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

[Giantbane]

I hope they change it for both PLD and DRK.

Me too, it really feels much better with the WAR setup.

[Twilite]

Uhm.. That last line. The ease isn't broken.. And it doesn't seem strategically smart to swap mid combo.

[Galactimus]

While it's not a perfect solution you don't always have to switch to Sword Oath to increase your DPS.

You can simply remove Shield Oath, which doesn't use up your GCD, does not break your current combo, and removes the 20% damage penalty that Shield Oath was giving you. Being in this Oathless state is great for when you need to push that extra bit of damage without forcing yourself into another clunky oath.

Short term its a huge dps gain. Let's you finish your next couple combos with an extra 20% damage without losing your combo or a GCD.

Long-term it's a dps loss. Not being in Sword Oath for an extended period of time will eventually negate the bonus damage you did while Oathless. However this allows you to activate an Oath at a much better time (ie. when it won't break your combo, during phase transitions, etc.)

[Callidus]

While it's not a perfect solution you don't always have to switch to Sword Oath to increase your DPS.

You can simply remove Shield Oath, which doesn't use up your GCD, does not break your current combo, and removes the 20% damage penalty that Shield Oath was giving you. Being in this Oathless state is great for when you need to push that extra bit of damage without forcing yourself into another clunky oath.

I agree that this is a nifty trick, and can come in handy in some cases, but I rarely use it for more than a couple GCDs just to finish a combo... usually when I've screwed up and started one in ShOath when I had intended to switch to SwOath. *facepalm*

For other cases I've found that you either have a few second between phases to lessen the impact of changing to SwOath or you'll need to be in SwOath long enough that it isn't beneficial to stay Oathless to save the GCD.


So we have the following assumptions for our math
1. 600ish skillspeed - within a pretty average range at 60 and conveniently is about equal to a 2.4sec GCD. From the data I've seen plus or minus 50 skill speed is only a couple hundredths of a second in either direction when scaled to these levels, so minor variances in SkSpeed should have small impact on the final numbers.
2. 2.24 delay weapon, which most 60 PLDs use.
3. For the sake of example, we'll assume our example PLD does about 900DPS in Sword Oath. This number can really be anything as long as the % contributed via Sword Oath remains the same; and it should, more below.
4. With a standard DPS rotation, Sword Oath equals about 13% of a PLDs damage when active. Data seems to back this up. The % of contributed damage by SwOath with a DPS rotation should stay about this percentage even at various gear levels since we're talking potency here. As damage scales with weapon damage and attack, so too will SwOath's 50 potency per attack scale an equal amount. Minor exceptions to this should be minimal.

First, how much DPS does SwOath give us:
900*0.13 = 117DPS from SwOath

So without any Oath, you're looking at:
900-117 = 783DPS

Take these numbers and work it out for several GCDs:


This holds true at different DPS levels as long as the relative potency stays the same so the proportions are the same:




So, on average, you're better switching to SwOath if you plan on being out of ShOath for more than 7 GCDs. Otherwise it would be a DPS gain just to turn off ShOath. This is based on average DPS though, if you've saved a bunch of oGCDs to cram into your Oathless window it would skew a little more toward more time Oathless being either a gain or DPS neutral. I'm too lazy to do the math for various scenarios, but given we only have a few oGCDs and they're fairly short timers, I doubt you'd see more than *maybe* 8GCDs being worth while Oathless.

In summary, turning off Shield Oath is a viable alternative to switching to Sword Oath, but only if you'll be Oathless for ~19 seconds or less. That number goes even lower if you're using any sub-optimal GCSs from a potency perspective (RoH combo, etc).

[Ragology]

Oaths break combos because they're flagged as spells right? Maybe they should change it into an ability like how Defiance is?
I think they should make it so that changing oaths delivers an AOE attack during its animation, that way the cooldown isn't wasted. Make it scale with health available or health lost, depending on which oath you're switching into.

[PogueX]

Clemency is pretty much just a gimped heal, why use it for an emergency when it takes 3 seconds cast? Why use it before taking a big AOE when healers can do it better? Why use it for anything? Honestly it would of been better if they made it like WOW's Paladin...an instant cast. If their is one ability they need to fix next patch it's clemency hands down, maybe i'll go back to playing PLD when they fix a lot of their problems

[AlexiIvaniskavich]

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.

