Shadowbringers Paladin: Complaints, Feedback, and Suggestions

[Eorzean_username]

Do you enjoy playing Paladin in Shadowbringers?

Yes. I think that Paladin's design is currently in a fairly good place, and that it is overall a fun Job to play.

What is the purpose of this post?

While I don't think that Paladin currently has any "severe" problems, I do think that the Job's current design still has some flaws and issues. I think that addressing these complaints would make Paladin feel smoother, more comfortable, or more enjoyable in a wider variety of situations.

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What do you currently enjoy about Paladin's design in Shadowbringers?

• Paladin has a smooth, clean rotation that is predictable, consistent, and mostly enjoyable.
• Paladin generally has appealing aesthetics and animations.
• Paladin generally provides a good sense of payoff and satisfaction for trying to refine or optimize rotational decisions on a given encounter.
• Paladin's aesthetics and rotation generally feel more distinct and unique compared to other Tanks.
• The "Requiescat" cycle introduced in Stormblood was refined further in Shadowbringers, and remains an enjoyable point of variety in the rotation. The addition of "Confiteor" as a finisher makes this part of the Paladin's cycle more fun and more satisfying.
• "Atonement" has become an enjoyable addition to the melee side of the rotation, adding more rotational flexibility, and adding enjoyable variation to the basic 123-124-124 melee rhythm introduced in Heavensward (and yes, I know, it was technically 123-154-154 before Stormblood...).
• "Intervene" has become an enjoyable addition to Paladin's basic toolkit, allowing Paladin to perform more equitably with other Tanks in "melee disconnect" situations. Even in the absence of disconnects, "Intervene" is an enjoyable and satisfying additional OGCD to activate.

Overall, I think that Paladin is currently a pleasant and enjoyable Job to play. I have used the word "enjoyable" excessively here, because it feels appropriate to describe most of the current Paladin design: it's just comfy and positive in most situations.

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What do you see as the current flaws or complaints about Paladin's design in Shadowbringers?

1. I think that there are some issues with certain aesthetics and a lack of "fun" for some actions.

1a. Paladin's OGCDs are boring and unexciting.

Paladin has been stuck with only two bland OGCDs since A Realm Reborn: "Circle of Scorn" and "Spirits Within". Compared to many other Jobs, I think that both of these actions are visually dated and bland, and overall quite boring:

• They don't do anything interesting.
• They aren't particularly powerful.
• They don't feel very satisfying or exciting to press.

I feel like I only consciously use "Circle of Scorn" and "Spirits Within" because I know that I'm obligated to push them in order to meet the total rotational potency that Paladin is balanced around; they are very "instruction-motivated" keypresses:

• I don't press them because they seem fun.
• I don't press them because they feel exciting.
• I don't press them because they look cool.
• I don't press them because they do anything interesting in the rotation.

I think that upgrading, enhancing, improving, or otherwise making both "Circle of Scorn" and "Spirits Within" more interesting would be a good change for Paladin. I think that both the rotational function and the visuals of these two OGCDs have a lot of room for improvement in order to make them actions that I would actually look forward to using.

Note that I am intentionally not including "Intervene" in this complaint. I think that "Intervene" looks cool, and it is satisfying to press, and it has some satisfying strategy to managing its 2 charges, and it even has other fun rotational uses (maintaining uptime, canceling knockbacks, etc).

1b. The "Fight or Flight" cooldown is very important, but also very dull and bland.

"Fight or Flight" is one of Paladin's most important cooldowns, and due to its unusually-long duration, "Fight or Flight" windows end up occupying large portions of a Paladin's rotational time.

However, "Fight or Flight" is very boring. It does not actually change the rotation, and absolutely nothing interesting happens inside "Fight or Flight". It is entirely just a passive "layer" that happens "in the background" while the Paladin just continues doing the same 123-124-555 rotation that it would have been doing either way.

I think that "Fight or Flight" has the following issues:

• It is too long. By having such a long duration, I suspect that it makes it more difficult to design "Fight or Flight" to have anything interesting happening inside its window, without having a dramatic disruptive effect on the overall rotation. And because it's so uninteresting, a large portion of the rotation ends up being occupied by a fairly uninteresting "rotational event".
• It doesn't change anything. Because "Fight or Flight" is entirely just a passive damage increase, it doesn't feel distinct, unique, or interesting to activate. Instead, it's just "business as usual", except if you squint at the flying text, the numbers are somewhat larger.
• Not enough happens. Because Paladin's rotation is so limited and methodical, and because Paladin has such bland and underwhelming OGCDs, there isn't a sense of excitedly dumping potency into its buff window in the same way that Gunbreaker's "No Mercy" window, Dark Knight's "Blood Weapon" window, or even Warrior's "Inner Release" window (Direct Crit "Upheaval" and "Onslaught") have. So "Fight or Flight" is also an underwhelming and unexciting rotation window, even as far as "big damage increase cooldown window" actions go in FFXIV.
• It's too fussy. Because of the performance necessity to fit 1 entire "Goring Blade" duration into "Fight or Flight", plus "snapshotting" another "Goring Blade" refresh before "Fight or Flight" ends, plus how reliant "Fight or Flight" is on cleanly completing multiple combo chains, it's very easy for frustrating failures and disruptions to occur if any sort of disconnect overlaps the "Fight or Flight" window. (This may sound ironic compared to the previous complaints, but please understand that "fussy" is not necessarily the same as "interesting", "fun", or "exciting".)

NOTE: Please let me be EXTREMELY CLEAR that I am absolutely, unequivocally, 100%, NOT asking for "Fight or Flight" to turn into yet another clone of Warrior's "Inner Release". PLEASE DO NOT DO THAT.

2. I think that the Paladin's "Oath Gauge" is a boring and unsatisfying aspect of the job.

I don't find the "Oath Gauge" fun, for quite a few reasons:

• It increments on auto attacks.

