Simple Fix to PLD

[Brannigan]

A paladin shouldn't be replacing a healer slot because paladins are tanks - they need to focus on doing tank things, not spot healing. Evading attacks, holding hate, positioning the mobs, and staying alive should be the tank's primary concerns.

While holy succor is a nice heal, it's on a 10 second cooldown. Sacred Prism>Cure is a pathetic AOE heal. Those two and divine veil can't replace a white mage. Besides that, you can already drop a white mage in many situations. I've done coincounter and mistress with 1 whm and I've heard of people doing the Cutter's Cry bosses with 1 as well. That's all with a warrior tank.

Paladin's mitigation is fine, they just need a little more damage from their combos so they don't slow boss kill speed compared to a warrior and a little bit more HP so they can make some mistakes like warriors can. Being able to parry would be nice, but only really so the Marauder subclass would be less worthless.

[NoctisUmbra]

A paladin shouldn't be replacing a healer slot because paladins are tanks - they need to focus on doing tank things, not spot healing. Evading attacks, holding hate, positioning the mobs, and staying alive should be the tank's primary concerns.

While holy succor is a nice heal, it's on a 10 second cooldown. Sacred Prism>Cure is a pathetic AOE heal. Those two and divine veil can't replace a white mage. Besides that, you can already drop a white mage in many situations. I've done coincounter and mistress with 1 whm and I've heard of people doing the Cutter's Cry bosses with 1 as well. That's all with a warrior tank.

Paladin's mitigation is fine, they just need a little more damage from their combos so they don't slow boss kill speed compared to a warrior and a little bit more HP so they can make some mistakes like warriors can. Being able to parry would be nice, but only really so the Marauder subclass would be less worthless.

They're clearly not going the way of giving it more damage. It's simply not what the PLD is about. I never suggested they were to be a main healer. I suggested that they can tank effectively, especially with them taking such mitigated damage, and they have a strong heal that works best when used on others. Thus if PLD is spot healing in a boss fight, one can viably take 1 less WHM and be quite effective. Not to mention Divine Regen and Cover are quite inviting for melee DDs.

Now, sure people are doing some bosses with WAR tank and WHM healer, but there's no denying that it is challenging. That option is still available, but a damage mitigation effect on PLD would bring it out of the WAR's shadow. It wouldn't be that WAR is straight up better no matter what. It'd be more like WAR can be better for some instances. For others people who chose to do WAR tank with one WHM would deserve that benefit due to the challenge.

The point is, a PLD tank with a single WHM should feel natural and safe, whereas a WAR tank with a single WHM should continue to be a challenge.

[Brannigan]

They're clearly not going the way of giving it more damage. It's simply not what the PLD is about. ...

Clearly? Last time they touched paladin they cut the recast of its highest-damage weaponskill in half. This isn't FFXI - you can't have the tank contributing such low damage. It shouldn't be putting out monk levels of damage but coming within like 75% of a tanking warrior on one target is reasonable. That and like 200 more base HP is all it really needs to be competitive. 10-20% passive mitigation is huge and could lead to problems down the line when HP gear gets better and the natural gap between paladin and warrior doesn't matter as much.

[NoctisUmbra]

Clearly? Last time they touched paladin they cut the recast of its highest-damage weaponskill in half. This isn't FFXI - you can't have the tank contributing such low damage. It shouldn't be putting out monk levels of damage but coming within like 75% of a tanking warrior on one target is reasonable. That and like 200 more base HP is all it really needs to be competitive. 10-20% passive mitigation is huge and could lead to problems down the line when HP gear gets better and the natural gap between paladin and warrior doesn't matter as much.

They also gave that same Weaponskill an enmity bonus. Besides that they made a major buff to the enmity bonus of Flat Blade. In fact with all the bonuses going around, most of PLD's enmity comes from bonuses and abilities and not damage. Also, PLD does in fact put out laughable damage, yet can generate enough enmity to tank well. People are vastly underestimating PLD's enmity generation after the hotfixes it received. However, it still has trouble mitigating damage.

[Brannigan]

They also gave that same Weaponskill an enmity bonus. Besides that they made a major buff to the enmity bonus of Flat Blade. In fact with all the bonuses going around, most of PLD's enmity comes from bonuses and abilities and not damage. Also, PLD does in fact put out laughable damage, yet can generate enough enmity to tank well. People are vastly underestimating PLD's enmity generation after the hotfixes it received. However, it still has trouble mitigating damage.

I don't think paladin has many problems with enmity but damage is high utility that you can't ignore. They didn't lower Spirits Within's damage so that was a deliberate move to increase damage output. They just need to do that with a few more things to make sure paladin doesn't do like a third of a warrior's damage.

[NoctisUmbra]

I don't think paladin has many problems with enmity but damage is high utility that you can't ignore. They didn't lower Spirits Within's damage so that was a deliberate move to increase damage output. They just need to do that with a few more things to make sure paladin doesn't do like a third of a warrior's damage.

Again it's not a problem if PLD + 1 WHM works naturally fine. That's 1 extra DD slot which more than makes up for the difference in damage between a a WAR and a PLD. If people bring a WAR with a WHM, sure they get even better DPS but at greater risk. It's basically a speedrun setup. I'd be fine if PLD was the default tank and everyone looked to WAR for speedrun tanking. It'd actually make sense. Right now, everyone looks to WAR for tanking. Period. Rightfully so.

If PLD had a significant boost to DPS, retained it's damage mitigation utility as well as healing utility, you're looking at a perfect, well rounded job. No weakness. Not gonna happen, and doesn't make sense as far as jobs go.

[Stufoo]

If PLD had a significant boost to DPS, retained it's damage mitigation utility as well as healing utility, you're looking at a perfect, well rounded job. No weakness. Not gonna happen, and doesn't make sense as far as jobs go.

If paladin had a boost to damage you could play it outside of dungeons as well in solo/lowman/etc without being completely worthless and not having to just play another job (warrior), and this goes for gladiator too, it's a sword problem. Trying to fix paladin to put it into these shitty dungeons is not the way to go, you're just putting terribly conceived bandaids on it, and you'll have to do so every time there's a new form of content. This isn't to say it should ever get area damage abilities, or out-damage warriors, but it has to fill the tank slot with some form of comparable output to ever be worth anything. This isn't XI.

How do you consider warrior not a perfectly well rounded job? It has more mitigation tools than paladin and their heals are better outside of bosses without fear of being interrupted, and it kills things in the process instead of having casting time, and it has no MP worries. Warrior has no weakness and can solo entire strongholds. How's that for making sense of jobs?

Oh wait, it's "not going to happen"