Job Recommendation: Paladin Tanking and Area of Effect

[TankHunter678]

-snip-

The best defense is the balanced combination of a good offense and a good defense. From the sound of things though, you just want a glorified damage sponge that sits there and lets others handle everything. Instead of something that can hold all aggro and dish out nearly as much as they take like the other tanks.

When a tank asks for more damage output, in the form of improving their AoE capability, its to improve their ability to grab and hold mobs. So that the DPS or Healer wont be able to rip mobs off of them. So that the DPS and Healer are only at threat from their own stupidity in standing in AoEs.

Same can be said for the whole "healers should do DPS", dead enemies means the tank takes less damage which means less healing is required. A Healer that helps out with DPS is a healer that is reducing the need for them to Heal in the first place.

Glorified damage sponges and glorified heal bots are not fun. It is why tanking and healing classes in the majority of MMOs are underplayed.

[Raim]

Even if you insisted on Paladin being a defensive damage sponge you can still make them more appealing to groups that do dungeon content by making a change such as Circle of Scorn/Flash applies a debuff that lowers physical or magical defense of enemies. Right now it feels like all Paladins do in 4 man content is hold aggro while the other tanks can nearly match DPS numbers, hold aggro, self heal, and have nearly equivalent mitigation.

[NovaLevossida]

They should just add a very low potency AoE proc on shield blocks. Something like sparks flying in every direction from the blow. It can be triggered as many times as you're blocking. It works well for damaging trash packs and is negligible enough on single targets to not affect DPS much on bosses.

[RLofOBFL]

I assume they think it would be unbalanced for PLD to have aoe since they already have innate blocking ability. Trading group damage for group defending.

It doesn't even necessarily need to be damage, it would be more appealing & fun if Flash/CoS had a damage down debuff or hp regen or something, or make blind much more potent like 50% chance to miss...that would still kinda suck but 50% chance at no damage is nice. Maybe too nice <.<

[VargasVermillion]

If anything i just think PLD needs some kind of mechanic that makes it different from the other tanks because it is basically the other tanks minus a central mechanic.

[Alahra]

I've long wanted them to add AoE to Paladin inspired by some of the Holy Knight abilities from Final Fantasy Tactics (such as Stasis Sword or Lightning Stab, or whatever the last one was...Holy Explosion? It's been a long time).

Flash is honestly dreadfully boring and I've come to realize that even though I've been working on the PLD Anima weapon for a long time (it's at the Hyperconductive stage), I actually generally enjoy DRK a lot more, in part because it's AoE abilities are much more interesting. Flash isn't even visually interesting, and as far as I can tell, the Blind on it is weaker than the Blind from DRK's Dark Arts + Dark Passenger.

[Rawrz]

I wanna see Clemency doing more for Paladins. I want it to pull aggro like a cute shirt on a small dog at a PETA convention. I think while Main tanking in Sword Oath, it should be instant cast, but be a buffed Regen. Healing Potency at 600 instant + 1200 over the course of 18 seconds instead of just 1200 up front, while still sharing 50% of whatever was healed with the target. Its Enmity, unlike normal heals, which are halved, should be doubled. He should be able to Pop it on himself or a party member under duress and the mobs should RUN to him. WHO IS HE TO HEAL THESE PARTY MEMBERS~ That mob in my scenario. Imagine, WHMs free to precast Regen on the tank, because his own regen out aggros it 4 times over and instantly being in DPS mode.

While in Sword Oath, Clemency would not heal yourself, but instead have a hefty reduced MP cost while still healing 1200 potency, something like 50-60% less than what it costs now.

I do agree that flash could use some love similar to Miasma II, but with much higher initial potency.

Clemency

Can only be used under the effect of Sword Oath or Shield Oath

While under the effect of Shield Oath:
Restores target's HP Cure Potency : 600
Also grants healing over time effect while generating high enmity to surrounding targets. Cure Potency of 200 to target for 18s.

Additional Effect: Restores to self 50% of HP restored to target if target is a party member.
Cast time: Instant
MP cost: 2121 MP.

While under the effect of Sword Oath:
Restores target's HP. Cure Potency: 1200.

Cast Time: 2 seconds.
MP cost: 1060

While under the effect of Tempered Will, Clemency cannot be interrupted, except by attacks that are not affected by Tempered Will. Damage cannot cancel the cast of Clemency, so long as the effect is active.

This is something I'd like to see, ALONG with something to help with the AOE DPS (like a DoT on flash.)

[AsteriaStarfall]

Better yet, they could add a low-potency damage component to Flash, which would provide that additional AoE at a much earlier level while still providing a slightly better experience for new tanks.

Pretty much this right here. That is where paladin lacks when it comes to AoE threat capabilities. Flash does zero damage while warrior and dark knight both get an aoe damage+threat ability by lvl 30. Even at end game paladins only have 1 aoe ability that does damage and that has a long CD on it compared to DRK and WAR that can spam theirs.

[Nestama]

Why not make Rage of Halone a cleave attack? Treat it similar to Holy and Flare (max potency and debuff on the target, 50 or less on extras and no debuff, but same amount of enmity generation). It'll be like Overpower, but you have to do Fast Blade and Savage Blade first for the enmity and cleave (and still cost 60 TP). A non combo Rage of Halone could remove the 'final slash flash' effect.

[Khalithar]

There is another aspect to paladin that's not being considered, namely what is the fantasy of the Paladin itself? A knight wielding holy power to smite their enemies and protect their allies. Not only that but paladin has a single resource that is woefully underutilized, Paladin almost never has to spend it's MP on anything except for Flash on AoE targets and doesn't really "need" Clemency casts in dungeon situations. So I propose this, give Paladin a short cooldown oGCD ability that uses their MP to deal damage.

Now I know what you're going to say, "but Khalithar you charismatic stallion, what kind of attack could they give Paladin for AoE damage?" To that I say, this: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/H...cs)#Holy_Sword

The Holy Sword magic from Final Fantasy tactics is criminally underutilized in the rest of the series, the frontal AoE attack from that series of spells was called Holy Explosion (Divine Ruination in the later release) and was quite a powerful attack. So I say give Paladin the Holy Explosion ability (Video of what it looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaIzf6XJNko ) and have it function in a similar manner to Overpower but with an MP cost instead of a TP cost with a high enough potency to warrant a cooldown on it.