PLD abilities

[PogueX]

So does any pally use abilities like Divine Veil, Clemency, sheltron or Royal Authority? I have the impression that a lot of the new pally abilities are "meh"


I like divine veil but im not sure how useful it is. Nor do i know if any of these spells are routine in the average pally's rotation know and days

[zcrash970]

Now I'm not a pally but you want to be use DV, Shelltron, and RA. A barrier, a guarantee block with mp return, and a dps attack are great

[Ashkendor]

I use Royal Authority constantly. There's not much point in spamming RoH if you are already holding a large aggro lead over the rest of your party; the potency on RA is far higher. The other three are a little more selectively useful. In dungeons, I use Sheltron a lot on trash packs for the mana restore, and it's great for single-hit physical tankbusters (like Heavenly Heel in the new EX trial). Divine Veil is a little bit of mitigation for whomever is nearby you. It's nice to use any time you know that the party is going to take some AoE damage; the problem is that you can't just pop it and have the mitigation be active. You have to be healed by someone besides yourself with the buff active in order to trigger it, which takes some of the control of when it goes off out of your hands. Clemency I use quite a bit, though usually it's covering for bad healers (or dead healers, or the complete lack of healers) or when I'm solo.

[Jpec07]

In +50 content, they're "okay." We finally have a DPS finisher and a DoT, which brings us categorically up to par with other jobs in the game (but still not really all that unique at all).

Rage of Halone is more useful while you're gearing up and immediately after the pull (or when trying to recover an errant mob from that leet BLM who got it before you could). But once you've got enough enmity on a boss or the mob you're focusing, Royal Authority is where it's at.

You'll want to make sure to try to keep Goring Blade up as much as possible says the PLD who almost never keeps it up. It'll help with enmity and is a pretty high-potency combo when the DoT runs its course.

Sheltron is situational, especially because there's so little physical damage going out nowadays (there may be more in Mocianne's and Pharos Hard).

Divine Veil is also situational, and you'll want to put a macro into it to make sure your healers know to heal you to activate it.

Clemency can also be pretty beastly, but is definitely stronger when you're off-tanking in Slaying gear (I've noticed a ~2500HP dip in its effectiveness since switching from Slaying to Fending at my healer's request). The 3s cast time makes it hard to use, but you can use it to keep your party up if your healer had to AFK for a few seconds.

All in all, they're not bad because they function, but they're not exactly great, either.

[Malicewolf]

Divine Veil is very hard to use as well as situational. I've macro'd it, but it still get's ignored half the time and the other half, people are too far away and the healer is spamming heals too quickly and set it off with hardly anyone in range (or no one). When I'm running with my FC in a skype call however, it works just fine.
Clemency is great for boss fights when the boss isn't wailing down on you like crazy. Mobs however, not very useful as the stream of attacks are just too constant to pull one off. Not to mention, it takes about 2/5 of your MP. So for a PLD, it's no use on mobs as we require flash to really hold down mobs and can't afford to lose so much MP on a heal that probably won't get through in time and takes enough time, that a healer would likely pull aggro from you in that time frame. If it's a slow boss you're MT'ing or you are OT, it's great!
Sheltron, helpful, but easily wasted if you don't pay attention or time it carefully.
I have not yet been blessed with the use of Royal Authority. But I hear it's great :P

[Seku]

Their all decent in the new throdan fight if your healer's aren't that great. But other than that, yes their meh and can easily be replaced / aren't really needed. Except RA...you wanna be using that once you're good with hate and have goring blade up.

[Yonanja]

Divine Veil: Sounds nice on paper, not really all that useful tho, since it got a long cooldown and it can be tricky to hit the party with it sometimes.

Clemency: Pretty much only use this in normal dungeons, if there's a misshap and the healer dies, then I try to keep people alive with it just for the chuckles. In reality it's pretty crappy tho.

Royal Authority: Sure I use it since it excists, but I've never really seen the point of having DPS only attacks on a tank (that includes all tankclasses), we're there to... you know, TANK!? In my opinion they should have given us something different instead, but meh!

Goring Blade: It's ok I guess, same as with Royal Authority. But why is the PLD DoT skill the only one hidden behind a combo barrier?

Sheltron: Pretty much really the only useful skill PLD got with the expansion in my opinion. Too bad I don't really have all that many things to spend my mana on tho, unless I'm spamming flash.

