PLD Advice - Skill bloating?

[Phoenicia]

I think Bulwark could be worked into Shield Oath and Fight or Flight could be worked into your Sword Oath, or Neutral stance if they got rid of DPS stances. Spirit's Within and Sheltron could be the same button that switch depending on what stance you are in like Fell Cleave and ... Inner Beast? Was that the name of that move? Total Eclipse and Circle of Scorn "could" be combined into one move or have one upgrade into the other.

Please no.

Stop trying to split "DPS" from "tanking". Do you really think there are too many tank players that you want to force anyone that finds optimizing tank game-play fun to quit? Seems to me that most tanks that want tanks to be nothing other than big slaps of rocks with fat HP and 0 DPS don't even do meaningful content as tanks so they don't know what they are asking for.

Why do you want to LOSE sheltron in Sword Oath if any tank worth their salt would be sitting in it 100% of the time? Why do you want to lose Spirits Within at ANY period? If anything I'd like the HP to potency tie in removed and CD lowered.

ANY WAR main that is worth their salt wishes that they retain access to Inner Beast in Deliverance (and that it stops costing 50 beast gauge). And they have a 100 times easier time switching between their stances.

Or are you just afraid of "button bloat" that you'd rather the whole class has 2 buttons... 1 damage/aggro button and Rampart button? But then again, I guess I should be happy that the forum-goers are not involved in the game design. lol

On topic:

Here is my PLD's UI hotbars:


The "square" bar on the left has my stances (since I almost NEVER switch them) and my pot being Ctrl+3, usually I have pot on Ctrl+1, but because I pop my pot just before I press alt+3 for Royal Authority, Ctrl+3 is more convenient. This bar is hidden 90% of the time anyways as it's a bit redundant. Pots are planned within a fight and stances are never switched. The "Up" arrow macro toggles hiding the bar. Alt+Shift+F is the key-bind that shows/hide it.

I use a gaming mouse with 12 buttons on the side, but I only use 6, so my key-binds are 1-6 on keyboard for things I don't press a lot, 1-6 on num-pad/mouse, QERZXV, and those combined with Alt. Sprint is on a separate shared bar with the key-bind Ctrl+R because I want that to be the same for all jobs.

The red macro is something I have on all classes that toggles auto-face target on/off. The PLD soulstone is an old macro that announced all my CDs in party chat, useless now that our CDs reset on a wipe or entering an instance. Ctrl+Alt+F and Ctrl+Alt+C respectively if curious.

EDIT: PLD is definitely the job with the most abilities on the hotbar due to situational abilities. DRK came close where under a similar setup to my PLD it has 2 free spot on my bar as you can see here. Salted Earth is on my bar twice as one is a macro with <t> and the other is manual placement. (Pot is Ctrl+1 on DRK :P). The second LD icon is a macro that screams in party chat: I'm DYIIIINNNNGGG! HEAL PLZ! with the most annoying <se.#> effects ever. Since random healers are.... random.


NIN, SMN and SCH, are pretty close at their ability to exhaust hotbar or keybind space. The latter two have a pet bar where if you want to optimize you want to hot-key or pull pet actions to hotbar. NIN exhausted my 3 hotbars and only hide is on the fourth square one. (All classes potions are on the fourth square one).

Re-uploaded screenshots of bars!

[Terkhev]

Using multiple XHB’s is just as cumbersome as using the WXHB (and you still keep using the term WXHB incorrectly) and it has the exact same problem, you cannot know for certain which XHB you have active at any one time, without looking down at it, which removes any capability to rely on muscle memory.

Huh? I can use any of my 48 skills without ever looking at bars. If you double click left trigger, it's left 8, if you double right, it's right 8, duh. I mean, I'm not some pro speedrunner, but I never had problem with it and played all roles in savage, including stuff like repositioning Eos with double left trigger -> A during casts. It's only matter of practice and there is nothing inherently confusing about WXHB.
GCD in FFXIV is so long that even on NIN I could use ogcd skills on those bars.

