Sheltron is not as strong as SE thinks it is.

[Sylvain]

of course it doesn't work on Gravity, Gravity is a flat 75% damage that nothing can mitigate, the only skill any tank has that could even slightly counteract it is TBN and we already know TBN is insane. .

wasn't it 80%?

[phantomr23]

To deal with gravity WAR has Thrill of battle and shake it off it can also help with the recovery with nascent flash, DRK has TBN. GNB doesn’t have anything that counteracts gravity but it does have 15% and 10% mitigation with an increased chance to parry the following autos readily available that it doesn’t need for anything else. PLD doesn’t even have sheltron for the autos at that point and even if it did it’s not as strong as the other tanks options. But the point there is the other tanks have their other options that do work while PLD only has the one option that doesn’t, so sheltron lacks the versatility that, say, WAR has with its multiple forms of mitigation from shields to self heals to flat mitigation.

Thing is that weakness isn't a bad thing, various tanks having to adjust to different mechanics in various ways is a good thing in my eyes, and it's not like we don't have tools to make things easier. Smart timing means we can cover the three major threats (autos after Gravity, tank lasers and Spear of Paradise) with just two cooldowns, and there's a swap right after. If that isn't good enough, we can use Hallowed to completely ignore Gravity if we want - that's what I started doing in early weeks when healers struggled to keep me alive. I feel like a lot of arguments in this thread are founded on the idea that Sheltron being weaker is a huge issue, but I feel like it's one of the things keeping PLD particularly interesting for me. When we have less mitigation tools we have to find unique ways to use what we have, and there's certainly no situation in the current tier that can't be mitigated properly with good play.

Like? The skill that has no net decrease to damage taken yet comes at the cost of your on-demand mitigation skill's worth of gauge? The %HP raid shield that puts out less mitigation over time than the one that doesn't require additional triggers? The percentile raid shield that's 50% stronger but takes 33% longer to recharge AND requires that your raid stack behind you? None of which gives you a second minor CD as afforded to the other jobs?

We have two particularly strong niche uses for our gauge, in both the best OT skill in the game (Intervention is absolutely absurd in moments where both tanks are taking damage) and one of the most abusable skills in the game (Cover is perhaps a little too weak now but I've saved my share of runs with it in scenarios where nothing else could). Divine Veil is... admittedly a little finnicky, I don't like the activation requirements much, but it's an incredible source of raid mitigation if you plan around it. Also, if I'm thinking correctly, it works out stronger than Shake if Off on a lot of classes. As for Passage, that has a long cooldown because it's absolutely ridiculous when you realise you can just flash it on and off as an oGCD; turns out requiring the party to stack isn't a huge problem in Savage when everybody stacks anyway. So yeah, I'd say having the most variable toolkit which can cover nearly any situation if you play well is worth the loss of a minor defensive tool when we already have the best invuln skill in the game.

wasn't it 80%?

Could be, I've never actually been able to find the specific number since everywhere I've asked has said either 75% or 80%. 75% sounded nicer so I went with that, but it could be wrong.

[Shurrikhan]

(wait, Shield Bash, I hear you say? What? I see Shield Bash as the equivalent of something like Camouflage - more of a Trash Pack cooldown than something for tank busters. If for some reason you're having issues on a bunch of adds, you can tab-spam Shield Bash and lock them down for huge amounts of time which equates to a large amount of mitigation.

Oh, your poor party... Every time you're locking one of them out for 1-5 seconds, you're also locking yourself out for a GCD. Now, how many of them are there? And how many of you? Camouflage is a free ~18% physical (10% magical) mitigation for 20 seconds. Shield Bash, even against a mere 7 enemies, does less mitigation, and effectively incapacitates you. Yeah, no kidding you don't want to use it, virtually ever.

[Freyyy]

Oh, your poor party... Every time you're locking one of them out for 1-5 seconds, you're also locking yourself out for a GCD. Now, how many of them are there? And how many of you? Camouflage is a free ~18% physical (10% magical) mitigation for 20 seconds. Shield Bash, even against a mere 7 enemies, does less mitigation, and effectively incapacitates you. Yeah, no kidding you don't want to use it, virtually ever.

Yeah it's not like a WHM's Holy. You're just stunning one single target at a time, losing tremendous amounts of DPS doing so. The more targets around you, the more DPS you're losing and the less "mitigation" you're gaining. That's really bad lol.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

The only time I found a use for Shield Bash was in PotD/ HoH, and only if Low blow and Interject are on cooldown, where the situation allows or requires it. I literally do not even have it on my hotbar, since I re-organised hotbars for new actions in ShB, like I'm genuinely surprised it wasn't removed to help with 'button bloat'.

[Cabalabob]

Thing is that weakness isn't a bad thing, various tanks having to adjust to different mechanics in various ways is a good thing in my eyes, and it's not like we don't have tools to make things easier.

That’s the thing though, PLD doesn’t have the tools to adjust. It’s put all its eggs in the one basket, flat mitigation, and that flat mitigation isn’t even higher than the flat mitigation the other tanks bring outside of hallowed which has the longest cooldown. If divine veil effected the PLD or if it had some kind of small hp shield (like giving it stoneskin) giving it an option for additional mitigation where flat mitigation doesn’t work like gravity, or its mitigation tools could actually be significantly stronger than the other tanks to make up for the fact it’s all PLD brings (bringing back bulwark as double block strength) then PLD would have the tools to adjust to mechanics. But all PLD can do is sheltron, it’s a one trick pony.

[Kabooa]

That’s the thing though, PLD doesn’t have the tools to adjust.

What.

It's literally the only tank who does have tools to adjust to all the bad, niche scenarios.

[eagledorf]

You're correct, PLD is currently not suited to MT.　　It is basically relegated to OT permanently; besides the fact that PLD is down one mitigation skill compared to other tanks and Sheltron isn't that great, Intervention is a better use of gauge with all the shared damage mechanics SE put in the new raid and Paladin is the only job that has to sacrifice mitigation (or DPS) in order to use support skills.

(Clemency isn't really a problem. As others have pointed out, the fact that it wastes a GCD is mitigated by being spammable and the shield.)

This is probably the closest SE has gotten to balance, but the fact that they homogenized the jobs to be almost indistinguishable and still can't quite get it right is unfortunate. PLD certainly isn't weak right now, but it's locked into not tanking which is quite silly.

[Reynhart]

You're correct, PLD is currently not suited to MT.

Is it really ? Outside of theorycraft, do people actually have issues "main" tanking as a PLD ?
I remember a time when PLD had way more mitigation than other tanks and people brushed it off because "enough is enough, more is a waste", but suddenly, having one less skill is a big deal.

[eagledorf]

I think the issue is that because it's undesirable to have double of a job (banned in RF) and PLD does perform better as OT than MT no matter what other tank a PLD is paired up with, they will generally end up playing OT. I don't believe I've played MT in any of the newest savage raids since it's dropped (I mean, unless the MT dying all the time in E2S counts as "playing MT")

It's certainly very doable, but it doesn't happen. I suppose you could be unpleasant and insist on PLD MT, but why when it's designed to be so much better as OT?