Paladin Updates

[Takinagi]

That would, sadly, run counter to it's design. Paladin is being designed as a mitigation-based tank. Regardless of wether or not SE is failing at doing this, i'd REALLY be happy if people's suggestions kept in line with what they've said was the design style of the job.

Why would it counter it's design?! I'm confused

[Alerith]

Why would it counter it's design?! I'm confused

I think he's referring to how SE wants PLD to have less max HP but have greater damage mitigation. In which case, raising their HP would run counter to their intended design.

Not that the intended design is working as intended....

[Arcell]

I think he's referring to how SE wants PLD to have less max HP but have greater damage mitigation. In which case, raising their HP would run counter to their intended design.

Not that the intended design is working as intended....

Paladin can have less max HP than Warrior but it doesn't need to be 1k less. Bring the gap within 300 HP and I think that would change things considerably.

[Takinagi]

Maybe they should give us shell back and 100 defence more then warrior. I can make up the extra HP in gear but I just loose so many other great stats doing so.

[Arkine]

Currently the basic set up in almost every event PT is 1 tank, 2 healers, 5 DDs (or 4 DDs 1 BRD).

Now that set up seems alright, I think its even very fitting for a group that uses a WAR tank. WAR's basic idea is that it does alot of damage, takes alot of damage but makes up for it with Rampage, a large HP pool and frequent critical hits that restore HP generate enmity and does damage.

It does that perfectly, and since it lacks the "on demand/in shit happens" heal with 2 healers backing the WAR up it seems like its working as intended.

Now PLD... how I envision it, is supposed to be such a stellar tank, that does little damage, takes little damage and basically outlasts its opponents instead of just destroying them (That's WAR's approach) now with that in mind, I believe that PLD should do that so well that it only really requires 1 (thats right, ONE) healer backing it up.

It should be defensive enough that it should say for example be able to hold its own if the WHM needs to raise a DD that doesn't quite understand that glowing cracks of lava under your feet is bad for you.

Thus, a set up with a PLD should be: PLD WHM 6DDs (or 5DDs and a BRD for support). Yeah, PLD doing its only job well enough that it doesn't need 2 healers cure bombing it to survive. (Granted you can get 2 healers or just have the BRD heal the DDs if you want, I'm saying that it shouldn't be REQUIRED to have 2 with PLD like it is with WAR)

Now to reach that goal PLD needs a serious overhaul.

Blocking rate needs to be ALOT higher. (FFXI's system was good with this, small shields block little damage but blocks often and the largest shields blocked most of the damage but didnt proc as often)
MP recovery needs adjustment (Cover with AF body is cool, but its hard to keep someone within 8yalms in something like Ifrit, and Outmaneuver 3-14mp a block is just sad even with Divine Veil up, maybe Auto-refresh or an ability that changes TP into MP or make that an extra effect with spirits within instead of increased ACC or maybe fix Outmaneuver to be returning more than 10mp a block)
Damage taken is too high. (My WAR takes 700-900 damage per hit on Ifrit without Rampart/Sent whatever up, my PLD (Full AF when it 1st came out) took around that much, less but not by alot, but I was just eyeballing it at the time, I'm thinking PLD should be taking 100-200Dmg with blocks, 400-500 when not, that puts you at enough risk to need a healer but not enough that you need 2 to be cure bombing you like a WAR to survive, which is a fair trade off)
Magic damage is also too high. (I don't know what to do about this, I guess you can block some stuff, I guess if shield blocks that too it'll be too OP, maybe give Holy Succor a magic shield buff every time its casted. 200dmg? lasts 10secs? lowering Sentinel recast for GLA to 30-45 secs via Enhanced Sent trait maybe? they can take Enhanced Phsycal Defense out, 12def extra on EPD3 is meh anyway and replace it with a buff to magic def trait of some sort.)

I know what I'm asking for sounds pretty OP, but if you take a look at how WAR is atm, and the fact that Tanking is PLD's main and so far (to me) its only Role it makes as much sense for it to excel at it as it does for BLM when it comes to nuking, or WHM with healing.

[Rydin]

Magic damage is also too high. (I don't know what to do about this, I guess you can block some stuff, I guess if shield blocks that too it'll be too OP, maybe give Holy Succor a magic shield buff every time its casted. 200dmg? lasts 10secs? lowering Sentinel recast for GLA to 30-45 secs via Enhanced Sent trait maybe? they can take Enhanced Phsycal Defense out, 12def extra on EPD3 is meh anyway and replace it with a buff to magic def trait of some sort.)

There used to be a Magic Defense...
And I know people will say magic defense still exists, its just each elements resistances
While this is true... the big difference is each piece of gear gave M.Def... but only rare pieces give any elemental resistance

[Kaeko]

Just fyi for the AF body Cover enhancement, you don't need your target to be within 8 yalms to get the MP back. You just need the actual status effect "Cover" active to get MP. Beyond this, while it takes 8 yalms for cover to work, you can use it on someone from further than 8 yalms.

So if you simply want to use cover as a mini-Sanguine Rite, you just need someone within around Provoke range to use cover on.

[Alerith]

Just fyi for the AF body Cover enhancement, you don't need your target to be within 8 yalms to get the MP back. You just need the actual status effect "Cover" active to get MP. Beyond this, while it takes 8 yalms for cover to work, you can use it on someone from further than 8 yalms.