[Burningskull]

Snip

I'm pretty sure if I had my way there wouldn't be a stance swaping mechanic. Not really. Your "Tank" stance wouldn't give you a damage penalty. Instead it would just reduce the damage you take and have all your weaponskills generate extra enmity. When you're not in tank stance you're weaponskills just generate their normal amount of enmity. Weaponskill rotation would then need to be more complex to account for having more than 123. Like maybe 123 keeps up a mitigation buff while 456 keep up a dps buff like SAM's stuff does. Then you could stay in tank stance if you're MT, never have to worry about droping hate, dps can loose their enmity drop skills to help reduce skill bloat there, and you still get your precious "tank" damage. Which imo if tank's damage is so important that you're loosing a fight then either your DPS players suck or your undergeared for what you're trying to do. Tank DPS and helaer DPS should never be NEEDED only a bonus should that player decide to do it. IMO anyway.

[Phoenicia]

Snip.

What do you mean Tank DPS should never be NEEDED? I am standing RIGHT THERE swinging THE 2 biggest weapons in the game. If not that I am stabbing things VERY repeatedly with a sword. I shouldn't tickle enemies.

On a side note, tank and healer DPS isn't "needed" as it is already. There are no real "DPS checks" to speak of. Nothing that demands squeezing every ounce of eveery job including tanks, any away.

Would you rather have a healer AFK in the periods where they do not need to heal (and they really do have long periods of those), or have that haler do "something"? I play healers and honestly, I'd die of boredom if between my oGCDs I have to watch Health bars stand still for periods of 20 to 50 seconds on end.

With tanks it gets a bit more complex. A tank's job involves 4 things:

- Grabbing and maintaining monster attention (Aka aggro/enmity).
- Surviving the damage incurred because of said attention.
- Positioning monsters to the party is safe from cleaves (back and frontal ones).
- Finally, help contribute in killing the monster (Aka DPS).

So yes, PART of my actual job is to deal damage. I'd hate to be a "flash" tank that does 0 damage while holding enmity. Flash is exactly why I hated playing PLD for 4 years in the first place.

The other thing is, I do not want to be penalized for doing my job. Any part of it. I shouldn't lose DPS to grab aggro or mitigate damage, and I sure as hell prefer not to lose mitigation to deal DPS. But if a choice is to be made, I will make the one that's better for the group. And in 99.9% of FFXIV, DPS is the better choice for the group. Your idea of trading Sheltron with Spirits Within is exactly JUST that, punishing me for doing either part of 2 parts of my job, mitigation and DPS.

Punishing me for trying to mitigate damage with Sheltron by losing access to Spirits Within? We WILL favor one move over the other. How is that different from Inner Beast vs Fell Cleave? WAR says Hello!

Even the reverse is bad, losing Sheltron to deal damage by regaining Spirits Within feels really bad and only means tanks will choose to take more damage. healers' DPS is not "NEEDED" after all so they can heal a bit more.

Imo, if stances do not add anything to the overall game play, they might as well just go away. Looking retrospectively at WoW, 3 tanks had their stances removed and the only one that still retained their stances is the one that identifies around its stances: Druid.

For druids, Bear form is the "tank stance", Cat form is the melee DPS stance, neutral allowed for some casting/healing. While being a Guardian druid (tank druid), all your tool kit is behind your bear form and you only really cat form to disengage. So their stances stayed.

Death Knights had 3 "stances" called Presences. Blood added 20% damage. Unholy allowed for movement speed and reduced GCD (not haste), Frost gave damage reduction and increased enmity. No negatives, only loss of bonuses. They added nothing to game play except the fact of "I have Frost Presence up, therefore I am tanking".

Paladin had a Divine Fervor buff: while up it increased enmity and reduced damage intake. that's it. It added nothing to gameplay. Nor took away from it. Just "button bloat".

Warriors had three stances: Berserker, Balanced and Defensive stances. Each had minor bonuses and negatives. Warrior tank gameplay revolved around staying in defensive stance to access their mitigation "buff" via Shield Block. It went into balance stance when off-tanking and Berserker was a burst tool or to access their fear immunity. The cost was steep at only leaving 25% rage. This was the definition of button bloat! You want to use Berserker's rage to remove fear? Press stance, press BR, press other stance again.

In Legion all of those were removed in favor of freedom of access to their tools.

So if you really want to take away button bloat, stances should be your first concern. Not locking crap behind those stances.

