How do these changes fix the issues with Paladin?

[Syzygian]

Ready for a sick segueway?

For similar reasons to why a DRK Gritless MT DRK's DPS is so high, now a SwO PLD MTing may now be able to do some very competitive DPS now with both benefits from SwO on top of Shield Swipe procs. I dunno if it'll come close to their WAR or DRK OT but it'll still be pretty good I'll wager.

What they need to focus on IMO is not PLD's DPS. Yes I think it could be higher and particularly RoH needs to be buffed to like 280-290 pot and the enmity modifiers definitely need a buff.

But at the end of the day, no matter what they do with PLD's DPS/enmity it still leaves them with a toolkit that is 50% useless and/or difficult to use effectively. Their defensive utilities like Clemency, Cover, Divine Veil... these all need a huge overhaul to make them attractive and frequently used mechanics of the kit. PLDs could get a 1000 Potency Turbo Fell Cleave Extreme and it wouldn't change the fact that half of their kit is fucking useless and cumbersome and requires you to try extremely niche strategies and tactics to get any mileage of them. When you have utilities that are supposed to be helping your party but other people have to play their jobs differently or be forced into different roles for them be actually useful you have a huge problem.

One design choice that absolutely makes no sense that SE needs to fix immediately is that the two tanks with the highest DPS also have the highest enmity modifiers. There's zero logic to this. If PLD is going to be the lower DPS tank its enmity modifiers need a proportionate boost in relation to those of DRK and WAR, in fact I'd go so far as to say they should be even higher.

[Shining_Tiger_Excalibur]

Ready for a sick segueway?

For similar reasons to why a DRK Gritless MT DRK's DPS is so high, now a SwO PLD MTing may now be able to do some very competitive DPS now with both benefits from SwO on top of Shield Swipe procs. I dunno if it'll come close to their WAR or DRK OT but it'll still be pretty good I'll wager.

It won't be anything even remotely near a noticeable difference. If it is indeed going to work like Reprisal for DRK with a tad more potency....we're looking at **maybe** double digit improvement and that's it. Paladins, based off the numbers to measure dick sizes being provided in this thread, are anywhere from 150 to about 350 DPS behind depending on the encounter design and uptime on boss......

For Oppressor max DPS Paladin is close to a flat 1000. Warrior is clocked at about 1300-ish. Dark Knight is near Warrior with about 1220-ish DPS.
When the encounter design is around tank swaps and peeling away from the boss for a tether like during Living Liquid the gap closes, but that's ONLY because the Warrior needs to build himself back up to do massive damage via stacks and debuff while a Paladin just keeps doing what they're doing. Even then Dark Knight isn't far behind Warrior in numbers while Paladin still sits 150 DPS behind.

Basically, this change to Shield Swipe isn't enough to even begin attaining balance.

EDIT: Another basically thing is, the longer Warrior and Dark Knight are on a boss with no need to swap or grab tethers compared to Paladin, the more they stomp the ever living hell out of Paladin. It's only when their focus is taken away and their stacks drop that we're even close to being on level ground at 100-125ish DPS behind. Which in an encounter that lasts for more than five minutes will show a divide of TENS of THOUSANDS of damage on the LOW end of us being 125 DPS behind. When we get into the encounters where the other two tanks are 300+ DPS ahead of us that gap is magnified exponentially.

[Syzygian]

snip

The balance does not just concern DPS though. If you gave PLD WAR or DRK-level deeps it still wouldn't fix the rest of their kit which is disjointed and revolves around mechanics that are utterly divorced from eachother with the sole exception of Sheltron for block procs and MP. PLD wouldn't need insane DPS if their utility simply got the fix it deserves, for the same reason that BRDs don't need to do MNK or SMN-level dps. Imagine if they did something (totally unrealistic) like giving Paeon or Ballad to PLD. You could ditch your BRD/MCH and bring an extra caster. BRD/MCH would still have their place in DRK/WAR groups. You could also forgo a DRG for a MNK/NIN since you'd have no ranged DPS needing the piercing debuff. Something like that could open party compositions up to entirely new possibilities. As I said, its highly unlikely. But balance is something that concerns the entire party, not just the tanks.