  • This results in the Gauge totals being unstable based on randomization factors in encounters (some as-designed, some caused by the behavior of other players, and so forth) that cause unstable disconnects from melee range.
  • Additionally, due to how "opaque" information about Auto Attacks is in the FFXIV UX, it's more difficult to anticipate or control how a given disconnect affects Gauge generation.
  • Overall, I don't like the lack of precision that this adds to the "Oath Gauge".

• It has no offensive value.

  • I think that it's bland and uninteresting to have a Gauge devoted entirely to defensive actions, because these are not always actually useful.
  • For example, while soloing, or in many easier forms of content, no "Oath Gauge"-consuming actions are necessary at all. In these cases, the Gauge often sits full doing nothing, because I get tired of pressing a key that's not actually productive.
  • During Stormblood, "Oath Gauge" could still be manipulated to force "Shield Swipe" to become active, increasing personal DPS. But with the removal of "Shield Swipe" in Shadowbringers, the "Oath Gauge" has become very dull and uninteresting in most situations.

• It gates defensive actions behind an unstable Gauge.

  • I much prefer that other Tank designs can use their defensive cooldowns in a completely-predictable and consistent way using firm and clear cooldown timers.
  • I don't like that the exact amount of defensive actions available to a Paladin during an encounter is tied to unstable factors such as melee auto-attack uptime, or uncontrollable "scripted Stuns", and so on.

• It's just not interesting or exciting.

  • Almost every other Job "Gauge" leads to some sort of exciting finisher, payoff, buff, or other visceral and positive rotational result.
  • "Oath Gauge" leads to almost nothing interesting. It is dull and flaccid. And in most situations, it can be summarized as: "Heart of Stone with extra steps".

3. I think that there are some issues with some aspects of the offensive rotation's timings being awkward or annoying.

3a. "Circle of Scorn" has a weird cooldown that doesn't sync nicely.

"Circle of Scorn" has a weird 25-second cooldown that doesn't line up cleanly with cooldowns. I would prefer if "Circle of Scorn" was given a more "standard" cooldown that cleanly divides into 60 second intervals — either 20 seconds, or 30 seconds.

3b. The Paladin rotation naturally occurs at awkward intervals of approximately 63 seconds.

Raid buff coordination in parties generally occurs at intervals of 30 seconds:

• approximately 10 seconds: 60 second, 90 second, 120 second, 180 second buffs, Potion
• approximately 70 seconds: 60 second buffs
• approximately 100 seconds: 90 second buffs
• approximately 130 seconds: 60 second, 120 second buffs
• approximately 190 seconds: 60 second, 90 second, 180 second buffs
• approximately 250 seconds: 60 second, 120 second buffs
• approximately 280 seconds: 90 second buffs
• approximately 310 seconds: 60 second buffs
• approximately 370 seconds: 60 second, 90 second, 120 second, 180 second buffs, Potion
• (etc)

However, the Paladin rotation naturally occurs at 63 second intervals, for the following reason...

• (Note: In this example, I will assume a Paladin with a 2.40 second GCD, but this issue occurs at basically any realistic "Skill Speed" quantity, because stacking "Skill Speed" until GCD = 2.26 is too much of a DPS loss.)
• 11 GCDs occur inside "Fight or Flight", occupying 26.40 seconds in total.
• 5 GCDs occur inside "Requiescat", and because "Spells" do not scale with "Skill Speed", this will always occupy a fixed 2.50 * 5 = 12.50 seconds in total.
• The Paladin then needs to refresh "Goring Blade" after ending "Requiescat", for another 3 * 2.40 = 7.20 seconds.
• Because "Fight or Flight" is not yet ready, and because the Paladin does not want to lose potency by overwriting "Goring Blade", and because the Paladin does not have enough MP to occupy the time with "Holy Spirit", the Paladin must necessarily perform a sequence of "Royal Authority → Atonement, Atonement, Atonement", for another 6 * 2.40 = 14.40 seconds.
• At this point, a total of 26.40 + 12.50 + 7.20 + 14.40 = 60.5 seconds have elapsed.
• However, the Paladin cannot activate "Fight or Flight" on-cooldown during the GCD of the third "Atonement", because then the Paladin will not be able to fit 2 entire "Goring Blade" inside "Fight or Flight", and this is a significant potency loss:

  • "Atonement" GCD is elapsing...
  • "Fight or Flight" begins — 25s remain in "Fight or Flight"
  • "Atonement" GCD ends, "Fast Blade" GCD begins, as the first GCD inside "Fight or Flight".
  • "Fast Blade" GCD ends — 22.6s remain in "Fight or Flight"
  • "Riot Blade" GCD ends — 20.2s remain in "Fight or Flight"
  • "Goring Blade" GCD ends — 17.8s remain in "Fight or Flight"
  • "Fast Blade" GCD ends — 15.4s remain in "Fight or Flight"
  • "Riot Blade" GCD ends — 13.0s remain in "Fight or Flight"
  • "Royal Authority" GCD ends — 10.6s remain in "Fight or Flight"
  • "Atonement" GCD ends — 8.2s remain in "Fight or Flight"
  • "Atonement" GCD ends — 5.8s remain in "Fight or Flight"
  • "Atonement" GCD ends — 3.4s remain in "Fight or Flight"
  • "Fast Blade" GCD ends — 1.0s remain in "Fight or Flight"
  • "Riot Blade" GCD ends — "Fight or Flight" has expired.
  • "Goring Blade" GCD begins outside "Fight or Flight", causing a significant potency loss.

• As a result, the Paladin is forced to deliberately ignore "Fight or Flight" for one entire GCD after it naturally comes off-cooldown, and instead activate it during the GCD of the following "Fast Blade".

