The Definitive State of Paladins Thread

[Dhex]

I want the contradictory issues with PLD's toolkit solved;


Divine Veil - requires Healing magic to activate, 10% of Maximum HP, 15yalm radius, 150s recast, doesn't effect the Paladin

If Paladin is the mitigation tank, the "guardian" tank, then why is Warrior the Job with the flat 10% easily maintained raid-wide damage reduction?
Divine Veil requires the party stack within 15yalms, a healer to pre-heal to pop the shield, and it's only useful every 150s - additionally the 10% of Maximum HP is rather backwards on a class that does not have a exorbitantly large health pool and suffers heavily when you stack more Vitality. For instance - at i196 if you were to utilize full Vitality Paladin would have just over 19000HP - this would be a 1900 shield; this is less than a single auto-attack from Oppressor in A1S. So if it is meant as a raid wide survival tool for massive damage it is borderline pitiful. Additionally Divine Veil does nothing to benefit the Paladin utilizing the tool.

Cover - Take all physical damage intended for another party member. Can only be used when member is closer than 10 yalms.

10-yalms distance... physical damage only... Cooldowns & debuffs don't effect the incoming damage. If they totter out of range or have to dodge out of range the skill becomes effectively useless. Pretty useless skill post-Coil or in fights with raid-wide magic damage.

Shield Oath & Sword Oath; GCD, MP cost, Sword Oath -> AA damage

I'd like to see the GCDs removed from Oaths, and another damage bonus added to Sword. The MP cost is odd and out of place - does it even serve a function?? It would if there were no GCDs... it'd limit the amount of swapping you could do and make you use your alt combos to maintain your stance dance - oh hi slight but not overwhelming complexity~

Clemency - interrupts, long cast time, short recast

Fixing Clemency -> make it instant, make the recast longer

Fight or Flight; Offensive buffs - Paladin only gets Fight or Flight every 90s & it's our only damage buff. Long CD, short buff. No wonder our damage is consistently the floor when it comes to Tank DPS potential.

Spirits Within - Potency decreases as HP decreases.

We're... a tank.... I... don't even...



Parry as a stat - can we replace Parry with PDT -% and MDT -% so we can control our mitigation via gear a little bit? Rather than a random POS RNG stat that most sensible tanks avoid like a festering plague.

[Synestra]

Shield Oath & Sword Oath; GCD, MP cost, Sword Oath -> AA damage

I'd like to see the GCDs removed from Oaths, and another damage bonus added to Sword. The MP cost is odd and out of place - does it even serve a function?? It would if there were no GCDs... it'd limit the amount of swapping you could do and make you use your alt combos to maintain your stance dance - oh hi slight but not overwhelming complexity~

Atm its just a another pentaly on top of Oaths being GCD AND braking a combo.

[Drtoxicmedica]

It's dubious they can adjust PLD's complexity without adding more skills or completely redesigning the class, which might be beyond the scope of a balance patch. Also, generally, classes aren't balanced around how hard they are to play, or you'd end up with a situation where PLD is only ever useful to learn to tank but not worth bringing to a real raid because its usefulness would be balanced around its complexity, which is, well, not very much.

Except if it's just as good as the other 2 and easier to play nobody would wanna play em. It need more complexity if it's gonna be on par

[TouchandFeel]

I would like to see more complexity added to PLD on the defensive side, such as more emphasis on reactive defending that then could combo or chain into another ability for cumulative or additional effects. For example the block from Sheltron procs a combo bonus to Shield Swipe that applies a debuff similar to Reprisal (-10% damage done) or something like that.

If Cover was then improved/fixed so that it worked with both physical and magical damage, had greater range, etc., so that a PLD could utilize their defensive capabilities even when OTing, that would add complexity to the class but have it play very differently than WAR or DRK.

Simple offense, more complex and fun/engaging defense is the direction I feel PLD should go.

[Dhex]

I would like to see more complexity added to PLD on the defensive side, such as more emphasis on reactive defending that then could combo or chain into another ability for cumulative or additional effects. For example the block from Sheltron procs a combo bonus to Shield Swipe that applies a debuff similar to Reprisal (-10% damage done) or something like that.

Augh no welcome back to 1.2 and Paladin being utterly useless. Having to wait for everything to proc Phalanx or blocks to be useful. (Ew I feel back? Bad. For Dark Knight but that's just damage and extra damage down REPPRIIISSALLLLLLL. Dat forced MT role. Thanks Square. Real rigid love it.) Eck. Proactive mitigation - this is why they changed Warrior in 2.1 - because reactive defense doesn't work when you're post-damage recovery =/= damage mitigated. This is part of the reason everyone considers Dark Knight's mitigation clunky having to rely on Parry procs or popping Dark Arts and their cooldown before the buster comes. You can't have "reactive" defending beyond expending cooldowns appropriately - all three WAR DRK PLD they all mitigate the same in that regard - Warriors build/expend stacks and pop CDs, Dark Knights pop Dark Arts and CDs. Paladin is clunky as is adding more requirements to their mitigation is silly.

