PLD IS NOT BROKEN

[Daniel_Fury]

If I moogle we take 1 warrior tank and he kites EVERYTHING in phase 2 (except whichever target the dds are aiming at)

I do this with Paladin and find it easier than using WAR.

[Daniel_Fury]

I'd rather kill Ifrit in 6 or 7 min instead of 10 or 11, I'll stick with war. War hold hate way better anyway, no clue what you're talking about.

I kill Ifrit in 6 minutes with as a PLD tank. Why? My hate isn't an issue and it never has been.
I also easily do it with one WHM.
The only way people can outwin a hate competition is by collusioning my spirits within. Holy Succor is an insane hate tool and most people can't use it properly because they play too safe.

Why use melee strategies? More than "making PLD useful" it's less repetitive and more fun.
Cookie cutter setups are boring, and if I can win either or, I roll tanking PLD looking after my melee, showing them that PLD isn't broken.

[Reynhart]

You're right, Daniel.
Why don't we deliberatly use a slower, less safe and less rewarding strategy just to pretend than one job can really shines ?

[waldo]

You understand a 10 minute fight on ifrit allows for several more chances of your party being knocked out than a 7 minute fight?

Also, you talk about the safety a paladin brings, to the point of you can do a fight with one healer instead of two. This takes every bit of safety away, one paladin + one healer = far more dangerous than one warrior + two healers.

I think you're really reaching here... And I'd like to think myself a pretty decent paladin.

[Aceofspades]

wow, every time I did post parses and pictures to prove what i have posted to be correct all I got was "blah blah blah , its an Ifrit fight" as if Ifrit didnt count. frankly Im tired of the debate too. Fact is PLD isnt broke, can it be tweaked a bit , sure, but truth be told , soo could WAR. Meh, to each their own, if you dont like to tank on PLD then dont, I personally cant wait for a real boss fight. maybe we will get it with next patch. as far as a boss that stomps WAR into the ground easly? Batrall, when the light is up and you can not deal any damage to him , WAR , without a healer backing it, is a sitting duck, where I can EASLY solo tank Batrall up till the last wave of skeles with absolutely no healer what so ever. All SE has to do is give us a boss that hits harder then batrall, and takes far less damage from mele attack then anything we have now and war will get its ass handed to it. PLD is at least a consistant tank.

[Phobos]

wow, every time I did post parses and pictures to prove what i have posted to be correct all I got was "blah blah blah , its an Ifrit fight" as if Ifrit didnt count. frankly Im tired of the debate too. Fact is PLD isnt broke, can it be tweaked a bit , sure, but truth be told , soo could WAR. Meh, to each their own, if you dont like to tank on PLD then dont, I personally cant wait for a real boss fight. maybe we will get it with next patch. as far as a boss that stomps WAR into the ground easly? Batrall, when the light is up and you can not deal any damage to him , WAR , without a healer backing it, is a sitting duck, where I can EASLY solo tank Batrall up till the last wave of skeles with absolutely no healer what so ever. All SE has to do is give us a boss that hits harder then batrall, and takes far less damage from mele attack then anything we have now and war will get its ass handed to it. PLD is at least a consistant tank.

No. Just, no. Don't balance jobs through content... that's a horrible way of doing things.

"Oh PLD sucks so lets make a fight where it's good" - yeah that fixed everything. Go, team!

[SwordCoheir]

No. Just, no. Don't balance jobs through content... that's a horrible way of doing things.

"Oh PLD sucks so lets make a fight where it's good" - yeah that fixed everything. Go, team!

Agreed, changing content to just make a job viable only makes the problem that much worse. If they change content they should do it where all jobs have a equally justifiable reason to be brought, not so one job doesn't get picked last for baseball every time.

[Destain]

It is harder to tank with but it is far from broken. maybe less QQ and more learning how to effectivly play PLD. That being said, making Holy Succor an instant tp skill with a 30-45 second cool down (much like second wind for monk) would be about all I can think of that would be a resonable "fix" to pld. They are already addressing hate controll by increasing enmity +/- materia stats. Damage deflection is already through the roof, and PLD is the only tank that get the ablitiy to cast Stone Skin and IF your good enough you can apply stone skin before any unavoidable magic attack (typically aoe like hellfire). If combined with sentinal and rampart damage deflection is awsome. with all three buffs up and fire resist earrings (+14 fire resist) I take 500+ damage max. pop a cure right after hell fire (start when Iffrit begins hellfire) and i come out of that attack with 100% HP. same can be done for most magic attacks like hell fire, except for the fact that sentinal and rampart both have long cool downs. Reguardless, being able to pop stone skin before magic attacks is an enourmous buff. That being said I would still love to see some kind of magic def that comes with tank gear (cobalt, sentinal, darklight) make a come back. Dosent make sense if your archer has the same amount of magic defense as a well geared tank.

