Thoughts on PLD changes

[Booden]

So your argument is "Use them when they are useful".

Okay. When are they useful? [snip]

Divine Veil is OGCD and doesn't kill your combo if you do it after fast blade, nor does it use up any mp, it doesn't matter that it's not useful in solo content because the game is balanced around 4/8/24 members, and not solo. I agree that it doesn't make sense for it to not affect us, but considering we're a tank and we can just shelltron aoes anyway, it doesn't really impact the paladin as much as you'd expect, even in savage content. Divine Veil (alongside reprisal, and depending how you fit it in Passage of Arms) is crucial to save your teammates from raidwide aoes that could wipe your party in extreme/savage content. Sure, it doesn't have much impact in 4 man content, since dungeons don't have any strong raidwide aoes, but you can still throw it anyway since you don't lose anything from using it.
I can't really remember a time where Shield Bash was absolutely necessary outside of Leviathan extreme in 2.x lol. I feel like they're keeping Shield Bash in the game to give paladin a gcd shield attack, and even though it's aesthetically nice, it should be replaced or changed. Intervene is already a much better shield attack than shield bash ever was. So yeah, shield bash has no real use or purpose, it's just there, a remnant of 2.x.

It's much more forgivable to use clemency than shield bash, because Clemency, even if it's a dps loss, it's still very useful if something goes wrong. It's also a very strong tool during savage prog, simply because you can give up on dps to see more mechanics and mitigate any error a teammate might make (and later you'll want to give up on clemencies so that you can meet the dps check). Optimally, you don't want to ever use it because healers should know what they're doing, but it's not wrong to use it if things go south (though they shouldn't).

Still leveling my PLD, just entered SB, but as I've leveled I've seen a few times where Shield Bash was useful. Most recent example was Baelsar's Wall, those three drill armed mechs on the moving platform midway through the dungeon. If you don't stun them, good chance all 3 of them will use their party-wide unavoidable needle rain attack. I was with a SCH, so no Holy chain to do the job. By chaining Shield Bash -> Low Blow -> Shield Bash, I was able to stun all 3 of them in 2 GCDs before they could get their cast off.

Would it have wiped us if they did? No, most likely not. But it is a fair burst of party-wide damage that typically forces the healer to drop a couple of AoE heals. By using two GCDs, I allowed the healer to continue DPSing not only because the party didn't take that AoE damage, but also because I myself was no longer taking any damage for ~5 seconds. A huge difference? No, not at all, almost meaningless, in fact, but that's just off the top of my head. Imagine if you did that to prevent something that *could* have wiped the party?

So, no, it's not very useful. It's alright in the low levels where tools are limited, particularly when you're just starting to level a tank and things are still hitting you like a truck so those 5 seconds of stun time are a godsend, but beyond that it's very limited in use. But there *is* still a use for it, albeit extremely situational.

For that particular situation, you could've used Divine Veil + Low blow instead of bothering with shield bash, and continued to use Total Eclipse > Prominance, which is more aoe damage than a sch can output especially under FoF. Even in the case that the party wasn't geared up properly, the worst that could've happened was the sch using one gcd to cast succor (which would trigger divine veil shields, if Eos hadn't already triggered it with Embrace by then) or an ogcd heal.

Yes, what you did might have been stylish, and I definitely think that triple stunning like that sounds kinda fun, but it's inefficient no matter what lol.

Even in lower level dungeons when you don't have prominence unlocked, spamming total eclipse instead of shield bash is more likely than not better to clear out monsters, simply because the mitigation you'd gain by stunning each monster one by one by rotating your stun won't make up for mitigation you'd gain by dpsing down monsters faster (the faster they die, the less damage you take).

Imagine if you did that to prevent something that *could* have wiped the party?

That's the thing though, there are no scenarios like this. Any raidwide aoe strong enough to wipe your party (ie: early savage raid progression) cannot be stunned or silenced, and need to be mitigated by Divine Veil + Reprisal (or Passage of Arms if the party is stacked) and healer shields. AoEs in 71 to 79 dungeons (or leveling dungeons for that matter) are not strong enough to wipe your party even if you're geared with i400 gear, and i430 gear more than make up for the raidwide damage you could take in 80 dungeons.

