Guide to fixing PLD

[Ricky]

If you bring that to a level where people will say "If we have a PLD tank, we definitely don't need 2 WHMs in our party", then I'll believe we can achieve a balance.

I like this thinking too. Perhaps let Divine Veil work with Holy Succor or just give Paladin another cure ability to eliminate the need for a second White Mage. If Warrior can bring DD and tanking to the party, Paladin can bring healing and tanking to the party.

[SwordCoheir]

That might work long as PLD's AoE buffs/heals are extended far enough players don't have to get in harms way to receive them (kinda a double standard to have to be close and get in harms way to get healed). But that still might limit their usefulness to mobs that spam 360 AoE's.

[Dzian]

I challange any level minded pair of tanks, 1 war, 1pld, to attempt to steal hate from eachother on a "mini boss" like Deepvoid Slave, Princess, or even coin counter. I think most will be suprised to see the results,.

As much as i love paladin i will take any one up on that challenge on my warrior. if we go with the deepvoid slave as an example. sentinal antagonize flash voke vengance rampart. think in 10 seconds of the fight i'll already have more hate which pretty much locks out your spirits within and wardrum because without hate you wont be blocking and a few seconds later i'll have my skull sunder emnity combo cake with its steel cyclone icing on top. and if by some stroke of luck you do pull it back i can just collusion your spirits within.

I can't see how any paladin could compete with that. but i would genuinely love to be proved wrong as i am a much bigger fan of paladin than warrior. which is why i'm so gutted that it's so broken.

I've been called a legendary paladin and a legendary warrior, i just find being a legendary warrior is 10% of the effort and 50% more effective. even if imo i suck at warrior cos i never use half its abilities but i don't need to....

[Evaddaragon]

As much as i love paladin i will take any one up on that challenge on my warrior. if we go with the deepvoid slave as an example. sentinal antagonize flash voke vengance rampart. think in 10 seconds of the fight i'll already have more hate which pretty much locks out your spirits within and wardrum because without hate you wont be blocking and a few seconds later i'll have my skull sunder emnity combo cake with its steel cyclone icing on top. and if by some stroke of luck you do pull it back i can just collusion your spirits within.

I can't see how any paladin could compete with that. but i would genuinely love to be proved wrong as i am a much bigger fan of paladin than warrior. which is why i'm so gutted that it's so broken.

I've been called a legendary paladin and a legendary warrior, i just find being a legendary warrior is 10% of the effort and 50% more effective. even if imo i suck at warrior cos i never use half its abilities but i don't need to....

If you think the PLD couldn't get his spirits within combo while the WAR has hate, you are sorely mistaken. There is an ability that allows a PLD to do that even without hate. That ability is called Cover.

While it's true that the WAR could Collusion Spirits Within, you can only Collusion one action while Cover will allow you to force shift hate for much longer than that.While you're under that effect, you take hits instead of the WAR (which definitely will in a 8 yalms radius since both are competing for hate on the mob), therefore you'll end up actually tanking at least 25% of the time.

Add in the fact you get a 25% MP return if you wear the AF body, you can spam Holy Succor for hate and Stoneskin for survivability. Since you are GUARANTED to have the mob on you at least 25% of the time, there is no way a WAR tanking against a PLD will prevent the PLD from using any of his abilities. A skilled PLD will also combine Cover with Divine Veil and Outmaneuver to try and generate TP fast enough to also spam the Fast Blade + Flat Blade combo, which, as one might recall, is on a ten second cooldown.

I can't say I'd bother doing that kind of contest on the Ogre, but I have done that against 3 WARs from my LS while we were doing level 50 factions leves for fun. Be it the wolf, drake, or buffalo, they were able to keep the lesser mobs on them, but never were they able to keep the main bosses on them for more than a few seconds. Either they were bad WARs, or I'm a good PLD, I can't say, but I'll say that challenge isn't a easy to decide as some would think.

It's as I said already. PLD can hold hate, in fact, perhaps even better than WAR. But as long as their survivability are about the same, with WAR having a better HP margin for healers and far better DPS, no one will ever pick PLD for a main tank in a group.

[Dzian]

i'll admit i forgot about cover but so far i've not found much use for it. it typically requires someone to stand in harms way to get covered. either i dont notice it or the mp regen doesnt proc when your outside 8 yalms.

but i'd still consider the war in aces challenge thing to have the blinky red box more than the paladin. does cover generate emnity? i cant find anything that says yes.

Again i love the paladin class. but i can still tank more effectively on a war with a lot less effort.
every dd i play with says they can be more offensive with a warrior. no matter who tries to pld tank. basically saying "oh a pld tank i better hold back a little"

and imo thats the reason why nearly everyone i see be it people i know or people i dont use warriors. more effective with less effort

[Evaddaragon]

i'll admit i forgot about cover but so far i've not found much use for it. it typically requires someone to stand in harms way to get covered. either i dont notice it or the mp regen doesnt proc when your outside 8 yalms.

but i'd still consider the war in aces challenge thing to have the blinky red box more than the paladin. does cover generate emnity? i cant find anything that says yes.

