Feelings on Endwalker paladin

[MirielleLavandre]

Hi all,
I keep seeing many threads about DRK and GNB in regards to EW changes, but what are fellow tanks thoughts on the poster-job PLD? I have all tanks leveled, and was going to try to wait it out on DRK, but am now considering maining PLD instead. My only worry is that with all that self healing I'll make healers even more bored even wall to wall pulling :P (I kid, I kid ^^). I figure since I haven't really seen many complaints that the majority of us are satisfied with what paladin is getting? Thoughts?

[ArthurATDayne]

For me I don't have much to complain about when it comes to Endwalker PLD because one of the biggest complaints I had was

"Where's my damn rotation heal? Why do I need to stop fighting/blocking/parrying to heal via Clemency Heal? Fuck I gotta use Clemency with Requiescat for Instant Heals WOW big numbers, This feels clunky and lame. Why do I need to build up my stupid Gauge to use Sheltron? WTF"

So with Holy Spirit/Circle getting 400 Potency Heal per Use and Holy Sheltron getting extra Mitigation + Heal Over Time per Use, Divine Veil getting a 400 Potency Heal added to the 10% Max HP Shield,
I now get:

1. 1600 Total Potency Heal if using 4 out of 5 Requiescat Stacks on Holy Spirit/Circle per 60s CD in my Spell Phase Rotation.
2. Mitigation + Heal Over Time with Holy Sheltron, OMG Holy Sheltron.
3. I still got Clemency and can Instant Cast that under Requiescat and Divine Veil if I'm really desperate.

Holy Sheltron, Holy Shit what more could I want? Oh yeah, I still hate having to use melee auto attacks to build up Oath Gauge.

It's really distracting to me and I wish there was a way to just use Sheltron at start of fight like other short CD personal mitigation skills... I wouldn't mind if I could increase that Oath Gauge out of melee range though like "in combat generate X Oath Gauge as long as Aggroed Target is within 20 Yalms" or something.

But other than that, PLD looks super good.

[Derio]

My only gripe is that holy spirit and clemency still break combo. Outside of that PLD is pretty much amazing.

[Undeadfire]

It's pretty much perfect compared against SHBs Paladin, removes the weakness, makes it a better main tank than Gunbreaker/Dark Knight and adds more magic cast range for dragging bosses quicker into position. The rotation is gonna be a big change for pot windows since Reqs makes Holy Spirits/Confiteor do double damage instead of 1.5x making it stronger than FoF Atonements.

SHBs Paladin has flaws tanking anything, lack of cooldowns, Spirits Within being HP based, no self heal sustain outside of trash Clemency.

[Beddict]

Endwalker Paladin looking real nice. My biggest gripes with Paladin in Shadowbringers were:

1. I don't like the 63s rotation because it isn't a multiple of five. It's like when you see the volume on the TV is set to 27 and you're left sitting there annoyed it isn't 25 or 30. Honestly, this not a gameplay complaint at all, just my dislike of odd numbers
2. Lack of passive healing on combos, players have to resort to Clemency for self-healing which breaks combos and can further dely their rotation
3. Sheltron simply forces a Block and doesn't provide any additional mitigation, made it feel bad whenever I got Crit (which doesn't happen in Raids, but still). It just felt weak compared to Nascent Flash and The Blackest Night
4. Spirits Within still had that stupid as hell potency that scaled off HP. They removed the HP scaling off Upheaval going into Shadowbringers but left Spirits Within because ???. Honestly, probably only stuck around because WAR could do some dumb shit with Thrill of Battle, Defiance, and Unchained spiking the potency of Upheaval and they were interested in removing the damage buff, while Spirits Within didn't have that problem so who cares

Going into Endwalker, most of those points are resolved. A lot of passive healing in the Requiescat phase, Holy Sheltron provides strong damage reduction and a solid chunk of healing, and Spirits Within no longer gets weaker the more the Paladin gets hit. Still got that 63s rotation though, much to my annoyance (but again, that's personal so who cares).

So yeah, go Paladin, they're going to be a fun Job in Endwalker and got some solid buffs.

[shao32]

Outside i don't like at all now requiem Cast window consist on 4 holy Spirits and 4 confiteors (i would rather preffer the new skills sustituted goring Blade combo instead) and make PLD the GCD spam King the job just get better in every front as usual, i would never main It so if PLD mains are ok with the spam is on them.

