(Paladin) Changes

[Shining_Tiger_Excalibur]

PREFACE:
I've been a forum goer for a couple of days now and have been skimming through multiple threads on the official forums to learn as much as possible about the issues surrounding not just Paladin but the entirety of 3.0 and onward. I'd first like to tell you all that I've observed so many people make peaceful arguments with well thought out reasoning when it concerns their defensive stance on why/why not something should be changed. From that observation alone I can tell you that eventually, we'll all come to an agreement on where this game is, where it's to go, and how we'll get there as a community (it went from extremely heated debates with refusal to compromise, to allowing ideas to flow forth from our minds to be received by listening ears, and was followed up by exercised caution and understanding of where each person was coming from.) Though we still have yet to agree on a universally acceptable set of changes I MUST compliment all of you regarding such maturity and level headed attitudes. It's now come to the time, I believe, where we need to establish concrete guidelines that are still left up to developers in terms of what tweaks need to be made and just how much. There are others attempting to do this and I have decided to do the same on the off chance that the developers see posts and threads like this growing in popularity. It's my hope that we all take bits and pieces from each thread, along with user suggestions, and eventually come up with a "master list" of changes to not just Paladins, but Dark Knights and any other class that seems deficient in more than one category. Though our lists should be kept separate, we as a community must communicate and cooperate with information being relayed to each of the Thread Posters who decided to take on the task of making "master lists." Unfortunately, I feel I lack the ability to perform the task of creating the Paladin "master list" of changes simply because I'm new to the forums, do not have a full understanding of all other classes, and still have yet to become familiar with ways to streamline a thread so that the most important parts are easily visible. So...let's get back to my suggestions.



FORMAT:
Herein I will describe not only the skill changes but my reasoning behind them in as much of a clear and concise manner as possible. I will leave the exact changes in percentage and multipliers (barring a few things) up to the developers to decide, that way we as a community put the responsibility of calculations onto their shoulders instead of our own. By doing the latter we have only regressed in the progression we've made thus far by bickering about numbers.



SUGGESTIONS:
Skills that should be off Global Cooldown are to include Sword Oath, Shield Oath, Shield Swipe.
My reasoning for such a suggestion concerning stances is that at the present time, there's a HUGE amount of punishment to Paladins switching stances. We lose our combo, lose dps, lose aggro, must wait on GCD to finish and also lose mp from switching to either stance. I would not at all mind some detrimental trade-offs to switching stances but this is entirely too much to justify. I'd like to keep my combo and not wait on GCD if possible, but I can also accept losing my combo, dps, aggro and mp if I can immediately get back into the fighting rhythm. On the matter of Shield Swipe I'd like to bring up the fact that Black Mages are not punished with MP consumption for a bonus damage situation based on %chance.....why are we? I'd like Shield Swipe to cost no TP and be off GCD if possible.

Skills that should have enmity and/or potency increase are to include Flash (enmity only,) Circle of Scorn (enmity and potency,) Savage Blade (enmity and potency,) Rage of Halone (enmity and potency,) Royal Authority (potency only,) Sword Oath (scaling 5% damage increase based on Strength.)
Keep in mind, please, that these are only suggestions to raise our damage output slightly. I don't need or want to perform Warrior levels of DPS, but I do want to be able to clear content with a Dark Knight in my group. As it stands right now, a Warrior is required to even stand a chance at success and I don't like that. I'd also welcome Dark Knights getting the same slight damage increase so that we can work as a team regardless of the combination of tanks (War/Drk, War/Pld, Drk/Pld.) It feels like I'd be laughed at right now for even telling people I want to clear A4s with a Dark Knight and Paladin because of how objectively weaker they are in comparison to the other combinations.

Other than that, perhaps I'd like Divine Veil to be changed only in that it's an instant cast with a slightly reduced cooldown timer. No other change is necessary in my eyes, because I'll more than likely be in the off tank position and the last concern of healers in almost every situation. It's current "must be cured to activate" requirement is great if you're main tank, not so much off tank from my experience because the time from topping everyone off to healing me for a party shield is just too small of a window (off the top of my head I want to say at least 3-5 seconds are required to both top off party and heal me, which is an eternity in end-game raiding.) Let's also not forget that Square's game engine prioritizes damage first so even in an ideal situation there's a chance my shield won't even help for an enemy AoE. Again, let's also not forget that in order to use Divine Veil appropriately I have to wait until everyone's grouped up (casters and ranged dps will be left out since ranged....and maybe dead if I don't wait,) so arguing that I can use it as the healers are topping everyone off is somewhat moot, but not to be outright ignored. Doing it like that is a possibility and I do notice if ranged dps pre-position.


