Thread: How would they fix PLD 4.0?

Having seen the damage comparisons I would like something done to Paladin for 4.0 too, some of his support skills are more like "if my team is doing horribly". Which is fine for him to be the support tank but hopefully brings a bit more then vs like DRK or WAR who can tank just as well as PLD and can also offer better damage for a longer period of time (running out of tp, while dealing less damage, so cool lol). So if they want to keep PLD as the team player tank, support like tank, then hopefully the stuff they change and add in 4.0 will help him perform even when the entire group isn't swirling down the drain and he's trying to put a stopper on it.

He's not so bad you can't use him, the difference isn't that bad - but at least looking that all tanks can tank all dungeons and Paladin is consistently worse at damage, then hopefully he can offer unique things that supplement the fact that everyone can tank just as well as him AND do more damage then him. And being able to sometimes heal the healer out of death with a clemency isn't quite enough.

Also please do something to flash~! It feels really lackluster. Thankfully if the team isn't going ALL OUT you don't really need to use it many times. But if your group is going full metal sometimes you have to use it multiple times, especially if your group out ilvls you (talking about AoE situations). That feels pretty boring, and bad because you know other tanks could provide significantly better in the same situation. I know he should probably still do less AoE damage than the other tanks, at least him specifically but something needs to be done to flash imo - make it combo with other things or change it via Paladin Trait. In another thread I suggested that it decreases other party member's enmity generation and increases your own, while also adding a very small potency tick on attacks (more so for your own) - with a combo potential with Circle Of Scorn that gives him a small burst and increase the duration (making the need to spam it less while still feeling the effects). Also could allow it to be useful to keep up on the boss too then. (The trait I suggested also made it a target able ability which will self cast if you target monsters like normal, but also so you could cast it on other tanks and be the team player Paladin is meant to be - none of this BB combo on warrior nonsense.. that's not team player lol). I like this only because it means you could start to use it less often but in more scenarios (the suggestion is a little bit more nuanced than that but pretty close). The simpler idea I liked was just making it reduce their damage and perhaps increase parties damage by a % (but you'll have to be careful about bosses then, like it doesn't work). Also I think having the small potency booster radiate from the target could be Paladin's way to get a glow like the other jobs, and probably work more balanced in PvP vs a % changer.

I'm totally cool with PLD having less damage than the other tanks but at the moment it feels like he has less damage and only really offers more when the boss is physical specific or your group is going south and needs someone to help pick up the emergency, and he only can pad a bad situation its not like he can raise everyone in combat. (With a few more opportunities to be team helpful I think would be good, and better than just circle of scorn for aoe).

Also, felt like if they wanted to add more stuff to Paladin's oaths they could - I feel like Paladin should always be under oath in terms of lore/identity so you could then turn his oaths into stance shifting AND active abilities, like activating shield oath while under shield oath would do something. Could increase his functionality without adding new abilities. You could have him gain like activating sword oath grants TP on auto attacks for a short period of time, and 50% of weapon skills cost to nearby party members as bonus TP. Activating shield oath temporarily allows your shield to block magic attacks (for a total of 1 magic attack), if successful blocking a magic attack send aether spheres to party members for a minimum of 5% mp or 75% of the blocked damage over 10 seconds.

Although I have little experience playing DRK so I don't really want to edge DRK out with the magic blocking idea, just think that if Paladin will never top the damage charts again (intentionally at least) then he shouldn't really need to question "can I tank that, well?" on any type of content (magic or not) - or at least know that he could offer quality support. Always wondered what the meta was for DRK vs WAR though.

Liked a lot of ideas in here, since I only have WAR and DRK to 50 I can't really suggest things that wouldn't edge them out and I do want their job to have a proper balance too. But for the fact that I know that Paladin is consistently, and as dev's have desired, the worst in terms of damage as a tank I think he must shine in another very valuable way then (damage = super valuable). (Paladin has had some high damage moments in the past, like with Sword Oath before WAR had it's new stuff).

Originally Posted by Sarcatica

Who knows if PLD getting another big hitting combo will solve PLD's damage output, even without other changes, if not enough they can afford to buff FoF. WAR is already known to be the best OT, so if SE wants to make WAR purely way better for OT, they can so choose to introduce another DPS combo instead of spamming BB combo which makes PLD/DRK life harder. DRK being the current best MT with the worst aggro generation definitely needs some fixing.

On another note, what if removing tank stance works? This will solve so many problems such as the damage output discrepancy or tanks unwilling to stance dance, reduces the gapskill etc. There are so many options SE can roll with.

To the first, SE could probably stand to revise the enmity system at some point in entire. One thing I've seen in other MMOs where tank threat is inflated as much as ours or beyond is that enmity has a semi-proportionate effect that allows for its output to vary indirectly with on conditions such as whether you are the current target, your health, etc. Others also bake in enmity bonuses into their Provoke-equivalent, such as granting bonus enmity to skills to a cap based on the amount of (bonus) threat increased on skill use, with that bonus draining over time, or holding attention for an additional amount of time. Certain simple quality of life changes or revisions might be more appropriate than removing a piece of existent Warrior identity and even further bloating their bars.

