The Problem with Paladin

[SwordCoheir]

Actually looking at WAR AF most of the pieces are on par defense wise with PLD's AF. I'm kinda shocked considering all the crit/enmity/damage bonuses that are attached to the gear as well. I was under the impression when they developed WAR it was supposed to be more of an HP/DPS tank not a job that could do that and compete somewhat defensibly with PLD, WAR should at least have to sacrifice DPS in some way to be on par defensively. Or maybe reverse roles and give PLD a way to sacrifice defense to up DPS significantly so they can at least be in a more flexible role when not tanking.

[Treach]

whoa i found the colors

[Youngblood]

Too keep it simple please by all means improve PLD however it needs to be done but DO NOT NERF WAR or any other classes for that matter. Improving classes is the better way to go.

[LlenCoram]

I like the fact that jobs are getting looked at, but the gods help you if you touch Monk <.<

We are murdering machines and we are NOT to be trifled with.

[zergasaur]

I wouldn't worry too much about nerfing of certain classes. Most of these new jobs as is are only marginally better than the original classes. Nerfing them would render the jobs pointless. How it works is probably using the original class as a starting point, then taking away the flexibilty of having access to all other class skills. Then with the remaining skills altering them to support more unique and role oriented purposes. But as I see it now for Paladin, they are worse off a tank than the Gladiator. So I can pretty much do better tanking as Gladiator than the Paladin with non-darklight gear.

My suggestion to SE is to stop worrying about putting boundaries on jobs and classes that make them limited. Having the feeling of being important and overpowered is a good thing for player enjoyment. For example, BLM should be doing insane dmg which may seem OP. But when a mob comes a knockin, the blm should die easily. On the opposite spectrum, dmg should be sucky for Paladin, but ae enmity, Hp and def should be his forte. Warrior can be diversified by having him generate enmity through dmg and WS instead. Or perhaps having abilites to tear hate away and reassign hate or something like that.

[Gildarts]

Only actions?
I think PLD need a better hp n defense or physical dmg resistance not only actions lol...
Works on shield and block rates and ofcoure the enmity ...
i hope the job get fixed soon and be useful.

[Skies]

Only actions?
I think PLD need a better hp n defense or physical dmg resistance not only actions lol...
Works on shield and block rates and ofcoure the enmity ...
i hope the job get fixed soon and be useful.

Well- They might be moving PLD more towards Active Tanking rather than Passive Tanking, in that it has active abilities that mitigate damage and such, probably adding secondary effects to their existing abilities and tweaking them otherwise. Im curious!

[Peptaru]

People should stop asking for Pld HP boosts, their concept from the Q&A was reduced HP for better mitigation (paraphrased) people are disappointed because only the lack of HP was delivered without the supposed + we were expecting. I hope Pld HP stays right where it is.

[PiedPiper]

The problem with paladin, and gladiator to be honest, is that it artificially limits the entire party owing to its tiny threat generation capacity relative to warrior. Many times in this thread something like "its not hard to slow down on dd" or "well the dd/healer should just manage their threat" or "tanks job is to generate as much threat as possible, and it doesn't matter that the dds can generate more" has been said... and all of this betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the tanks job. This sort of thing has been said by people with the mentality of "we have 30 minutes to kill ifrit, any amount of enmity will allow the DDs to get him dead by then." There are several things wrong with this.

A) The longer the fight, the more likely something will go seriously wrong. End of the day, a longer fight means more cracks, more cracks means more people will eventually blow up (even if you are 99.9% consistent at dodging, if you have to dodge enough, you will blow). Too many people blow up and you fail. If the fight was say, 10 minutes shorter (very possible), its substantially less likely that things will go wrong. More emnity = shorter fight = smaller chance for mess up.

B) Drop rates aren't 100%. This may seem obvious and off topic, but think about it. We don't (usually) just fight ifrit once in a vacuum. We form groups expecting to kill him multiple times. Faster kills = more kills = more loot. If my group can kill him in 7 minutes and 30 seconds and yours is taking 20 minutes because the DDs in your group are fettered by lower tank threat, then my group is way better off. This is just as true for Cutter's Cry as it is ifrit. More tank hate = higher dps = more loot.

C) As it happens, there isn't plenty of time to get it done. Speed chest on CC requires high out put for the entire dungeon. This means that your DDs need to be able to go full throttle almost the entire time. So when we get to ChimChim and I'm on warrior and putting up way more threat than you on gld/pld, my group is better off. The same DDs in a group with war kill it faster than a group with gld/pld.

D) And, to me, this is most important. A tanks job is not to maximize group dps potential, its to get out of the way. Idealy, the tank should be putting up more threat than the DDs can match going full-boar. A great tank is a tank that places no limits on the group. In a sense, our job is much less "stay alive" and much more "hold threat." We have whm/cnj brd (support class!) to keep us alive. Yes, we ought to have tools to help out, and you ought to use them, but they are secondary to holding threat. By that, I mean, just as a dead DD can't DD, a dead tank can't hold hate.



