A Few Paladin Ideas

[Janyxea]

Hey all, long time reader, first time poster here in the tank threads. I mained PLD throughout 2.xx and the first bit of 3.0. Ended up switching to WAR, and have been happily Fell Cleaving the countryside ever since. As a long time PLD player, I've stewed a bit on some of the things that annoyed me about PLD playstyle- and I've come up with a couple novel ideas that I wanted to share.

I like WAR not because it's OP, but because EVERYTHING in the WAR kit has great synergy. All of WARs abilities seem well designed, and work well together (with the exception of Fracture). Synergy is what I feel PLD lacks, and it's what I'd like to see more of with PLD.

So here's my ideas:

1.) Circle of Scorn/Flash Synergy - I'd like to see PLD have a little bit better time with AoE damage/threat. Not huge, mind you, but a bit better. My idea is to have 2 things happen: Flash refreshes the DOT effect of Circle of Scorn, and Circle of Scorn applies a stacking DOT (up to say a max stack of 3). I think this would really create an cool interaction that allowed skilled PLDs a shot at doing more AoE damage in a sustained, though ramping way. IE the longer the fight, the more stacks of Circle of Scorn the PLD gets up, and keeps them going with well-timed flashes.

2.) Block Procs can be used to EITHER shield swipe, or if you cast Clemency while a block is proc'd, it is insta-cast (and consumes the proc). This one is pretty simple- gives a means by which to get better usefulness out of Clemency, but making it a choice between getting a Shield Swipe in for more DPS/threat, or getting a nice heal off. The incentive to choose between one or the other would be: If you use the insta-cast Clemency option, it puts Shield Swipe on CD, and if you use Shield Swipe, you can't get an insta cast Clemency until Shield Swipe is off CD. Mechanically Shield Swipe would give you a debuff that says "Can't Instacast Clemency"- you'd sill be able to hard cast Clemency if you wanted.

3.) Shield Swipe needs to refund some amount of TP. You know it, I know it, Yoshi P knows it. PLDs have miserable TP management options, and this would really help that issue a lot. Especially with #2 above- it would reinforce the choice between an insta-cast powerful heal or more TP. How much TP? I'm not sure, but SOME amount.

4.) Damage Stances off the GCD. God it pisses me off so much that this didn't make it in to 3.1. I can't believe I even have so say this. Jesus what a no-brainer.

5.) Divine Veil needs love. My BIGGEST complaint is that Divine Veil is just confusing for non-PLD players. It needs a better animation that does two things: Gives a better visual queue for the healers that says "I NEED A HEAL, PLEASE PROC MY SHIELD." and it also needs a ground indication animation that says to everyone "STAND HERE THE PALADIN IS ABOUT TO GIVE US ALL A SHIELD". Also while we're at it- an animation that says "THE SHIELD WAS SUCCESSFULLY PROC'D AND YOU NOW HAVE THAT SHIELD- THANK YOUR PALADIN."Better animations would make this ability SO much better. Also, PLD needs to benefit from the shield. It would be neat to be able to get the shield in emergencies as a Main Tank where you think you're about to die.

Anyway, I'm putting these ideas out there because I'd like to see PLD get some love- and I'm in the camp that WAR doesn't need nerfs- other classes just need synergy on par with WAR.

Peace!

[Jpec07]

I'll read this in a bit, but did you know you can get around the character limit by editing your post? Makes posting monolithic walls of text pretty easy.

[Janyxea]

Oh god, I did not know that! Thank you!

[Hayward]

Cue Warriors unironically screaming "OVERPOWERED!!!!?!?!!".

[Malicewolf]

As someone who main's PLD, I'm quite open to most suggestions on changing it :P

But few things:
1. If you edit your post, you can surpass the 1000 char limit (so no need to post 7 times to get your point across! Don't worry, everyone does this at first).

2. Clairvoyance? Did you mean Convalescence or Clemency? The name made me thing Convalescence, but based on you saying insta cast, I am assuming Clemency since that's the only thing that really has a casting time for a PLD.

3. It is VERY helpful to put a macro with Divine Veil. I've had many healer's tell me that mine helped them out tremendously. If you need the macro, feel free to use the below:
/micon "Divine Veil"
/ac "Divine Veil"
/p "Using Divine Veil, everyone run to me. Heal to activate"

The only thing that the above is really doing is making it so that when you activate Divine Veil, it makes an automatic party chat statement. You can easily change what it says to anything you want.

But what you said about there being a ground indication, that would be awesome. Just have a circle glow around your PLD with it's range until it is activated.

I've seen the Circle of Scorn/Flash suggestion before and I do like it. Although, you made a change so that it could stack multiple. That might be a bit much imo. I'm not looking to be the SMN of tanks :P (Need more DoTs!).

The TP management part I think could be brought in elsewhere instead of with shield swipe. I'd rather see it on a cooldown. With your suggestion though, I will say, I would NEVER run out of TP! :P

And a most definite yes to the stances... It is such a bummer that I literally have to focus on stance dancing between my rotation to ensure I don't screw it up. It's not the BIGGEST issue, but still ridiculous.

