Thread: DualShocker Interview - 3.5 pt 2 next week, supposedly

Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

Fixing healers is kinda easy - nerf healing potencies, up healing requirements, possibly do something about how brutally effective their DPS is while in Cleric Stance, boom. But how would you "make tanks tank", exactly? Looking at the design of something like a PLD, which relies heavily on cooldowns, if you simply make things hit super hard so that a tank always needs to have CDs up to soak damage...well, it'll work well at making WARs tank, because they'll be using Inner Beast instead of Fell Cleave (I don't play DRK so not sure how they'd be affected), but how would PLD handle that same scenario? They don't really have a "spammable" cooldown outside of Shelltron, which is 30 seconds and...not super great, tbh, because of how parry works in this game. (It also doesn't affect magic damage, so rip pretty much every major raid boss ability in the game.)

And how exactly would you make offtanks "tank more" instead of sitting in DPS stance? Endless dual bosses a la T1? Constant add waves to manage? There's only so much you can do to try to regulate how much damage tanks do...even WoW, which IMO has a lot better trinity balance still doesn't really find ways to make off tanks do a whole lot outside of swaps and adds.

Sorry if I seem like I'm attacking you, since I actually agree that the slow distillation of the trinity into "who can deeps moar" also bugs me, but I've struggled to find a solution for tanking woes for some time now that would work outside of a straight tank re-design. Things like, dropping fire n' forget tank stances in favor of making those same effects be maintenance buffs that tanks have to use certain combos to keep up, etc, to make them feel more like they're tanking and less like they're DPSing. And I don't really know how well that would translate here, all things considered.

Tanks are somewhat limited in they will always be a partial DPS. The issue is more how little they actually require mitigation. For example, a Dark Knight can handle both A9 and A10 without ever turning on Grit, provided they have a Ninja to help control their aggro. Even A11 and A12, you'll barely need your tank stance once you've seen the fights. One potential solution would be less predictability. Say they adjusted it so all three tanks could swap stances off the GCD ala Warrior. If the boss suddenly did unpredictable high tank, it forces the tanks to mitigate with their tank stance-- turning it into a cooldown itself. Not necessarily a perfect solution but it's the first that came to mind. Perhaps forcing both tanks to stack together for more mechanics might be another option. Unfortunately, I cannot imagine the devs would ever go into the unpredictable route because that would make learning fighters harder.

Originally Posted by Istaru

They could be mean..

Want an encounter where DPS is not all that matters?

How about this one?

Boss at 95% health does two (2) tankbusters back to back...on the HEALERS!!!

It is a guaranteed attack for 100% health and ignores all shields. Lose 1 person and the boss gets a 10% damage reduction boost that lasts for 1 minute. Lose 2 characters? You cannot damage the boss for 10 minutes.

Solution? Cover. The PLD or PLDs gets to save one or both of the healers from dying. Thus the run can continue.

In this case, the PLD mitigation matters, it's actually all that matters. DPS is secondary.

Bad part of this? Either WAR or DRK or both are excluded.

This would never happen, and I'm not saying it should. But this is simply and example of a fight where the usage of abilities is key, not how much DPS you generate as a tank.

All this accomplishes nothing except forcing Paladin into the meta. You literally couldn't complete the fight without one. Either Dark Knight or Warrior will be flatout ignored even more so than Paladin is currently. Not to mention, forced mechanics such as this are rarely fun. It's entirely artificial and would only sour players on the fight. None of this accounts for being unable to damage the boss because you messed up a mechanic is boring. It lacks any creativity and most groups would simply wipe to try again, thus invalidating it regardless. Another thing... A9S and A10S enrage at 11 minutes. So... yeah.

Originally Posted by Ririta

For paladins, instead of Flash getting damage I'd like to see Circle of Scorn being made into a proper, stronger spell (triggers the GCD and has a MP cost), that would distance paladins from dark knights while not stepping into the warrior territory since Flash would still be needed for AoE aggro.

As for Sword Oath, it needs to do something interesting rather than just add damage. I don't know what, but right now it's really boring and weak next to Darkside and Deliverance.