So if you simply want to use cover as a mini-Sanguine Rite, you just need someone within around Provoke range to use cover on.

And it's really a wonderful means of MP regen. It returns MP on every single attack you get hit by, including magic. Depending on the target, they can deal damage to you almost equal to an MP return that would give you a Holy Succor to heal the damage you just took.

[Firon]

Yes for the love of god increase the block rate i'm better they don't wanna do it cause cnj/thm might be op with shields if that's the cast just get rid of them for those classes i wouldn't care if it fixes pld. I have been using buckler shield i can actually block like 1/100 hits while using it >.>.

I think the main problem with stats and block rate as it was in the past and its our evil friend Mr. Dlvl As long as they don't fix this guy, no matter what they do block rate wont be fix cause if a mob lvl is to high you never block anyway. I go fight a lvl 10 mob and i go afk 5 mins come back and my pld blocks 90% of the hits, fight a lvl 30 mob and its cut down to like 40% fight an mob on same lvl or higher it almost does not exist....

[Arkine]

Yes for the love of god increase the block rate i'm better they don't wanna do it cause cnj/thm might be op with shields if that's the cast just get rid of them for those classes i wouldn't care if it fixes pld. I have been using buckler shield i can actually block like 1/100 hits while using it >.>.

I think the main problem with stats and block rate as it was in the past and its our evil friend Mr. Dlvl As long as they don't fix this guy, no matter what they do block rate wont be fix cause if a mob lvl is to high you never block anyway. I go fight a lvl 10 mob and i go afk 5 mins come back and my pld blocks 90% of the hits, fight a lvl 30 mob and its cut down to like 40% fight an mob on same lvl or higher it almost does not exist....

FFXI worked around this by having PLD's shield skill a gigantic A+ while other classes were between F (almost useless) to C (On WHM, also too low to matter).

That made Shield very unatrractive to all the jobs that could use them, melees and such had no use for an F class sub weapon when they could duel wield or use 2 handed weapons, and WHM used 2 handed staves or just went for shields with mage stats on them since they couldn't block for crap.

Now since we don't have skills for weapons in this game since the weapon you use dictates your class. (ass-backward concept, if it wasn't around we'd have WARs with 1 handed axes, MNKs with poles or ARCs with crossbows etc etc) we can always just take away one of the useless traits GLA has like Enhanced Physical Def which is 8, 10, 12 DEF and replace them with something like "Shield Mastery" :Block rate + % and get TP per block or something, since our only shield trait is a +10 (meh...).

Also, FFXI divided shields into 5 categories by sizes.

Size 1: Small bucklers that blocked alot but didn't block much, they were mainly used for fast hitting mobs that didn't do much damage just to stop them from interrupting your casting, oh yeah shield blocks prevented spell interruptions in XI, not sure about XIV. I'd say block rate around 75~85% on a PLD with high skill.

Size 2: Our equivalent to Targes, Round shields and lantern shields. block rate around 65~75% blocks more damage than size 1.

Size 3: Kite shields and maybe Hoplons, these are the balanced ones, the block rate and damage reduction was balanced and they just served as general purpose shields for almost any situation, blocks around 45~65% of the time.

Size 4: The large shields like Scutums they blocked most of the damage but had a low block rate, around 30% and required you to be very heavy on +shield skill gear, they had high DEF that added to your general DEF (duh).

Size 5: Reserved for Relic/Emp shields, they blocked almost all the time and most of the damage, they were almost impossible to get without dedicated shells helping their PLDs, and took 6months+ of dedicated work to get. (Aegis etc)

That was a great system, easy to understand and versatile, each shield had a size, Def and extra stats like STR/VIT/HP/Enmity and no Block rate/Block and all that cryptic nonsense.

Oh and the shields blocked often even if the mob was alot higher lvl than you but of course if the hit is hard you'll take alot of damage even if you blocked it.

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What I find irritating about all of this is that this scenario isn't new to SE, XI's PLD was a sad excuse of a tank, out tanked by NIN and WAR/nin since Utsusemi (Ninja spells, two of them, blocks 3-4 attacks, and can be rotated to achieve almost-invincibility) and the high damage output of those 2 jobs compared to PLD's almost pointless shield blocking (caused PLDs to use staves with -DMG taken % on them to tank) and poor MP management (PLDs wore Verm. Cloaks for its MP-refresh effect) and being an MP sponge compared to NIN-WAR that barely took damage and kept hate with damage.

Sounds familiar doesn't it?

SE solved this by greatly fixing block rate and damage taken, giving PLD auto refresh, introducing MP refresh accessories ( <3 Parade Gorget), A TP to MP ability (Chivalry) that at full TP filled your MP back to full but had a long recast, Shield Mastery that gave you TP when you blocked which was now often, Reprisal spell that added to block % and returned some of the damage taken to the enemy and then my favorite, a weapon skill that did light magic damage, and main modifier was enmity (capped at 750 damage, every time when you have max enmity), and they revamped its old abilities like sentinel (Was just Def boost, changed to -95% damage taken and that % dropped until the effect wore off) and rampart (added a magic shield to it) and shield bash was almost always a guaranteed stun and they all now added a generous amount of enmity when used.

PLD became the main tank for almost everything but it was balanced enough that a Half assed PLD would lose hate and get his PT killed, while a very skilled one would allow the rest of this PT to fight harder and end battles faster.

It just irks me that SE learned nothing from that experience.

/long posts ftl