What happens when.....

[karateorangutang]

So what I'm saying is if there is some kind of effect, it does not show up in the character menu. I believe the only way people were able to confirm what effects flash was by the battle log aka parsing.

Well that makes that stat rather extraneous....

Well seeing as I play on PS4 there would be no way for me to test this outside of generalizations. It's interesting nonetheless.

[NFaelivrin]

As far as I can tell, Flash is essentially treated as a 600 potency attack that cannot crit, scales in the same way all of your other attacks do, is unaffected by FoF because its magical, and has a special secondary effect of doing no damage. This means that under Shield Oath flash first has its power reduced to 80% but its enmity generation doubled. Since Flash does no damage anyway this essentially means it does 60% more enmity under Shield Oath, just like all of your other attacks.

[Exodus_Kenpachi]

As I and many other people have stated the core of PLD needs to drastically change. Personal mitigation is a moot point in a game where the developers are obviously biased against healer DPS, where fights have scripted burst damage that are planned for, and where all tanks have the ability to survive every encounter.

This leaves the tank with utility. DPS in FF (and all MMOs) is a MAJOR utility. PLD needs to be brought up to speed in this category and this category only, the question is in which way it needs to be done. Whether it be increased DPS through raid buffs (i.e Battle Litany-esque move), major debuffs placed on the boss to significantly decrease raidwide damage (Storms Path), or massive personal self heals (if Clemecy was a HoT) the core of PLD's "I can mitigate slightly better and easier than the other tanks" design is what needs to change.

At the end of the day nobody give a shit how much less damage was taken by one tank to the next as long as they both survived.

[Donjo]

As far as I can tell, Flash is essentially treated as a 600 potency attack that cannot crit, scales in the same way all of your other attacks do, is unaffected by FoF because its magical, and has a special secondary effect of doing no damage. This means that under Shield Oath flash first has its power reduced to 80% but its enmity generation doubled. Since Flash does no damage anyway this essentially means it does 60% more enmity under Shield Oath, just like all of your other attacks.

Shuffles over to FoF tooltip... It says physical. Mother...!

@Connor: One day I'll catch you on the linkshell and we're going to talk about Tanks and it'll be a hell of a time. Please look forward to it :P

[Syzygian]

As I and many other people have stated the core of PLD needs to drastically change. Personal mitigation is a moot point in a game where the developers are obviously biased against healer DPS, where fights have scripted burst damage that are planned for, and where all tanks have the ability to survive every encounter.

This leaves the tank with utility. DPS in FF (and all MMOs) is a MAJOR utility. PLD needs to be brought up to speed in this category and this category only, the question is in which way it needs to be done. Whether it be increased DPS through raid buffs (i.e Battle Litany-esque move), major debuffs placed on the boss to significantly decrease raidwide damage (Storms Path), or massive personal self heals (if Clemecy was a HoT) the core of PLD's "I can mitigate slightly better and easier than the other tanks" design is what needs to change.

At the end of the day nobody give a shit how much less damage was taken by one tank to the next as long as they both survived.

Maybe I have too much faith in the devs (and I don't think its wholly misplaced, as tanks balanced or not, FFXIV is a hell of a game), but I don't think its outside the realm of possibility for them to make PLD's defensive/support utilities enough to outweigh their lack of DPS. Looking at DRK and WAR, both of whom wield big motherclucking two handed weapons, it makes no sense from a design standpoint for PLD to be "brought up to speed" with them in DPS. Now look at BRD and MCH. In the hands of equally skilled players neither of these will outdps, say, a DRG or MNK. But their utilities still make them valuable and even mandatory. I think they could do the same with PLD (a bit less than mandatory for balance purposes, but still extremely useful). They would need to completely unravel PLD's entire toolkit to turn them into what you're suggesting, as they already have an excess of abilities designed for defense or support that are just too situational but also too integral to the job's design. Since they've already dug this hole they need to try and make these things useful before they just throw the design out with the bathwater and turn PLD into a DRK clone or a WAR clone. Now raid DPS as opposed to personal DPS I could potentially get behind, but even then you're left with a sizable chunk of their toolkit just unused because nobody cares, as you said, whether you survive with 100 HP or 10000, 10 TP or 1000, as long as you survived and cleared the fight (a problem in design in and of itself but I'm in the minority in thinking that so I won't open that can of worms).