[Hezzlocks]

Even in lower level dungeons when you don't have prominence unlocked, spamming total eclipse instead of shield bash is more likely than not better to clear out monsters, simply because the mitigation you'd gain by stunning each monster one by one by rotating your stun won't make up for mitigation you'd gain by dpsing down monsters faster (the faster they die, the less damage you take).

Hold on a sec, I'm not gonna make any points against the rest of what you said as I'm not nearly experienced enough to say what is and isn't most efficient for tanking at a high level of play, but having just fairly freshly come out of leveling through the low level dungeons where I didn't have the gear to chain pull multiple groups, I can say you're not actually correct here, at least not when you're just pulling small groups.

Shield Bash stuns for 6 seconds, and Low Blow stuns for 5 seconds. If you have 3 enemies on you (which is all I could handle tanking when I was in the low levels with gear bought from a vendor), you use two GCDs to stun 3 enemies. Two of them are stunned for 6 seconds, one is stunned for 5 seconds. The Low Blow'ed one will be stunned for basically two GCDs, while the two Shield Based enemies will be stunned for about 2 and a half GCDs. During this time they are doing no damage to you or anyone else.

For your own damage, the two that were Shield Bashed have taken a total of 220 potency, as opposed to the 480 they would have taken if you used Total Eclipse twice, meaning you've lost 260 potency between them. The third didn't take any damage, so that's 240 potency lost, for a total of 500 lost potency.

However, you have just pressed the pause button on the fight, basically, allowing the DPS you're with to essentially get in two extra GCDs in each. Now, this of course depends on the DPS you have, with Dancer, Bard and Machinist being among the better options. But even with, say, a Monk, using a 110 potency AoE, that's 660 free potency during a time when the enemies are no longer doing any damage. And that's just *one* of the two DPS. If you had two MCH with you using Spread Shot, that's 2160 free potency in a period where the enemies are not doing any damage to you.

You aren't ending the fight faster, no, not at all. But you also aren't taking more damage. As a matter of fact, you are taking *less* damage, as the extra damage your DPS is throwing in during a period where the enemies are doing 0 damage will more than likely make them die a hit or two earlier.

Obviously this has absolutely NO bearing on later on when you're geared up enough to mass pull multiple groups, and indeed I find myself using Shield Bash much, much less than I used to now that I'm able to do that in most dungeons myself. But when you're just starting out and you can only handle one group at a time, Shield Bash is actually very useful, it saved my lowbie ass many times. Once you can handle multiple groups at once, then yes, using your AoEs is much more efficient than trying to chain stun everything. That's all I'm saying, though, in the low levels it's an absolute godsend.

[Booden]

but having just fairly freshly come out of leveling through the low level dungeons where I didn't have the gear to chain pull multiple groups, I can say you're not actually correct here, at least not when you're just pulling small groups.

Oh, I had just assumed you'd be level synced to the max since you were talking about doing Baelsar's wall, didn't think about under level 50 + undergeared. Yeah I guess it can help newbie tanks, I wouldn't bother using it myself though.

However, you have just pressed the pause button on the fight, basically, allowing the DPS you're with to essentially get in two extra GCDs in each. Now, this of course depends on the DPS you have, with Dancer, Bard and Machinist being among the better options. But even with, say, a Monk, using a 110 potency AoE, that's 660 free potency during a time when the enemies are no longer doing any damage. And that's just *one* of the two DPS. If you had two MCH with you using Spread Shot, that's 2160 free potency in a period where the enemies are not doing any damage to you.

You aren't ending the fight faster, no, not at all. But you also aren't taking more damage. As a matter of fact, you are taking *less* damage, as the extra damage your DPS is throwing in during a period where the enemies are doing 0 damage will more than likely make them die a hit or two earlier.

Wait that sounds wrong, because whether the mobs were stunned or not, the DPS would still be doing their aoe rotations, so it's not free potency, and there's no extra damage coming from the dps here because the mobs are stunned. So there's just the aoe potency loss from the pld.

[Hezzlocks]

Wait that sounds wrong, because whether the mobs were stunned or not, the DPS would still be doing their aoe rotations, so it's not free potency, and there's no extra damage coming from the dps here because the mobs are stunned. So there's just the aoe potency loss from the pld.