I would be interested in what that percentage exactly is. SOMEBODY PLEASE MATHS.

Also note that I work under the guise that the use of clemency is more on a scripted basis, rather than the OH SH** moments. I am not taking those moments into consideration.

My favorite use for clemency is during the cast bar of tank busters, so this is where I will do my research. Honestly, on mob pulls, I am a tank, not a healer. I hold agro and use defensive cooldowns, my healer’s primary job is to make sure I stay upright.

Potential issues I see:
(using A1S) Mitigated HCP (Sentinel + Rampart) does roughly 7k-9k ish damage – sorry been a while been running A1S as Drk lately - at 21k health (full vit build) 25% is 5,250. I concede that it may be plausible to mitigate that buster to be below the 25% to allow for a non-interrupted Clemency, The question becomes, why use clemency here at all?

It is my healer’s fault if I am not topped off before a tank buster on a scripted fight. If I am still sitting around 15-16k health, why would I bother casting clemency on myself when I should be poking the boss with my sword? My healer certainly won’t be in panic mode with me at that kind of health.

On a STR build, where I am starting at 16k health, during HCP my health bar looks like this:
16k > 8k > (clemency goes off) 12k. Net loss is about 4k health, which is what I have been averaging on DRK (little less but meh potato, potatoe)

Of course, none of considers harder hitting tank busters, or damage output lost etc, etc, but at this point I have done more math today than I care to. If someone can pick up where I left off with my figures that are slightly better than blatant generalizations, please do!

[Kaizer]

Wild stupid head canon conspiracy crap text incoming...

So initially WAR was not a good job and not looked favorably upon. It was the job that was depicted as the WoL in the cutscenes for 2.0 (and I think even before). Then boom, buffs came in and now its super good.

In 2.0 everyone was loldrgfloorbbq and it wasn't look favorably upon. Then it HW it was depicted in the cutscenes and a major focal point. Now boom, awesome dps.

Paladin is next... tinfoil hat off...

[Februs]

Wild stupid head canon conspiracy crap text incoming...Paladin is next... tinfoil hat off...

Dragoon wasn't really broken. If the player was good and used their rotation correctly you could roll extremely high Dps even before 3.0. Proof in the pudding is that none of Drg's abilities were actually buffed or nerfed with 3.0. They only added the new mechanic of Blood of the Dragon (which essentially turns Drg's into monsters). People only looked unfavorably at Drg's because of the persisting notion of them dying frequently which carried over from FFXI. Sometimes the "lol Drg" is justified, because their jump animation tends to get them caught in AoE's when everyone else can move (hence why their jump animation time has been adjusted twice, that I can remember). Otherwise though, the job was fine and nothing was "fixed." It was only hyped in HW advertisements to get people more into it.

War had serious problems that made them nearly unplayable in the First Coil. A lot of those problems are similar to what Pld is facing now, especially Tp consumption (which was also a War issue and subsequently saw every combo finisher they have reduced in Tp cost in 2.1), but War still had it worse back then. Their Cd's were awful and made then unsuited for Tank Busters. Their Hp regen was heavily nerfed compared to now, and they ran dry on Tp all the time. The only thing they exceeded at was Threat generation.

By comparison, Pld is a tiny bit better off. They're not strictly unplayable in end game. They're just ridiculously unbalanced and substantially harder to play than War's and Drk's. The rest of the team has to cover the slack, and that's not cool. There's also the added community stigma of them being wimpy compared to Drks and Wars (dmg wise), so less and less people want to play as them.

Right now, its definitely a safe bet to say that Pld is by far the job in FFXIV that requires the most attention and fixes from SE. I just hope that it doesn't take a full expansion (Drg) or a mass abandonment (War) to see it happen.

[Brannigan]

Dragoon wasn't really broken
-

They could hang on DPS for the most part, but frequently turning bosses really screwed them before their positionals got changed to not break combos upon failure. The bigger issue with them was magic defense in Final Coil. For the first few weeks depending on your drops they'd get smashed by unavoidable magic damage like megaflare much harder than the other jobs. Not much changed from 2.55->3.0 for dragoon because it all got fixed back in 2.4. Actually, Dragoon got a ton of tiny adjustments over the life of 2.0 - jump animation and cooldown used to be much, much longer.