The Definitive State of Paladins Thread

[SpookyGhost]

PLD was sub-optimal for A1S-A3S, but still viable. It only became completely unviable in A4S at lower gear levels - obviously, with some gear, PLD was perfectly able to clear it but therein lies the problem. I like Sapphidia's suggestion of buffing Shield Swipe however I think this would be a problem in fights like A4S where there's nothing to Shield Swipe. Whatever increase they do give to threat should result in higher PLD MT DPS anyway due to not needing to use RoH as much and if something else were tweaked slightly we'd probably see PLD coming in line with DRK.

Anyway, my thoughts aside, this is a good thread as it highlights all the issues really well. Hopefully if SE isn't already aware of the specifics, they are now. It's unfortunate that 3.1 is so far away, I'd love to know what they have planned - hopefully we'll hear word about it next/this month.

[Ercapote]

snip.

when did you specifically clear SAVAGE? I'm asking because even pre buff astrologian was able to clear, and at this point is a no brainer since we are further away already and gear lvl makes any class work "without" problems, meaning at this point, you can tell me PLD can push over 900 dps making the older problem of not doing enough dps not a thing anymore, the problem comes with paladin needs to wait a month extra to perform just as good as the other tank job till they are geared enough...when it should be not a thing all tanks should perform just as good as any other tank job... but that wasn't a thing since they beat A4S there wasn't any clear recorded that was from a PLD all the clears where WAR,DRK almost a month after I've only seen 1 video clear with an actual PLD... so yeah I'll let you think about that.

[MeeYow]

BALANCE AND VIABILITY ARE DIFFERENT THINGS

EVERYTHING IS VIABLE ALWAYS, ESPECIALLY IF YOU WAIT UNTIL MAX ILV.

BY THAT POINT SCH WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR DPS IS VIABLE.

TALKING ABOUT VIABILITY IS POINTLESS.

Can we please stop having to wade through this non argument. Please.

[Xyphon]

You realize the entirety of the war 2.0 buff was "purely" based on death sentence. A mechanic in the 5th turn of coil (hardest hitting tank buster at that time). Almost as if to say they balance stuff only based on the hardest content the game has to offer. Not saying I agree with it exactly, but that's what they did in the past.

As for pld being behind war in threat gen, that's easily off of just the different in potency on the main enmity combo between the two jobs (not a huge diff, but enough. I also don't look at total potency of the entire combo, because its based per hit by server time. If you want to look at total threat multiplier, I guess you could then look at the entire combo potency). That's not even including any other factors, such as stances/buffs.

@7hurricane - I'm curious about your statement about people raging about war in 1.0. You meaning raging about how OP it was? (Its funny cause everyone I knew abused the power lvling potential of mrd to level all of their jobs)

[Airswimmer]

You realize the entirety of the war 2.0 buff was "purely" based on death sentence. A mechanic in the 5th turn of coil (hardest hitting tank buster at that time). Almost as if to say they balance stuff only based on the hardest content the game has to offer. Not saying I agree with it exactly, but that's what they did in the past.

Unfortunately, the issue with A4S comes from the design of the encounter (or even the design philosophy of DRK and PLD both) rather than the design of the tank, so Square may not implement the correct changes if they base the need for balance off of that encounter in specific.

[Valkyrie-Amber]

PLD is fine to take with the other two tanks in savage when its il 200+ as long as the other tank is a war.

while the other two tanks could do it easy at il 191, even some of the first clears tanks were like il 190 but pld needed like 10 ilevels more to be any good.

So yeah there is a balance issue going on here that many avoid. Things become easy when over geared and that's common sense.

[Sapphidia]

Yeah we're at a weird state now - everyone has enough gear that (aside from maybe A4S) most good groups can run quite suboptimal lineups to Savage and brute force it via higher item level. Paladins work just great here because there's no real risk of hitting the tight DPS checks if your group is decent.

The problem has always been the -first- clears, the times when every single last bit of DPS from the best players in the world is make or break for the encounter. And that filters down - not everyone is as good at the game as the players from Lucrezia or Elysium, but people sort of expect that they are. The issue is that due to the lower "wiggle room" for dps you get when you bring a Paladin, it affects the lesser groups too who can't quite pump out the max damage for their jobs.