To the second, what would then replace the fun of stance dancing? Or if it's not to be considered an outlying mechanic, and is representative of the skill meant to be required for tanking, what would replace its functionality? As it is, stance-dancing is basically just taking off the training wheels that allows a large group of players to do what we do, merely at lesser damage, with far less effort or attention. Removing stance-dancing would sort of merge the tank paradigm into one solid whole, rather than a pre-game and real game of "enough" and "maximization" through dps, but if the skill-cap isn't to diminish (and likely thereby bore many tanks and/or healers) then that difficulty would take place in survival itself, where the skill-gap only becomes much more clear and dividing. That's not to say I'd personally mind this, but the skill-gap being placed where it is does at least allow less skilled tanks to be carried through things in a sense, where they'd likely be chewed up and frustrated if the gap wasn't only about dps.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I fully agree with you there. And I'd love to see more to defense/offense prioritization than just stances. (See suggested TP rehaul in previous post.)

I just find it worrisome that a lot of tanks who full-time their tank stance excuse it with claims of identity, but are in fact just incapable of tracking damage intervals. It makes me wonder just how many tanks would die out flat after being carried that long, as soon as survivability can't be cheesed at cost of 'merely' dps.

I think this very easy to imagine. I constantly am in situations where the healer lets me get dangerously low (and yes I'm popping CD, self healing etc). I'm not going to make it easier for myself to die if the healers wants to play how many times below 10% can you go. I want to clear the dungeon not watch the last second heal after too many dps spells.

I change stance if the healer is keeping me alive or if there is no reason to worry (low damage mobs or no damage situations), but besides getting used to end game content I don't see people really wanting to stance dance when it just increases the stress (certain jobs have more encouragement, like abilities being locked).

Besides I don't think it's a good idea for at least Paladin in terms of identity, I actually think that's a good argument. Like why SE refused to add HP sacrificing to Dark Knight - removing your defense abilities is like HP sacrificing. I don't mind they encourage dancing and shifting around to the situation, but I also don't mind people suggestion that its less of a defensive hit since THAT is your job. And if you're not in a well tuned group the dance could just make everything more painful than helpful.

So I don't think its hard to imagine life long tanks just sticking to a stance, because from DF that's probably one of the better ideas if you want to clear things successfully the first time (at least depending on your job).

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

If you're condemned to a slow DF run, so be it, but that is not an example of *any* sort of optimization.

Lol aye, but imo DF is almost always un-omptimized - like.. 90% of my experience. I like Paladin because sometimes I get to make sure to keep people alive, healer trying to get the floor tank up but got hit by an aoe so here I am keeping the healer alive.

But my point was that if you play nearly pure DF or just pure DF it's actually really easy to see why certain jobs would not see the point in stance dancing as much, like Paladin. Warrior sort of has to if they want to use their full skillset which encourages them to "git gud" but Paladin doesn't really have that. So I often see Paladins who dont switch out even when its a DPS rush no damage phase, which is bad of course but like I can see why some Paladins don't even think about that since there is nothing making them think to dance. And again even if you CAN dance, a lot of DF content is going to make you question if you actually want to.

So I wasn't arguing optimization as much as the game is likely teaching a lot of people, especially of specific jobs, to play the game un-optimized because in most scenarios it'd be fine or even better to do what they were already doing.

Since I imagine majority of the game is being played in DF (yes we have to make sure the really good hardcore players have a lot of rope to have fun with) I still think there are some arguments about the whole stance "anti"tank decisions. If SE saw issue with HP sacrificing then I see how easily it would be to argue making all tanks need to do it to be most effective is just like HP sacrificing ideas. (eHP drops of course when you leave tank stance, at least for Paladin and Dark Knight - HP just plain drops for Warrior hahaha).

Don't get me wrong that I want it to be boring one stance exact same rotation always 24/7 forever. Would like to see different forms of stance management though and all of them be encouraged mechanically (like Warrior is a bit, with ability locks, or monk/BLM are forced to, or Dragoon with their buff), not just all of them the same turn on off with. Perhaps Paladin's becomes more of managing a buff (like monk/ish, keeping his oath - besides Paladin is all consistency, less DPS, more tank), Warriors is entire stance switching with stacks and feeling very wild and already slightly special, and Dark Knight's is?

The stance system doesn't have to change, but like I said above certain jobs don't really get the push to think about it AND many times the DF makes you not want to play optimized because that would actually not be "optimized". I'd prefer if the system was more made so I can play optimized even if my group isn't or at least one of the tank jobs is made that way, I figure it could be Paladin since they're already set on it being a less DPS more tank job (so play optimized and dancing doesn't really cost you much if any eHP so long as you do it right).

Tl;dr playing too good is actually bad when you DF lol (and I argue most players play DF), Warriors have encouragement to do it anyways but other tanks have less. This is where I see argument on changing the idea of stances a bit.