With these things in mind, lets compare glad and plad. As has been discussed to death already, the two are next to equal in terms of keeping themselves up, perhaps (and I believe it to be so) with gld getting the edge owing to renewable mp and a faster cast time along with feather foot and second wind. As I have said, survivability, however, is somewhat subordinate to threat generation (again, just to be clear, survivability only matters inso far as it allows you to continue building threat.)

Threat generation, some people seem to think pld actually has an advantage over gld owing to spirits within, which i must say is totally lol. Think about the start of a fight, and lets stick with ChimChim. I'm a paladin, so I look at him real hard.... and flash /voke him. And then i position him. And then I stab him until I have tp and hope a dd hasn't pulled it off in those first 30ish seconds. Then I blow boon to drum phalanx spirits. Honestly, DDs pretty much have to just twiddle their thumbs this entire time. Holy succor is unlikely to be used here, I'm moving, I probably have stone skin and regen up, so I'm not even going to take much damage to try to heal, and oh, they took away our PRIMARY initial threat generation tool: over cureing for hate.

Now I'm a gladiator. I get my war face on, I stare at ChimChim.... and I pop invigorate and keen flurry. Why? Because by the time I have him positioned, I can IMMEDIATELY use wardrum, which will also be on a much shorter cool down, and will continue to be used nearly twice as often throughout the entire fight, which is WAY better than spirits within. Not to mention all the extra combos invig will give me across a fight, or shield bashes, or, well, anything I want to use that TP for.

Setting aside the MP issues, curing for threat simply isn't viable. People have said, "well, just cure the dd when it pulls." Yeah, that gets you all kinds of really really dead on ChimChim once he starts voice of the lion'ing the entire group. Not an option. No one but you, other than maybe on chorus and ants, is going to take damage. And you have two whm's with regen and fingers on the button staring at you with faster to cast cures. Good luck with getting a full effect holy succor off, unless your intentionally getting hit by his abilities, which is super scary since your hp is only marginally bigger than that of a wet noodle. The key to fixing gld/pld is actually rather simple: bring back over cure for threat. If we are willing to spend the mp on it, we should get the effect. As it is now, we frequently spend that precious pld mp only to cure for 0. And its just silly to tell the whm's not to cure, its kind of why they are there, and you really can't risk the tank going down.

Prior to this patch, gld and med were pretty close in single target threat. For speed kills, MRD's vastly superior dps probably still made it the better tank, but hate wise I was untouchable on Ifrit as gld. Double and triple melded BLMS couldn't pull him off me if they started casting the moment they were in position, a big part of that was the fact that at any time, if my abilities were on cool down, I could just cure someone/something and get a full 400+ points of healing threat. During jumps I could AOE cure the DDs and get a few k threat, right at the start I could do it on the full party to get essentially a second rampart. If paladin could, at will, drop a 1.1k holy succor on itself for threat, this entire thread would be "hey, pld needs mp" "yeah, i agree" "maybe a bard?" "idk i want to play solo right now" /thread. Paladin's biggest problem isn't that its mp is difficult to manage, but rather that its MP, in endgame, is useless. Paladin is supposed to be a better tank than GLD because its supposed to have all the tanking tools as GLD and then some, when in reality it has less tools + some largely useless ones. Divine Veil on ChimCHim? 100% Useless. Holy succor on ChimChim? 85% useless. Cover on ChimChim -1337% useless. Even hallowed ground is a good 70-90% useless because it fades on movement, and haha, the entire ChimChim fight is moving to avoid abilities. In a short fight, paladin has less threat. In a long fight, it has less threat and less survivability (my gld will almost never run out of mp with feather foot and well used SR).

Temporary solution? Go warrior. AOE Hate grab on the same 30 second cool down as flash, hits for more threat, and it is also a rather kick ass DD (recently came in first place on an 8 minute ifrit kill, as the tank.) Oh, and you never perma-run out of TP. Oh, and the bard is still useful, cus he can Paeon you. Paladin is supposed to be a tank and only a tank, its a job, it should do one thing and do it really really well. Its shiny new thing is MP, that MP should help it tank. It's not a "utility healer" or a "shinier white mage." It is a tank. Make its MP help it tank.

Please note, I love the idea and even feel of paladin's play style. But I can't justify using it when I'm having to say "guiz don't pew pew yet cus I can't build more threat" when I should just be on warrior. Also, Buff PLD don't nerf War, war does what its supposed too, pld is like cake, it is a lie.

[TessaJalloh]

Great Sage

Pretty much the entirity of this explains every issue there is with PLD right now, and why WAR is simply better than us. It aint cause WAR is overpowered at what it does, it's because we poor Paladins are kinda... well... shit at what WE do. We need a heavy boost to our enmity generation, a HUGE boost to it, enough to make it so we can secure it, keep it, and only need to maintain it rather and cry and need to steal it back.