Thread: 3.1 PLD Changes

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Should I give up on the idea of them being balanced? If you mean that we should be looking less at the cruxes of the fight and more about how the different jobs handle the 'white numbers' or the more arbitrary considerations of the fight, I can understand that, but... what you're saying here... doesn't point anywhere.

The point I was trying to make is that clinging to certain paradigms won't yield anything good. Trying to justify the WAR/PLD/DRK niches by attempting to design content to make all three useful or viable or good in a non-uniform way is a losing proposition in the end because people will still gravitate towards the "best" approach.

To ignore the incongruities in performance between the three and blaming content is doing basically just that. I think that's why people weren't satisfied with what Yoshida said about PLD. Can't speak for others, but I can say it's a combination of tank design AND content, not just one or the other.

Here we'll have to disagree to some extent. I think it is a bad thing, albeit just barely. If you can go an entire fight without using an ability, that's fine. To go an entire fight without having reason to use an ability, is not fine. Granted, this differs depending on the resource cost (be it a CD or mana requirements), but for an ability to be left entirely for "oh shit" moments is like saying that a Bard is balanced against another dps when it has no benefit for its songs unless things go horribly, horribly wrong

Your example is dependent on the nature of the effect/ability. Mitigation cooldowns or anything that increases survivability is generally for oh-shot moments. Hence why I mentioned Rallying Cry and Hand of Protection. There may be fights where they're not used, but when needed come in handy (Rallying Cry in particular may be used to sort of mitigate some raid damage, much like Divine Veil).

The difference lies in constant use. The people that want Divine Veil available for every time Oppressor jumps, for example, don't realize that when you make an ability reusable in short intervals it stops being "a nice help to the healers that comes into play once in a while" and becomes a mandatory thing you have to do to get the clear (because the devs will then tune damage output around the raid having that effect active). That's what separates mitigation cooldowns from things like interrupts. It also increases the value of the ability and may even force the devs to give that to the other members of the roster just to even things out; this isn't even limited only to defensive cooldowns, but all types of abilities and utility (see: Mortal Strike in WoW and the fact it had to be given out like candy because it was so useful that only Arms Warriors having it was making them too powerful/valuable).

oh except that, for PLD, it most likely won't go off in time... /shrug.

This is the one item I wish more people would complain about. I can probably run a test and find that post-fix Mudras activate faster than defensive cooldowns. If I end up being right I'll be really sad.

All I meant by that example is that in general this game makes us pay not only for using utility, but for merely having it. For PLD to balanced around having it and not really be able to use it puts it in a tight spot, balance-wise. Rather than leaving it on the clunky outskirts, perhaps even balancing PLD around its skills without regard to its utilities, I'd rather see these utilities get a bit more usability. But, for damn sure, I don't want them to become a mandatory component of the job, either. I just want to be able to actually use Cover, etc., worth a damn again, and for Clemency to actually go off in time in a real "oh shit" moment, because right now it only saves anyone in situations that I knew ahead of time would fail and precast for accordingly.

Originally Posted by Duelle

This is the one item I wish more people would complain about. I can probably run a test and find that post-fix Mudras activate faster than defensive cooldowns. If I end up being right I'll be really sad.

From what I've tested, Shuriken definitely launches faster than a defensive CD takes effect, but as a finishing blow would kill slower (which is what I'll here call 'actually doing damage'). It's shitty too, because it even says on your screen '+ Sentinel' before the hit immediately after that it still just barely failed to mitigate.

...And then there's Hallowed Ground... which I can pop while the first of a 3-second damage stream hits and it won't mitigate the next two... Infamous is as infamous does.

Edit: Also, input's up on your DNC outline.