What happens when.....

[Dante_V]

I know it used to scale off an equation that I can't find and determination was a large factor in determining the threat it produced. It's theorized that stances also affect it as it would count as an attack. So, if flash generated 1000 threat shield oath would drop it by 20% to 800 then double it to 1600. This is all conjecture from me though.

I'm sure someone here knows better.

My understanding is that flash scales on str from the testing I've done. Shield Oath also increases enmity at a higher rate than the damage loss from the stance and I don't think the stance directly lowers str but you can check in your character stats by turning it on and off. Regardless since flash does no damage it shouldn't be affected by the stance regardless aside from an enmity increase.

[karateorangutang]

My understanding is that flash scales on str from the testing I've done. Shield Oath also increases enmity at a higher rate than the damage loss from the stance and I don't think the stance directly lowers str but you can check in your character stats by turning it on and off. Regardless since flash does no damage it shouldn't be affected by the stance regardless aside from an enmity increase.

no it doesnt lower your str, but it does lower you attack. I was under the impression flash scaled off of attack and not str. Again I digress that I could indeed be wrong. I'd have to do some testing.

[Syzygian]

By laying things out like I did in my earlier post, its clear PLD has gaping holes in its DPS toolkit where DRK and WAR have everything they need (and probably more).

So as I see it, there are two solutions to this problem, and both of them have some pretty big stipulations as well (or would have).

Simply give them more DPS, or boost their defensive utility.

The fact is though, that you would have to give them some pretty hefty boosts to do the former, and having DRK or WAR deal less or equal damage than PLD when they wield gigantic two-handed weapons feels weird. I know people are quick to dismiss design-based reasons for not doing this/that/the other to a job, but you have to factor these in because the devs are definitely going to. As designers they have a vested interest in changes to the game that they make "making sense". Then there is DPS homogenization, which I don’t think is going to happen since they already have a pretty delicate balance with DRK and WAR, similar to the way PLD and WAR were in 2.x. WAR currently outdamages DRK as an OT, and the reverse is true in the MT slot. PLD comes close to neither of them in either stance. I think that they could make small adjustments, like a healthy boost to Circle of Scorn’s potency (their AoE needs some serious help) or reducing Fight or Flight’s cooldown to make it a more bonafide mitigation to their tank stance penalty.

I do not think they need some sort of resource management mechanic (stacks, MP-based DPS) as WAR and DRK have because this is such a blatant homogenization to a point beyond anything that people complain of now (and I'm usually the last to complain about it as it is). If you boost PLD DPS to a level that competes with WAR or even DRK, you further marginalize their defensive abilities. If they are going to have all these defensive/support abilities, they need to be powerful enough to facilitate increased raid-wide DPS to make up for the lack of personal DPS that they are saddled with. I do believe that the enmity modifiers on their abilities should be increased, and perhaps the recast time of FoF or potency of CoS could use some love, but certainly nothing game changing.

Their defensive utility, is in a weird spot though.
Imagine Cover’s range was 20y instead of 10, lasted 24s instead of 12, and covered physical and magical. Imagine Clemency had its cast time removed but still kept its MP cost, or vice versa. Imagine Divine Veil was an 80s CD instead of 150.
Do they feel like game changers now?

Didn’t think so.

That’s because so much of PLD’s toolkit is so situational.

So many of the interesting aspects of the job see use once per raid tier for like, one mechanic, if that. Even their cross-class abilities from WHM, like Stoneskin, are interesting on paper, but rarely see use, at least not for party support.

For all the criticism the other tanks, especially DRK, have gotten for having disjointed toolkits or mechanics, PLD’s seems the worst by far when you actually take the time to examine it. Its a bland set of combos with not a whole lot of exciting damage boosting tools, and a hodgepodge of defensive utilities that don’t go together or interact, and now in 3.0, an emphasis on MP that is a trainwreck in its design, as your MP returns/expenditures are so sporadic and situational that keeping track of it/maintenancing it does not graduate to being an actual mechanic of the job.

Its corresponding combos and DPS-related abilities have huge gaps in them that the other tanks just don’t have, and those gaps are filled with defensive/support abilities no one is finding a use for. RoH is its weakest combo and also the weakest enmity combo out of all the tanks and yet this is what it depends on for hate, whilst its other combos have no debuff or self-heal and are just pure damage. And unlike, for instance, a healer, who actually shifts gears between healing and DPSing, a tank is (or should be) always DPSing, to one extent or another, so for PLD to have to stop and cast abilities that aren’t doing damage and more importantly, not generating meaningful enmity, is silly. PLD loses so much more for casting abilities that, even if they were present on a job for whom they made sense, like WHM or AST, would be cumbersome and difficult to make use of (no healer would cast a heal with such a proportionately high MP cost as Clemency, for example).