Again i love the paladin class. but i can still tank more effectively on a war with a lot less effort.
every dd i play with says they can be more offensive with a warrior. no matter who tries to pld tank. basically saying "oh a pld tank i better hold back a little"

and imo thats the reason why nearly everyone i see be it people i know or people i dont use warriors. more effective with less effort

Well as far as the MP regen effect goes, I don't need to have my target within 8 yalms from me for it to work. I only need to be able to actually activate the ability. It even works if I take damage when I had hate in the first place. Oh well.

Oh yeah, that discussion is about if I'd be in a situation where I'm competing for hate with a WAR on the same target. My points was simply to state that the mere fact the WAR takes hate from me doesn't prevent me from using my full set of abilities.

Also, if I was in said competition with the WAR, let me tell you I'd never, ever let, the WAR collusion me on Spirits Within. It's easy enough to notice the WAR activated the ability and simply use a second Phalanx, thus preventing the WAR from stealing my enmity spike, then use Spirits Within. It's not like 250 TP is hard to come by, especially when you can use outmaneuver and Divine Veil to give yourself a nice TP boost.

Cover doesn't generate enmity, but it forces shift the hate on you for the duration of the effect, which, if I recall, can be up 25%. Since the challenge is "having the blinking red box more often than the other", the WAR starts with a 25% handicap unless the PLD forgets to actually use Cover.

So, as I said, I wouldn't go as far as saying PLD can't be as effective, but I'll admit it's probably easier to spam Steel Cyclone for damage/hate than it is to spam more abilities on PLD. However, Ace's challenge isn't about easy, it's about holding hate.

Still, that challenge has no practical use but to boost said participant's respective egos. I'd rather find ways to have PLD and WAR work together than absolutely trying to have them compete, but that's just me I guess.

[Alerith]

i'll admit i forgot about cover but so far i've not found much use for it. it typically requires someone to stand in harms way to get covered. either i dont notice it or the mp regen doesnt proc when your outside 8 yalms.

The MP regen doesn't require your covered target to be near you, or to even have enmity. The game checks two things: Did the PLD take damage? (from any source) and Is Cover active? If both these are true, then the effect of cover will return MP.

but i'd still consider the war in aces challenge thing to have the blinky red box more than the paladin. does cover generate emnity? i cant find anything that says yes.

It doesn't generate actual enmity. What it does is that as long as your covered target is within the 8 yalm distance, it FORCES a hate shift that has the mob turn on you when it attacks and casts.

[Reynhart]

There's something that bothers me in all these PLD thread.
Every now and then, a pro-WAR come and say "Blah blah you can't beat me with hate blah blah Provoke, Collusion and such"

My question is: If the PLD is supposed to be the tank, why would you EVER use Provoke or Collusions on the PLD ?
We ask the PLD to keep hate over mages or DD, not over DD who would screw everything just to show they can have better enmity generation...

Can a PLD keep hate over DPS only actions ? Yes
Can a PLD keep hate over healing actions ? Yes
Can a PLD keep hate over nuking actions ? Yes

Now for a PLD to be more useful than WAR in most situations, it have to be far better at staying alive (Not the dance, mind you)
- Better damage mitigation
- Better curing capacities so it can stay alive for longer fights without a dedicated healer

We could have different setups:
WAR+WHM+WHM+5 other jobs. That is the main setup for the boss fights, and it can still be useful when you don't have a PLD in the group.
PLD+WHM+6 others jobs. This is a more complex setup, and requires people who can really manage MPs and cooldowns. Whitout the need for a second healer, we can stack one more DD, to compensante for the weaker DPS of the PLD.

[Duelle]

Heh, and here I was leveling GLA so that I could eventually become a PLD while I wait for SE to implement Fencer and RDM...

Why take the best at one thing, when this other job can do your job and more even if he's a slightly weaker tank. People don't necessarily want the best when they can have a job that's highly functional at multiple things. RDM was a prime example of this back in the ToAU days in FFXI, we knew it's capabilities far paled in comparison to other core jobs, but it never stopped it from becoming the wanted/required job for most content due to it's versatility and mp regeneration/efficiency, unless it became absolutely necessary to bring a WHM for higher cures.

While your statement is true, RDM is not a good example. RDM was mostly used for CC, heals and refresh. That's not what I would exactly call versatile. Still, WAR seems to be in that spot where it is in the middle of the road, and benefits from it. Would probably be better if both WAR and PLD could perform equally and let WAR have the DPS as a bonus, I think.

Unfortunately there isn't a NEED for PLD on anything due to the small gap between PLD and WAR's defense, survivability, and current content, however WAR has such a high advantage over PLD DPS wise he gets the benefit of both worlds and can fall back into a focused DPS position if another tank is present. The name of the game is versatility, and WAR has it in more places than PLD does.

We have to be REALLY careful when bringing this up, because SE might make the stupid decision of nerfing WAR instead of buffing PLD.

[Evaddaragon]

We have to be REALLY careful when bringing this up, because SE might make the stupid decision of nerfing WAR instead of buffing PLD.

It's probably too late to warn people about that, because there are nearly a dozen of similar threads about this, and I'm not even counting the ones in other forums.