Thread: 3.1 PLD Changes

Originally Posted by Yonanja

@rawker: While that is true, it would still be a better situation than if players could straight out prove that one class is considerably better then the rest. Bias will always be there no matter what you do... unless you just have one tankingclass.

Well... if you think about it, player skill trumps everything. So this approach really will just weed out the bad ones. I mean, there are terrible paladins out there but due to they safety net of the PLD skill set, they seem fine... I ran my level 54 DRK yesterday and asked for critique and what I got was positive remarks.. I guess it's just because PLD and DRK play styles aren't that different. Though I really have this fear of playing WAR. It's just too risky for my type. haha

First of all I agree with you on raiddesign, but in this case it wouldn't matter too much.

Thing is, with 3 tankclasses, that the devs want to have one being more dpsy but squishier, one being the middle ground, and one being more tanky but having lower damage, they can't realisticly balance encounters in such a way that the higher dps wouldn't make the first class the prefered. Even if they increased the need for more "tankiness" they still have to tune the encounter so that the squishier tank can manage it, because if they make it so that this class would have problems handling it, it would just turn the balance issue upside down. They can never realisticly have higher survavibility matter, without outright making the other classes unable to complete the encounter.

Also, making the "tankier" class having such a huge survivability that you could outright have a healer (or even replace a healer) dps fulltime to make up for the tanks lower damage, would make the class unbalanced and suddenly the prefered choice instead. Balancing a class around having higher "eHP" than the other classes, is realisticly impossible, since it'd be next to impossible for the devs to manage to reach and maintain that kind of balance.

They'd be better off just rebalancing all the tanks in one sweep, trying to make sure that they have at least near the same damage output and survivability. Uniqness can be achieved through different playstyles, looks and feels of the classes.

Originally Posted by Yonanja

They'd be better off just rebalancing all the tanks in one sweep, trying to make sure that they have at least near the same damage output and survivability. Uniqness can be achieved through different playstyles, looks and feels of the classes.

Quoted for emphasis. And this applies to class design as a whole, not just tanking.

Again, black and white examples and theories when actual raids are not so simple and encounter margins have a wider range of tuning and balance. How much experience do you even have with the content? Or are you just mindlessly parroting points made within a different context?

Because PLDs have objectively better physical mitigation under the right circumstances, you can structure damage mechanics to reward that. If you had a physical tank buster on a 30 second timer and other mechanics designed to lock up dCDs like Shadowskin, Vengeance, Thrill, Rampart, etc., then the PLD could stay in Sword Oath and mitigate with Sheltron + RoH while WAR would be forced to spend their stacks on IB rather than FC and DRKs would be forced to sit in Grit. You just need to properly tune the damage to wedge into that mitigation gap between PLD and WAR / DRK.

Raid design currently is designed to reward DRK's mitigation. I don't know why it's impossible for you to see how the same couldn't happen to PLD. Because DRKs have DA + DM for the magical-damage based tank busters, they can save their other CDs like Shadowskin to negate the mitigation loss from dropping Grit. In the early weeks of A1S, PLDs had to stack Rampart and Sentinel to mitigate the tank buster. DRKs could Shadow Wall + DA + DM and achieve higher mitigation while saving Shadowskin for other uses. The raid design rewarded DRKs with specific tuning and balance.

Because of how unique Hallowed Ground is, you could easily design mechanics to react with it. Like I mentioned earlier, if HG acted as a true immunity, you could use it to absorb all the royal pentacles in A4S with one PLD and HG and save your party from the need to sacrifice three people. Just look at HG in T13. It allowed you just to eat an Ahk Morn without sharing. And, on the point of Ahk Morn, its design also gave value to cover in a more meaningful way.

Viewing the issue almost exclusively from the viewpoint of healer DPS shows you don't understand the scope of the issue or the nuance of it. Being tankier can have other influences outside of healer DPS uptime.

There are plenty of ways to design content to reward varying eHP values while still retaining the viability and value of tanks with less eHP but more damage. Just because you don't have the experience, intellect, or vision to see it doesn't mean it's impossible. So, when SE says that they're going to try to balance the classes through the content, while I don't have much faith in their competency, the idea is perfectly viable.

Originally Posted by Brian_

Because PLDs have objectively better physical mitigation under the right circumstances, you can structure damage mechanics to reward that. If you had a physical tank buster on a 30 second timer and other mechanics designed to lock up dCDs like Shadowskin, Vengeance, Thrill, Rampart, etc., then the PLD could stay in Sword Oath and mitigate with Sheltron + RoH while WAR would be forced to spend their stacks on IB rather than FC and DRKs would be forced to sit in Grit. You just need to properly tune the damage to wedge into that mitigation gap between PLD and WAR / DRK.

So the problem we have now, except replace DRK with PLD.

