Why does Clemency get interrupted? And why does Sword/Shield Oath reset combo?

[Sapphidia]

For reference, what I was told (and tested to seemingly be the case) is that casts are interrupted in FFXIV when you take a single hit of damage that's equal to or greater than 25% of your health. At least, I believe it's 25%, it might be a lower number, maybe 10 or 15. I'm 90% sure at least that the -size- of an individual single hit determines whether or not you get interrupted.

You can actually often spam clemency whilst tanking a pack of instance trash despite being hit hundreds of times because none of the trash mobs hit you hard enough to trigger this interrupt. On bosses of course, most autoattacks or spells will be over the threshhold and will thus interrupt any cast you make. Amusingly this means that Clemency is easier to get off with a high vitality build and with tanking cooldowns up, though the -size- of the clemency scales with Strength of course.

If the devs do what they implied they might in 3.2 and rebalance tanks to use vitality as their damage stat, such that all tanks start wearing full fending and going 35 stats in vitality, tanks will end up with higher health pools and thus will naturally be less likely to have a Clemency interrupted compared to now. I still feel clemency needs some kind of way of Surecasting it via a stance or cooldown, but if SE decide to ignore it and leave it as it is, it might be slightly more useful in 3.2 anyway simply due to tanks having bigger health pools.

If anyone can actually confirm the mechanics of interrupting and health threshold though, I'd be grateful - this is from word of mouth and casual tests so might be incorrect.

[fm_fenrir]

If anyone can actually confirm the mechanics of interrupting and health threshold though, I'd be grateful - this is from word of mouth and casual tests so might be incorrect.

I'm pretty sure there's a damage threshold for an interrupt, but I'm not sure what the value is. I've only had one clemency cast interrupted as PLD, but I also got blasted with a crit for the interrupt, so I don't know if it was the crit or the damage that did it.

Anyway, OP, ShO/SwO are spells, so they interrupt combos. Defiance/Deliverance are abilities (which don't interrupt combos), and the "tank bonus" for Defiance doesn't come into play unless someone hits you with a Lustrate/Tetra immediately after you pop it; ShO is an instant -20% damage taken, so yes, it has a penalty associated with it.

[Freyyy]

Anyway, OP, ShO/SwO are spells, so they interrupt combos. Defiance/Deliverance are abilities (which don't interrupt combos), and the "tank bonus" for Defiance doesn't come into play unless someone hits you with a Lustrate/Tetra immediately after you pop it; ShO is an instant -20% damage taken, so yes, it has a penalty associated with it.

Unleash and Flash are both spells and both don't interrupt combos so it has absolutely nothing to do with this. And Oaths being on the GCD is enough of a penalty, interrupting combos is too much.

[Bashum]

As someone who mains warrior, I wholeheartedly support an instant or at least uninterruptible clemency, and no combo breaking when changing stances. Will it completely fix Paladins? Of course not, but it would sure make them a smoother overall experience to play.

Make the above changes, plus add some sort of way for them to increase raid dps by 3-5% and they'd probably be about right.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

They interrupt combos because the default setting is for GCDs abilities to do so. They didn't think to exempt Oaths, Clemency, etc. from this because they didn't think it would matter. It obviously does matter and something should be done (I think Shield Bash is a far worse offender, from a design perspective, but it may not be as relevant). They did exempt Flash and (old) Shield Swipe from interrupting combos, however, because they knew it would be a problem if they didn't.

It's just arbitrary; there's no rule. They exempt certain GCD abilities from interrupting combos because they think it will play better.

[repoe]

Because paladin wasnt developed to fluidly switch between stances.

[Sunako]

But paladin can use all defensive abilities inside sword oath(except tank stance ofc). Warrior need defiance for inner beast + equilibrium heal. DRK soul eater not heal anything without grit.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I mean, really, SE? You give us a wonderful spell (well...as wonderful as it could be, anyway) but then limit its use by letting it be interrupted. And the 3 second cast time? You'd think for over two thousand MP, it would cast faster than that, or at least not get interrupted...

Clemency is interruptable because it is a spell and that is not the real problem. It actually takes a fair bit of damage to interrupt a Paladin's spells, but the current "Str over Vit + fight in DpS stance" meta makes it far easier for monsters to interrupt casts. It takes more than 1.5 times the damage to interrupt a Vit paladin in Shield Oath than it does to interrupt a Str tank in Sword Oath if they are the same ilevel.

4000 damage taken within 3 seconds is more common than 6500 taken within 3 seconds.

And I never understood why Sword/Shield Oath resets combo progression. I feel as though that would help boost PLD's overall DPS/raid performance in end-game, if we were able to switch between stances. Perhaps not so freely.

Because in phase non-swap stance dancing was never intended to be a part of the tank skill suite. Tanks are intended to be in tank stance while tanking and in dps stance while not tanking.

Pretty much every fight where a tank needs to change stances to help with a dps check has a 3 or more second phase transition where combos would drop of anyways so changing stance is free.

The ease of Defiance/Deliverance stance swapping is the irregularity not the intended norm.

[Shurrikhan]

The ease of Defiance/Deliverance stance swapping is the irregularity not the intended norm.

Given that we have PLD at one end (2 GCDs, highest mana cost), Warrior at the other (no GCD loss, possible health loss and slower eHP increase), and DRK exactly in the middle of that 'ease of swapping' spectrum (1 GCD loss, moderate mana cost)... it seems kind of hard to say definitively that this was never intended...

It also seems hard for them to have actually completely neglected a simple consideration like "If the next 2 GCDs' worth of damage are less than 20% of the total undiminished damage of the swap window, it is better to swap than stay." That's just common sense. I can see that they may have intentionally made that compromise a gameplay component for PLD, but for them to have never considered that their scalar and its offset might eventually intersect (at 4-5 GCDs depending on prior combo position and oGCDs ready) seems unlikely.

And I never understood why Sword/Shield Oath resets combo progression. I feel as though that would help boost PLD's overall DPS/raid performance in end-game, if we were able to switch between stances. Perhaps not so freely.

For example:
(1) Switching to Shield Oath would reset combos, but switching to Sword Oath would not.

Just an idea. It'd be nice to (2) tack on Goring Blade without the damage reduction by Shield Oath, without having to do the entire combo for it in Sword Oath.

That said, this much is (1) DRK (drops combo on applying Grit, not upon dropping Grit) and (2) just dropping Shield Oath early, finishing combo, and then putting up Sword Oath (before having lost a second opportunity to buff your AA). For a GB, that just saved you 100 to 108 potency. If you you could swap into Sword Oath without losing combo, then you could slap on another 50 or 100 during that GB GCD's AA(s).

[Giantbane]

Given that we have PLD at one end (2 GCDs, highest mana cost), Warrior at the other (no GCD loss, possible health loss and slower eHP increase), and DRK exactly in the middle of that 'ease of swapping' spectrum (1 GCD loss, moderate mana cost)...

In reality, the PLD only loses time. MP is meaningless to PLD in the vast majority of situations where they'd even consider stance dancing. The MP a DRK spends always means lost damage, since excess MP can always be used to dump into DA + SE (or DA + DP if you've really got an excess of MP). So in practice, the PLD is losing 2x GCD worth of damage, while the DRK is losing 1 GCD and another ~85ish potency (75% of the difference between a DE and a DA + SE). I mean, DRK still has it better than the poor PLD at this point, but it's worth understanding.

The health that the WAR loses should be considered significant. But they also have, hands down, the best self healing among the 3 tanks, so it's sort of moo.