And for the record, since I have not been above advocating some minor DPS increases for PLD, I don't necessarily support PLD being "homogenized" or whatever with DRK and WAR (assuming those two are homogenized but even that I don't really buy, since their DPS comes from very different sources and the managing of MP on DRK and stacks on WAR just doesn't feel the same. Its like comparing classical to techno), and the reason for that is easily apparent in the changes that already came to PLD from 50 to 60. They tried to expand upon its defensive/support abilities in very half-hearted ways, and then, 180 degrees in the other direction, gave them a DPS focused combo tree that draws direct parallels to 2.x WAR and now DRK as well, but is wholly inefficient in the context of a rotation, since the most potent one is a DoT (not spammable as a reward for proper play, like DA Souleater) and the next most potent one is pure damage (no assistance in utility or enmity like Storm's Eye or Butcher's Block). So essentially, they tried to homogenize a bit in one area, which has backfired completely, and then differentiate it in another, existing area, which has proven next-to-useless. They need to pick one or the other and run with it or the job is going to continue to feel watered down and "boring".

As it stands now, I am actually enjoying lvl 60 PLD less than lvl 50 PLD. The simplicity of the whole 1-2-3 1-2-3 Halone combo that people QQed about so much in 2.x freed you up to make efficient and regular use of PLD's other utilities without letting DoTs or debuffs fall off or losing enmity or any other such nonsense that you have to put up with now. It felt totally comfortable and even second nature, while playing lvl 50 PLD, to look after my party and throw a SS here and there or Cover somebody that was taking a beating. Now its simply cumbersome, counterintuitive, and conflicting. There are reasons that abilities like that weren't given to WAR in those days, and one of them is because the job had a (relatively) complex rotation and actual mechanics to manage.

Shuffles over to FoF tooltip... It says physical. Mother...!

@Connor: One day I'll catch you on the linkshell and we're going to talk about Tanks and it'll be a hell of a time. Please look forward to it :P

Bwahaha, yes indeed!

[Brannigan]

Eh, I don't really think the usefulness of paladin's utility has much to do with its new combos. Cover has always been a stupid gimmick. There's like five fights (I can think of two off the top of my head, but I'm being generous) in ARR where it's useful and mayyyybe one or two now. Stoneskin still has its uses, but Clemency covers some of its old territory. The big thing always has been that paladin gets a lot of unique crap (sup bind/heavy removal) but warrior (and now drk) has to be able to do anything paladin can, so all that unique stuff ends up being a minor convenience (not getting knocked around while clearing land mines in Avatar) or useless (can't remove raid heavy, can't pacify anything, can't blind anything, stun mechanics are always timed so warrior can do them). Paladin got a couple new problems in 3.0 and had some old ones fixed, but I think the state of its utility skills is pretty much the same.

[Exodus_Kenpachi]

Snip

I think you are missing my point. What I am trying to say is that PLD utility needs to be changed/increased. Right now the only tank utility in the game falls into 3 categories that matter: Personal DPS, Raid DPS buffs, and Raid Mitigation. Nothing outside of those three things matters at all on a raid level. Designing a fight that better suits PLDs "tools" basically means making the fight have physical busters, physical raidwide damage, and trash mobs that make the shield useful. The problem with that is that IT WON'T MATTER. People will still bring WAR for the increased DPS, Path, and the fact that they mitigate physical moves just as well as magical moves. People will still bring a DrK because guess what, it does more DPS, can survive everything in an encounter, and has utility with Reprisal and Delirium Blade.

The core problem with PLD is that nobody gives a shit about how much a tank can mitigate. It is literally a non-issue. This is due to the tank meta revolving around scripted burst damage, weak AAs, defensive stats being alonst worthless, and what utility a tank brings to the table.

So once again we need look at the three things that MATTER: Personal DPS, Raid DPS increases, and Raid Mitigation.

