It makes zero sense for the PLD class to have three different skills for AoE

[CarnivalNights]

Circle of Scorn, Flash and Total Eclipse are three skills that can be consolidated into one or two skills.

Give Total Eclipse Flash's enmity gain and give Circle of Scorn Flash's blind for starters.

There's probably better ideas out there, but three 360 degree skills bloats the Paladin's hotbar.

[Kalise]

Yo dawg I heard you liked AoE so we gave you AoE with your AoE so you can AoE while you AoE!

(Still has worse AoE than DRK...)

But yeah, Flash being incorporated into Total Eclipse makes sense especially in ShB after TP is gone so there's not even the fringe case of them using 2 different resources to justify their existence.

Circle of Scorn is different though, because it's an oGCD so it gets used even against single targets because it has no cost associated with it. Though, I could totally see it getting Flash's blind and just replacing Flash with Total Eclipse completely (Including the level at which it is learned so that PLD has a damaging AoE at the same level as WAR and DRK)

That said, technically, DRK has 5 AoE skills (Unleash, Dark Passenger, Abyssal Drain, Salted Earth and Quietus). It's just that most of these are oGCD's or have alternate effects/CD's to make them more justifiable.

PLD's issue is Flash and Total Eclipse fill the same role, which is spammable AoE just arbitrarily one has the enmity boost on and the other has the damage. (Though, it's similar thing for DRK with Unleash/Abyssal Drain where both have enmity boost just one does more damage and can also be used to gain life. While being TAoE instead of PBAoE...)

On a completely unrelated note... I kind of wish WAR had an AoE that could generate Beast Gauge so as to be able to build up for Steel Cyclone/Decimate while AoEing rather than having to decide between Overpower spam for AoE damage/enmity or ST combo's for gauge to use these AoE spenders...

[Lyth]

I think a lot of this will depend on the aftermath of the removal of TP. Ideally, you'd have a situation where Total Eclipse was a free, but lower damage baseline enmity tool, with a new holy magic styled sword skill that was buffed with Requiescat. Just look at Agrias from FFT for inspiration.

On a completely unrelated note... I kind of wish WAR had an AoE that could generate Beast Gauge so as to be able to build up for Steel Cyclone/Decimate while AoEing rather than having to decide between Overpower spam for AoE damage/enmity or ST combo's for gauge to use these AoE spenders...

WAR has the best burst AoE out of any of the three tanks by a very large margin, in a game where burst is king. I don't think we need to make the most overpowered tank more overpowered, no pun intended. If the Vegas fanfest Q+A is any indication, it's high time to rein in WAR's damage output, and rightfully so.

[Kalise]

WAR has the best burst AoE out of any of the three tanks by a very large margin, in a game where burst is king. I don't think we need to make the most overpowered tank more overpowered, no pun intended. If the Vegas fanfest Q+A is any indication, it's high time to rein in WAR's damage output, and rightfully so.

*Sigh*

Can we not start this unmitigated anti-WAR bias crap again?

Especially not when we're talking about an aspect of tanking where DRK is literally the best of all 3 tanks, which is AoE damage output?

Yes, WAR has Inner Release which is nuts, but outside of that one specific CD every 90 seconds, DRK > both other tanks for AoE.

Also, when we're heading into a brand new expansion that will be changing all classes in a dramatic way, talking about how "Balanced" a class is or is not currently is moot.

[Shurrikhan]

PLD's issue is Flash and Total Eclipse fill the same role, which is spammable AoE just arbitrarily one has the enmity boost on and the other has the damage. (Though, it's similar thing for DRK with Unleash/Abyssal Drain where both have enmity boost just one does more damage and can also be used to gain life. While being TAoE instead of PBAoE...)

Not quite, though. Flash does at least offer mitigation in a way that is wasted if spammed, just as Anticipation would be wasted with, say, Raw Intuition.

I'd have to argue that now that AD's enmity modifier has been greatly increased relative to its initial state, it and Unleash are more redundant than Flash and Total Eclipse.

In any case, though, I do hope we can see them consolidated in a satisfying way, rather than just another trimming of mechanics and/or capacity.

Also, to be fair: Goring Blade has the best AoE animation in PLD's kit. A shame it, like most skills that cleave everything in front of you in their appearance, is single-target...

[Jandor]

I imagine one of them is going in ShB to be honest.

I hope it's Eclipse personally, and Flash upgrades in to a magic lightning AoE.

[TouchandFeel]

I imagine one of them is going in ShB to be honest.

I hope it's Eclipse personally, and Flash upgrades in to a magic lightning AoE.

Hmmm... to me that's a tough one, I like the look of Eclipse but I agree that it would potentially be prudent to consolidate the two abilities into one functionally.

If I were to do that I would just remove Eclipse and provide PLD with a trait that upgrades Flash to give it some damage as well.
I would keep the holy light theme to it and call it White Light as a little nod to the localization in FFII(FFIV) on SNES in the US where they changed the name of Holy to White.
Visually it would keep the visual effects of Flash but add to it where little white circular motes of light crackle in the area of effect, sort of like how some fireworks look. The little circular white motes would be an homage to the visual representation of the Holy spell in early FF games.

[Lyth]

AoE tanking almost always happens in short bursts, unless your dps are asleep. Once you get PLD and DRK to 70, you'll hopefully have a better appreciation of this.

DRK AoE tanking is probably the most interesting of the three (which isn't saying much), but that's just a reflection of the fact that it's one of the few situations in which DRK's resources actually get to syngerize and interact in interesting ways.

Also, if you don't want the discussion to involve WAR, then don't bring WAR buff requests into an unrelated topic, yeah? I've seen too many overpowered requests from the WAR community become reality this expansion, simply because the devs think that if they cater hard enough to you, people might actually want to tank in this game. The reverse is actually true. Let's not repeat the past, this coming expansion.

[Kalise]

Also, if you don't want the discussion to involve WAR, then don't bring WAR buff requests into an unrelated topic, yeah? I've seen too many overpowered requests from the WAR community become reality this expansion, simply because the devs think that if they cater hard enough to you, people might actually want to tank in this game. The reverse is actually true. Let's not repeat the past, this coming expansion.

Whether or not the discussion involves WAR has no bearing on you coming in with your crying about WAR at every single chance you get.

Note that my suggestion had no relevance about damage output, merely asking for fluidity of an AoE rotation for WAR that actually works with the tools it has available.

Yet, because you so biased against WAR you instantly took it as an opportunity to rant about how "Overpowered" WAR is and take it as if I said "I wish they made WAR just instantly delete all other tanks when it used Overpower lelelelelelel"

[shao32]

Whether or not the discussion involves WAR has no bearing on you coming in with your crying about WAR at every single chance you get.

Note that my suggestion had no relevance about damage output, merely asking for fluidity of an AoE rotation for WAR that actually works with the tools it has available.

Yet, because you so biased against WAR you instantly took it as an opportunity to rant about how "Overpowered" WAR is and take it as if I said "I wish they made WAR just instantly delete all other tanks when it used Overpower lelelelelelel"

Asking to generate more gauge with an aoe skill, with you already do by shorten the recast of infuriate with decimate and steel, means increase the number of decimate/steel cyclone per second that have pretty high potency already, so it will increase WAR dps on mass pulling equal of the amount of decimates you will gain on the same window of time and the extra dps gain by using constantly aoe skills instead of combos to generate more gauge.