PLD synergy issues

[Sqwall]

It's fun to play as OT because you get to use blood weapon more often which helps it's overall damage output. But I don't think anyone would argue that it lacks raid utility, much like MNK.
Hell, PLD at least brings a group-wide shield to the table.

I agree with you on the controlled chaos. I like DRK's ability to have a hectic handle on the battlefield. But as you say in the future expansion coming up I AGREE about your concerns with the current state of PLD. Are they going to allow certain tanking skills available to ALL tanks? And how is this going to effect certain tanks?

Can I expect "Thrill of Battle" on my PLD? Which would be amaze-balls honestly! Could I expect "Dark Dance" on my PLD? I feel that this could really change the way the game is played if what SE says is true.

Thoughts?

[Sqwall]

Since the conversation is shifting more I'm going to offer some speculation to the next upgrade for the skill system in stormblood.

PLD must haves: Thrill of Battle- perfect for large grp bulls and getting HP up to WAR heights

Vengence: 30% lower Damage taken and thorn damage. Perfect with Bulwark or sentinel paired.

Blood Weapon: Honestly this would be OPAF, but the dps increase and MP regain would be amazing for PLD. Don't you think?

Dark Mind or Dark Dance: This would really help out the with more CD's to burn for the PLD and dark mind would help out with Magic defense. Absence of Dark Arts makes it more unique for DRK also which makes one want to play DRK even more.

I.E. swap a current PLD skill for another jobs skill, and you won't be able to use that skill unless you respec again.

Thoughts?

[whiteblade89]

Can I expect "Thrill of Battle" on my PLD? Which would be amaze-balls honestly!

I agree with you on this. Thrill of Battle is an ability that I think would be a good fit for all tanks. Dark Dance is a bit questionable just because Parry itself isn't all that great. But I see it like another Foresight. It's not great, but it's good to use just so you can say you have a CD up. Blood weapon would be awesome for PLD because I often see PLD's who run themselves dry on mp in big pulls. For WAR, the increased skill speed would benefit their damage output, and for those WAR who use flash, it could be a good alternative for aggro generation if they're low on tp by allowing them to use flash a couple more times. And Dark Mind is so situational that I feel like giving it to other tanks wouldn't really hurt the DRK identity too much.

But on that note, I think the community is worried about the identities of these tanks being muddled with the upcoming changes. I'm not overly concerned about it because as long as DRK has Dark Arts and Blood Price, I will continue to play it. I actually welcome the prospect of maybe getting to use CD's like ToB on all tanks.

What PLD really needs, imo, is an aoe enmity ability that does damage besides CoS. Hell, make Flash deal unaspected damage like Unleash and at least some of the tanking community would be slightly happier with it.

Tl;dr- I like your ideas, but some of the community won't because a lot of people like the separate identities that the tanks have. We'll just have to wait and hope that SE doesn't screw it up lol

[ErikMynhier]

Take Shield Swipe off cooldown but keep it where its only usable after a block.... add a Blunt Debuff effect.... bring a Monk with you, they'll appreciate the business as well.

[ADVSS]

So let me get this straight everyone is fine with how DRK is designed?
Skills.
Cooldown skills?
Role in a raid/dungeon?
General understanding of the classes playstyle?

I hear more and more people saying they like the idea/playstyle of DRK. But PLD still seems to get the short end of the stick

nah i got gripes with drk lack of utility as well but this topic is about pld so i tried to stick to it,
i do prefer to tank as drk over the other two, but i could see myself going back to paladin if they tune it right for SB while ignoring drk few quirks

What PLD really needs, imo, is an aoe enmity ability that does damage besides CoS. Hell, make Flash deal unaspected damage like Unleash and at least some of the tanking community would be slightly happier with it.

At the very basic I agree with this, not so sure about the other ideas, though it wouldnt personally bother me. Since rampart is getting uprooted from pld, somehow, i feel like vengeance which really fits drk to me, should also be put in a cross role list. ToB? meh, but i guess it has its purpose, for self healing-sorta, which sustainability on all the tanks could afford to be raised a little more than it currently is imo. How much? i couldnt give statitistics, just that it could be higher. DRK giving up DM is fine by me, as long as they get a new lifetap or something fitting such as curse - reduce targets magic resistance, or aspir - because holy exists

[Sqwall]

Take Shield Swipe off cooldown but keep it where its only usable after a block.... add a Blunt Debuff effect.... bring a Monk with you, they'll appreciate the business as well.

