Paladin's TP Issue

[Torunya]

Honestly, the best would be to give PLD a DoT that uses MP.

I'm actually on board with the idea of changing the enhanced version of Flash to a DoT. Something along the lines of "Searing rays of light is causing damage over time!" Example: 30 potency tic for 15 sec, ala Circle of Scorn. This would actually force us to incorporate an MP-based skill into our rotation, which in turn would ease the strain on our otherwise constantly stressed TP.

I'm not an ideas man, but I think this would work.

EDIT: Thinking about it, I get reminded of Fracture. As Flash is on the GCD, this idea would just be a dps loss wouldn't it? Curses...

[Jpec07]

I've found that if I take the time to Stoneskin myself frequently, not only do I mitigate a lot more damage, but I also tend to not run into issues with my TP.

[Ironos]

I've found that if I take the time to Stoneskin myself frequently, not only do I mitigate a lot more damage, but I also tend to not run into issues with my TP.

B..but your DEEPS!!!1!

In all seriousness, PLDs were probably expected to use things like Stoneskin and Clemency to avoid TP starvation, but that leads to less DPS so things like that were only cast during downtime (jumps, mechanics, etc) when you would regenerating TP anyway.

At least with the new VIT changes, things like Stoneskin will mitigate more damage, although marginally (like 5-600 I think?).

[eagledorf]

Yes, if you cast heals or shields you probably can sustain your TP, but does it make sense to balance the job assuming you'll be assisting in healing? Not really. The potency lost in SwO is so great that it'll almost always be better for the healers to pick up the slack and they'll always tune the content for 2 healers' output, not 2+1. As MT casts will still cancel...Paladin's healing will always be an emergency thing, not part of the core rotation so TP consumption must be balanced without factoring it in.

As for a DoT, I was thinking along the lines of recycling an old animation and making it PLD's version of Scourge. 500 potency of light or wind damage that costs MP to use. Alternatively, the MP could be blown on a big AoE skill, but I personally think that if PLD ever does get an AoE it might be better for it to be TP-based to encourage Flash use.

[Ironos]

Paladin's healing will always be an emergency thing, not part of the core rotation so TP consumption must be balanced without factoring it in.

Oh, I wasn't advocating that things should stay the way they are for PLD's TP sustain because of their casts. I was just offering what I think the devs are thinking.

Which is a fool's errand, because dear lord I can never figure out what SE is thinking for the life of me.

[Torunya]

Which is a fool's errand, because dear lord I can never figure out what SE is thinking for the life of me.

It's not that they aren't thinking, obviously. FFXIV in itself is proof of their outstanding accomplishment. I just get the feeling that their job testers aren't playing Paladin the same way their entire playerbase is playing it. It's as if your dad gave you a playstation 4 for christmas and expected you to use it as a dvd player only.

[eagledorf]

It's not that they aren't thinking, obviously.

I know that they do their own internal testing, but when I look at the kinds of numbers I get for TP or the comparison of buffs I did for my other blog post, I have to wonder.

I think they're thinking too little about balance and too much about their own concept about how we should play the jobs.

I said this on the Japanese forum, but consider the healers. Yoshida said that they changed Stoneskin and Lustrate because HP% skills would scale too well with ilevel. This makes no sense since heals should scale at the same pace or there's going to be another problem (if this were true to any significant amount, healers would start having trouble keeping tanks up).

The obvious conclusion is that they really did it to prevent healing from Cleric Stance and make healer DPS harder to squeeze off. There's nothing really wrong with this since it was honestly too easy for SCH to DPS in ARR, but they were so concerned about this that we ended up with WHM having nothing unique to bring in terms of mitigation, Aetherflow stacks losing 1/5 of its efficacy on a WAR, and 3.0 dropped with a nightmare of bad healer balance (and how are they going to get AST and WHM really well balanced for all the content when Diurnal AST has 3 unique, stackable mitigation skills and WHM has none? I honestly have no idea. Oh I know! Give WHM a much better HPS output than...wait...)

I think it's the same with tanks. They're thinking about PLD and DRK and willfully ignoring the fact that there exists a outrageous imbalance with WAR in terms of utility, defense, resource management, and DPS. How else could Yoshida possibly say "PLD has superior and easier to use defensive skills" with a straight face?

[Astrelle_hyperion]

I think what could be interesting is if the DPS stance rotations of all the tanks were TP limited -- leading to tank swaps to maximize uptime of dmg as well as defensive needs.

[eagledorf]

I think what could be interesting is if the DPS stance rotations of all the tanks were TP limited -- leading to tank swaps to maximize uptime of dmg as well as defensive needs.

I think any forced mechanic like this would be very annoying for 4-man dungeons and solo content. Even raids.

[Astrelle_hyperion]

I think any forced mechanic like this would be very annoying for 4-man dungeons and solo content. Even raids.

Trying to develop the idea a bit more fully now that I'm not on my phone.

1) TP should be a resource that has to be rationed, and their should be a trade-off. MNK & DRG (don't know NIN or any of the ranged attackers well enough to know) have choices when it comes to single versus AoE with the latter consuming TP like no tomorrow. Its a resource to be spent when the time is right. Good MNK/DRG know when to spend it, and when to throttle back to make sure they don't run dry.

2) Steady state MT shouldn't need to every run dry (in order to avoid putting restrictions on boss fights in 4-player content). Hence why I suggested it for DPS stance only. For the skilled players who MT/solo-tank in DPS stance, I'm confident they'd find a way to still get more out of it.


The goal is something like
a) tanks, in tank stance have a harder time running tp dry (reduce tp cost of final move of hate combo when in tank stance?)
b) tanks, out of tank stance should have the ability to do higher burst but non-sustained, and sustained lower damage rotations.
c) the follow-on is that raid theory crafting could now have fun optimizing across multiple choices for swaps. Ideally designed in a way that the existing MT/OT limited swaps is DPS neutral, and these extra swaps are people pushing skill/timings.

I think there's a hint of this style play happening with some of the initial pull by WAR with a huge burst opening, only to be provoked onto a DRK for most of the fight. In that case its not TP resource related, but cooldown/opener related before switching into the pre-3.2 meta MT/OT split.


Part a could happen easily whenever SE wants -- as the hate rotations are lower dps and tanks know/learn how to minimize their use -- lowering the last step's cost doesn't increase dps. Tanks would just be incentivized to weave in a couple more rotations over longer fights with less down time -- slightly lowering sustained dps in exchange for sustain time.

Part b can't happen easily -- probably not until 4.0 and new skills are added, to support it it would need some higher potency, higher tp abilities. -- or more things like DRK's DA -- buff the next skill by say 30% potency and double its TP cost.