Ideas for Paladin Skill Changes

[Immut]

I knew that was copypasta from somewhere when I saw it in the 4chan thread.

I've been discussing this with my FC for like...months now. There's a bunch of ideas we've been kicking around.



First off, MY personal vision for paladin is to stay as the "defensive tank" but give them the tools to actually be that, while keeping their raw dps about 10-15% behind the other tanks. The DPS gap would ideally be closed by skilled healers using the extra time and MP to dps more. Right now, they have the WORST mitigation of the three tanks for that purpose.

Say a big hit is coming, what skill do you hit as paladin? The one that's off CD, because it doesn't actually MATTER anymore. So you have, against magic damage, two cooldowns you can use on a 90 and 180 second timer. You can use stoneskin and clemency as well if you have the MP for it but I don't know if we can really count those. Against physical you've got a freebie roughly 20%. They're all 20%, except sentinel, which is 40% but who really cares? Woo you lived with 6000 hp instead of 3000, that's an entire extra cure you would have saved them if they weren't going to just bene/lustrate/dignity you back to full anyway.
Now say you're a warrior, what button do you hit? Inner beast, that's what. It's always up, every time, ready to go. 20% mitigation. Paladin's entire cd rotation in one move. If you need MORE, you got 30% vengeance on a 120 second timer, so it's up way more often than sentinel for roughly the same effect; i.e. you barely survive and the healer bombs you back to full, and then if you need EVEN MORE mitigation, you have thrill of battle for another 25% sorta kinda.
Now say you're a dark knight. You've got the same 90 and 180 second cds as paladin, plus a 30% dark mind on a 60s cooldown which means it's always going to be up to stack with Shadow Wall, giving them RIDICULOUS magic mitigation on demand. Which is fine. Against physical though, the only thing PLD has on them is sheltron for a guaranteed block. Bulwark and Dark Dance are practically the same thing.

So, I'm thinking. Buff sentinel to 60% or even higher. Lower rampart's CD to 60s. Combine this with their own stoneskin and a healer's shield and they should be able to get through two tank busters in a row (one using a combination of cds and another with HG) without taking ANY damage. Not just taking less damage, taking ZERO, with minimal healer involvement. Hopefully this will give the healers MP and time to close the DPS gap on their own. A 60s rampart would be up for every other cooldown PLD has. Convalecense, foresight, bulwark, awareness. This alone would increase their survivability tenfold.

Then there's divine veil. Nearly useless as it is. I'd make it so the shield is the strength of the Cure. How bad could a 10k party-wide shield break things? I mean don't we already have those with warriors and scholars? Again it's more time and MP for the healers to dps with.

That said, we all know PLD has enmity issues. The simple fix for that would just be to increase their multipliers to match WAR and DRK's. Shield swipe could also use a buff to, say, 240 potency, so it's actually desirable to use again. I haven't done the math on this part, but maybe buff its enmity bonus as well. But here's the big thing: Take a page from 1.0 and give clemency an enmity bonus in shield oath. Imagine if that 10k crit clemency actually counted for 20k or even 50k hate (5x enmity bonus + 2x shield oath bonus + half enmity from healing). Think that might put a dent in the enmity problems?

We played around with some other ridiculous ideas too. Like changing Hallowed Ground to an 1200 potency/tick DOT attack while in sword oath. I mean it works in Ragnarok Online. Or making Sheltron a direct TP restore in sword oath. Oath-based skill changes were a significant part of discussion.

As far as VIT being their damage stat. At this point...might as well. Vit accessories are actively detrimental right now since they lower the strength of your self heals, and therefore lower your mitigation. So you die FASTER with vit than str. Tanks are also the only role that has to actually think about where they put their stats. It's a game design inconsistency. While I'd love for ALL the stats to matter for EVERY class and give us some actual choices, that's not going to happen. I'll miss being able to point out the shitter tanks just from their HP, though.