If Cover was then improved/fixed so that it worked with both physical and magical damage, had greater range, etc., so that a PLD could utilize their defensive capabilities even when OTing, that would add complexity to the class but have it play very differently than WAR or DRK.

Even if they did this - if Paladin isn't completely nullifying damage it's just redirecting where the healing has to go - if it doesn't offer the benefit of additional damage it's not going to be a better choice as off-tank; so then why use a Paladin? Pointless defensive capabilities don't make it more desirable in an off-tanking scenario.

Simple offense, more complex and fun/engaging defense is the direction I feel PLD should go.

So... Warrior.

Tanks do this; Big hit - Use thingy to reduce Big hit! This is what all 3 tanks already do effectively. If they couldn't do this they wouldn't be tanks. Adding gimmicks to "Use thingy" does not inherently change this outside of making it require procs and we all already hate RNG (Parry Block Reprisal Shield Swipe say hallo). Dark Knight uses the thingy and the other thingy, Warrior uses the thingy and expends the stack thingy, Paladin uses the thingy maybe uses the stoneskin thingy, and has a useless heal thingy that gets interrupted mostly.

Auxiliary functions of these tanks become; Warrior does dps - buffs tank(s) & Ninja damage - reduces raid wide damage taken, Dark Knight does dps - reduces magic damage taken (if you don't have a Monk) and reduces raid wide damage taken if it parries (force that main-tank role on ya), Paladin does less dps - reduces physical damage taken anddd it's extra mitigation is mostly hiding behind a shield (again force that main-tank role).

Why is that ^ an issue - Paladin and Dark Knight are always second fiddle (or at least need to be the one to be getting hit in the face) to Warrior when it comes to a raid. Always. Didn't bring a Warrior? Why? Go get a Warrior. Put your Warrior in the OT slot and enjoy having more damage, and more mitigation. Do it! Do it all the time - every time because DRK and PLD aren't good at off-tank roles because they need to get hit in the face for their shiny extras to work.

Hell even if Cover sucked less it'd need to also allow you to block Covered damage so you could use your other junk - like Shield Swipe since you don't have a TP factory in your butt...

Like Warrior.

And even then - DRK MT with a WAR OT would be better unless the content suddenly was pulling gimmicks like Bahamut's Ahk Morn dookie-dumper followed by Nael's back-scratch attack or whatever.


It's really a balance issue between WAR vs. PLD/DRK; WAR always gets a slot because it reduces both types of damage and increases it's own damage and the raid damage. Oh and it does the most damage too.


Wiggledy-diggledy-doo.

[Violette]

Wiggledy-diggledy-doo.

I like the thought of "MT role is forced" for Drk and Paladin and that's the best way to put my annoyance at the classes in words.


But if Paladin gets buffed and becomes the premier defensive tank with it's damage staying relatively the same... why take a dark knight? Sure our MT damage is a little higher...but if paladins can just tank through everything the healers will be more free to deal with other things and the moment a physical tank buster comes we'll see dark's disappear q.q

[Drtoxicmedica]

Which I agree with you touch but the meta is tuned more towards dps. The problem is dps isn't what pld is about it never was. There needs to be things that it can do either by adding dps through passive mitigation or defensive skill procs that reward extra dps for more effort etc. It would allow pld to stay much the same but granting those trying to. Compete in savage the ability to put out more dps by being given the same complexity and ability to just like warrior and dark

[TouchandFeel]

^^^
That is something that I consider part of what I was talking about in my previous post I just didn't go into much detail about it.

Essentially PLD is simple offense, complex defense and attacking by defending.
For example, using my Sheltron -> Shield Swipe combo example, what if the effect was that you automatically crit with your next weapon skill? That would most definitely increase dps, but still be defensively focused. Stuff like that.

DPS can be increased by other means than just going the straight forward route of higher potencies or more attack abilities.

Also, raid DPS (the meta), is the totality of the entire raid group's dps. If PLD had more stuff that allowed for the group to be able to do more damage such as healers having to heal less and getting to dps more or providing a damage up buffto the group or damage taken debuff to the boss, that would also improve their standing in the current meta.

This makes PLD gameplay the flipside of the coin from WAR, that are heavily offensive in gameplay style and defend by attacking (IB).

[Brian_]

Job disparity can exist just fine without imbalance.

A DPS/offensive tank and a defensive tank can exist just fine in even the current meta where DPS is the most important thing. You can even pair defensive tank + defensive tank and reach the same raid DPS as a offensive tank + offensive tank pairing.

Jobs can also have different roles. It's just that in the end, the cumulative raid result needs to be the same.

Nobody should have their progress gated behind their job choice. During this raid cycle, it clearly was. If you didn't level a DRK/WAR to 60 and gear it with eso, you (and even worse, your 7 raid mates) were behind in progression by weeks by default.

[Kiara]

Another week and all we get is a Dev Response on adding in a Search Box feature. No official Dev Response on Paladin yet.