You could even give PLD abilities to make it function as a healer/tank hybrid, like a Lustrate/Tetra clone and perhaps a Soil/Asylum clone as well. Thus allowing you to forgo a WHM, bring a SCH/AST and allow them to dip into cleric stance far more often. It'd be a totally different playstyle and would fit in with the direction that they've established for PLD. PLD isn't the raging berserker that is WAR and its not the menacing death-dealer that is DRK. Its a protector, a meat shield. They are not going to abandon that design choice any more than they are going to nerf WAR or DRK's DPS.

Giving PLD high personal DPS is A. Not likely to happen and B. Not the only fix to the problem.

[Shining_Tiger_Excalibur]

The balance does not just concern DPS though. If you gave PLD WAR or DRK-level deeps it still wouldn't fix the rest of their kit which is disjointed and revolves around mechanics that are utterly divorced from eachother with the sole exception of Sheltron for block procs and MP. PLD wouldn't need insane DPS if their utility simply got the fix it deserves, for the same reason that BRDs don't need to do MNK or SMN-level dps. Imagine if they did something (totally unrealistic) like giving Paeon or Ballad to PLD. You could ditch your BRD/MCH and bring an extra caster. BRD/MCH would still have their place in DRK/WAR groups. You could also forgo a DRG for a MNK/NIN since you'd have no ranged DPS needing the piercing debuff. Something like that could open party compositions up to entirely new possibilities. As I said, its highly unlikely. But balance is something that concerns the entire party, not just the tanks.

You could even give PLD abilities to make it function as a healer/tank hybrid, like a Lustrate/Tetra clone and perhaps a Soil/Asylum clone as well. Thus allowing you to forgo a WHM, bring a SCH/AST and allow them to dip into cleric stance far more often. It'd be a totally different playstyle and would fit in with the direction that they've established for PLD. PLD isn't the raging berserker that is WAR and its not the menacing death-dealer that is DRK. Its a protector, a meat shield. They are not going to abandon that design choice any more than they are going to nerf WAR or DRK's DPS.

Giving PLD high personal DPS is A. Not likely to happen and B. Not the only fix to the problem.

Oh, I completely understand where you're coming from saying that it's not just a DPS issue. Our kit is indeed a mess. I have a signature in my posts of a thread I took days to type out for suggesting changes they could make to the job that would be a way to fix it. The community pretty much accepted the thread with neutrality and it's since died. I've been saying the job needs reworked to even accomplish balance for a while now. I also said the longer they prolong fixing it the more and more and more obvious it will become that it's a mess right now. The job has to be reworked. It has to work with itself and others, it has to overcome its own weaknesses over time. That's the whole reason why Warrior is the ideal job right now. It's not at all because it just puts up massive numbers. It ensures its own survival while also boosting its damage. The DPS is just a benefit and the skills have been tailored around that.

Square, give that kind of shit to everyone, we need to be able to have built in obstacle destruction.

[Shurrikhan]

I have a signature in my posts of a thread I took days to type out for suggesting changes they could make to the job that would be a way to fix it.

I'll be heading over to your thread in just a bit once I've finished posting my initial thoughts here. I'll edit here as well when I've finished reading it fully.

When I look at these changes I see:
- TP consuption worsened by lack of Shield Swipe as a low-TP GCD. The 10-TP deduction on GB, used only every 24s, does not make up for the loss of the 20-TP deduction on Shield Swipe, which is ideally used once per GB to best time GB's DoT refresh.
- Blocking/parrying magic refused, even at reduced values.
- Block/dodge/parry RNG remains untouched. As the one job utilizing all three, PLD especially feels left in muck.
- PLD MT dps mostly unchanged. PLD OT dps was already in a fairly good place whereas MT dps floundered behind the other tanks. I'm fairly certain that if they were keeping its refresh component then that would be mentioned on the patch notes. Removing the ability for Shield Swipe to refresh on block removes the entirety of its MT benefits. Though those were few enough at 60, already, that will make a significant loss to spot-enmity in dungeon pulls and mitigation utility, and will feel like a shot to foot in any High-level roulette when you pop Bulwark for a free (at that time significantly enmity- and control-increasing) Shield Swipe spam.