Things like Divine Veil, Clemency, and Cover are designed to be PLD’s defensive raid utilities.
For example, WAR has Storm’s Path. Great all round, -10% damage on both sides of the spectrum.
DRK has Delirium, and while it only covers magic, they have an extra -10% on both sides in Reprisal, balanced with less uptime.
PLD has only Rage of Halone, which covers physical, which is arguably even less useful than Delirium as most raid-wide damage is NOT physical. So PLD has a bunch of miscellaneous utilities like Cover, Divine Veil, etc.

In order to make these things actually useful in the sense of PLD being more of a defensive support tank rather than an all-out offense tank like WAR, or an offensive tank with increased mobility, AoE, and resource management mechanics like DRK, they need to be buffed SUBSTANTIALLY.

Here are some ideas. Just spitballing. By no means do I think all of these are necessary and they are meant to be taken as just that - ideas - and not necessarily things that they "need".

While I don't specifically mention Stoneskin here, the ability to SS yourself or party members is a cool thing to have on PLD as healers generally do not cast SS much once a fight has started, except maybe before a tank buster, so having an extra party member that can do it that is not responsible for healing is definitely a utility, and some of these boosts keep that in mind and benefit this cross-class skill as well.

Flash- Now off-GCD but with a 5s recast. Same MP cost.

Cover- Duration increased to 20s, recast reduced to 90s, range increased to 20y. Covers physical and magical, and reduces damage transferred to the PLD by 50%. This would make the ability actually useful and available when it will be relevant, such as when another party member is having to tank an add or will be taking unavoidable damage.

Divine Veil- The initial buff is applied in an AoE so the heal will generate a shield on heal to any party member in range. Radius of initial buff and the shield increased to 20y. Recast reduced to 120s, and a shield is applied to the PLD as well, of double potency, making this an actual defensive CD. Until the buff is triggered, the initial Divine Veil status also acts as an MP refresh of similar potency to Shroud of Saints.
-Additionally, if used in Sword Oath, this will not shield the PLD, but will apply a regen in addition to a shield to party members in range. Both regen and shield stack with all healer equivalents.

Clemency- MP cost cut to 1768 from 2121 at lvl60. If used in Shield Oath, applies a proportionate shield as well as a heal to the PLD, and to the party member if they are the target. If used in Sword Oath, increases the duration of the PLD’s buffs by 10s, and to the party member if they are the target, with the PLD being granted a 5s increase in the latter scenario.

Sword Oath- Any spell cast under the effect of Sword Oath has its cast time halved.

Tempered Will- Duration increased to 20s. Surecast effect added.
Bulwark and Sheltron- Surecast effect added.

If these buffs sound overpowered, realize that outside of them, PLD offers no DPS utility and no defensive raid utility outside of Rage of Halone which is barely useful for anyone but the PLD themselves, and even then only on mostly physical fights, and the PLD has to STOP DPSING to use many of these. If the PLD is to be a defensive/support tank, its utilities that fulfill this role actually have to be powerful enough to afford healers/support classes free GCDs with which to DPS or focus on other mechanics to a meaningful extent (enough to make up for the shortage of DPS).

An additional, minor DPS increase that I feel needs to happen one way or another:

Shield Swipe - now costs 20 TP, potency buffed to 310 and restores MP.

The lowered MP costs and more numerous forms of MP management encourage PLD to make more liberal use of these abilities; as it stands now, not only is it difficult to find worthwhile opportunities to use them wherein they would actually be helpful or contribute anything of note, but the steep MP costs make it punishing as well (i.e. if you cast Clemency and the healer heals you/the target at the same time, you just wasted that Clemency and likely do not have the MP to cast it again). Riot Blade is currently pathetic for MP management, as it is a huge DPS loss to use the combo several times in a row, unlike DRK, for whom using Syphon Strike is almost constant in a DPS-efficient rotation.

I feel like a flat DPS increase is not necessarily the answer, since PLD still has no DPS-relevant mechanic to manage (MP, stacks, etc.) or meaningful DPS buffs/cooldowns that would not require a disproportionately large buff. WAR and DRK need to, to one extent or another, earn their personal DPS. If PLD is the defensive tank and WAR is the offensive one, with DRK somewhere in between, PLD's defensive utilities need a very very large boost to make them actually grant your party increased mileage in a raid scenario, especially with how DPSed focused the current meta is.

Also in regards to DPS, the FFLogs are based on performance in content and not necessarily dummy parses, the latter of which give a much better picture of the jobs' potential as the numbers are easily muddled by the current content and roles into which a given job is forced in said content. I.E the fact that DRK and PLD are most often in the MT slot often influences the overall damage output average.

