holding hate at lower levels to increase Halone's potency. It would be broken as you say for lvls. 40-54, but at every other level would be an improvement. When you look at BRD and DRK and other jobs that are insanely overpowered low level, it's clear they don't care at all about fine-tuning balance outside of max level anyway and I think that's fine.

Provoke=>Lob is not even close to being enough hate if your DPS are good (Just spamming your Halone). You are right that there are ways to work around this (for example, having a Ninja solves the problem entirely), but it is a disadvantage to the two when OTing.

Reducing Clemency's cast any more than a second (to 2 seconds to match Cure II) is clearly overpowered. I agree with you on that and don't want the skill itself to be changed. I do wish it came with an ability to resist interruptions so that you could use it reliably while MT without having to stack another defensive cooldown (and therefore often making it unnecessary), but I think the skill is very good as it is. The only problem with Clemency is that SE seems to think that's enough in terms of TP management as OT, but it's worth nothing if you don't actually need it.

[Kemas]

I think a lot of people are hyping up shield swipe more than they ought to. I've yet to see it actually provide substantial tp management which was the whole purpose behind the ability in the first place. You can argue that pacification has its uses on trash dungeon mobs but even then you're hoping rng aligns the duration of your pacification with the enemies execution of their own skill. Imo pacification so translate into a stun of sorts on a separate timer as it currently is, or maybe an additional 5% mitigation for a few seconds similar to inner beast for shield swipe procs? Idk taking shots in the dark at this point hoping for SE to acknowledge/provide solutions to the current state of PLD. As for now, I've converted to Warrior in favor of smoother gameplay, higher dps, higher threat generation, and overall quicker runs.

[Shining_Tiger_Excalibur]

Signing in to commend you on your efforts, agree with your OP, and attempt to put this on the front page for a bit since you've cleared A4S as a Paladin and can offer your honest opinion based on experience.

[Syzygian]

This looks fun.

ALL HYPOTHETICAL. THESE ARE NOT CHANGES I THINK ARE NEEDED, BUT COULD PERHAPS BALANCE THE TANKS A BIT.

PLD
1. Fight or Flight recast down from 90s to 70s. Boom. DPS issues solved.
2. Divine Veil radius up from 15y to 25y. Recast down from 150s to 120s.
3. Rage of Halone debuff up from 20s to 24s. Potency up from 260 to 280.

toned down from that thread that I know you all just LOVED...
WAR
1. Infuriate recast up from 60s to 80s.
2. Unchained recast up from 120s to 150s.
3. Defiance/Deliverance recast up from 10s to 20s.

DRK
1. Dark Dance under Dark Arts adds 20% parry strength in addition to evasion.
2. Reprisal inflicts additional vulnerability up for 3s when used under Dark Arts. (Why? to make PLD+DRK compositions more viable from a raid DPS standpoint, even without a NIN.)
3. Souleater and Power Slash under Dark Arts have 0 TP cost.

Changes that are absolutely unneeded IMO:

PLD
1. Any change to Sword or Shield Oath.
2. Any change to blocking or the use of a shield, or Shield Swipe.
3. Changes to cast times for Stoneskin/Clemency. Learn fights and safe times to use these, they're there.

WAR
1. Any more DPS.
2. Any more mitigation.
3. Any more utility.

DRK
1. Anything to do with MP costs, Grit, or Blood Weapon.
2. Anything to do with taking advantage of proc-on-parry mechanics or rotating Blood Price with stuff that boosts evasion. Git gud and L2DRK.
3. Any more personal (non-raid) DPS.

One random change that I'd like to see on all tanks:
Give 25s Awareness to all tanks. Give PLD recast time reduction or something. Being unable to be critically hit is awesome but 15s for WAR and DRK is nearly useless.

[eagledorf]

PLD
1. Fight or Flight recast down from 90s to 70s. Boom.

1. Dark Dance under Dark Arts adds 20% parry strength
2. Reprisal inflicts additional vulnerability up for 3s when used under Dark Arts.
3. Souleater and Power Slash under Dark Arts have 0 TP cost.

Yeah, no offense but this is why I wanted to make a thread that doesn't revolve around insane ideas. That's almost 50% uptime on FoF and you could never have anybody but a DRK MT considering every third skill would cost 0 TP and they would get a third of a Trick Attack by MTing.

I do agree WAR should be adjusted, but your adjustments really just nerf their MT DPS and cement them even more into an OT role, which is the last thing we want for WAR. (The easiest and best way to adjust WAR IMO is just to lower their DPS cap to ~5% lower than the other two tanks and fix Defiance so Lustrate isn't crap on WAR. That would piss WAR players off, but it would preserve the WAR play-style more than trying to tweak the buffs and there's less risk of screwing up and making WAR legitimately bad than if you start messing with their mechanics).

I realize this is an unpleasant post, but we want balance, not to run WAR into the ground. I think you just have a vendetta against WAR for some reason