Alternatives to avoid this and "force" a 60-second cycle include:

• Stacking enough "Skill Speed" to have a 2.26 GCD: Due to the huge quantity of "sub stats" required to achieve this, it is a significant overall DPS loss, making it pointless, because more is lost than gained.
• Dropping 1 "Atonement" before "Fight or Flight": Deliberately allowing "Atonement" to expire with an unused stack is a large rotational potency loss, akin to breaking a combo chain.
• Dropping 1 "Atonement" inside "Fight or Flight": Again, this deliberately allows "Atonement" to expire unused. Or it deliberately places an "Atonement" outside of "Fight or Flight". Either way, it's a large potency loss.
• Dropping 1 "Holy Spirit" inside every "Requiescat": strangely enough, this is less of a potency loss than it seems like it should be. However, it is still not necessarily a gain (situation-specific analysis is required), and it is counter-intuitive to a player trying to just logically follow their tooltips.

Note: There is an alternate "optimization" cycle that deliberately rearranges the standard GCD order to push 1 extra "Atonement" into "Fight or Flight" for a middling and unstable potency increase. However, this particular cycle does not actually reduce the cycle duration: it is still 63 seconds long, it just rearranges where certain GCDs land (ie, "Fight or Flight" is still delayed by 1 GCD every loop).

The result of all these constraints and factors is that for every "rotation loop" completed, the Paladin rotation slowly drifts out-of-alignment with the party's 30-second buff cycles. I don't enjoy this, for several reasons:

• It's unsatisfying.

  • I think that one of the most engaging aspects of trying to optimize a Job's rotational style in an endgame environment is the challenge of making as few mistakes as possible while doing mechanics, so that every time raid buffs such as "Trick Attack" and "Technical Step" become active, my own rotation is cleanly aligned with the phase of increased damage.
  • By forcing Paladin to naturally drift out-of-alignment, it steadily removes this sense of reward as an encounter drags on, and instead cause the Paladin to feel like it's just kind of doing its own thing offensively... as if the other party members don't even exist.
  • Likewise, it's disappointing to watch a big array of raid buffs all splash into my Enhancements tray, but know that my big cooldown windows are still 20+ seconds away, due to how far everything has uncontrollably drifted by the later stages of most encounters.

• It's unintuitive.

  • Most Jobs train their players to use actions as soon as they come off cooldown, especially important buffs.
  • Paladin, however, actually bizarrely "punishes" players for using "Fight or Flight" immediately off-cooldown, because it slowly deranges how "Fight or Flight" syncs up with the GCD combo cycle and "Goring Blade" refreshes.
  • Alternatively, forcing the rotation to be 60 seconds long by deliberately getting fewer "Holy Spirits" inside "Requiescat" than possible is also counter-intuitive and feels bad. And what's even less intuitive is that sometimes it's actually higher personal DPS to deliberately do "Requiescat" in a way that is "wrong".

• It's frustrating with regard to OGCD uses.

  • "Spirits Within" and "Intervene" are still fixed 30-second cooldowns, and there is a high risk of losing uses by allowing them to drift.
  • Therefore, as an encounter progresses, even the Paladin's own personal OGCDs begin to desync from its own personal buffs, which feels awkward and frustrating and unintuitive.

Overall, I would like it if the Paladin rotation was tightened up to naturally be exactly 60 seconds long when done "optimally", rather than remaining at this awkward, "drifty" 63-second length, beset by bizarro and counter-intuitive "optimization" options.

4. I think that "Requiescat" still has some annoying "quality of life" and "usability" quirks and issues.

4a. "Requiescat" can completely fail if the Paladin's MP isn't high enough.

I think that this requirement is unnecessary and annoying:

• The Paladin is already punished for entering "Requiescat" with low MP.

  • Having partial MP drops the direct potency of "Requiescat", and additionally constrains the number of "Holy Spirit" that can be cast inside the increased damage window.
  • So, I don't think the Paladin needs to be "extra punished" by having the entire action "fake activate" and basically do nothing.

• It's awkward and unintuitive.

  • While the tooltip technically explains this, the wording is arcane and confusing.
  • Most players are not expecting a buff to fail to apply correctly if it's actually lit up and usable.
  • Also, while we're on the topic of this tooltip, another segment of players frequently needs to be explained that "Requiescat" doesn't stop working if the Paladin's MP drops below 80% after activation.
  • Overall, I think that this aspect feels "over-designed" — it's not intuitive to players, and it doesn't add much fun or interest, rather than just situational headaches.

• It causes extra layers of punishment to any Paladin that tries to actually help their party by using "Clemency", and teaches Paladins to just let people die instead, so that they don't ruin their personal offensive rotation.
• It causes extra layers of punishment to the Paladin if they are forced to sustain a large amount of melee disconnects, due to party errors or bizarro encounter design (for example, many frequent messy Alliance Raid situations), and thus physically cannot regenerate enough MP before the next "Requiescat" cycle.

4b. The "Requiescat" action requires a successful Melee attack to activate.

• "Requiescat" starts the Paladin's "ranged" cycle, but it requires a melee-range strike.
• In a vacuum analysis, I would argue that this design is interesting: it makes for a natural "transition" design between Melee and Ranged. "Fight or Flight" melee physical cycle → Magical Melee Attack → "Requiescat" ranged magical cycle.
• However, in actual practice, it's often just very annoying, because there are situations where the Paladin literally cannot remain in melee range quite long enough to successfully activate "Requiescat", and then is forced to stand outside melee range doing nothing, despite "Requiescat" being available.
• I think that this is a situation where the empirical assessment "This feels bad" should take priority over idealized design elegance.

4c. "Requiescat" does not increase the range of auto attacks.

"Requiescat" seems like it allows the Paladin the freedom of acting at range.

• However, because "Requiescat" does not extend the range of auto-attacks, the Paladin ironically still has to remain in melee range in order to maximize personal DPS.
• Therefore, part of the "fun" of "Requiescat" is undermined once a Paladin realizes that "Requiescat" doesn't actually allow them the freedom of being at range.
• Instead, this issue leads to trying to find ways to stay next to the target even while "Requiescat" is active, which is counter-intuitive, and makes the "ranged spellcasting phase" feel somewhat pointless compared to just having empowered melee attacks or something.

To be clear, in situations where the Paladin would otherwise have to disconnect entirely, "Requiescat" is still a significant gain over not being able to keep GCDs rolling at all.