[7hurricane]

I wish you the best of luck in this thread. It is very constructive and exhaustive, similar to this thread, which I leave here for reference because many of the ideas suggested and problems observed are similar:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...aladins-Thread

[Shining_Tiger_Excalibur]

snip.

Keep these kinds of arguments and rationalizations going guys, Square-Enix will need multiple viewpoints and reasoning behind proposed suggestion in order to form a middle ground from all the data they're getting. I ask only of you to keep in mind these are concepts with general numbers being said as to illustrate feasibility. I urge users to stay away from making personal attacks or making claims that a user is a failure for just talking to others.

As I said in my original post silence is the only great destroyer, so please don't force it onto people. Nurture suggestions for what they are.....just thoughts with good intentions in the users' hearts.

[Xyphon]

Just to touch on the STR and attack power scaling, your total STR = your attack power. So if you increase str, you're obviously also increasing your attack power.

@karateorangutang - I know the old formula you are referring to, and I think its really outdated. Most of it was done during phase 3 of beta testing for ARR lol. If you want the source I can link it.

From my own testing, I found that somehow weapon damage also effects flashes threat generation. Which is why its much harder to hold threat as pld spamming flash with a lower ilvl weapon vs dps with higher ilvl. The old formula used to have x 0.8 damage penalty from ShO, which also was found to be the same as using overpower with defiance.

There was some testing done a while back that showed even though flash doesn't actually deal damage, there's still factors of damage involved in how the threat is calculated.

[karateorangutang]

snip

Yeah I assumed the formula no longer works, but I'm assuming the remnant base approach is the same. Seems like it would scale off of attack and not STR. I honestly have never checked, but does equipping a weapon with higher attack affect the attack stat directly? If it does that would makes sense as to why weapon damage is factored heavily into the formula.

[Xyphon]

@Karateorangutang - Unless the character screen is hiding information, your str is always identical to your attack power (which is why str is so important for tanks). Weapon damage doesn't even show up in the character screen, outside of looking at your gear.

Attack power says - Affects the amount of damage dealt by physical attacks. What's really odd is determination says the exact same thing except its both physical and magical + the amount of hp restored by healing. (I find it odd because for physical damage, det was only supposed to be physical auto attack damage). Tool tips ftw.

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.

[Donjo]

@Donjo - If you are referring to the lack of passives that increase the effectiveness of a cross class skill, then sure they could be considered inferior. But lets not be completely ignorant, flash as a cross class skill can work better on warrior than pld as a cross class skill. Not to say you'd be better off using it vs overpower, but then it doesn't use your tp resources.

Besides the -acc you get from the actual trait of flash, the main point of using it is aoe threat. Yet magically you can pop berserk on warrior, and now your flash is superior to pld. I realize nobody in their right mind as a warrior would waste berserk just to spam flash, but the point is it still gens more threat than a plds flash (with the same ilvl).

This is why I've argued that flash should have never been able to be cross classed to begin with; a remanent of 1.0. Originally I think the passive trait to it was turning it from single target to an AOE.

Well, Berserk is rather unique in the world of Damage Increasing cooldowns in that it physically increases a stat(Attack Power) instead of just increasing your damage dealt by a multiplier. It would also make Clemency stronger, as silly as that is! Anyways, the reason Warrior can get more enmity out of Flash at times is that they can just get their stats higher. It's still a 600 potency spell no matter what your Attack Power stat is. Besides, I know this is subjective but I find it fun to blind things that can be blinded. I personally enjoy dealing with trash by trying to use Flash exactly three times in a pull, staggered such that the blind is extended as much as possible on all enemies. But that's just me.

As for the single target -> traited AOE thing, I do think that would be very interesting. A Flash that always blinds while producing enmity but this way Paladin would get a very clearly superior in all cases version of it.

Since a further discussion on Flash occurred while I was drafting this, I might as well input. Flash has been shown to generate 600 potency worth of enmity, with the total enmity generated scaling off of a combination of Weapon Damage, Attack Power, and Determination. Last time I saw someone math it out, it was observed that being in a Tank Stance does reduce the invisible damage it deals by its corresponding amount despite the opposite(the like of FoF enhancing it) not being true. A cruel double standard indeed.

[Shining_Tiger_Excalibur]

@Karateorangutang - Unless the character screen is hiding information, your str is always identical to your attack power (which is why str is so important for tanks). Weapon damage doesn't even show up in the character screen, outside of looking at your gear.

Attack power says - Affects the amount of damage dealt by physical attacks. What's really odd is determination says the exact same thing except its both physical and magical + the amount of hp restored by healing. (I find it odd because for physical damage, det was only supposed to be physical auto attack damage). Tool tips ftw.

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.

They could probably verify it from having a Warrior and Paladin in a party only using Flash on a training dummy. It doesn't provide numbers explicitly but they could extract raw data from just how much enmity the training dummy takes from both of them side by side.