Yes I would love shield swipe to be of cooldown and given something worthwhile. Adding a debuff to the mob is nice. I was thinking something like a stacking damage multiplier. Much like monk getting grease lightning. But would stack up to x5 and stay on the PLD until the timer ran out. So everytime you blocked you get a HUGE damage burst on PLD up. You could use it at x1 or x5. But you would obviously want to get the full effect at x5, and really push you to use Bulwark to gain the stacks. Not to mention increasing your crit chance for large burst damage.

Thoughts?

[Launched]

So let me get this straight everyone is fine with how DRK is designed?

No, I think it's incredibly badly designed and it's my least favourite job in the game. It has a ton of problems:
Skills: lots of unnecessary duplicates or ones that don't add anything interesting. Why have Unleash and Abyssal Drain at the same time instead of making DA+Unleash give 20 more potency and the HP drain? Dark Passenger, Salted Earth (which are also 2 more aoes) and Carve and Spit are just there to be a DPS increase that you use as often as possible. The rotation and MP "management" are nowhere near as complicated as DRK players like to make it sound. And why is Dark Arts to bland and limited? It's not interesting at all and just gets used in the same way constantly.

Cooldowns: just copies of PLD skills, should be obvious why that's bad. There are other tanking styles it could have got that weren't just percentage mitigation on every skill, like Brewmaster Monk's stagger from WoW. Make DRK take more damage overall but make that damage smoother instead of big spikes. Living Dead is probably its best-designed skill.

Raidwide contribution: Giving DRK INT down on Delirium was a horrible idea. First, it conflicts with MNK because you can only have INT down from one source, so it means you probably won't ever want DRK and MNK in the same group. Second, when you compare PLD and DRK, one has STR down and one has INT down. Everything in this game so far leans heavily in one direction, I don't think there's any fight where both the MT and the group take an even split of physical or magical damage. So you're only ever going to want one of Halone or Delirium, and for all of HW that's been Delirium. It wouldn't be too bad if it stopped there, but adding Reprisal on top of that is just stupid. Delirium was already close to 10% raidwide mitigation, and Reprisal is another 10% on top of that, just with a bit less uptime than Storm's Path. It's a stupidly strong combination that shouldn't just be limited to one job. And despite the fact that it has cooldowns nearly identical to PLD's along with tons more raidwide mitigation, it also does WAR levels of DPS.

Tanking spot: DRK's entire skillset makes it want to MT. It loses too much from Blood Price procs, Reprisal and Low Blow procs when it's not getting hit. PLD also wants to get hit for Shield Swipe procs. It doesn't lose as much as DRK from OT, but neither of them gain anything either and unlike WAR they can't use their defensive cooldowns in other ways so that they're not completely wasted. DRK should have been designed to fit with how tanks were at the end of ARR: PLD MT (so DRK OT) and WAR OT (so DRK MT) like how AST got the two sects. Instead, it just fights with PLD for the MT spot because neither of them have anything that makes them want to MT.

Basically, just making DRK a direct upgrade to PLD was a horrible idea. Jobs like WAR, the 3 healers, MCH, DRG etc. work well with every other job in the game, but DRK's design still directly conflicts with PLD and MNK nearly 2 years after HW was released and I don't understand why it hasn't been changed.

[Sqwall]

Basically, just making DRK a direct upgrade to PLD was a horrible idea. Jobs like WAR, the 3 healers, MCH, DRG etc. work well with every other job in the game, but DRK's design still directly conflicts with PLD and MNK nearly 2 years after HW was released and I don't understand why it hasn't been changed.

YES!! This completely! I have been waiting for someone to post something about this. This just shows me that not everyone has played all 3 tanks and some of the DPS that have conflicting skills. To me this is why PLD is completely no longer viable in end game. DRK has all the skills PLD does and does it better. If your smart about the MP management DRK eclipses PLD in every possible way. Same with WAR, It does way more DPS and higher AOE DPS + the debuffs are a simple rotation.