I was more referring to how you said the mitigation you gain from stunning the mobs won't match up to the "mitigation" you gain from just killing them faster. With larger pulls where you can't stun them all without sacrificing many GCDs, you're absolutely right. With small pulls where you can stun everything for effectively 2 GCDs, it's like you pressed a pause button on the fight. 0 incoming damage whatsoever (barring dots, i guess). The DPS getting in two GCDs worth of damage during a time where there is 0 incoming damage, so long as it's more damage than you sacrificed to stun them (and it bloody well better be more or they are terrible DPS), it's basically increasing the damage done vs damage taken ratio in your favour.

Basically, the smaller the pull, the more valuable a stun is, as each stun is eliminating a large percentage of the incoming damage, and the less damage there is lost on each AoE you aren't doing. The larger the pull, the more valuable doing damage is, as a single stun is barely affecting incoming damage at all, and you're losing considerably more damage on each AoE you don't do. Stunning a single mob for 6 seconds in a single target situation is very valuable in that regard, though obviously single target situations are usually situations where either the mob is immune to being stunned, or you want to save it for stopping an ability. And obviously you don't want to use Shield Bash mid combo, either.

[MerlinCross]

Divine Veil is OGCD and doesn't kill your combo if you do it after fast blade, nor does it use up any mp, it doesn't matter that it's not useful in solo content because the game is balanced around 4/8/24 members, and not solo. I agree that it doesn't make sense for it to not affect us, but considering we're a tank and we can just shelltron aoes anyway, it doesn't really impact the paladin as much as you'd expect, even in savage content. Divine Veil (alongside reprisal, and depending how you fit it in Passage of Arms) is crucial to save your teammates from raidwide aoes that could wipe your party in extreme/savage content. Sure, it doesn't have much impact in 4 man content, since dungeons don't have any strong raidwide aoes, but you can still throw it anyway since you don't lose anything from using it.

Look I'm not saying "Delete Divine Veil". I'm just saying "Why do the other tanks get effected by their AoE shield and we don't". That just seems like a bloody weird thing to decide. I'm glad it's balanced for 8 man raids but it's basically useless in other content. Maybe 24 man.

And while Clemency can help out, you'd be hard pressed to find a group it seems that won't blame you for the DPS loss. Everything must be done for the sake of DPS and you'll be called a bad tank for daring to pull it out. Or the Healers are bad, one of the two. That's just how the community is.

Shield bash needs fixing, this we can agree on. But we have Shield bash that should never be used because of how the game is designed and Clemency which should never be used due to how the community plays.

I've been noticing this myself, actually. Most recently the Vault has been extremely painful for me, using mostly level 55 gear from the Aery. One run it was fine-ish, some very painful moments with the waves of guards before the first and second boss but otherwise fine, which was with a sprout WHM. Next run, with a level 80 SCH, and there were many wipes. I wasn't sure if it was the healer being bad or if it was me being bad, and I honestly still couldn't say, but I then went on to run Great Gubal Library using the same gear, with a sprout SCH and it was perfectly fine. To me it feels like there are certain little trouble spots while leveling where things are just extremely painful, just a few sudden large spikes in difficulty. I mean, difficulty spikes are to be expected as you level up, but this was less a spike and more a wall. Something feels off.

I've used Clemency a handful of times since getting it. I usually don't feel the need to, but if I feel like I'm about to die, I'll use it. Like 95% of my Clemency uses have been in the Vault so far though...

Then you and Dixa are 'bad' in the eyes of the community. Could have AoE'd more and killed the enemy faster to not take that damage or your healer fell asleep. That's just how the game is 'supposed' to be played.

[Hezzlocks]

Then you and Dixa are 'bad' in the eyes of the community. Could have AoE'd more and killed the enemy faster to not take that damage or your healer fell asleep. That's just how the game is 'supposed' to be played.

When the enemy is all still at about 50% health and the healer is struggling to outheal incoming damage despite me rotating my cooldowns properly, getting off one more AoE combo isn't going to help any more than one single Clemency to help the healer catch up. Seriously, the mobs in the Vault hurt *that much* wearing level 55 gear, which *should* be fine, being only 2 levels below Vault's level. It's crazy. Haven't had as much trouble before, haven't had as much trouble since.