CLOSING STATEMENT:
With everything I wanted to say off my chest, I'd like to end this thread by reminding you that I'm so glad I have arrived to the forums at this particular moment in time. I've learned a great many things, witnessed the community go from almost angry rapidly to understanding and forgiving, and saw that we're becoming open minded. We are changing for the better. We are strong when united and calm.

EDIT: A 5% increase in outgoing damage from Sword Oath if you're at around 800 dps would only impact your overall dps by 40 without increases in potency. With added potency we still won't be surpassing or coming close to Warrior dps, but it'll be closer to what it was Pre-Heavensward for sure (which is how it should have been through expansion.)
EDIT II: It could also be argued that reducing the damage penalty from Shield Oath could accomplish the same thing and the more I think about it, I'd actually want this changed instead because we could still accrue aggro fairly easily while also easing/bridging the gap DPS-wise. My mind stops at how much should be removed though because from a lore perspective I should take some form of damage penalty in regards to mitigation (I just find that currently it might be "too much" of a loss.)

[DSaint]

Well, there is a lot of threads already about changes, buffs, nerfs, and other things players desire. And others threads with definitive lists addressed to devs (like this one).

I sincerely don't think devs and SE follow community pleas. Never. They just do what they think must be done. Take last year for example:
Infinite threads complaining about summoners and summons. And what summoners receive? A promise to an (maybe) incoming vanity system to pets.
In other hand... Monks receive 2 more seconds in GL. Surprise surprise. No one asked for this, I believe. Not saying monks don't need it, but no one was expecting, right?

Lets just trust SE and developer team! Lets discuss about changes, buffs, nerfs, etc.. Its healthy!
But I don't believe +100 threads about same stuff will change anything.

Btw, I main pld. I keep my oath (?) since day 1. And I believe paladins need a buff, yes. But I can't tell myself what devs should or should not do. Just what I wish for...

[Kemas]

Why do you keep making new threads about the same thing? It's unnessary clutter and a single person's opinion/personal thread won't make the development team more likely to bring your ideas to the game. I really hope they don't just ignore the mess completely and leave the job as is.

[Phoenicia]

Well, there is a lot of threads already about changes, buffs, nerfs, and other things players desire. And others threads with definitive lists addressed to devs (like this one).

I sincerely don't think devs and SE follow community pleas. Never. They just do what they think must be done. Take last year for example:
Infinite threads complaining about summoners and summons. And what summoners receive? A promise to an (maybe) incoming vanity system to pets.
In other hand... Monks receive 2 more seconds in GL. Surprise surprise. No one asked for this, I believe. Not saying monks don't need it, but no one was expecting, right?

Lets just trust SE and developer team! Lets discuss about changes, buffs, nerfs, etc.. Its healthy!
But I don't believe +100 threads about same stuff will change anything.

Btw, I main pld. I keep my oath (?) since day 1. And I believe paladins need a buff, yes. But I can't tell myself what devs should or should not do. Just what I wish for...

I think you're missing that. The FFXIV team LISTENS VERY WELL to the community. They just don't go and over buff/nerf on the community's whims. They want to make adjustments so ALL classes are in a good place. Greased Lightning timer increase has been asked for from since 2.0. But monks were already doing insane levels of DPS.

Let's look at history:

2.0 Game was still very new. State of classes? Such a huge mess. BRD was broken (Read: Overpowered) and WAR was broken (Read: Poop level). Melee were unwanted except for their LB. Setups were PLDx2, BRDx2, DRG (because of Disembowel), caster, both healers.

SE changes in 2.1?

• Buffed WAR to insane good levels. You ALWAYS want a WAR in your group.
• Buffed DRG and MNK so that melee are "top DPS" even if they have to have some down time dodging BPAoE.
• Nerfed BRD (mainly by nerfing cross class abilities).
• Removed Thunder from SMN.

Preferred setups? PLD+WAR, both healers, any combination of melee+brd+casters. Most groups preferred to bring both melees, 1 bard and either caster (SMN was considered better at this time). Game was in a good state.

In 2.3, SE buffed BLM to higher single target DPS, slightly better than SMN as long as they don't move.