[Burningskull]

snip

I think you are missing what I'm saying.. Or I'm not saying it clearly. (probably the latter as I'm horrible at explaining things.) I don't think they should have tank stance / dps stance. They got rid of stance dancing on healers I so no reason why tanks should have to do it. Just make the mitigation and increased enmity from tank stance a natural trait. So long as you remove the damage penalty from it. Then the tank can worry about it's dps and hate generation without having to worry about weither they are in the right stance or not or worry about switching to tank stance to worry about taking less damage cause they do it naturally.

People say, "but then you have the off tank pulling the same enmity as the MT and the boss spinning like crazy."

To which I say, No you wouldn't, cause the OT wouldn't be using their enmity combo. You'd have the MT doing their enmity combo and dot combo or dps combo while the OT just did their dot and dps combos.

[Phoenicia]

I think you are missing what I'm saying.. Or I'm not saying it clearly. (probably the latter as I'm horrible at explaining things.) I don't think they should have tank stance / dps stance. They got rid of stance dancing on healers I so no reason why tanks should have to do it. Just make the mitigation and increased enmity from tank stance a natural trait. So long as you remove the damage penalty from it. Then the tank can worry about it's dps and hate generation without having to worry about weither they are in the right stance or not or worry about switching to tank stance to worry about taking less damage cause they do it naturally.

People say, "but then you have the off tank pulling the same enmity as the MT and the boss spinning like crazy."

To which I say, No you wouldn't, cause the OT wouldn't be using their enmity combo. You'd have the MT doing their enmity combo and dot combo or dps combo while the OT just did their dot and dps combos.

I think you are explaining what you want clear enough. Give yourself more credit.

It is the differing opinions that are at clash here, which is fine, I won't hate you for it. Personally I dislike the differentiation between "MT" and "OT". The concept itself isn't dominant in FFXIV. Both tanks take roughly equal or similar amounts of hits and damage in most fights. Some fights, the tank NOT tanking the main boss takes more damage than the one that IS. I can give examples of many scenarios and explain how it is so.

Back to your suggestion, we already avoid touching those combos even with a 10-foot stick. The "OT" is never an issue for the "MT" unless the OT is being stupid, sitting in tank stance and spamming its aggro combo. Thanks to role actions like Shirk, snap enmity tools and helping tools form party like Diversion and Shadewalker, enmity is not really a concern. Again, if you want details, check opening rotations for the three tanks. Our "MT" priority currently has it that the tank with best snap aggro pulls, this means the OT has almost no chance of pulling off. I can even explain and give simple math to how that is done if you want. We do not need the stances to exist solely to just say "I am tanking".

Tanks swap all the time, shirks tossing each tank's enmity on the other, DPS won't reach tanks unless they try hard (not press Diversion), or the tank holding the boss dies (where all the enmity is pooled). So having a stance we press on top of provoke is just redundant.

Don't get me wrong, I am not anti-stances. I think stances can add to game play. But they have to be done right. A stance that has abilities locked behind it as an incentive to use it but no real "punishment" for entry is a good stance. Check BRD songs. Or MNK's "dance" between Fists of Fire and Wind in order to use Tornado Kick for DPS gain instead of loss.

Enmity moves in general are redundant. WoW removed the whole deal of enmity moves. Tanks simply generated 10 times their damage in enmity in legion (4times in BfA) and the first tank hitting the boss is usually tanking without the off tank worrying about "stealing" aggro. To make tank swaps easy, taunt has 1 more feature than topping the enmity of highest person, it adds a 3 second buff where they generate more enmity. Taunted target WILL attack the taunter until this debuff wears off, and unless this tank fails to generate enmity, it will stick on the tank that taunted.

I know you mentioned aggro reduction tools are button bloat too, but WoW classes also have Tricks of the Trade and Misdirection to boost tank aggro and many classes have their own way to drop threat. Hunters feign death, rogues and mages vanish, priests have Fade and so on. And WoW is one of the biggest MMO examples of 4-button-classes.

It is not simple really, you don't just yell "button bloat" and cut actions. You intelligently design actions so your rotations don't involve pressing all 36 buttons (like how it is in Aion). What we have in FFXIV now is not bad, we have ~36 buttons, our rotations have us press ~10 of those, the other 26 are all situational actions with CDs.