• The problem, however, is that encounters cannot should not realistically be designed that way without significantly punishing the other 3 Tanks that do not have a similar "Requiescat" analogue.
• Therefore, in any reasonably-balanced encounter design that does not unfairly punish melee players or Tanks, it is almost always possible to engineer some way to remain in auto-attack distance while "Requiescat" is active.
• Therefore, any clever or unique tactics that might be generated by Paladins having access to "Requiescat", are often undermined or scratched-out by the desire to preserve auto-attack uptime, because auto-attacks are actually a significant portion of total encounter damage caused by melee Jobs.

To be, uhm, "further clear":

• "Requiescat" is still a powerful action that grants the Paladin a great deal of situational flexibility that other Tanks do not have access to.
• However, I think that "Requiescat" would be more flexible and more fun if some of its bizarre rough edges and "gotcha" caveats were streamlined away, and it was more clearly defined as a definitive "ranged" phase.

5. I think that Paladin currently has quite a few lingering issues and frustrations with its defensive design, that make it feel ironically less "Tanky" than other Tanks.

Interestingly, I actually have more complaints about Paladin's defensive design than its offensive design. Aside from the complaints above, I think that the overall Paladin offensive rotation feels very good.

However, despite being the fantasy-iconic shield-bearing Tank class, I think Paladin ironically feels the worst to me to actually "Tank" at the front of a boss with, out of all 4 Tank jobs. There are quite a few reasons for this...

5a. I think that "Oath Gauge" feels sloppy and bad to use, even defensively.

As discussed above, but I'm going to repeat here: I don't like my defensive actions being tied to unstable factors such as melee auto-attack uptime. As a Tank, I prefer to be able to anticipate exactly what defenses I will have available at any given time.

5b. "Oath Gauge" spending tools feel unnecessarily convoluted for what ends up amounting to a very minor part of Paladin gameplay.

• "Sheltron" and "Intervention" (not "Intervene", the gap-closer; now we're talking about "Intervention", the support tool) could just be one action with different functions between personal and party usage, similar to Warrior's "Nascent Flash".
• I don't think that "Sheltron" actually gains much positive gameplay from being tied to a Gauge. It could just have a cooldown (which worked just fine in Heavensward), and maybe charges.
• "Cover" costing "Oath Gauge" is annoying. I think that the developers wanted to scale back on the extensive "Cover" shenanigans that occurred throughout Stormblood, but I think that it would have been brought under control enough just by removing the 20% damage reduction on "Cover". ("Cover" is an iconic Final Fantasy action, and having it pushed so far into the corner in Shadowbringers feels disappointing. At the very least, I would prefer if the "Oath Gauge" cost was removed from "Cover".)

5c. I don't like that "Spirits Within" punishes the Paladin for Tanking as a Tank job.

I am going to be quite blunt here: I pretty much will not accept any argument from the developers for why "Spirits Within", an offensive action on a Tank job, punishes the player for taking damage. I believe that this is an objectively poor design choice.

"But we wanted to differentiate between Main Tank jobs and Sub Tank jobs!", they may cry. No. I do not accept this. The reality is that in a wide variety of situations, such as randomized Duty Finder content, or even Party Finder where players do not always engage in consistent "meta-accepted" behavior, it's just not practical to "respect" the MT/ST division in Tanks.

Furthermore, I don't think that any Tank player should ever feel punished for taking unavoidable damage. They are playing a Tank!! Their entire purpose is to take damage instead of other roles in the party. If anything, they should be rewarded for doing this not punished (but preferably not that either, since then Tanks would just deliberately jump in AOEs or something...).

Further furthermore, sometimes the "Sub Tank" still has to take unavoidable damage anyway! Such as high raidwide damage mechanics, or shared "tankbuster" attacks, or... etc, etc, etc. So even as far as "reinforcing the Sub Tank role", this is still an awful design choice. Wasn't this obvious to anyone on the design team at some point before 5.00 release?

Further further furthermore, in Stormblood, when Warrior's "Upheaval" was instead the Tank action that scaled its potency with the player's HP total, it at least made slightly more sense, because Warrior has a significant amount of self-healing tools and options. Paladin, on the other hand, is the Tank that is single-handedly worst equipped to restore their own HP (and if you're about to bring up "Clemency", please don't — we'll get to why in a moment), so it makes the least sense of any Tank to punish Paladin for being below full HP.

"Spirits Within" scaling its potency with current HP total is an extremely bad design choice for a Tank Role job, and this aspect should be removed. I really don't like this!!

5d. I think that Paladin's defensive support tools feel awkward and uncomfortable to use in practical situations.

First of all, let me be very clear: I think that in an optimal, organized, coordinated environment, both "Divine Veil" and "Passage of Arms" are very powerful support tools.

However, outside of this very small niche range of situations that are not a common thing for the vast majority of FFXIV players to encounter, both of these support tools are awkward and difficult to use effectively, resulting in Paladin often feeling like — ironically — the least supportive Tank job.

"Divine Veil".

"Divine Veil" requires the Paladin to receive healing to trigger its effects.

• However, very few Healers — especially outside Savage+ content — know to pay attention to the icon for it. And even if they do, they may very well not feel like "wasting" an offensive GCD cast, or spending an OGCD that they weren't planning to use yet.
• Also, because FFXIV has chosen to abusively punish players for trying to use macros (by preventing macro'd actions from utilizing the action queue), it's inefficient and clunky to try to macro an alert for the action into party chat. (And anyway, maybe 2% of players would even notice an announcement during a busy encounter)
• So then, if the Paladin triggers "Divine Veil" directly with their own "Clemency", then they lose a great deal of personal DPS, for a variety of reasons.
• And finally, if the Paladin just patiently waits for a Healer to trigger the effect, then it may very often just expire and fall off, especially in random-matchmade or less-coordinated environments.

"But there's always healing going out! 'Divine Veil' will always be triggered by something!"