Personally would like to see flash changed to not be spammed /at all/. At least it seems like you suggest it remains a spam aoe spell to Paladin, without damage - and spamming a damageless spell with a buff that gets shortened on recasts (debuff resistance) just for a ping of enmity feels really meh lol (also the lack of damage means it produces less enmity than a damage + enmity ability, extra meh). Perhaps because at least for warrior flash is actually fairly helpful in certain situations, that flash is given to everyone. With a little tweak so it can even be useful on Dark Knights like flash has slightly lower enmity generation, no damage still, but double the distance (or even leaves a field effect for say 5 seconds where if an enemy enters the field they will receive flash's effects, doesn't reapply - awesome for mobs you know that will spawn). Would be cool if the ability shifts slightly, every tank gets access to flash but the ability aesthetics change slightly. Fearsome Shout for Warrior (red/shouty effect), Gloom or Shade for Dark Knight (instead of light it's darkness), and Flash or Blinding Light for Paladin (same spell).

Unless you were suggesting CoS also keeps its enimity generation (perhaps even more), and that CoS becomes Paladin's spam tool once they unlock it. I was thinking you meant it becomes more like a steel cyclone / decimate, so you'd still be spamming flash though. If its more like an overpower then you'd just spam CoS instead and flash would be like the other spells SE wants to get rid of since higher tier ones are just better.

I would like to see chance buffs changed into something else like every third attack will miss, a monster cannot miss more than 5 attacks every 2.5 minutes (half effective on magic users, and 15% reduction on third attacks in PvP and only functions on auto attacks with 15% reduction on bosses). The massive aoe range would make flash useful for all tank jobs in grabbing large spawned packs, even allow SE to make different strategies (room starts to pour from all corners, tank can handle it opposed to now which would be like "wut you doing SE?"), and with the damage reduction it could be useful to cast once in the fight (and so long as the fight wasn't slow or big groups not spawn, it would be useful to cast /only/ once).

Then give Paladin something else (now that flash is a sort of /massive/ aoe grab, and slight damage reduction for all tank jobs), something that also doesn't require spamming. Before I suggested an ability that causes Paladin's enmity and damage to reverberate within a given effect, like through a new flash (but seeing as now I suggested everyone gets a big flash) perhaps another skill. So say Radiance, an MP draining aura or an efficiency decrease cost while active ability (higher tp cost/mp) that allows Paladin's attacks to reverberate to nearby targets (both portions of enmity and damage). Of course the AoE part of the enmity and damage would be reduced but basically CoS would turn into a mini holy bomb (in large packs of monsters) and Paladin would cycle through their regular combos on monsters. The calculation for damage would be something like % of potency to a maximum of X amount per ability, DoT potency is included into the calculation (but again there is a maximum potency damage). So while using the 1/2 you'd do quite a bit less aoe damage than War/Drk still (but more than before) but your 3 / CoS / Spirits Within could provide sudden burst that makes your average AoE damage acceptable, so you don't slow down the group in the end (so long as the monster doesn't die so fast you can't finish a combo lol).


Tl;dr - If flash doesn't become a damage spell I do not want to spam it, at all - ever lol.

Originally Posted by ErikMynhier

My fantasy of 4.0 PLD change is we become like ninjas in our stances with some skills getting added effects. Flash is one of the main skills I see getting that treatment. Mind you its all in my head and not anything more.

Flash: As it is.
Under Sword: Adds damage.
Under Shield: Adds a DoT.

I would love to see the oaths mean more I feel it has a high opportunity for theme on the paladin as well, while keeping the stance management different but also /encouraged/. Since it feels weird to leave stance when you're new but if you have a bunch of neat effects on a different stance you'd be like "hey I really want to get my TP back so maybe I should use tempered will with my sword oath!". While adding an extra layer it is still relatively straight forward compared to Warrior and still leaves Paladin that streamlined feeling, but also offering them a bunch of support / self options in each ability. Bulwark + shield oath = 360 degree block and each block reduces sheltron cooldown (by a small amount, like 1.5 to 2 seconds), + Sword Oath = each block reduces spirit's within (2-4 seconds) and every second block adds a double auto-attack.

Would like to see cover have something with it too, so you'd be promoted to use it to take advantage of block related skills. Like in shield oath it stays relatively similar perhaps longer max range with damage reduction built in. With sword oath however it would only share a portion of the damage, but each blocked attack would also invigorate the covered target with % blocked amount into HP/TP/MP as a comrade sort of effect (not a lot, but like after covering the warrior for the full duration he gained a total of 7% hp, 15% tp, and 15% mp) meanwhile you were able to use the blocks to power your other block related abilities and you could self heal the damage you took with a clemency or a healer drops a HoT on you.

They may want cover sword oath not to function on tank busters though, it would add extra strategy options but may result in cases where Paladin is deemed required because instead of being required to make a single super shielded full health tank with defense cooldowns up you'd just share the load between two fairly full tanks (the later being a significantly easier task to do, than being prepared with all the cooldowns and full health on a single person).