Now, if they go ahead and keep the refresh component atop the 15s oGCD (Hell yes...), my only question--not even a complaint, really--is... why ever use a Tower Shield? We're not exactly mitigating 33% of anything out here, especially now that STR doesn't affect block values.

[RiisWolf]

It may be nice that Swipe is may be used more often because of this, but I don't think that lowering the cost of gore blade, shield bash, and nerfing the benefits shield Swipe had is fixing more problem than they are not. In fact this barely fixes two problems.

[Kyne_Lyons]

The total changes to Paladin are incredibly minimal. Shield Swipe will result in roughly a 3% DPS increase on fights with Physical attacks to block throughout, and you'll save 30 TP per minute with the changes to Goring Blade. An adjustment this small won't make any meaningful movement in the problems Paladin faces in the current meta.

[Kyne_Lyons]

Shield Swipe spam currently is a DPS loss. If A) Goring Blade is already on your target and B) You don't need threat (Halone) you should be using C) Royal Authority as it's higher average potency to complete a combo. If a boss is about to change phase with no chance of keeping your combo going (A1S, A3S only) you might see a slight gain by using a Shield Swipe before they go away, but only if your next move would have been a Fast Blade.

So basically never.

[Shurrikhan]

Shield Swipe spam currently is a DPS loss. If A) Goring Blade is already on your target and B) You don't need threat (Halone) you should be using C) Royal Authority as it's higher average potency to complete a combo. If a boss is about to change phase with no chance of keeping your combo going (A1S, A3S only) you might see a slight gain by using a Shield Swipe before they go away, but only if your next move would have been a Fast Blade.

So basically never.

At a 2.5s GCD, you have the option of reapplying GB's DoT 1.5 seconds early or 1 second late (SS once). [Take your pick.]
At a 2.4s GCD you have the option of replacing it 2.4 seconds early, or 0 seconds late (SS once). [Pick is obvious.]
I'll admit, I've got a lot more SS than I want right now, but for me Swiping once per GB is a definite dps increase.

[Kyne_Lyons]

I mean when Poping Bulwark you have a chance to spam SS with 210 potency for the next 15 sec without priming something. I'm just trying to see how its a DPS loss by doing that. Of course it wont be possible to do that after 3.1.

Because the average potency of almost every combo move Paladin does except for Halone combos is higher than 210. Halone combos are 203.33 average potency for reference.

Goring Blade: 150 + 230 + 540 or (220+320)/3 = 306.667 potency per combo move average.
Royal Authority: 150 + 200 + 340/3 = 230 potency per combo move average.

Using either of these combos averages higher potency-per-button-push than using Shield Swipe spam, which would be just 210.

At a 2.5s GCD, you have the option of reapplying GB's DoT 1.5 seconds early or 1 second late (SS once). [Take your pick.]
At a 2.4s GCD you have the option of replacing it 2.4 seconds early, or 0 seconds late (SS once). [Pick is obvious.]
I'll admit, I've got a lot more SS than I want right now, but for me Swiping once per GB is a definite dps increase.

Clipping DoTs is not necessarily a strict DPS loss, and in the case of Goring Blade it's still better to just re-apply it and get straight back to Royal Authority combos. If you clip early and only get 7 ticks of the Goring Blade:

150 + 230 + 500 or (220+280)/3= 293.33 potency per combo move average, which would then send you back into the 230 potency average Royal Authority combos.

To compound this, let's assume that using Shield Swipe allowed you to extend uptime on Goring Blade with 100% precision, you're adding a 210 potency move to the Goring Blade combo that reduces it's overall effective potency versus clipping.

150 + 230 + 210 + 540 (220+ 320)/4= 282.5 potency per combo move on average.

That's why the only way it's a DPS increase is if your next move will be less than 210 potency and you'll lose your combo due to the boss becoming untargettable, a.k.a. Fast Blade.