• The problem is that... no. This is not the case in actual practice.
• Sometimes, an attack comes up with minimal advanced warning. For example, many Hunt bosses have a semi-randomized script, and will pull out a large, dangerous attack with essentially no predictable timing.
• Other times, a significant damage event occurs after a long lull period during which no significant party or Tank healing is required, especially on the "sub tank". The Paladin knows that this is coming, but "Divine Veil" cannot be triggered without forcing a "useless" extra healing event out of the Healers.

I would much prefer if "Divine Veil" just applied its absorb shield immediately on-use. If the potency needs to be reduced, or the cooldown increased, to compensate for this "easier" usage — fine. I would much rather have an action that can actually be utilized effectively in a wide range of practical situations.

As it stands right now, I feel significantly more effective as a "party support" while playing Warrior, because "Shake It Off" just bloody works when I need it to, immediately, as soon as I see that something needs to be shielded.

"Passage of Arms".

In coordinated and disciplined environments, players (usually) stay huddled tightly together when not forced apart by encounter mechanics, and "Passage of Arms" can see reasonable use.

• However, in the vast majority of realistic and practical situations in FFXIV, players are instead scattered haphazardly all over the place.
• Likewise, in many situations even in coordinated environments, it is simply not possible or practical to have players stacked together at the time that a significant damage event occurs.
• As a result, in far too many situations, "Passage of Arms" ends up sitting unused, or ironically being used as a cooldown on the Main Tank rather than the party, or being activated with disappointing effect as it affects maybe 3 players.
• And as a result of that, in far too many cases, "Passage of Arms" serves little purpose other than "looking cool" as it adds unnecessary overkill mitigation on some cinematic intermission raidwide effect that wasn't going to KO anyone either way, because that ends up being the only situation where players actually stay together tightly enough to fit inside the "Passage of Arms" cone effect.

I would much rather have "Passage of Arms" be weaker, or have a longer cooldown, or whatever is required, and make the effect an 8-yalm-radius circle or something, because again, like with "Divine Veil", I would at least get to actually use it in a wider variety of practical situations.

Overall, if the developers think that Paladin having 2 "party-wide support tools" is too strong, I'd even be fine with just merging "Divine Veil" and "Passage of Arms" together into one 90 or 120-second cooldown that does both things, works immediately on cast, and is a radial circle, or some other practical shape.

As it stands right now, in actual practice, I feel like a useful support in far more situations as Dark Knight/Gunbreaker compared to Paladin ("Heart of Light" is much more practical and effective in a wider variety of situations than "Passage of Arms"), and as Warrior compared to Paladin (likewise for "Shake It Off" compared to "Divine Veil").

I find that a lot of Paladin's support power ends up being hypothetical, rather than empirical, outside of very contrived situations, very specific mechanics, or very coordinated teams, and I would rather have tools that function more broadly and more pragmatically in situations such as Dungeons, Alliance Raids, Extreme Trials, and "pugging" Savage in Party Finder.

5d. I think that Paladin feels very awkward to "pull" bosses with.

First of all, "Shield Lob" is weak, and players trying to perform well do not want to use it unless absolutely forced to:

• It does poor damage.
• It breaks combos.
• Its Enmity generation is irrelevant due to Shadowbringers changes to Tank design.
• It sets the entire opener back by 1 GCD, causing the Paladin cycle to desync even further from party buffs.

Second of all, it is currently an advantage to a Paladin's personal DPS to open an encounter with a hard-cast of "Holy Spirit", because the pre-cast during the pull countdown is basically "free potency".

Both of these factors lead to a Paladin being encouraged to pull in the following awkward manner:

1. Begin hard-casting "Holy Spirit" during the pull countdown.
2. Time "Holy Spirit" to cause damage just as the pull countdown reaches 0.
3. Time "slide casting" the tail end of the "Holy Spirit" cast to allow the Paladin to be in melee range of the target as the pull begins.
4. Open the encounter with "Fast Blade" rather than "Shield Lob".

This takes practice, fluctuates with things like latency, easily goes wrong (early or late pull, or clipped first GCD, or...), and I think that it is generally just bizarre and unintuitive for a lot of players.

5e. I think that Paladin's personal defensive array is disappointingly limited.

Something feels "weird" to me about Paladin's defensive toolset. It just feels... underwhelming, and lacking, and just not quite on par with other Tanks.

Everything that Paladin can do, other Tanks can also do, and often "better":

• random "Block" chance → "Storm's Path", "Souleater", "Brutal Shell" healing/shielding
• "Sheltron" → "Raw Intuition", "The Blackest Night", "Heart of Stone"
• "Reprisal" → "Reprisal", "Reprisal", "Reprisal" (shared)
• "Rampart" → "Rampart", "Rampart", "Rampart" (shared)
• "Sentinel" → "Vengeance", "Shadow Wall", "Nebula"
• "Invincible" → "Holmgang", "Living Dead", "Superbolide" (more frequent KO prevention is, in many cases, ironically better than 7-minute-cooldown "true invulnerability")

...but the other Tanks each also have at least something extra:

• Warrior: "Thrill of Battle", "Equilibrium", "Nascent Flash"
• Dark Knight: "Dark Mind"
• Gunbreaker: "Camouflage", "Aurora", "Heart of Stone"

Paladin just feels... very basic. Very limited. Like it only has the absolute bare-minimum necessary to scrape by defensively. It doesn't feel like it lives up to the fantasy of being the super-tough, shield-bearing hero Tank.

5f. "Clemency" is a humiliatingly counter-productive action that punishes the Paladin in a wide variety of ways for trying to use a support tool.

Once again, Paladin is ironically the worst Tank at doing what its fantasy archetype is traditionally expected to be the best at.

