Paladin -- You're doing it wrong

[negiman4]

I've noticed in these boards that many of you are having trouble holding aggro whilst maximizing your damage contribution to the party. So I've been crunching a few numbers on how best to optimize PLD's damage output with the toolkit we're given. The rotation is no longer oversimplified like it has been for the past few years so it's time to relearn the class from scratch. I'm going to start by saying that PLD is primarily a defense-oriented class, and as such, damage mitigation should be your number one priority, and damage output your second. Let's get started.

[negiman4]

First, the attacks we're going to be working with:

GCDs:
Fast Blade - 160 Potency
Savage Blade - 210 Potency + enmity
Rage of Halone - 270 Potency + even more enmity
Riot Blade - 240 Potency + MP gain
Goring Blade - 250 Potency + 60 potency DoT for 21 seconds (670 potency altogether)
Royal Authority - 360 Potency
Total Eclipse - 110 Potency AoE around user
Holy Spirit - 430 Potency spell, adds 20 oath gauge points if you're in shield oath

oGCDs:
Spirits Within - 300 Potency (damage scales with remaining HP)
Circle of Scorn - 100 Potency AoE around user + 30 Potency DoT on each target for 15 seconds (250 Potency total per target hit)
Shield Swipe - 150 Potency + Pacify
Requiescat - 350 Potency (damage scales with remaining MP) + increases healing and damage magic potency by 20%, but only if MP is at 80% or higher
Sheltron - Blocks next attack and recovers MP. Costs 50 Oath gauge points.

[negiman4]

Buffs:
Fight or Flight - 25% damage increase for 25 seconds
Requiescat buff - increases healing and damage magic potency by 20%, but only if MP is at 80% or higher

All other abilities are irrelevant to this thread and as such are not listed here for that reason. The new PLD rotation heavily revolves around shifting in and out of your burst phase. Your burst phase essentially consists of spamming Holy Spirit as many times as you can while Requiescat and Fight or Flight are up.

[negiman4]

General Rules

The rules while using any of these openers and rotations are the same except for the offtank ones. They are as follows:
-Use Sheltron only once during your burst phase and as many times as possible during your recovery phase
-Use Holy Spirit up to 7 times during your burst phase and only once during your recovery phase.
-Use Shield Swipe every time it's available
-You have time to use oGCDs between Holy Spirits, use them, but prioritize your 1 Sheltron use during the burst phase before unloading the others
-Use Sheltron(or Intervention if needed) if your next Holy Spirit is going to make your oath gauge reach 100 or over
-If you must swap to Sword Oath while main tanking, try to do so with your oath gauge as close to 0 as possible, and do it only if you're confident you won't lose aggro.

[MomoOG]

Buffs:
Fight or Flight - 25% damage increase for 25 seconds
Requiescat buff - increases healing and damage magic potency by 20%, but only if MP is at 80% or higher

All other abilities are irrelevant to this thread and as such are not listed here for that reason. The new PLD rotation heavily revolves around shifting in and out of your burst phase. Your burst phase essentially consists of spamming Holy Spirit as many times as you can while Requiescat and Fight or Flight are up.

I thought Flight or Flight is only physical and wont buff Holy Spirit?

[mosaicex]

I thought Flight or Flight is only physical and wont buff Holy Spirit?

Yes, FoF is physical only.

[Jim_Berry]

I haven't had issues, but then again, I stay in Shield Oath, only going Sword while solo or during dungeon bosses.

That said, with Shield Oath, I unintentionally work to keep hate, sometimes mindlessly forgetting to use Halone lol...

[Edewen]

Tried so hard with 4 posts instead of just editing, yet immediately mistakes using FoF for spell damage burn phase. Paladin, you are doing it wrong.

[Sarcatica]

Tried so hard with 4 posts instead of just editing, yet immediately mistakes using FoF for spell damage burn phase. Paladin, you are doing it wrong.

To be fair, most of the people just can't read tooltip properly. And most people who post in forums and reddit alike just aren't good enough to do high end progressions that you can't take their opinions seriously. Credibility is very much questionable at best. The same shit happens to people doomsaying DRK and WAR, aside from DPS comparison which will be up very soon because ACT is back.

[GDFletcher]

I don't see how anyone now can be struggling unless the DPS is clearly burning themselves out on the 1st initial attack in which case let them tank! Tanks need to do an opening rotation just as much as a DPS class does, if they can't wait for that then fine they can tank the floor instead!