Thread: 3.1 PLD Changes

I agree that a lot of the imbalance comes from encounter design, but even if you change the encounter design, it has to be very specifically tailor made for PLD in order for PLDs to be a desirable option. If I was a game designer, this would raise some red flags because it would severely limit design space in the future. So, I really don't see why this imbalance is allowed to continue. What's more important? The health of the game or the ego of some mediocre DRK or WAR that might lose their raid spot?

It doesn't matter if you remove the DPS checks. You actually have to make good DPS counter-productive for PLDs to be viable. An example of this is Haukke Manor HM where killing the boss too fast actually wipes your group. Another example is in certain Coil turns where you could push phases and end up with awkward transitions. Otherwise, the higher DPS of DRKs and WARs will still be an advantage. Regardless, how does it make sense to punish players for being good? It doesn't.

I don't know if it's ignorance or stupidity that causes this, but people really fail to understand the value of DPS vs. survivability. Supporters of full-VIT tank-stance-only tanks will always rely on the idea that a sturdier tank gives your group a larger margin of error. It doesn't. Even if PLD was the best defensive tank, you would need a specific situation for it to matter.

Take a look at A3S. If you have very high raid DPS, you can actually recover from a lot of mistakes. Messed up a digi pass and someone who shouldn't have DPS down has it? Someone accidentally did too much damage to the wrong hand during equal concentration? Had people die to tethers during add phase? Had your DPS linked in every ferro-fluid during add phase? Mistimed a stun on a piston and need to burst it down before it runs out? Constant heavy misses on adds because of ACC RNG? Messed up a ferro-fluid and now 2 DPS have atrophy? Don't have LB3 because of various issues or class comp for liquid limb or just to nuke the boss? I could go on, but the point I'm making is there are a lot of ways you can mess up in A3S that will result in a raid DPS loss that would wipe a group normally. But, if your raid DPS is stellar, you can still recover. So, the margin of error you gain from pushing DPS is far greater than the margin of error you gain from pushing survivability.

So, they would need to flip that paradigm on its head in order for survivability to matter. Then, they would need to tailor craft the damage intake to favor PLD -- lower but much more rapid general damage that can't be parried but can be blocked and frequently crits, physical damage raid-wide damage mechanics on a longer timer so that DV can be up for each one and RoH will contribute to raid mitigation, physical tank busters that can be consistently blocked by Sheltron, mechanics that can be trivialized with Hallowed Ground, a raid mechanic that forces the requirement of LB3 to stop groups from just bringing 2 WARs, etc.

I don't know about other people, but that degree of pigeon-holing does not feel healthy for the overall design of a game. People will demonize the idea of homogenization but homogenization of ends is not bad as long as the means are still diverse.

Just look at Defiance vs. Grit and Shield Oath. Different methodology, roughly the same resulting eHP. Achieving homogenized results through different and flavorful methods is not impossible.