Then came 2.4! Ninja was released. NIN (mistakenly) was overtuned to do monk levels DPS, no TP issues and bringing great raid utility, instantly knocking DRG out of viable options. DRG had low (Read: Poop) magic defense "justified" by their huge HP pool. DRG did lower DPS than MNK and NIN with no raid utility. DRG started disappearing from setups because of the rampant AoE magical damage in FCoB that usually killed the DRG outright. The ilvl 130 gear was stacked with Spell Speed which hurts SMN more than helps them due to increased MP consumption (which was a massive issue back then) and not affecting pets' damage. People complained!

SE fixes the situation between 2.45 and 2.5:

• Nerfed NIN slightly (2%) by restricting venom damage bonus to physical only. Increased TP costs so NIN eventually needs a TP song.
• Buffed DRG, DRG did new NIN levels DPS, had same magic defense and a much higher HP pool. DRG became "Tankiest DPS" and is no longer a detriment on raid health (Read: Healers MP pool).
• Buffed SMN MP consumption. SMN's MP is no longer an issue. Spell Speed was still bad for SMN. But at least, BRD is not singing to fix SMN's MP but instead to help healers.

Some classes still had issues. But not to a level where they were unviable/not wanted.
=================

In 3.0, classes changed, and stats changed. (ALL of SMN's past issues were fixed!) Some classes had their old issues fixed, while new issues arose. New classes were also released. Learning from NIN (And maybe SMN/SCH), SE decided to take the safe route of under-tuning classes and buffing them later instead of over-tuning them and nerfing them.

After all, you upset less people with avoiding nerfs. Specially at a time where the state of the game dictates choosing 1 class to gear instead of all classes in the same role. (Stupid esoterics.... but those AFs are cute <3)

SE is aware of those issues. But they are not going to over-buff a class during a minor patch only to realize they made a mistake and then (over)nerf it again the next minor patch. Making you think that they do not know what they're doing or where they wanna go. Remember Blizzard anyone?

I would think you'd rather wait through a major patch and get the right buffs over getting buffs only to get nerfs the patch right after, right?

All in all, keep these threads coming. Not all the suggestions will stick, heck, they don't have to! As long as SE notices that there is an issue and domes something to fix it, we're good!

[FridgePanic]

Why yes let's flood page 1 with nothing but PLD whine threads
That was sarcasm in case you didn't notice

[SpookyGhost]

Why yes let's flood page 1 with nothing but PLD whine threads
That was sarcasm in case you didn't notice

Worked for BRD, tbf.

[Brannigan]

Why yes let's flood page 1 with nothing but PLD whine threads
That was sarcasm in case you didn't notice

We could be talking about exciting new topics like "What's your warrior opener" and "Should I allot STR or VIT" if it weren't for these pesky knights and their damned shiny helmets.

[Phoenicia]

We could be talking about exciting new topics like "What's your warrior opener" and "Should I allot STR or VIT" if it weren't for these pesky knights and their damned shiny helmets.

Lol, that's all that's tanking came down to.

[winsock]

@OP
Just wanted to give a different perspective on shield oath.

Shield oath is on gcd, but it gives ehp once the skill is active. WAR can switch to defiance off gcd, but the act of switching stances does not result in an increase of ehp. To increase ehp, war needs to follow-up with a skill like innerbeast, which is on gcd.

I've always kinda seen the combo breaking mechanic as being a tradeoff for the ability to change stances whenever you want (provided adequate mp) as opposed to WAR being locked out for a cd.

[karateorangutang]

@OP
Just wanted to give a different perspective on shield oath.

Shield oath is on gcd, but it gives ehp once the skill is active. WAR can switch to defiance off gcd, but the act of switching stances does not result in an increase of ehp. To increase ehp, war needs to follow-up with a skill like innerbeast, which is on gcd.

I've always kinda seen the combo breaking mechanic as being a tradeoff for the ability to change stances whenever you want (provided adequate mp) as opposed to WAR being locked out for a cd.

That would be fine if PLD actually did competitive DPS and that was the breaker for them. If it was a game to use smart switching to keep your DPS at a close level then that would be fine, but thats not the case. It's a further punishment to a class that already has problems keeping up with the big boys.

With that in mind, I main WAR so if SE wants me to heal 4 k every time I enter Defiance that is just dandy with me, but there is no way in Halone that this wouldn't break the class further.

I envision stances for PLD to work the same way that cleric stance works for WHM. You turn it on and you get Tank mode, you turn it off and you get DPS mode. The act of turning it off doesnt cost MP and you wouldnt lose the GCD. You would however still have to pay a MP cost and lose your combo to enter Tank stance. This would eliminate some cheese with buffing combo's and only switching to tank stance for a buster as it would still require a GCD to do.