"Clemency" is straight-up horrible for the following reasons:

• It costs a GCD. Full stop, you've already lost this action as a viable option. The Paladin is forced to trade out an entire GCD of offensive potency for... zero offensive potency.
• It breaks combos. This kills "Clemency" as an option even more: not only does it cost a GCD, but it potentially sets the Paladin back multiple GCDs by breaking a combo.
• It costs MP. As soon as Paladin gained "Requiescat" and "Holy Spirit", "Clemency" became an even larger personal DPS loss, because spending MP on "Clemency" means not spending MP on "Holy Spirit" and, furthermore, significantly increases the chance of not being able to successfully trigger the "Requiescat" buff window, which is a grotesque personal DPS loss.
• It has a cast bar. This means that "Clemency" also has "hidden" costs: the Paladin cannot Block, and the Paladin cannot auto-attack, while activating "Clemency".

All of this means that, from a practical and realistic perspective, Paladin is actually the worst Tank at self-sustain, and the worst Tank to have "main tanking", because all of the following Tanks can buffer or restore their own HP better and more effectively than Paladin:

• Warrior

  • "Storm's Path" is an offensive combo move that's part of the normal rotational priority, so it is free self-healing at no DPS loss.
  • "Nascent Flash" is OGCD and has no cost, so it is free self-healing at no DPS loss. Also, it even heals someone else, so Warrior is also more effective for healing other players than Paladin is.
  • "Equilibrium" is OGCD and has no cost, so it is free self-healing at no DPS loss.
  • "Thrill of Battle" is OGCD and has no cost, so it is free self-healing at no DPS loss.
  • "Shake It Off" is OGCD and has no cost, so it is free self-shielding at no DPS loss in any situation where the raidwide benefit is irrelevant or unimportant.

• Dark Knight

  • "Souleater" is an offensive combo move that's part of the normal rotational priority, so it is free self-healing at no DPS loss.
  • "The Blackest Night" is OGCD and, if done correctly, has no net cost, so it is free self-shielding at no DPS loss.

    • In fact, if done correctly, "The Blackest Night" is actually a DPS gain to use.
    • Also, "The Blackest Night" is just as powerful when used to save someone else, so Dark Knight is also more effective for "saving" other players than Paladin is.

• Gunbreaker

  • "Brutal Shell" is an offensive combo move that's part of the normal rotational priority, so it is free self-healing and self-shielding at no DPS loss.
  • "Heart of Stone" is OGCD and has no cost, so it is free shielding on another player at no DPS loss.
  • "Aurora" is OGCD and has no cost, so it is free self-healing at no DPS loss.

Paladin, meanwhile, has only the following "sustain" tools:

• "Block", which other Tanks can't do. But it is randomized and unpredictable, so you can't plan around it, and it doesn't do anything if you're already injured. Also, Paladin has no natural, rotation-based healing, which basically cancels out the average value of "Block" relative to other Tanks.
• "Clemency", which causes the Paladin player to basically voluntarily destroy their own personal DPS performance, which most players would agree is something that feels "bad" to do.

5g. Overall effect of these complaints

As a cumulative result of all these factors, Paladin — the traditional fantasy/RPG shining, shield-wielding, heroic, healing-hybrid defender archetype — is, in FFXIV... actually pretty mediocre at defending others, healing others, healing itself, and even defending itself. This... really feels disappointing and frustrating.

For players invested in the "shield-wielding armored hero" fantasy trope, it just doesn't feel right that being in front of the boss and tanking it as Paladin feels like distinctly more of a burden to Healers, and more of a liability overall, than other Tanks.

...Other Tanks, including the guy who's half-naked and just kind of "quite upset", but is more durable than the Paladin anyway. Or the guy in a damned cloth trenchcoat that's swinging around a goofy cosplay weapon while sometimes shooting himself in the face with geometric sparkle power.

[Eorzean_username]

What kind of changes would make Paladin feel better in these current "rough areas" of its design?

1. On the issue of Paladin's offensive OGCDs.

1a. "Circle of Scorn"

• Make the "Circle of Scorn" animation look cooler.
• Make "Circle of Scorn" hit harder.
• Make "Circle of Scorn" either a 20 or 30-second cooldown, so it stops annoyingly and awkwardly drifting all over the place relative to 60-second buff cycles.
• Make "Circle of Scorn" do something more interesting rotationally.

1b. "Spirits Within"

• Remove the obnoxious and ill-thought-out HP-based potency penalty on "Spirits Within"!!
• Make the "Spirits Within" animation look cooler (compare, for example, Warrior's "Upheaval" and Gunbreaker's "Blasting Zone").
• Make "Spirits Within" a line attack (look at the enemy action "Spirits Without" in the Dungeon "Halatali (Hard)", for example), so that it feels more exciting and satisfying to use in multi-target / AOE situations.
• Make "Spirits Within" do something more interesting rotationally.

2. On the issue of "Fight or Flight".

• Make "Fight or Flight" feel more appropriate to its name. For example, it could increase Attack Speed and Movement Speed while active.
• Shorten the duration of "Fight or Flight". It's too long, and it feels like it "drags out" compared to shorter, "punchier" cooldown buffs. I also think the long duration partially constrains its design possibilities.
• Make "Fight or Flight" add something distinct or interesting or unique to the rotation cycle, rather than being a bland, "passive", "background" effect that just continues the standard melee rotation.

3. On the issue of the 63-second cycle.

Reduce the Paladin cycle to a clean 60-second loop.

One option to do this would be to modify "Requiescat":

1. Reduce the duration of "Requiescat" to 10 seconds.
2. Increase the potency of Holy Spirit by 33%.
3. Increase the MP cost of "Holy Spirit" and "Confiteor" by 25%.
4. This would convert the "Requiescat" window to being 4 GCDs long, while containing the same total potency. As a result, the Paladin would naturally be on a 60-second loop.

Another option would be if "Fight or Flight" increased Attack Speed.

By tinkering with the amount of Attack Speed increase and the duration of "Fight or Flight", it could be adjusted to reduce the total GCD "loop time" of the rotation down to 60 seconds.

I am very certain that there are plenty of other possibilities, as well, but as long as the cycle tightens down to a consistent 60-second loop, I would be satisfied (timing-wise, anyway... please don't do anything excessively weird...).

