So, after the patch, how goes it with Paladin?

[SirPhoebos]

I'm pretty underwhelmed by the changes. And depending or raid design to address the deficiencies would only trade one imbalance for another (everyone bitching that WAR and DRK don't have enough mitigation to be viable).

Personally, I really like the PLD aesthetic, but I feel that mechanically, the class needs an overhaul from the ground up.

[alimdia]

First of all, no it's not. Swapping is a loss of at least 500 potency (in and out, average RA potency with slashing debuff). In those 3 GCD, you get .2*250*3+55*(3 or 4)+30 or 40 so you get about 350-400 potency.

Second of all, that's actually all the more reason Halone should be at least 300 potency. They should be encouraging us to use it for the STR debuff if we're OT or when we're MTing and have already established aggro. Making it so low discourages its use except for hate when absolutely necessary.

My calculations
Assume only RA combo spam
Not taking into account any debuffs
213 avg potency per GCD

213 * 5 = 1065
auto atks 6 - 600
1665*.8 = 1332

213 * 3 = 639
auto atks 5 with sword 1 with shield - 850
850+639 = 1489

If you stance dance at a time where you have CoS or SW or debuffs/buffs up, the difference will only be greater.

Weird, the tool tip clearly says "Combo Bonus: Increases damage dealt by 20% Duration: 24s"

@Rawker - That's interesting that its applied that way. Any idea why the dev's did the math like that? As for the flight or flight argument, I was just straight out comparing non cooldown buffs.

If you want to compare cooldown buffs, wouldn't it be more appropriate to compare berserk vs FoF? Or you just trying to compare the dps increase duration of 24 vs 30 seconds?

Since you seem to like math, let me give you a very simple example:

Lets say every 10 seconds you deal 10k dmg. For the sake of buffs, lets take a look at 3 cycles of that.

So that's 30k dmg, in 30 seconds.

Paladin:

30k + FoF = 39k dmg

Warrior:

20k + berserk (only 20 seconds) + 10k unbuffed dmg = 40k dmg.

Looks to me in that simple math, that warrior with just berserk pulls ahead by 1k dmg. That's not even bringing in the potency differences between combos.

Wheres the 5s pacification. Are you assuming healers esunaing 100%? What about healer dps loss then?

[Xyphon]

@Alimdia - Add in maim and that's 46k dmg. The gap only increases every time these cool downs are up again.

In terms of healers, it depends on "which" healer you are referring to. Selene on obey doing Fey's Caress for instance, would not slow a sch's dps. It also depends on their dps rotations, because if done properly there should be barely any DPS loss at all. I was leaving out the 5 seconds of pacification to just simply show a proper comparison of the skills. If you want to compare the pacification, you'd also have to compare the potency differences between warrior and paladin combos. This is also not taking into count any other buffs or crit hits.

If you want to spend the time including all of the variables, be my guest lol.

[eagledorf]

Actually, I must admit that you're correct about SwO being a DPS gain in 3 GCD if you don't cancel combo, but your calculation is actually off. First of all RA is an average of 230 potency with no debuffs (150+200+340)/3=230, second a weapon with a 2.16 second delay will only get 4 hits in 4 GCD and 5 in 5, and third the potency of an auto attack isn't 100 unless your weapon delay is 3 seconds (it's 100/3*delay) so it's 72 for the Gordian Blade.

So for the Gordian Blade staying in ShO is (5*72+230*5)*.8=1208 potency and swapping to SwO is 230*3+4*122+72*.8=1236 so it is a potency gain of 28.

[Jim_Berry]

For Thordan, I see a lot of DRKs and WARs refuse to MT. Glad I didn't give up on my PLD because after a few learning parties, while I haven't cleared, I get asked if I want to come as PLD lol... Makes me feel good.

[Freyyy]

For Thordan, I see a lot of DRKs and WARs refuse to MT. Glad I didn't give up on my PLD because after a few learning parties, while I haven't cleared, I get asked if I want to come as PLD lol... Makes me feel good.

WARs perform as good as PLD in this fight in terms of mitigation. Dunno why suddenly people ask PLD to come. If they want a tankier physical MT, just make the WAR MT and DRK OT.

[eagledorf]

DRK is not very good as OT on this fight though. They provide essentially zero utility since they can't reprisal and the party-wide damage is largely not possible to mitigate with Delirium and not appreciably better DPS than a PLD since you shouldn't take much damage OTing (the charges and comets I suppose). On top of that, the DPS checks are soft and can be survived even if you lack the DPS to meet them fully with Divine Veil and Stoneskin (unless DPS is really terrible, like level 50 terrible, in which case you're doomed anyway).

This is actually another major part of the problem with the tanks. WAR really is designed to OT so it's a poor choice to have any other tank do it even if it's preferable for the WAR to MT. In this case, it's probably most intelligent to have a SwO PLD MT and a WAR OT or use a second WAR to OT.

[Freyyy]

[...] and not appreciably better DPS than a PLD since you shouldn't take much damage OTing (the charges and comets I suppose).

DRK still does way more OT DPS than PLD and lasts longer without TP-starving thanks to Blood Weapon. I believe that WAR MT - DRK OT is more total tank DPS than PLD MT - WAR OT even with the Shield Swipe change. So if people want a MT with more physical mitigation, they don't have to switch jobs in their party, just make the WAR MT and DRK OT. But it's not even necessary. This fight is physical-heavy but DRK still mitigates good enough to survive everything while still doing more MT DPS. So DRK MT - WAR OT is still the way to go for clearing faster. Overkill mitigation is wasted DPS. DPS, on the contrary, is never overkill. Tho WAR - WAR is very efficient too, I agree.

[eagledorf]

In pure OT role DRK and PLD are very close in DPS. The best evidence is in A4S where the best PLD does 90% the best DRK's DPS even with the DRK getting hit for MP because of the loss of Reprisal and Lower Blows for part of the fight (much better than mystery people making videos).

In this fight, mitigation is actually superior to that small of a DPS difference because you can literally ignore things. Like you can ignore two meteor circles completely and burn the middle one with just Divine Veil since it's only about 17k damage from letting those go off.

If you want to try for a speed clear you might prefer a DRK, but it's in no way optimal for this fight, especially for a PF group.

[Freyyy]

Didn't expect mitigation to be able to do such things even for this fight. Gotta try it as PLD then. But if they plan on doing more encounters like that for the next set of raid it will not fix the imbalance anyway. It will just make DRK the next "undesired" tank. I would be disappointed to see SE come up with something like this instead of fixing the jobs.