If You Were A Class/Job Designer...

[Shurrikhan]

@J'ioh: If pld and drk get slash debuff, Monk is basically locked out of content in favor of drg/nin because nin's big dps loss (dancing edge applications), is mitigated.

Been thinking lately about what might happen if PLD got an evasion-down debuff in the form of Rage of Halone (much like Rain of Death). I usually think of PLD/WHM/BRD/DRG-or-MNK as being the iconic PLD 4-man, and it would take away from Bard's Rain of Death in the same way that DRK takes away from Monk's Dragon Kick, but at least it would mean more Bloodletter uses, similar to how WAR and NIN work together. Now if DRK could just give Blunt resistance down as well... Then we could have PLD/DRK;Healer/Healer;MNK/NIN/DRG/MCH or PLD/DRK;Healer/Healer;NIN/DRG/BRD/BLM-SMN. The WAR wouldn't necessarily be as much of a raid dps increase as its alternatives. If Storm's Path were then reduced to 8%, or Delirium and RoH increased to 12% or 22s duration, we'd really be considering its spot in a raid instead of always going with WAR+1.

This partly ties into the "Preliminary changes" from my post above, where Vitality doesn't necessarily replace Strength, but is far more lucrative than it was for survival over time. At that point the PLD might contribute as much to raid dps going heavy Vit as a Warrior would going heavy Str, because the extra healer dps leniency could be paired with guaranteed healer hits. Just bringing a PLD along who can keep up RoH could also keep the raid from needing full accuracy. (Strength, due to its higher AP contribution than Vitality (.67 instead of .33), and blocks/parries being dependent in part on AP, retains some defensive value as well, but as Vitality benefits gain more from healer overgearing and aren't RNG dependent, it may be the preferred stat even after cap.)