4. On the issue of "Requiescat" having annoying "usability" issues.

• Increase the "Requiescat" attack action's range to match "Holy Spirit".
• Make it so that the "Requiescat" attack action's potency is always full potency, and no longer scales with the Paladin's MP total.
• Make it so that "Requiescat" always applies its buff, regardless of the Paladin's MP total.
• Make it so that while active, "Requiescat" increases the range of auto-attacks to match "Holy Spirit".

5. On the issue of "Oath Gauge" being boring and unfun.

I would strongly prefer if any Paladin "gauge" was generated by something more controlled and consistent than auto-attacks.

I would also honestly prefer if the "Oath Gauge" was completely removed, at least as a defensive aspect. It's not very fun or satisfying in its current design.

As for whether Paladin even needs an "offensive Gauge", well, I am rather biased on this subject, and my bias is as such: I kind-of hate "gauges", and I wouldn't care if every single "gauge" in FFXIV was burned to the ground and deleted.

However, I understand that a lot of players actually enjoy "gauge" gameplay, and also that Naoki Yoshida was very excited by "gauges" being added in Stormblood, so I don't want to, like... ruin anyone's life, or something... by bullying "gauges" too hard.

But... okay... here: I think that Gunbreaker has a really nice gauge. I like the Gunbreaker gauge a lot, because it barely exists, and it's barely a gauge. So it's not distracting, awkward, or annoying, and it feels less "tacked-on" that most other Job Gauges. So, maybe look at Gunbreaker as a model if Paladin must have a "gauge".

For example, uh... Okay, how about this:

• Paladin could generate, like... "Oath Rocks"... or something ... when it casts "Atonement".
• And you get 1 "Oath Rock" per "Atonement" strike.
• And you can spend 3 "Oath Rocks" to... uh, I don't know... how about, shoot out a 15-yalm-long Holy Laser Beam from your sword, like Link from the Zelda series.

And consequent of removing the current "Oath Gauge" design, then I would prefer if Paladin's defensive tools changed as such:

• "Sheltron" has no cost, 2 charges, and a 20 second cooldown. Or no cost, 1 charge, and a 20 second cooldown. (whatever is more balanced... I honestly don't care)
• The cost of "Intervention" is removed. Probably increase the cooldown accordingly. And then maybe it could be merged into "Sheltron", making it work more like "Nascent Flash" and "Heart of Stone". (or just left as a separate bloated keybind, I guess)
• The cost of "Cover" is removed. Maybe bring back the damage reduction, also, so that Paladins can feel cool "Covering" people all over the place again. (...or not, if you're worried about rebounding back to the "Coverblood" defensive meta).

6. On the issue of Paladin's party-wide defensive support tools being awkward and impractical outside niche circumstances.

• Make "Divine Veil" apply its absorb shield immediately on cast, removing the prerequisite "receive healing" step.
• Make "Passage of Arms" a radial effect extending in a circular area around the Paladin, rather than a conal effect behind the Paladin.
• If necessary for balance reasons, apply nerfs to effect potencies, or cooldown lengths, or effect durations, or merge these actions, or etc, until it is deemed to have parity with other Tank support tools.

7. On the issue of Paladin being awkward to "pull" bosses with.

There are a number of possibilities, such as: "Holy Spirit" cannot be used on targets that are not in combat.

Or, "Shield Lob" could be made significantly better. For example:

• It could have significantly increased potency when used as the first action against a new target, or from outside 10 yalms range, or etc.
• Or, it could count as a prerequisite for "Riot Blade", allowing the Paladin to not fall behind by 1 GCD in its opener if it starts with "Shield Lob".

8. On Paladin's defensive array feeling underwhelming and limited.

Give Paladin its own cool "proprietary" cooldown, to match the toys that the other Tanks have.

For example, you could give "Bulwark" back (since Paladin used to already have a cool "proprietary" cooldown...), and make it a better cooldown than it used to be:

• The effect could be something analogous to Gunbreaker's "Camouflage", such as: "Reduces all damage taken by 15%. For the duration, your chance to Block attacks is increased by 50%."
• Or: "For the duration, increases your chance to Block attacks to 100%, and doubles the amount of damage reduced by Blocking attacks".

Or, you could also give Paladin something completely new and unique. That would be fine with me (as long as it's actually useful, and not some whacky nightmare tool for tormenting Scholars, like "Living Dead" currently is).

9. On "Clemency" being completely horrible and disappointing.

I am not going to be gentle about this one: without dramatic changes, "Clemency" will never stop being a horrible "radioactive waste" button that players trying to perform even moderately-well offensively will feel pressured to avoid ever touching.

This is the scale of changes that I think "Clemency" would need to actually feel cool and useful:

• No longer on the GCD. As long as "Clemency" competes directly with the Paladin's offensive rotation for GCD space, "Clemency" will always lose.
• No longer costs MP. As long as "Clemency" competes directly with "Holy Spirit" and "Requiescat" for resources, "Clemency" will always lose.
• No longer has a cast time. ...Because OGCDs with a cast time get really weird, really fast.
• No longer interferes with, or costs, the offensive rotation in any way. As long as "Clemency" costs the Paladin personal DPS, "Clemency" will always lose.

Now, this would probably necessitate some other changes, to prevent "Clemency" from changing to being completely insane and "overpowered":

• Gains a cooldown. If it's OGCD, and instant-cast, and doesn't cost MP, then... it kinda needs some other factor limiting its use.
• Possibly shares a cooldown with something else. Similar to "Raw Intuition" and "Nascent Flash", it might be appropriate to make the Paladin choose between damage reduction with "Sheltron", or damage restoration with "Clemency".
• Alternatively, "Clemency" could become a "big CD", like "Equilibrium" and "Aurora", with a correspondingly-longer CD.

... Whatever is done, I would really like something to be done with "Clemency", because I would really like to be able to use the Paladin's big shiny healing button without feeling guilty, and severely-deranging multiple aspects of the rotation.

Seriously... "Clemency" looked so cool in Heavensward... but instead, it's just ended up rotting on my hotbar, year after year, because the benefits of using it rarely outweigh the substantial and disproportionate costs.