[Ralvenom]

Royal Authority: Sure I use it since it excists, but I've never really seen the point of having DPS only attacks on a tank [...]

Because, like it or hate it, tank dps totally matters -- even if you are the "defense tank".

What's silly to me is that PLD players are always whining about what essentially constitutes doing their job. Good performance of the tank role REQUIRES (regardless of meta, actually) that a tank do the following:

1. Maintain hate,
2. Stay alive through proper use of abilities,
3. AND do as much damage as it is possible for a tank to do.

The concern right now (although, it's been halfway fixed in 3.1) is that PLD MT damage is lower than WAR MT or DRK MT damage.

Why in the world so many PLD tanks want to complain about combos that do damage is beyond me. It's such a ridiculous thing to complain about...

Divine Veil: Sounds nice on paper, not really all that useful tho, since it got a long cooldown and it can be tricky to hit the party with it sometimes.

The main intent of this skill, I imagine, was to give PLD something in raids to mitigate raid-wide damage. In other words, it works best when you coordinate with your healers and use it to help with hard-hitting raid boss AoE attacks that the group generally is stacked up for. If you fail to coordinate with your healers to allow proper use of the ability, that's your problem -- not a problem with the design/intent of the ability.
The CD isn't really that long, considering some of the "best" tank CDs in the game are 180 seconds, whereas Divine Veil is 150 seconds. Over the course of a 8:30 fight, that's 3 uses of Divine Veil. That's the same recast time as Vengeance (WAR skill).

[Sapphidia]

To mirror Ralvenom above, I feel people don't really understand the way to use Divine Veil best. I find it one of the more useful skills in my repertoire. I generally find good spots to use it on just about every raid encounter. It's all about adding additional stability to the group.

The onus isnt on the Healer to suddenly cast a heal on the tank to proc it. The onus is on the -tank- to know when they're being healed so it gets procced automatically. The tank has to learn the fight, and then weaves in Divine Veil at points of heaviest AOE damage, and needs to learn how their healers heal in order to ensure it procs.

It's also not really an AOE shield on its own, think of it more as a way to boost the aoe heals of your healers during moments they might otherwise struggle with (particularly back to back AOEs, or a single huge tera-flare esque like Thordan Ex's limitbreak).

Some examples - when grouped up for soaking the double cleave on the entire party in the hand phase in A3S. Pop one after the first digititis part and when everyone is stacked infront of it, you'll get healed anyway as there's so much AOE healing needed and it'll fire off and hit everyone. Thordan Ex, in the first phase you can cast it after the thunderstorm then run into the group to soak the Dragon's Rage, and the heal that healed up the Dragon's Rage will pop your Veil so it's up to soak the following Ancient Qaga. Also, when tanking A2S and standing near your co-tank and both taking lots of damage, popping your divine veil as you're being spam healed is the same as an instant cast stoneskin on the other tank.

Divine Veil is -not- good if you just pop it when people are spread out and then shout at your healers to heal you. It's mostly about knowing a fight and knowing how your team's healers heal, and then using it as a way to enhance their AOE heals on the roughest moments, often when you have multiple AOEs going out at once. Just remember that Divine Veil is procced if you get hit by a Medica or Succor, so often it's easy to just pop it before you know one of those is comign, rather than rely on a healer specifically casting a single target heal on you.

That said, I'd certainly not argue against DV getting a buff (ideally a shorter cooldown, maybe a bigger radius or a boost to 15% or something). It's okay as it is and I find I get a lot of use out of it, but it's not exactly overpowered.

[Brannigan]

The CD isn't really that long, considering some of the "best" tank CDs in the game are 180 seconds, whereas Divine Veil is 150 seconds. Over the course of a 8:30 fight, that's 3 uses of Divine Veil. That's the same recast time as Vengeance (WAR skill).

In an 8:30 fight, warrior can use vengeance at:

0:00 start of the fight
2:00
4:00
6:00
8:00

Five times.

Divine Veil could be used at

0:00
2:30
5:00
7:30

4 times.

But you shouldn't really be comparing Vengeance and Divine Veil, since one is personal mitigation and the other is raid mitigation. Vengeance lasts 15 seconds while Veil lasts a set amount of HP (usually one hit, a raid AOE). Divine Veil's cooldown is too long. The closest ability to it is Deployment Tactics, which can absorb WAY more damage and is on a shorter cooldown.