Paladin Change(s)

[SpookyGhost]

Sword Oath
Increased potency has changed from 50 to 75.
Weapon delay will now affect damage output.

Seems alright, imo, though makes any ShO uptime even worse. Kinda curious what "Weapon delay will now affect damage output" means exactly...

[Reynhart]

Kinda curious what "Weapon delay will now affect damage output" means exactly...

I've searched for auto-attack calculation and found this reddit thread (Not really new).

Judging from this, it seems like Sword AA potency are always somehow around 70, but SwO additionnal attack deals much lower than normal AA.
If this is still true, maybe it means SwO will basically double our AA damage.

In the end, I'm still confused that all they do to improve PLD is increasing its damage output.

[AegisKiddo]

In the end, I'm still confused that all they do to improve PLD is increasing its damage output.

The problem we face with PLD at present, was the emphasis on DPS that came with HW and how it become the new meta, over ARR favored defensive meta. Whilst raiding, any OT PLD will run into a numeral problems of untold proportions, such as, why does one of their highest dps combos(Royal Authority) enforce enmity, whilst WAR/DRK have the "privilege" of having a dps combo that does not?

Why does clemency get interrupted by a boss auto attack? Why can't pld/dark duo be a thing without a ninja? A ninja in this scenario, will want to commit harakiri, at the levels of stress he will be under, at keeping the slashing debuff at 100% uptime and the amount of dps he will be losing by keeping it up at 100% uptime in his rotation. Thats just a handful of things that comes to mind. Why does SE think increasing PLD's potency in every major patch is the way to go?

[Reynhart]

why does one of their highest dps combos(Royal Authority) enforce enmity, whilst WAR/DRK have the "privilege" of having a dps combo that does not?

Once enmity is secured (Fairly easy with CoS and Shield Swipe), a PLD in ShO will have no issue keeping enmity without doing any RoH combo. This is exactly a case of not touching the potency but still greatly improving PLD's damage output on the field.

Why does clemency get interrupted by a boss auto attack?

Because it follows the same rules as any spell. Clemency is more easy to use as an OT, I think it was supposed to reduce the "PLD = MT" idea.

A ninja in this scenario, will want to commit harakiri, at the levels of stress he will be under, at keeping the slashing debuff at 100% uptime and the amount of dps he will be losing by keeping it up at 100% uptime in his rotation.

I think this is an issue with Ninja. The slashing debuff should be part of their optimal rotation.
They should have a combo "Spinning Edge > Dancing Edge > Shadow Fang", like DRG and Chaos Thrust.

Why does SE think increasing PLD's potency in every major patch is the way to go?

This...I don't know. Besides, if they go that way to make PLD+DRK as an equivalent pairing than PLD+WAR or DRK+WAR, they'll eventually have to give DRK or PLD higher personal DPS than WAR to compensate for the lack of Eye...pretty bad idea.

[AegisKiddo]

Once enmity is secured (Fairly easy with CoS and Shield Swipe), a PLD in ShO will have no issue keeping enmity without doing any RoH combo.

Clemency is more easy to use as an OT

Whilst I applaud your reasoning in the defence of PLD's plethora of tools, I don't believe you have read my post thoroughly, please allow me to elaborate further. I was referring to a OT PLD using 'Royal authority', which gains increased 'enmity', against a lets say a MT DRK, who has turned Grit off.

Any tank watches the argo table, a PLD doing what he should be doing pushes it higher than the other two tanks in this scenario, thus more powerslashes/butchersblock need be required; this is a less dps party gain upon MTs enmity combo execution. Also using clemency as a ot is a waste of a gcd altogether, which is better spent on DPSing, if heals need required I'm sure that little portion that a pld clemency can produce can be covered by Eos

[Reynhart]

I was referring to a OT PLD using 'Royal authority', which gains increased 'enmity', against a lets say a MT DRK, who has turned Grit off.

Savage Blade was not changed with an OT perspective.
But, for the record, a WAR will have much stealing enmity issue, considering that their most powerful combo is BB with a far higher enmity multiplier. If you steal aggro with GB > RA > RA, it means your MT is doing somethin wrong...and will probably lose aggro to one of the DPS.

Any tank watches the agro table, a PLD doing what he should be doing pushes it higher than the other two tanks in this scenario, thus more powerslashes/butchersblock need be required; this is a less dps party gain upon MTs enmity combo execution.

See above, WAR pushes it more with BB

Also using clemency as a ot is a waste of a gcd altogether, which is better spent on DPSing, if heals need required I'm sure that little portion that a pld clemency can produce can be covered by Eos

No, it's not a "waste". DPS is not the only thing that matters in this game. A well timed Clemency can save someone.

[Lyth]

Whilst raiding, any OT PLD will run into a numeral problems of untold proportions, such as, why does one of their highest dps combos(Royal Authority) enforce enmity, whilst WAR/DRK have the "privilege" of having a dps combo that does not?

This isn't really correct. The highest potency combo on WAR is BB, their enmity combo. It generates significantly more enmity than SB does in PLD's RA combo.

I don't see how you can design this both ways. When you're actively tanking, you want your dps moves to also generate enmity. When you're not, you want to generate less enmity using the same moves. PLD strikes the best balance between these two, without running into any significant issues generating or accidentally taking aggro.

Why does SE think increasing PLD's potency in every major patch is the way to go?

PLD has some of the most powerful utility and mitigation moves in the game. The narrower the dps difference between the tanks, the more likely that your raid group will have incentive to take advantage of this. They're trying to strike a balance between PLD/WAR and DRK/WAR comps. It's a bit late in the expansion cycle for anything more complex.

[AegisKiddo]

This isn't really correct. The highest potency combo on WAR is BB, their enmity combo. It generates significantly more enmity than SB does in PLD's RA combo.

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

[Reynhart]

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

I'd like to see real test numbers to back up this claim.
If it's a true, it's a nice bit of information.

However, my raw testing doesn't point towards that way.

[aleph_null]

snip

You can keep 100% eye uptime with fracture and fell cleaves without skipping block combo. There are few things to watch out though, for example:

If the last combo before you use berserk for triple cleave is block combo, you should do 2x eye combo during berserk, otherwise you'll drop eye debuff due to pacification (unless you have a brd);

If you do a block combo and 2 cleaves then you should skip fracture until you reapply eye unless you have very high sks since you can at most insert 5 gcds between each eye combo with average sks. So doing "SE combo > BB combo > frac > 2x cleave > SE combo" is bad unless you have high sks or external boost (card/fairy), you should do "SE combo > BB combo > 2x cleave > SE combo > frac" instead.

tl;dr there are times when repeating eye combo is necessary to maintain eye debuff uptime but most of the time you can slip in block combo too for more dps.