Thread: PLD 4.0

Originally Posted by Giantbane

They should make parry boost block slightly, simply to make up for the fact that they roll against each other. But they'd also need to make parry a more universally desirable stat.

Skill Speed and Spell Speed exist because they wanted an identical stat for mages and melee (while punishing cross-classed stuff as the "wrong" domain). Unfortunately, the two hybrid classes that use both got shafted as a result.

Anyway, parry is pretty much universally garbage because it can't be relied on to actually mitigate anything unless you burn Keen Flurry or Raw Intuition (converting parry into a weaker version of block strength with Bulwark). The only way they could make parry more desirable to stack as a tank is to eat into the value of certain CDs like Awareness or Foresight, by directly altering how incoming damage is handled based on how much parry you have (lowering crit rate per +X000 parry or reducing physical damage per +X000 parry, for example).

Other things: I'm not going to front here, I haven't been able to reproduce the DPS disparity people see with DRK/PLD in MT slot, so I can't really say with certainty DRK is way better, or PLD is way worse; I get about the same results with both, with a slight favoring on DRK on trash pulls from DA-AD/Unleash. The reason I bring this up is because somebody mentioned that RA needs a buff in ShO because DRK's Grit DPS is slightly higher, but RA really, really doesn't need any buffs.
Its closest competitor is DASE, which generates no additional enmity and requires an augmenting skill to reach full potential; RA is a consistent 690 potency combo and has a hidden +100 potency because of Savage Blade (+400 with ShO). It's the most consistent tank DPS rotation, and generates bonus enmity to boot, so giving RA any sort of added effect would be stupidly strong in favor of PLD. If you're losing threat faster than 1% per second to your DPS with RA combo in SwO, your DPS are doing way more than you are and you should cushion yourself with ShO instead. They don't need the help anyway, apparently.

edit: Fixed some numbers I should have gotten right in the first place, and changed some wording to make my post clearer.

Originally Posted by fm_fenrir

[RA's] closest competitor is DA-SE, which generates no additional enmity and requires an augmenting skill to reach full potential; RA is a consistent [340] potency and has a hidden +100 potency without ShO (it's +400 with ShO) because of Savage Blade. It's the most consistent tank DPS rotation, and generates bonus enmity to boot, so giving RA any sort of added effect would be stupidly strong in favor of PLD. If you're losing threat faster than 1% per second to your DPS with RA combo in SwO, your DPS are doing way more than you are and you should cushion yourself with ShO instead. They don't need the help anyway, apparently.

Wait, what? It doesn't have any hidden potency bonus. It's simply doing 20% less damage in ShO, same as the Savage Blade before it, the Fast Blade before that, your oGCDs, and you AAs. The only "hidden potency" within a given combo is if you don't know, with a 1.8-2.6s blade, exactly how many times in 3 GCDs your AAs will strike, contributing anywhere from 100 to 200 bonus potency via Sword Oath (since we use mostly 2.1-2.2s blades, generally 150).

The only bonus enmity a Royal Authority combo produces is the 400 from Savage Blade. Compare that with the 1900 bonus enmity from Power Slash combo. You could spam it infinitely, and a DRK using PS combo every 4th combo would overtake you. (Note also, self-healing produces enmity, just like any other heal. Yay SE.) And since you're technically going to be spending every third combo on GB anyways, they could overtake you with a PS every sixth.



As for the DPS difference: Put on Grit / Shield Oath and go dps a dummy. You will most likely find the DRK doing a bit more. This gap increases once Blood Price is mixed in, especially if the DRK is free to use it on DA-SE (AoE and DA-DD are unnecessary) and stance-dancing becomes possible. PLDs gain 10 potency per second if Shield Swipe is ready every time its CD refreshes. DRKs can refresh their ability, striking for the same damage, albeit with a lower proc chance, and have an additional 200-potency counter per 45s. These two abilities alone, Low Blow and Reprisal, more than make up for Shield Swipe typically, and the added DA-SEs just make it better.

Also, isn't it usually a bad sign when a class is basically limited to the options of (1) using its non-enmity finisher in dps stance or using its (2) using its non-enmity finisher in tank stance? What ever happened to the viability of using the enmity combo, in either stance?

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Wait, what? It doesn't have any hidden potency bonus. It's simply doing 20% less damage in ShO, same as the Savage Blade before it

I was only talking about Savage's enmity bonus, which I specifically mentioned in my post. Comparing DASE raw (for convenience, mostly), it's 800 (150+250+400) potency to RA's 690 (150+200+340) (+100 for Savage bonus, effectively "790" potency). RA doesn't require any resource management (other than TP), so it, naturally, doesn't come with any other neat effects. Also, I am not really sure what planet I wrote that original potency number on, because I've made this argument before and used the right numbers, so... orz
Anyway, the added potency from Savage's enmity bonus is enough to keep your threat lead alive against DPS, but not necessarily other tanks; I don't think it's fair to compare DRK/PLD on a threat basis because PLD's MT threat is sufficient for handling DPS, but it's easily the weakest at keeping the other two tanks at bay in direct tank stance on tank stance pissing matches. I guess that's an indication that PLD's threat needs some attention, but I'm not sure what you'd do other than bumping the ShO multiplier to compensate.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Put on Grit / Shield Oath and go dps a dummy. You will most likely find the DRK doing a bit more. This only becomes more the case when Blood Price is mixed in, AoE is unnecessary, DA-DD is unnecessary, and stance-dancing becomes possible, whereas stance-dancing is much more dps-costly for PLDs. PLDs gain 10 potency per second if Shield Swipe is ready every time its CD refreshes. The DRK typically gains quite a bit more in the long run, covering the Shield Swipe difference off Low Blow and Reprisal alone.

