Delete Clemency and Vercure

[tdb]

With Clemency though you're not just wasting a GCD, you're throwing off the whole rotation and losing like half of it for even a single Clemency cast. Raising also doesn't take that long, as well as topping, though I aknowledge the weakness, but then it's not like you let someone die on purpose.
Unless you mean a Healer wasting a GCD, but keeping someone over 50% at all times takes way more than one GCD, especially with big pulls.

I checked from a video, and from the moment the raise icon appears to when the player regains control took about 8.5 seconds (and there may be a little bit of lag from the ability execution to the icon appearing). That's at least four GCDs lost for the tank, and one for the healer (for the swiftcast raise). Possibly an additional lost GCD for the tank if they die just as the healer's previous ability goes off and they have to wait for a GCD until raise can be cast. Because the tank was dead for that long, the deeps will have taken some hits. If the healer was tunnel visioning and has all their oGCDs available, they may just be enough to restore everyone to sustainable health levels - assuming they will instantly snap back into proper focus. Most likely though a GCD heal or two is needed. This does not quite add up to the 10 GCDs I claimed before, but still a significant number of lost attacks. And there may be more GCDs lost to general panic, not to mention if a deeps dies as well.

I'll admit I haven't played PLD so I don't really know how the rotation works. But I find it hard to believe a death would be less disruptive than having to casting Clemency to keep yourself alive.

Now, if your intent is to give a good scare and teach a lesson to the tunnel visioning healer? Sure, I don't argue with that. I don't even mind an occasional wipe. It's just that "why waste DPS on a heal because raise is so quick" seems untrue to me.

[TurtlesAWD]

The simpler the purpose of a class is, the easier it is to find the best one on a spreadsheet.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

With Clemency though you're not just wasting a GCD, you're throwing off the whole rotation and losing like half of it for even a single Clemency cast. Raising also doesn't take that long, as well as topping, though I aknowledge the weakness, but then it's not like you let someone die on purpose.

throwing off your rotation for one clemency to prevent yourself from dying is far less of a dps loss than eating a weakness which is 25% damage down for a little under 2 minutes. Not to mention your rotation on a PLD will still get thrown off when you die, not to mention if the healer doesn't have swift, that's still tons of GCDs worth of damage lost if they start slow-ressing you immediately.. You could easily have hit FoF right before you died, meaning when you get back up you have no MP for Req, neither do you have FoF and are forced to just sit there using your physical rotation until you can re-align with CDs.

[Tlamila]

throwing off your rotation for one clemency to prevent yourself from dying is far less of a dps loss than eating a weakness which is 25% damage down for a little under 2 minutes. Not to mention your rotation on a PLD will still get thrown off when you die, not to mention if the healer doesn't have swift, that's still tons of GCDs worth of damage lost if they start slow-ressing you immediately.. You could easily have hit FoF right before you died, meaning when you get back up you have no MP for Req, neither do you have FoF and are forced to just sit there using your physical rotation until you can re-align with CDs.

My question is: do you die from being under 50%?
Cause all those answers make it seems like if you don't Clemency under 50% you're gonna die.
i must be playing PLD wrong since I don't die that easily.

[Vahlnir]

My question is: do you die from being under 50%?
Cause all those answers make it seems like if you don't Clemency under 50% you're gonna die.
i must be playing PLD wrong since I don't die that easily.

In my opinion, 50% isn't enough to justify panicked Clemency use. 20% and under with no signs of one's healer doing anything about it? Yeah, I think that's understandable. I try to give my healers the benefit of the doubt though even at 20%. If they let me go under 10 I'm popping Superbolide. lol

[Packetdancer]

To each their own, I suppose, but Clemency should basically almost never see any use outside prog.

I would say the 'almost' includes PotD solo runs, because MAN is Clemency handy in there on floors where auto-heal is disabled as a floor effect. (Or in deep runs on PotD with a party, if your WHM happens to presently be rampaging around as a manticore and someone else steps on a landmine.)