[Janyxea]

Sorry, I meant Clemency. Totally derped the name- been a while since I PLD'd.

I have a Divine Veil macro, but I'm a big believer that you shouldn't HAVE to have a macro for people to understand your abilities. Just IMO.

Stacking Circle of Scorn could be OP, BUT, it would take 75 seconds to get 3 stacks up- which I think would preclude it from being too OP in most multi-mob situations (IE the mobs are going to die before you can get 3 stacks rolling). In single target scenarios, it does just give a straight up buff to PLD dps- but at the cost of having to work in flashes (even if you're off-tank DPSing, or MTing cause you would normally not use flash on a single big bad). It would need some tweaking, but I think it would be easy to balance because you could just play with the potency numbers for Circle of Scorn.

As for TP management- it depends on how much TP you got back (also remember that Shield Swipe has a CD now, so you can't infinitely spam it). But if it gave back something like 20-30 tp every 15 seconds, that would at least put it in the ballpark of WAR's equilibrium.

Thanks for the input!

[Shurrikhan]

1. My only issue with this is that Circle of Scorn, much like Spirits Within, feels like it's supposed to be one of those very direct, at-the-ready skills. Forcing later Flash usage to get the most out of it therefore seems a bit counter-intuitive. It still seems one of the better options for granting some PLD AoE, one of I've suggested in the past, even, but I'm sure there are even better options still.

2. I certainly wouldn't mind this, but at the same time it doesn't seem especially attractive to me, either. I'd honestly rather just have a higher interruption resistance embedded in Shield Oath, and give PLD the ability to block/parry while casting either by default, or, again, within Shield Oath. That, or revise Clemency to be a bit more usable.

3. The only issue with this is we'd still be utter crap in magical fights, much like DRK TP sustain when unable to stance-dance. Though I'll take any PLD Sword-and-Board identity I can, I'd prefer something with universal usage when it comes to something as basic as TP consumption rates. I'd sooner take a 5-10 TP restore per FoF hit (60-120 TP total regenerated per 90s) or Fast Blade TP cost reduced from 70 to 60 (120 TP saved per 90s).

4. Not saying it's a bad thing--I would certainly enjoy this change--but this would be essentially the same as DRK. A GCD to activate tank stance, no GCD to drop tank stance (and in PLD's case, activate Sword Oath). As a side-note, I don't quite mind PLD stance-dancing as is, even. In my case I often swap into Sword only for the 2 GBs of Fight or Flight on decently hard-pressed fights, and generally enjoy the swaps. I'd rather Sword and Shield Oath get something a bit more unique than simply dropping half the swap time (duplicating DRK). This would still be an improvement though, definitely. There are just many other ways to handle it, some of which may also incidentally solve TP issues to an extent. I'd like to PLD stance-dancing encouraged further, but not necessarily just by removing its obstacles.

5. Agreed on pretty much all this. Though, I'd honestly prefer, especially if the CD were reduced, that the PLD could prioritize either himself or the party through Divine Veil, such as by creating a shield which he can then release onto the party or keep for himself. Then again, that'd probably end up going stale through being used too often as just another minor mitigation tool. I guess it'd be a balance between that and not really seeing any noticeable use out of the ability in encounters without any significant AoEs.

Edit: > Hayward
Nothing here remotely OP unless the Shield Swipe refunds are over 10-15 TP each. Instant Clemency would a heavy buff, especially as MT (where not only blocking but taking hits that would otherwise interrupt), but the sheer mana cost still keeps it from being overpowered as it takes ~40 seconds to recover its mana unless spamming Riot Blade / Goring Blade.

[Fernosaur]

Put Divine Veil on a 60 sec. cooldown instead of 180 is honestly the change I'd be happiest with. It's not like it's super powerful anyways, although if Vit ends up becoming the damage stat for tanks, a 2200 HP shield every minute could be pretty powerful.

Though I think that's what PLD needs, tbh, something actually powerful that makes them useful for the party in their own, unique way

[PenelopeWinn]

1.) Circle of Scorn/Flash Synergy - I'd like to see PLD have a little bit better time with AoE damage/threat. Not huge, mind you, but a bit better. My idea is to have 2 things happen: Flash refreshes the DOT effect of Circle of Scorn, and Circle of Scorn applies a stacking DOT (up to say a max stack of 3). I think this would really create an cool interaction that allowed skilled PLDs a shot at doing more AoE damage in a sustained, though ramping way. IE the longer the fight, the more stacks of Circle of Scorn the PLD gets up, and keeps them going with well-timed flashes.

Now imagine a boss fight where you get to keep 3 stacks of CoS up at all time. >.>

[Malicewolf]

Now imagine a boss fight where you get to keep 3 stacks of CoS up at all time. >.>

I would honestly love that. But yea... I would also be like... FEAR ME! I AM THE DOT MASTER!! while proceeding to manderville until the boss keeled over.