What's the problem with Paladin?

[Sapphidia]

Oh okay, I can understand that. Paladins do have low dps so it makes sense. Though, that still leaves my question open as this situation only applies to one (or 4 if you don't like to group the 4 floors) encounter(s). One in which a small portion of the community will ever actually do. While the class works well in every other facet of the game.

Currently, that "one encounter" of four floors is the ENTIRE endgame for anyone who raids seriously in content that requires a Static group rather than just DF/PF. Yes, a small portion of the playerbase do this content but that's the portion that are complaining on the forums. Right now many dedicated paladins have felt the need to be forced to swap main because their group likely wouldn't be able handle the content until much better geared unless they swapped. Just because not everyone does this aspect of the game doesnt mean the class shouldn't be fixed.

It's worth mentioning that at the last census, something like over 35,000 players had killed Alex 2 Savage. 35,000 players is a -significant- number that care about balance. Was closer to 100,000 or so actually participating in Alex 1 Savage onwards.

Also, yes paladin is viable in all other areas of the game, but it still suffers from one issue once you reach 60 - it does noticeably less DPS than the other tanks, and its advantage of "a tiny bit more mitigation" is basically irrelevant. The difference isnt as noticeable because bringing a Paladin isnt going to mean you flat out fail a dps check and wipe, but in the easier content Paladin can still benefit from some threat/quality of life changes to bring it up to par.

So wouldn't the answer be changing the harder encounters to be balanced around all classes rather than changing how a class works?

Or is paladin really in a position where regardless of the mechanics of the harder content, because of how the class is balanced, it's never going to be "viable"?

Basically you're right - the reason Paladin is bad now is due to the current tanking meta that says that tanks are capable of tanking content in low vitality Slaying accessories whilst spending most of their time tanking in DPS stance (thus rendering most of their mitigation power kind of irrelevant as it mostly just forces the burden onto the healers and means tanking has turned into "hold threat, DPS as hard as possible and pop a cooldown for a tankbuster"). Couple this with most of the difficulty coming from incredibly harsh DPS checks and right now tanks are basically a DPS class that has to press a cooldown at certain points in an encounter. Until the tank meta changes significantly paladins will always be the least desired tank, and the difference in potential dps between a paladin and a warrior right now -is- the difference between some groups (or current groups before they got more gear) literally not being able to kill a fight.

Also it's worth mentioning that whilst Paladins are -able- to complete at least the first 3 floors of Alex Savage right now, this is now at the point where people are starting to get overgeared from the original tuning intention. Once you overgear a fight then quibbling over balance issues is kind of irrelevant because good static groups start messing around with all sorts of weird lineups like 7 tanks 1 healer for giggles.

It's a fine balance between classes at the top end raiding. The objective isnt for all classes to feel the same, or equally strong, it's to feel that each class brings enough Advantages to the table that any Disadvantages they show are countered for the most part, and thus every class is viable in cutting edge content. Some classes might make a specific encounter easier, but these should even out across encounters.

Right now the issue is simply that for all the encounters in Alex Savage with the tank meta as it is, Paladin is the objectively worst tank on pretty much all four floors (A2S notwithstanding if your group has enough AOE without it). Right now, not a single group has killed A4S with a paladin. It's not that they're slightly worse in some situations, it's that their kit renders a lot of fights simply impossible to do until a group is overgeared, or at least makes an encounter a lot harder.

Because raiders don't want to hold their static back, a lot of paladins have chosen to swap main to Warrior or Dark Knight (not an easy feat with the way esoterics restrict gear to one class). That's a sign that paladin needs something to bring them up to spec - and it's worth noting that the things that paladins really -need- to perform (increased threat, higher single target damage in tank stance but not sword oath, definitely not any increased mitigation) wont be massive boosts outside of Alex Savage other than making 4mans a little easier on the paladin.

[TheLastRaven]

If this is a bit out of topic let me know. I think that paladin could have some simple buffs to help it out and not make it OP or anything. One of the main problems is the lack of DPS this could be fixed or at least balanced more by doing something like fixing sword oath which in my opinion is garbage. Sword gives you an amazing 50 extra potency to auto attacks why can't this be changed to something better like 10% dmg increase with the 5% accuracy increase from shield oath or 10% dmg increase overall or 10%% dmg increase and and the auto attack potency. Even just a 5% increase would be nice to have something other than the dinky 50 potency maybe even a bit higher. One of the things that has bothered me for a long time was that if a warrior kept maim up with their tanking stance their dmg reduction is only 5% right? Paladin seems a bit forced to rely on Fight or Flight for dmg increase while tanking or dps'ing granted its 30% dmg increase but overall its not gonna be much.

There is also the fact that it seems it any of the other tanks want to especially warrior they can just rip aggro through tanking or pure aggression. They could also give paladin a natural dmg buff that isnt oath based like a 10% innate dmg buff buffing their global dmg up by that 10%. The dps increase would help generate aggro on either stance and up dps in turn making them more useful overall. The class is kind of reliant on its cooldowns but with proper manangement i've never found it an issue. As for abilities not stances/oaths that could be changed I believe the PVP skill glory slash would be great in PvE just without the knock back having 200 potency and being an aoe frontal cone aggro generating move. Other than flash we don't have much in terms of aoe aggro generation however that makes sense seeing as paladin is more of a single target tank. However it couldn't hurt to give one aoe ability. Rage of halone could be altered to be a smaller cone aoe at least it would be something. Circle of scorn could also generate a bit more aggro or deal more dmg per tick since its potency is 30 why not make it 50? Not a game breaking buff I would think. We could also buff shield oath to be more useful and have a larger aggro generation maybe or dmg reduction or both.