But yeah, I tend to manage the tank's HP based on what I have available. I've got Benediction up? I'm gonna plan to use it when you're somewhere between 20-30%. (Below 20% is great, but the game's creative server tick and ability priority stuff can make it risky. Also I'll tend to put it slightly higher on GNB, because I've seen one too many "Okay, time to Bene— well, crap, they just popped Superbolide at the same moment I Bene'd." moments.) Benediction's on cooldown? Then yeah, I'll probably let you drop into somewhere in the 45-60% range and hit with Solace and weave Tetra. Plus I've usually put Regen and Benison on the tank, maybe dropped an Asylum or popped Temperance, so the damage is already less than it could be.

And I have similar metrics for AST, as to what I'll wait for the tank to drop to before using it.

I can judge roughly how much healing my own kit will do, and I'm going to wait until the tank has taken enough damage to make it worth using an given bit of that kit. If someone starts Clemency'ing themselves to stay above 80% at all times, they'll never reach that point. Though if they keep it up for long enough, I'll sometimes sigh and adjust my mental mileposts a bit, and just suffer the indignity of generating overheal in the name of not having a tank panic.

(But I'll be quietly growing a crust of salt as I do.)

[seraf]

I'll Clemency or Vercure anyone I want if I see them low on HP at any point.

[Lumivyory]

While as a healer main I hate seeing a PLD that start healing themselves when they aren't even below 50%, Clemency needs to stay. Some healers are just bad and self-healing is a way of saving yourself when you drop too low. As a very anxious tank I can completely understand how scary it can be to drop to 10-20% HP.

Other than that - PLD is literally the only tank with no self healing in the main rotation. Even on just level 50 WAR has Storm's Path and Thrill of Battle, GNB has Brutal Shell (which also gives a shield) and DRK has Soul Eater. And Clemency isn't even available at lvl 50.

[tdb]

Other than that - PLD is literally the only tank with no self healing in the main rotation.

Also the only tank with a GCD heal ability. The heals of all other tanks are oGCDs (not counting those which are an additional effect on an attack). In exchange Clemency is spammable, although it does drain a lot of MP.

[Packetdancer]

While as a healer main I hate seeing a PLD that start healing themselves when they aren't even below 50%, Clemency needs to stay.

Agreed: every tank should have a self-heal. I think that Clemency just annoys healers more because the majority of other tank self-heals are side-effects; they'll self-heal as a byproduct of their rotation, or else with something that both heals and damages, or heals as a side-effect of damage, or whatever. Clemency is a more versatile heal (since you can target others), but it's also a pure heal; a tank casting Clemency to heal themselves isn't "well the tank's doing damage and healing themselves along the way" but specifically "the tank is deliberately, consciously focusing on healing themselves", and moreover as it's a GCD with a cast time, it sits there in the party list staring the healer in the face.

And besides self-healing, I'd argue that Clemency is part of PLD's identity as a job; taking it away takes away some of what makes Paladin a paladin; there are solid reasons that in 1.x, PLD was the job that you earned by combining GLD and CNJ.

Similarly, Vercure. It's saved my life in Eureka, it's saved other people's lives in Eureka, it gives me a way to get Dualcast ready outside of combat... it has easily a dozen scenarios where it's useful, any smaller subset of which is enough to justify its existence. And I've also been the PLD or RDM who's around when a healer eats the bad, or gets disconnected (thanks, Comcast), and was certainly very grateful to have healing abilities until the healer could reconnect. And moreover, as a job that's canonically what happened when some surviving Amdapori white mages and Mhachi black mages looked at the Calamity of Water and went "Well that didn't end well. Maybe we should work together to survive this Umbral era?"; stripping out Vercure and Verraise would run against all the lore behind the job. (Heck, I'd argue that there's solid lore justification for RDM to have a Veresuna.)

And hey, there've been situations as a healer where I'm glad to see a PLD or RDM pitch in with healing. Some alliance raid where my co-healer's down, everyone's hurt, and I don't have Swift up. If the RDM can Dualcast Verraise the other healer while I focus on keeping everyone else upright, excellent! If the PLD can focus on keeping themselves up while I hard-rez the other healer, also excellent! Etc.

So as much as I will continue to be mildly annoyed when DPS or tanks think they can manage the healer's kit better than the healer can, I don't think non-healer healing/rez skills should go. I'll just quietly wish that folks who get nervous at seeing their health dip below 70% would learn to trust the healer, and accept that it's often better to let the health drop a little more rather than wasting healing resources keeping folks constantly topped up.