"We can't do enough DPS to pass this check" usually signals that your raid group needs to learn to play better, or just gear up more. If however you can simply replace a Paladin with a DRK/WAR and suddenly your underperforming raidgroup DOES have enough DPS to pass the check, then that's a problem. And right now the damage difference is noticeable enough that even the non-first-clear groups are having to have serious talks about whether their devout paladin main tank might be better off switching.

To look in context, right now Bards and Machinists are pretty interchangeable, and do pretty equal damage within reason. Both work. Same with Black Mage and Summoner - pick any one. ANY two melee dps work, though one can argue that one of them has to be a Dragoon to be optimal, but Monk/Ninja are both equally balanced in terms of raid contribution. Now that ASTs are buffed you can take any combination of two healers. But for tanking, Paladin is strictly a downgrade over the other two tanks in -current- content. Yes, they can do all encounters now, but noone likes feeling that they're slightly sabotaging their team's performance due to class choice.

[Snowy_Mist]

"We can't do enough DPS to pass this check" usually signals that your raid group needs to learn to play better, or just gear up more. If however you can simply replace a Paladin with a DRK/WAR and suddenly your underperforming raidgroup DOES have enough DPS to pass the check, then that's a problem. And right now the damage difference is noticeable enough that even the non-first-clear groups are having to have serious talks about whether their devout paladin main tank might be better off switching.

Well in that case its a player problem, its savage if your team can't out put the dps required for the clear in that situation where better players have done so with the same composition then its not so much a class problem.

[Ercapote]

Well in that case its a player problem, its savage if your team can't out put the dps required for the clear in that situation where better players have done so with the same composition then its not so much a class problem.

you missed the point brah read again... it say that if on the same situation with one class you struggle and with the other class suddenly appears to work then there's the problem...

[Jonnycbad]

Threat Levels (to let us use our lower threat DPS moves more).
Quality of Life regarding various Utility Moves.
DPS contribution to a raid when tanking/holding aggro.
TP regeneration.
Shield Swipe being poopy (always a dps/threat loss to use).

Agreed.

Some suggestions (these don't all have to be implemented, but any of them would be a huge boon!)

- Make Shield Swipe an auto-counter upon block during Shield Oath. So when you Block, Shield Swipe is instantly and automatically used (if in range) at no cost to your TP or global cool down. To balance this, the potency would be much smaller, say 50-60 potency, but the enmity is the same.
- Or a spell/ability similar to FFXI's 'Reprisal', basically damage dealt to your target upon succesfully shield blocking. The damage reflected would be the amount blocked. So if you block 20% off of a 1000 damage attack and suffer 800 damage, the 200 damage your shield absorbed would be reflected back at the target. This could be a way PLD increases its DPS during Shield Oath.
-Or to mirror Sword Oath, whenever a Shield Block procs, the target takes 50 potency damage.

-Increase potency of Shield Swipe in general, or make it off global cool down and cost no TP.

-Sword Oath's +50 potency would be granted to Weapon Skills, in addition to auto attacks.

-Spirits Within restores a small amount of TP depending proportional to HP%. Say at 100% HP, it restores 150 TP. (PLEASE!)

The problem with PLD is, sure it may have the best defensive capability, but once content is cleared enough and becomes overgeared, damage mitigation becomes less important. Then you start having WAR and DRKs with STR accessories tanking and also quickening the raid time due to higher DPS. When you have a STR spec'd WAR or DRK successfully tanking AND doing high damage,then what good is PLD's pure defensive playstyle useful for?

In my opinion no job should have a 'specialty' in their field, but rather all jobs in a role should feasibly reach the same numbers (damage dealt/damage healed/damage taken) but achieved differently. WHM has highest potency heals, but SCH can reach that when combined with Fairy/Aetherflow. By saying PLD is spec'd more towards total defense and WAR is spec'd to be a hybrid, is unfair because damage is important too. Rather, PLD/WAR/DRK should all be capable of the same damage dealt and received, but these values are achieved differently. Like I suggested, maybe make a portion of PLD's DPS based on damage reflected from their shield blocks whereas a WAR's is raw DPS from weapon skills. That way, the end result is relatively similar, but the GAMEPLAY varies between jobs. It should be like a well-balanced fighting game. All characters have a certain balance of speed,mobility,range and strength, but in the end it's same, just players achieve it differently