I haven't really taken stance dropping into account, because I don't run content with competent enough healers to drop tank stance outside boss pulls. I'd feel very, very sorry for the healer who had to try to heal me through a big trash pull because I wanted to squeeze out another 50 dps from dropping Grit.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Also, isn't it usually a bad sign when a class is basically limited to the options of (1) using its non-enmity finisher in dps stance or using its (2) using its non-enmity finisher in tank stance. What ever happened to the viability of using the enmity combo, in either stance?

PLD only had that option for 2.55, and it was rough for WARs who wanted to MT. OT slot needs a high potency non enmity rotation to avoid the old "FOF ROH ROH ROH ROH we;lp RIP real MT, I'm the tank now" situation.

AoE would be very nice. Honestly, in gameplay, it's the one glaring weak point that I can really feel in PLD versus other tanks. Just about every other job out there (with the exception of maybe MNK?) has at least the ability to do some pretty solid burst AoE damage, while sustainable AoE is a of a niche. PLD's block mechanic is built for situations where they'd be taking a lot of hits - it's where their mitigation model really shines. And yet, the PLD enmity mechanics and gameplay mechanics give PLD the weakest AoE in the game, with its only damaging move being locked to a lengthy cooldown. Paladin is built for AoE tanking mitigation, but single target enmity generation. It's kind of backwards.

I'd like to see some way for PLD to do more AoE damage. We have a couple of DoTs (CoS and GB); why not make it so Flash spreads and/or extends/refreshes them? Have Flash pass around the Goring Blade DoT to up to two additional enemies, and have it extend the duration of the CoS DoT on all affected targets by 2GCD/6 seconds.

I also hope that they aren't adding more skills/abilities in 4.0, and instead take the traits route to alter how various abilities behave and interact.

Originally Posted by fm_fenrir

Itemization
Never put parry on a PLD item again, especially PLD JSE/relic. Parry and block roll against each other, and PLD already has a built in 20+% "random" mitigation tool in its shield.

I'd rather they adjust the combat table to make the two rolls independent, so that it is possible to both block and parry an incoming hit (call it a critical block or something). That, and parry needs to be made more useful anyway. Even if they just moved the parry roll ahead of the Crit roll, it would suddenly become desirable for PLD again.

Originally Posted by Brian_

So you're suggesting that if we switched to a meta where general tank damage was much higher that people would suddenly prefer inconsistent and spike prone damage intake?

No, that was not what I was suggesting. I was suggesting that getting away from single hit Spike + mostly ignorable regular damage pattern would make non-spike RNG based proc defenses (i.e. parry/block and not Dodge/Perfect Resist) more viable. If you can't rely on RNG defensive procs to reliably decrease average damage intake they are worth less than effects that do reliably decrease average damage intake.

You're wrong and ignorant. We've seen that meta in other MMOs and the test of science and basic reason and logic has resulted in what I said.

And you are one of the thousands who hear and repeat things without actually understanding what is actually going on.

Spike damage = bad.
Inconsistent damage intake = bad.

Yes, random unpredictable Spikes in damage are bad (which is what makes Evasion tanking non-viable), but "inconsistent damage intake" is not a bad thing. Problems occur because far to often inconsistent damage intake is too varied to be effectively reacted to.

If damage is too consistent it becomes boring to deal with.
If damage is too inconsistent then it either ends up being impossible to deal with or forces players to focus on the worst case scenario which ends up making it boring also.

So RNG "blesses" you and you get a string of blocks and parries. Your healers adjust to that degree of damage intake. Then RNG flips on you and you get a string of hits with a couple crits mixed in. Your healers fail to account for the sudden spike in your damage intake and you die. When healing, you cannot adjust your GCD usage based on your tank MAYBE blocking or parrying.

Depends on how big the damage variance is. Having to react to 150% more damage than expected (getting a x2 damage crit when you were expecting a 80% damage parry/block) is a different monster than reacting to 87.5% more damage than expected (getting a x1.5 crit when expecting an 80% parry/block).

As long as the variance is large enough that it needs to be paid attention to, but still small enough that it can be reacted to Inconsistent Damage is fine and a good thing to have as it keeps Healers focused and interested in the fight.

As block and parry currently exist, they're useful in a very specific situation. When tanks are taking a lot of quick and small hits, parry and block are really good. But, that comes back to the idea of consistency. When you take a lot of quick and small hits, parry and block provide a much more consistent decrease in damage intake.

It is not just quick small hits. The hits can be slower or harder as long as there are enough hits for there to be enough procs to influence the average amount of damage taken a significant amount.

More hits = more chances to proc = closer damage taken is to the average. This is the Law of Large Numbers.