The only area that makes sense for PLD to be buffed is in Raid DPS incease (Think Ninja). This would go a long way in alleviating the tanking problems. Particularly the PLD+Drk party composition problems.

If you make PLD the Raid Wide DPS buff + High personal mitigation + Low Personal DPS tank and DrK the Raid Wide Damage Taken Debuff tank with moderate personal DPS then there would be some incentive to run DrK+PLD.

The problem that we will continue to see with the 3 tank system is that parties will generally be taking whichever composition allows for the most DPS.

So until we see the day when WAR+PLD, WAR+DRK, and PLD+DRK all equal comparable raid DPS; one tank will continue to be left out.

[Shining_Tiger_Excalibur]

snip.

I'm overjoyed at how you guys are handling the situation right now and from what I'm seeing the majority of us are in agreement on the overall issue that Paladin faces; that issue is it needs SOMETHING other than the "I survive hits better" philosophy that the developers have forced onto the job. Paladins have an excessive amount of defensive cooldowns yet it doesn't possess the ability to overcome its weaknesses by using them. I can relate this to Psychology in such a way of "Classical Conditioning."


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning

'Classical conditioning occurs when a conditioned stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus. Usually, the conditioned stimulus (CS) is a neutral stimulus (e.g., the sound of a tuning fork), the unconditioned stimulus (US) is biologically potent (e.g., the taste of food) and the unconditioned response (UR) to the unconditioned stimulus is an unlearned reflex response (e.g., salivation). After pairing is repeated (some learning may occur already after only one pairing), the organism exhibits a conditioned response (CR) to the conditioned stimulus when the conditioned stimulus is presented alone. The conditioned response is usually similar to the unconditioned response (see below), but unlike the unconditioned response, it must be acquired through experience and is relatively impermanent.'

If you apply that quote in such a way that it relates to Paladin, you'll realize that we're not rewarded with anything for doing our job other than survival. The more I think about it, THAT'S the reason so many are feeling empty when playing Paladin. We just survive and that's it. There's no intangible emotion like Joy or Pride involved after taking a huge hit because we know we're still doing peanuts for damage and surviving only the same as the other two tanks.

[Syzygian]

If you make PLD the Raid Wide DPS buff + High personal mitigation + Low Personal DPS tank and DrK the Raid Wide Damage Taken Debuff tank with moderate personal DPS then there would be some incentive to run DrK+PLD.

This sounds good but it would almost make DRK the de-facto MT across any content unless the raid dps buff PLD gets is specifically gated behind them tanking something. If PLD got a buff like that that was usable regardless of stance you would assuredly get the most bang for your buck putting the DRK in the MT slot every time since they top the DPS charts in that role if they are allowed to stance-dance liberally.

weak AAs

Living Liquid called saying something about his 11K AA crits, I think its for you.

[Shining_Tiger_Excalibur]

From the time I've recently spent on the Official Forums and on some popular streamers' twitch channels, more and more people are waking up to the fact that band-aid applications don't fix a job suffering from a sucking chest wound (by the way, unless you have a strong stomach, don't look this up on an image or video search.) We as users need to keep hammering this point in each and every thread to get the point across. Increases in enmity and potency, unless astronomical, will not fix the lack of synergy a job has, not only with itself, but other jobs as well. A huge amount of people only focus on what's happening now when instead they should be thinking of the next 8 months to 1 year.

Case in point: I was actually farming Blood Dragons today and thinking of how my suggestions would come into play damage dealt wise. I figured the hardest I'll be able to hit for (all strength accessories) would be around 3200 on a critical hit with my combo finisher Royal Authority AND with Fight or Flight active at the time. I can't even hit for HALF the damage of other tank jobs when I'm trying, even with adding my suggested damage increase. It's no wonder Paladins are literally performing at half the potential...I remember a time in 2.x when Paladin and Warrior did competitive damage as off tanks and somewhat competitive damage as main tanks. This clearly isn't the case anymore.....

I'd also like to, again, thank you guys for keeping this thread relatively clean and respectful.

EDIT: Obviously with better equipment will come higher numbers, however, that scales with other tanks as well.