I'm with you SE needs to address this issue quickly and make it worth while to put that shield back on for me. I suppose I'll work on finishing DRK 56 and WAR 56.

[Dzian]

This problem with the tanks is balance between them all and trying to make them all the "samey" for just being a tank. When I play MNK it plays TOTALLY different then say my SMN. And for good reason. Because that's a play style that works for each class. I have some grips with MNK and the constant spamming chakra (so annoying), but the dps mnk offers is great.

I don't understand why they really try to make all the tanks play the same just for the masses to "use them more" or "we would really like to see more PLD". That's a crap excuse. Just make the class viable in it's own right. Don't adjust it to make it more like WAR's dps level. Just offer something that makes the class unique. Shields need to offer more for the class honestly, it's our bread and butter.
I think it's time that PLD get\s the spell reflect!
This would make the class unique and gives the PLD more of it's knight/mage ethos.
Food for thought. Thoughts?

I think it's partly down to the static design of 2 2 4 party's. And the content itself.

Paladin always used to be a defensive tank but in the games content all that ever matters is dps..

And this forces tanks to be samey. Because if you have paladin that have uber mitigation but no dps. A duty finder party with 2 of them is going to struggle with any dps checks or something for example
Same could be said for warriors. If they had no mitigation but uber dps. A party with 2 of them would also struggle because those unavoidable tank busters would rip them to shreds while barely scratching a paladin.

If the party compositions were a lot more flexible than fixed 2 2 4 you could separate the tanks a lot more.. a paladin might be able to tank on his own what it would take 2 warriors to handle.

Or a warrior might require the second healer in a group where a paladin might only need one... so even if that tank buster would rip a warrior to shreds, a party with a warrior tank would probably have extra heals..

The job balance kills the job identity quite a lot in this respect. Can see it with healers as well.

Whm is aimed at pure heals but nothing require that level of healing so ast and sch take all the slots because they bring more dps and enough heals.

But when everything is built around a predefined party setup 2 tanks 2 heals and 4 dps. You really can't individualise the jobs too much and that's why they all feel samey..

They pretty much are all the same. If I play Scholar the amount of healing I have to do on a tank isn't really any different if that tank is a war or a pld or a dark. That tank busters gonna smack all 3 for the exact same amount of damage. And generally speaking what class my tank is doesn't even change how much time I spend in cleric.

The way my Scholar plays is exactly the same regardless of what job the tank is. So yeah it's very samey

[Lyth]

DRK has all the skills PLD does and does it better. If your smart about the MP management DRK eclipses PLD in every possible way. Same with WAR, It does way more DPS and higher AOE DPS + the debuffs are a simple rotation.

If you're just looking for someone to validate your point of view, I'm sure that there's someone out there willing to do so. That being said, there's nothing that prevents you from doing raids on PLD. You'll always find fights which work in favour of one tank over another. But you can't make that judgement if you're not actually pushing the limits of the job. WAR may bring the highest personal and raid dps by design, but there are plenty of mediocre WARs out there who still manage to consistently get outperformed by their co-tanks, whether they be on PLD or DRK. So you should always ask yourself if you could push your own skill further before you ask the devs to push your job's power further.

That's not to say that PLD couldn't benefit from a rework. But I do feel like a lot of its naysayers haven't really explored what it can or cannot do as a job. If you haven't had moments where you wished that you had access to Spirits Within, Cover, Tempered Will, Hallowed Ground, Sheltron, or Divine Veil while on another tank, you haven't really played PLD.

Rotations aren't actually what make a job simple or hard. Any rotation becomes second-nature with enough practice. It's a combination of maximising your uptime and recognising how to tailor your rotation to each individual fight that makes the difference. That being said, faster-paced jobs with higher APM requirements tend to be more rewarding to execute, once you learn how. That's part of the reason why some people love jobs like DRK or NIN, while others find them unnecessarily fiddly.

Either way, take all this with a grain of salt (or provide the salt yourself, in some cases). It's all going to change in two months anyways, so why not wait and see?