[Jonnycbad]

-As I understand it, DoT doesn't generate Threat. Therefore, please allow Circle of Scorn to do its full 250 potency upfront instead of over time.

-Give Spirits Within an enmity multiplier and give it 300 potency MINIMUM, but a scaling potency BONUS closer to full HP.

-Give Sword Oath a 10% haste bonus or at least a damage bonus, the 50 potency auto attack doesn't help much.

-Buff Shield Swipe's potency to 270 or something so it isn't a DPS loss.

[Donjo]

-As I understand it, DoT doesn't generate Threat. Therefore, please allow Circle of Scorn to do its full 250 potency upfront instead of over time.

-Give Spirits Within an enmity multiplier and give it 300 potency MINIMUM, but a scaling potency BONUS closer to full HP.

-Give Sword Oath a 10% haste bonus or at least a damage bonus, the 50 potency auto attack doesn't help much.

-Buff Shield Swipe's potency to 270 or something so it isn't a DPS loss.

- Last time I heard about the subject, it was proven that DOT ticks do generate threat. However, I believe it was also observed that Circle of Scorn's initial hit has a multiplier on enmity but its DOT ticks do not.

- I always thought it might be neat to let Spirits Within ignore the Shield Oath damage penalty, but it would appear that SE is definitely only letting Warriors do such things.

- Unless the nerf to Determination was truly astronomical, Sword Oath's extra hits were showing increases of between 10-13% total damage over no stance at all in 2.X. Even if a couple of percentage points have been knocked off, it still shows that the 50 potency attack is more helpful than it looks.

- It would appear that Shield Swipe's purpose was never to be a powerful attack. Even in 2.0 the potency/GCD gain was very small. It exists to supplement TP levels(which is a DPS gain in any situation where TP flooring is a danger) and more recently to enable the use of more non Halone Combos while Tanking(using 1 Halone combo is a greater loss than slipping even 2 Shield Swipes into one of the other combos). Well, and Pacification, but that's mostly just an amusement to play with in the open world. Never using it at all will be a greater DPS loss than utilizing it when it can prevent a loss elsewhere. It is also worth keeping in mind that using Shield Swipe at least once during every application of Goring Blade will prevent the dot from getting its last tick clipped off during a normal rotation of Goring > Other > Other > Repeat, which adds up in long fights.

[TheLastRaven]

-As I understand it, DoT doesn't generate Threat. Therefore, please allow Circle of Scorn to do its full 250 potency upfront instead of over time.

-Give Spirits Within an enmity multiplier and give it 300 potency MINIMUM, but a scaling potency BONUS closer to full HP.

-Give Sword Oath a 10% haste bonus or at least a damage bonus, the 50 potency auto attack doesn't help much.

-Buff Shield Swipe's potency to 270 or something so it isn't a DPS loss.

- I still think a simple dot potency increase would suffice maybe a base potency or overall threat generation increase.

- I don't think we should have abilities where damage can scale based on HP. Spirits within is an an ability I think is perfectly fine right now.

- We could still have 50 potency but sword oath being the dps stance just needs some form of a % buff to be a simple easy fix.

- Shield swipe could just apply a buff or debuff. For a buff it could be like storms eye decreases slashing resistance or applying a defense bonus.

[Jim_Berry]

DPS checks were not that bad as SE didnt plan that tanks and healers would pump out some decent DPS(most fights were propably planned to be done in fending items in mind)so when tanks rolled a crafted accesories and STR build it kinda broke dps checks. Also PLD was pretty much solo tanking most fights because all big hitters where physical and that kinda favored PLD CD kit not to mention passive migitation via blocks/parry, also WAR was there as an additional melee DPS and for provoking if there was a swap mechanic. In 2nd coil WAR actually got leftout in some fights due solo tanking so your team could take another DPS job to brake dps checks even harder.

But now all savage fights are tuned tank and healer DPS in mind so thats why we started to see these flaws, before it was just a nice extra now its required.

Nice! I never thought about it this way. *INSIGHTFUL*

[Lone-wolfe-02]

They have always had problems that weren't addressed but were largely ignored because there were only two tanks and content was still largely physical damage focused. We now have Drk and content that uses mostly magic damage and high dps requirements, PLDs are in a really bad spot because of SE failing to consider how a pld would fare in this enviroment. The blame rests squarely on their shoulders and their refusal to acknowledge something is seriously wrong.

Drk also has some pretty glaring issues but savage has made them useful for their magic defense and higher mt dps, war is the only tank class that is pretty much perfect right now.

[Kemas]

Still no mention of PLD QoL changes. Happy for NIN but this PLD will be sitting on the back burner for another month it seems. :/

[Kuwagami]

snip

Not wanting to destroy your argument (which is fine, except the PLD would be 400), but if the 4 dps can't pull out more than 3200 dps together, the PLD isn't exactly the one needing improvements ^^


But yeah, the PLD is around 100-150 dps behind the other 2 tanks, which is detrimental in AS3 and AS4. (detrimental only. It's still possible to clear those 2 with a PLD)

[Nadirah]

Thought they had enmity fixes in the works?