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.

Originally Posted by Fyce

they need to shift the meta to make the players think "should we switch to PLD because we need that mitigation?" instead of "should we switch to WAR because we need that DPS to pass the checks?".

That's a terrible thought process, since it leads to people using PLD's mitigation to learn the fight then kick PLD to the curb and replace them with a WAR once they've get the encounter down. Don't believe me? FFXI pretty much saw this where post voidwatch people would use a -DT capped PLD to tank fights they were learning, then kicked the PLD and replaced them with a DPS in -DT gear because that led to faster kills.

The devs are trying to cling to their flawed ideas on what differentiates the tanks from each other. Unless there's some hidden message on how they're going to nerf DRK and WAR damage (which I highly doubt) or some plan to even out damage contributions from the tanks, this does not bode well.

PS: Utility is nice, but utility NEVER makes up for missing damage potential. The fact Yoshida even mentioned utility worries me a bit.

I'm done with this game at 3.2 if they don't legitimately start leading into fixing issues created from this expansion.



At the end of the day, no one in their right fucking mind is gonna' take a Paladin into future Savage raid content because DAMAGE is the best form of mitigation for not just a single person, but the entire group. Something that's dead can't hurt you anymore. I'm EXTREMELY confident that the next raid tier will feature DRK/WAR being the most optimal group yet again.....it's been stated over and over by people that all 3 of the tanks survive equally, despite Paladin being "mitigation king." People are going to say "but the next raid tier will be more physical," and to that I direct those people to A3s and A2s. I run a DRK/PLD tank composition in my raid group and we're on wave 9 of A2s (there's some optimizing we're still doing in order to meet enrage, but we're going to beat it as DRK/PLD.) Although we're not at A3s yet, from videos and streamers I've watched, those two floors are by far the most physical out of the current raid tier......yet we both survive the same. Let's not forget the fact that our dps (MNK. DRG, SMN, BRD) are carrying the living shit out of us by, each of them, doing over average and closer to exceptionally good dps. Now people are about to say "but you have a DRK/PLD and you're about to beat a savage floor why are you saying this stuff," and to that I reply by saying that floors 1 and 2 aren't really "savage" when you get right down to it. It's only in A3s and A4s where things get really savage.

The shield a Paladin carries isn't an excuse to gimp the shit out of damage they do in content. The shield they carry isn't an excuse to NOT EVEN fix its utility or lack thereof.

So yeah, Square, go ahead and design every single encounter from now until this game dies to be suited to how Paladin can't build itself up to recover from its own weaknesses (low damage and long cast times with barely decent and situational "utility.") I'm sure people will appreciate you stretching out encounters and content in general, in fact, I'm surprised the community is falling for this. They're changing tank damage, crafting, raid equipment, materia melding, and other things to stop us from clearing their content extremely fast. They're doing this in an attempt to cover up balance issues and lack of creativity, foresight, job complexity, etc.


And yeah, I am salty as fuck right now. I've been putting up with "pld is doing fine, it's mitigation king, it shouldn't do damage, just wait for more gear, it'll get buffed in the future, you carry a shield you're op, etc" for over a year now. I can't wait for Void Ark to be a completely cancerous shit show with people outright harassing Paladins for even showing up.


EDIT: I'm actually not even going to come back to these forums anymore either. To the people I had fun talking to, keep being awesome and to those I had heated discussions with, keep being passionate. So long and thanks for all the fish!

Originally Posted by Shining_Tiger_Excalibur

I can't wait for Void Ark to be a completely cancerous shit show with people outright harassing Paladins for even showing up.

Nah, really, this stuff won't happen except from extreme idiots. Most warriors and dark knights in there won't even pull 500 out of stance so no one's gonna care if a similarly crap paladin is doing 60 less.

This news is disappointing, however. At least it seems like they realize Clemency and Divine Veil are kind of bad. Hopefully they buff the skills rather than just design bosses with 3.5 second autoattack delay lol. I also think it's a bit of a falsehood to say the content just makes paladin bad when you have a class like warrior that is nearly impossible to design bad content for.