Your right. Paladin is not broken, it just isn't as good as Warrior. Btw beat dungeons so you have more experience than Ifrit to make your claims. PL'D tanks ifrit easy, cus IFRIT is EZ

[Mortikhan]

This may be some speculation on my part but I have discussed this at length with our lead tank in our LS and he prefers WAR for tanking but admits it may not be the PLD itself that may be broken but a stat (VIT) that is not boosting correctly or an AF piece that shows as adding to defense but is not actually doing so (more than likely the body piece or leg piece). He said he is taking more damage as a PLD but his defense is only 10 points lower than his GLD which he has no problems maintaining control over mobs with and takes about 200 points less in damage.

My personal theory is that healers are too used to topping off their tanks. I know in FFXI I had to "leave a little off the top" for the tank to heal. I think that will be the biggest tell tale for if PLD survives. The HP vs Damage Taken is the main issue. Leaving some for the PLD to heal if they are not ready to heal may be a problem because of that sending both the healer and PLD into panic mode casting and burning skills to keep the PLD alive. I think maybe if the healers learn to lay off the Cura and pop dual Cures with their PLD maybe the result will be better. Throw in a regen and you have yourself a low MP maintenance healing situation where more steady damage can be done with less healers and more DD in the party (ie. 6 DD doing 50k damage each throughout a fight as opposed to 5 DD doing 60k per fight). The damage will still be there and will done at virtually the same rate but less hate generated by the individual.

DDs also need to start watching their hate. Way too much epeening goes on about how much damage they can spike at. Learn to work with the group to boost you chance of winning instead of boosting your ego. The 1.5k damage you do is not gonna do you any good if you are face down most of the fight. It puts more stress on your healers to raise (especially in the current system where less raises are available to go around), and takes them out of their rythm with the PLD. It is just as important that you learn how to alleviate hate through gear and skills you can use as it is for a tank to keep that hate through slow hate disappation (enmity). If a PLD or any tank for that matter spikes their enmity and you bottom out yours you will find that fights go 10x smoother and things go more according to plan and are less chaotic (except for fights like the Moogle fight but it was designed for that purpose). Remember that tanking is about control and pace of the combat. If you do your part to help by learning how to ride the hate line the you are in essence contributing more to the fight over all. As your tank and healers get more comfortable then that hate line moves farther up the board and you can then start to push that new boundary.

[Eagleheart]

Every time someone says "the DDs need to learn to hold back a bit" they prove the case that Paladin is inferior.

No one here loves Paladin more than me. (>.> ) Equally, maybe. More? No way. And it's inferior.

If you have to say "Well, if the party has a Paladin, as opposed to a Warrior, they need to learn to pace themselves", you just made the case for Paladin being inferior.

DDs do not need to pace themselves with a Warrior the way they do with a Paladin.

To OP: Paladin can Stoneskin, a well-geared WHM can do it better. Other jobs present - BRD and WHM, or anyone on a Class instead - can give the tank Stoneskin. It is not of great import for Paladin to have access to it when others will cast it on the Paladin routinely.

And I second Phobos' groaning about the idea of balancing jobs through content. That's not repairing what's not working with the job, that's tailoring new content to bad mechanics. That is what FFXI did for the entirety of its existence.

Don't do that.

Lastly, I do not want to come across as unkind, but the truth is that there is no skill involved in getting Stoneskin up before Hellfire, as a Paladin. You have sixty seconds before Hellfire, after Nails pop - you start a timer, you won't be caught off guard.

If your best point about the defensive potential of Paladin is being able to survive a scripted sequence attack with a minute of warning, then this thread is simply pointless.

Also, Stoneskin isn't native to Paladin. (>.> ) It's not a "Paladin defensive ability." A Gladiator can do the same bloody thing.