Paladin Change(s)

[SpookyGhost]

I've had many discussions and testing, storm's eye over and over is a dps gain over butchers, since you can keep up both fracture and eye without either falling off, I'm sure you know just because butchers has a higher potency than eye doesn't mean it's a gain this is pretty fundamental. But I believe this can be further debated elsewhere, not on a pld change thread

It is true that you should 2x Eye if you're going to 2x FC + Fracture after the first Eye (IE s/t like this http://ffxivrotations.com/adl) but if you're in a situation where you're just applying Fracture and doing 1x FC then Eye won't actually drop. It's certainly safer to just Eye on repeat (unless you're the MT in which case you might as well BB whenever you can actually do it), but that doesn't mean BB isn't literally a DPS gain as long as Eye doesn't fall off and you can apply Fracture (both of which you can @ 1 of each). So realistically the only places where you can't touch BB are in your Berserk window and with the 50s 3x FC opener you technically can BB by putting Fracture at the end, but that loses you IR crit buff and also would give you a lot of threat so not really worth it (unless you're MT).

There is the argument to be made that using BB enough will cause your PLD/DRK to need to use their threat combo and completely negate the potency you gained from BBing, but your BBs open up a bit with a NIN in the party. On top of this the optimal opener is to have WAR pull and get Vengeance ticks under Berserk which will probably result in you wanting to BB in your opener even if it isn't optimal for Fracture usage.

Basically you're really not losing a lot if you stick to just spamming SE to infinity and beyond, but there's certainly a time and place to use BB. Then again no real point in being this min/max when Savage is going to be below Midas in terms of DPS checks lol

[KinnisonArc]

Maybe "Weapon Delay" is referring to the "Delay" stats on the weapon will affect SwO auto attack. Like for example, fewer delay value means more damage, similar to skill/spell speed affecting DOTs.

[Lyth]

Just a guess, but I think the plan is to have longer weapon delays be offset by increased auto attack damage, so that variations in delay don't influence damage output. Otherwise, you might run into needlessly complicated situations in which your weapon choice depends on the amount of SwO uptime you have in a fight. I seem to remember there being a similar issue with the Dreadwyrm Blade and the Excalibur Zeta in late ARR. Of late, they've been controlling for this by simply keeping delay as a constant.

The SwO change is essentially free dps. I think it's a pretty good deal.

[YokeM]

Auto attack potency is calculated based on the delay of your weapon.
At a delay of 3.0 seconds your auto attack would have exactly 100 potency.
As most paladin weapons have a delay of 2.08 to 2.24 they where at ~70 potency.
This is just a guess but the "Weapon delay will now affect damage output" COULD
mean that sword oath will now deal 75p / 3.00 * weapon delay.

If this was to be the case, it means that there will hardly be any difference
noticeable. Which would quite upset me, as I a had read somewhere, that they
are finally thinking about bringing PLD and DRK to comparable DPS levels with WAR.

[Tint]

If this was to be the case, it means that there will hardly be any difference
noticeable. Which would quite upset me, as I a had read somewhere, that they
are finally thinking about bringing PLD and DRK to comparable DPS levels with WAR.

they never said they want to increase the dps of the other tanks. they basically said that WAR is too op, and they don't want to nerf them but want to bring the other tanks to the same lvl. buuut the dps is not the main reason WAR is so op. and DRK already is on a compareable dps lvl with WAR (DRK has highest dps in tank stance and second highest in dps stance). PLD still has the shield and i don't think that he should make the same damage as the other tanks who don't have a shield.
i think dps wise the tanks are almost perfectly balanced. only thing i can agree with is that PLD needs an aoe attack wich makes damage.

[YokeM]

Maybe I misread something then (or had some sort of wishful thinking).

[Kitfox]

They didn't change Flash. orz

[Shurrikhan]

At the moment, Sword Oath has higher contribution the lower your weapon delay is, because it hits for the same amount no matter how long your attack takes. This should make all swords have the same Sword Oath % contribution.

Paladin DPS already seemed fine aside from that one massive oversight though. Just standardizing it to 25*weapon_delay potency would have been fine (a 2-second delay sword then has the base number, decreased below and increased above for the same DPS).

[Fernosaur]

WAIT

So the sword delay change means it's just a measure to keep the new Sword Oath bonus balanced among different weapons?

I thought it would finally mean a lower weapon delay weapon would be more powerful , ala SpSpd and DoTs.

So I guess this change will be somewhat minimal, though it's still very welcome, in any case. I wonder what the amount of GCDs equalling a damage gain from SwO is after this change.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I thought it would finally mean a lower weapon delay weapon would be more powerful , ala SpSpd and DoTs.

Lower delay weapons were previously more powerful at the same ilevel in Sword Oath and have been that way since the start of 2.X. A 2.08 delay weapon was doing roughly ~173 potency every 3 seconds in Sword Oath versus the ~169 potency of 2.16 delay weapons and ~167 of 2.24 delay weapons.

So I guess this change will be somewhat minimal, though it's still very welcome, in any case. I wonder what the amount of GCDs equalling a damage gain from SwO is after this change.

Its a definite increase in Paladin Auto-attack damage even before being combined with the changes to auto-attacking (i.e, you no longer need to be facing the target to auto-attack so more auto attacks will be going out if you are close enough to your target). Now every sword should be doing 175 potency per 3 sec with auto attacks. 2.08 Delay weapons should be going to 52 potency per extra attack, 2.16 to 54 potency per extra attack and 2.24 to 56 potency per attack.

This should be a serious boost in Paladin PvP damage output.