Because of how unique Hallowed Ground is, you could easily design mechanics to react with it. Like I mentioned earlier, if HG acted as a true immunity, you could use it to absorb all the royal pentacles in A4S with one PLD and HG and save your party from the need to sacrifice three people. Just look at HG in T13. It allowed you just to eat an Ahk Morn without sharing. And, on the point of Ahk Morn, its design also gave value to cover in a more meaningful way.

So making an ability that is already massively strong overpowered by making it literally remove mechanics intended to involve 4 people juggling a debuff back and forth. Also this implies HG needs a buff, which is blowing my mind.

Viewing the issue almost exclusively from the viewpoint of healer DPS shows you don't understand the scope of the issue or the nuance of it. Being tankier can have other influences outside of healer DPS uptime.

All it does is make you require less healing and thus results in higher healer DPS due to freeing up GCDs. That's all being tankier than is needed does. Say there's a tankbuster you could survive with Rampart, but if you used Sentinel you would cost your healer 1 less GCD and that GCD is then converted into damage. That is effectively how any increase in eHP works outside of the minimum needed for said encounter. Admittedly it also frees up the healer to possibly use that heal they would've used on you on someone else, but spot healing would need to be massively more necessary than it is now for that to be a thing or tank busters need to occur at the same time as raid damage... which could get quite messy. Basically all you can possibly gain from being tankier is freeing up a healer's GCDs to either DPS more or to heal elsewhere, both of which are good things but they also result in the tankiest tank being the best tank if raid DPS remains the same vs a DPS oriented tank that is less tanky. If we were to shift the meta focus onto making tankier tanks, then all 3 need to be reworked with that in mind, and not have PLD be the king of the mountain again.

There are plenty of ways to design content to reward varying eHP values while still retaining the viability and value of tanks with less eHP but more damage. Just because you don't have the experience, intellect, or vision to see it doesn't mean it's impossible.

Like I have to continually repeat, the current tuning is off. So no, you don't replace PLD with DRK, you design and tune future content with different margins. How do people continually misunderstand this point?

The order of DPS amongst tanks will probably be as follows -- DRK MT without Grit = WAR OT/MT in Deliverance > PLD MT in Sword Oath (due to Swipe changes) > DRK OT > PLD OT > WAR MT in Defiance = DRK MT with Grit > PLD MT with Shield Oath. So, you could either balance their DPS on paper, or you could tune encounter design to allow PLDs to spend the least time in their tank stance due to alternative ways of boosting eHP while forcing DRK and WAR to spend significant time in their tank stance. This is what I am referring to when I talk of the other benefits of eHP.

As for one example of how, I gave it earlier. Another? Give the boss an enraged status that deals more damage unless they are pacified. Can the other tanks still live through the damage? Yea, with CDs and tank stance. PLD? They can stay in Sword Oath and just Swipe the boss once. Another example? Give the boss a high damage window where they apply a stacking defense down debuff per hit but allow them to be stunned during the window (like the legs in A4S). The PLD can keep the boss stun locked throughout the entire window to negate all damage and prevent the debuff from being applied. The other tanks can't stun-lock but can still live through the damage and resulting debuffs with CDs and tank stance.

As for A4S royal pentacles, intended or not, that's not how the majority of people handle the mechanic. They let Nisi drop instead of passing it and sacrifice three people to royal pentacles and then raise them. So, 3 people will have weakness for a portion of the final phase. If PLD could eat one set of royal pentacles with HG, you could either save your LB3 to nuke the boss, or you could prevent the MP / DPS loss from raising three people and giving them weakness. Suddenly, because of mechanical tuning, PLD becomes a much more attractive option because they now contribute raid DPS and raid utility in a unique way. You could even have Living Dead do the same thing so DRK / PLD comps would have a real advantage over WAR comps.I'm not saying you just rehash A4S and just change how royal pentacles interacts with LD / HG. But, could they do something similar in the future? Sure.

These are all ways that you can use raid mechanics to balance tank raid DPS contribution. The rest is just fine tuning the real numbers to reach a balance -- the same thing they would need to do if they just balanced tanks instead. No class will be king of the mountain with proper tuning -- if you're going to say it's unrealistic to reach a perfect balance through raid design, it's equally unlikely they'll reach it through tank balancing.

What other benefits does this approach have? You offer a more dynamic set of decisions to make when assembling a group and more depth and nuance to a fight. Rather than the situation where you say "just bring any tank, the result is all the same," you actually have much more detailed discussions about mechanical interactions and raid composition. You specialize roles, increase the skill ceilings and reward players who have mastery over their specific job in relation to the content. As is, you basically play all three tanks the same. You also add more depth and decision making to actual raid strategy rather than the one-size-fits-all raid strats that everyone uses now.

I'm not even trying to argue for this approach to balance. I openly questioned SE's ability to tune and balance their fights properly multiple times. I'm just saying that it's a perfectly viable approach if done well and there are real examples in current content -- intended or not. If you pull up my posting history, I have also said much in favor of the alternative -- just homogenizing the contributed raid DPS, raid mitigation, and utility of tanks while bringing flavor and uniqueness through play-style and aesthetics.