——————————————————————————————————————

Overall, I think that most of these complaints are relatively modest compared to the issues that many other Job designs currently have. And I think that Shadowbringers Paladin is fun to play, and in a good place for the most part.

But, I also think that these spots on Paladin that are still "rough" are actually very "rough": underwhelming OGCDs, awkward drifting loop timings, bland "Fight or Flight" windows, annoying "Requiescat" constraints, uninteresting "Gauge", disappointing personal and impractical party defensive tools, punished for taking damage, awful and unusable "Clemency".

So, I would like it if the developers would take a critical look at all of these complaints while adjusting the Paladin design for Endwalker.

[NeoDivinity]

Great post, i do agree with your takes on PLD Oath Gauge and the FF windows being boring and even frustrating when playing with high latency. Improvements are always welcome.

I would say too that i actually feel that the Defensives on PLD are in a good spot, Sheltron is basically a Bulwark but better and can be used almost every time since you don't have much use of the gauge if your Tank mate is doing fine,

Veil sucks to use and theres no discussion there, maybe reducing is mitigation potency and adding a weaker version of Convalescence to the group would be nice( and changing the way it triggers of course) giving it a unique trait among the other tanks aoe mitigations.

I hope Endwalker will bring some good changes to the job, i don't like the meta where almost every OGCD needs to be offensive, specially on Tanks. Clemency and Passage of Arms right now are pretty okay on giving the healers a hand and 'saving the day' in a bad run. That's what makes PLD so versatile and fun to me, of course they are not skills you will use everytime and they will result on DPS loss but its okay if it gives me the clear i've worked weeks to get.
As you stated on the post, PLD its on a good spot and im excited to see what can they bring to the table and i also hope that DRK and WAR get some love since i do feel like they're not that fun to play right now.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

With regards to pulling bosses in raid content, I feel like it's awkward for pretty much every tank--especially now that face-pulling has become more prevalent.

[DaulBan]

Bruh

Actual responses:

I think you have to grasp pretty hard to find that the fourth best tank of all time (HW WAR >> 4.1+ WAR = 4.X PLD > 5.X PLD) in terms of overall prowess is somehow in any particular rough shape. For basically every point you make I can think of a reasonable counterpoint? Like Req is melee because it's the marker that indicates the 'end' of the melee phase and you transitioning into your magic phase. I mean, it doesn't even do physical damage, so flavour-wise it's perfect. PLD oGCDs have never been particularly important because that has tended to be DRK (now sorta also GNB)'s thing. This was reinforced all the way back in HW when Royal authority was added, and has only been made more prevalent with things like Req/HS and Atonement. Clemency is probably one of the best pieces of tank utility in the game because you can very realistically save a run with it if we recognize someone is at low health. The thing is we don't use it because A) it's a meme and B) we foist that responsibility on healers.

I'm not saying I don't have complaints. Cover should either cost nothing or still have the mitigation it used to in order to fill a role as a proper tank cooldown. OK I guess I have a single complaint. Basically everything else about the job is about as straightforward as it gets, and whatever minor gripes I have about it are like, infinitesimal compared to complaints about fight design often being boring or weirdly annoying. Like I'd rather the balance team spend more time looking at ways they could apply the tools we already have in interesting fights then polish the turd and call it a job well done.

[Comrade_uri]

I have saved dungeon runs and my alliance in raids with clemancy. Does my DPS drop? No, it plummets to a near stop but if the dps pull their socks up and I keep tanking and healing we get through it.

The gauge, yeah you could remove it and no one would notice.

Devine veil's trigger is also not the best

Defensives do feel lacking as well but I lack the skill to think of a fix. That said I manage with what I have.

All in all though, paladin is in the best place it's been in. The days of HW are long gone.

[Miskatonic]

I would like to see an upgrade to Shelltron to make it more paladin-like. The ability looks and sounds mechanical, the name Shelltron sounds robotic, it just doesn't really jive with a holy warrior theme

[Absurdity]

Shelltron is also a bit of a joke in dungeons. While SE removed a boss' ability to crit they did not do so for dungeon trash, the arguably more dangerous part of a dungeon. So you can run into the unlucky situation where your Shelltron does exactly nothing because you just ate a bunch of critical autos and crits completely ignore block.


Divine Veil could also use some changes. It is currently a clunkier version of Shake it Off that needs to be triggered by either yourself or a healer with a GCD heal (which you want to avoid because it tanks your dps and the healer wants to avoid because that's just how healing works in ShB, this was less of an issue in previous expansions) and doesn't even apply to the Paladin themself.


Then we have Cover...look what they've done to my boy. I'd say it was pretty broken in Stormblood and needed a nerf but SE hit it with a Sledgehammer. On top of not reducing your damage taken anymore it comes with a whopping 2 minute cooldown and a gauge cost, turning it from one of the best skills into a skill that is more niche than Shield Bash.


I do however not see why Fight or Flight would need to be shorter or "punchier". Paladin has always been a tank that does sustain dps and FoF fits well into that mold. Making FoF "punchier" would bring Paladin closer to the burst-heavy style of warrior and we all know how well that went for DrK when they did it to that job.

[Undeadfire]

Then we have Cover...look what they've done to my boy. I'd say it was pretty broken in Stormblood and needed a nerf but SE hit it with a Sledgehammer. On top of not reducing your damage taken anymore it comes with a whopping 2 minute cooldown and a gauge cost, turning it from one of the best skills into a skill that is more niche than Shield Bash.

Even with the major nerfs to Cover it has still been exploited for DPS uptimes among certain Eden Savages, plus WOL, it's not exactly niche still.

What does need fixing is Clemency, GCD healing spell is the most useless ability except for prog survival.

[Ultimatecalibur]

What does need fixing is Clemency, GCD healing spell is the most useless ability except for prog survival.

All Clemency really needs is a trait to make it mostly dps neutral. Something like a buff that increases the potency of the next Holy Spirit/Confiteor by 350 or the next Holy Circle by 250.