[Recon1o6]

Honestly, healing breaking combo aside, there's genuinely no weaknesses in paladin's kit anymore, its looking like its going to be able to solo dungeons and possibly normal raids by itself if there isn't dps checks on bosses because its got so much healing and defence.

Its not going to be for everyone (many people dislike spamming 1 button X times, its one reason blm and war never really had high playercounts) but its mechanically and statistically solid


As is normal for the game sadly, it could do with an improvement in its levelling kit (what abilities are acquired when)

[ArianeEwah]

Paladin is/was pretty much perfect for 2 expansions now, and there wasn't much to add in EW, so anything they get, and doesn't screw with previous iterations is a good thing imo.

There are just a few annoyances:
1. The new Requiescat doesn't buff healing magic anymore, which decreases Clemency's value inside Req even further. They probably did that to keep the healing effect of Holy Spirit/Circle as they are... still double dampens Clemency by adding the healing effect on HS/HC AND removing the healing buff on Req.
2. Skill Speed still doesn't affect Spell GCDs on physical jobs (i.a. PLD, DRK): It makes PLD in EW a tiiiiny bit slower than in ShB. A small annoyance, but no issue (at least on PLD).
3. Shield Bash: I guess this is special treatment for PLD, otherwise I can not explain why this action is still there. WHM will lose Fluid Aura, but PLD keeps this one. My assumption is, it would be impossible to beat the dread-add in Leviathan. /kappa
4. same as Derio said: spells still break combos. This just makes Shield lob mandatory as long as it's less than 2-3 GCDs, as the dmg loss is less severe than casting HS, despite Shield lob being so weak... and I mean incredibly weak.
5. Cover! Still on gauge cost, long CD, no additional mitigation. Most of the time useless, and veeeery niche. This one keeps on grinding my gears.

Other than that, PLD is pretty solid. We can either run a 63s or ~60.5s rotation, and I hope it will stay that way in EW, but we'll see. There are no serious issues, just small nitpicks. Hallowed is still good, the additions done to it seem great, and complementary. Probably best designed tank since Stormblood.

[Undeadfire]

4. same as Derio said: spells still break combos. This just makes Shield lob mandatory as long as it's less than 2-3 GCDs, as the dmg loss is less severe than casting HS, despite Shield lob being so weak... and I mean incredibly weak.

I've yet to do raids under these situations, Rotations exist to set Reqs on away times.

5. Cover! Still on gauge cost, long CD, no additional mitigation. Most of the time useless, and veeeery niche. This one keeps on grinding my gears.

This is one of the most broken abilities in the game, bringing it back to it's original would only solve skipping mechanics or possibly bring Pld for easy cheese. Out of Log/Speed runs it's still extremely useful for certain fights, it's only niche for lower tier groups.

Other than that, PLD is pretty solid. We can either run a 63s or ~60.5s rotation, and I hope it will stay that way in EW, but we'll see. There are no serious issues, just small nitpicks. Hallowed is still good, the additions done to it seem great, and complementary. Probably best designed tank since Stormblood.

It's likely Paladin is going to run a faster SKS 0.02/0.03 extra vs GNB to stay aligned with 60s Burst Windows. Currently Pld skips 2 Holy Spirits throughout a whole fight to stay close on instant Trick Attacks. In other words going to skip an atonement instead.

[Cabalabob]

They did pretty much everything I’d hoped they would do for PLD and then also made it a healer on top of that. So I’m pretty happy.

They didn’t really do much to shake up the rotation by the looks of things but PLDs rotation has been fairly solid so that’s to be expected.

They finally took the HP requirement off spirits within which is a nice QoL update, same with MP requirement on requiescat.

Only gripes I have with PLD are the same as shadowbringers but none of them are anything close to the problems DRK and GNB face. Things like shield bash and cover being mostly useless and veil not effecting the user. Veil I can live with since PLD got a truck load of self heals dumped on it. Shield bash I’d kind of like to see it made into an AoE so PLD could be an AoE stunner in parties without a WHM. Cover I accept the stormblood version won’t be coming back despite that version bringing PLDs iconic ability to the forefront but I’d just like to see the gauge cost removed.

I suppose you could also argue hallowed ground lost some of its benefits since the other tank invulns were also brought up to 10 seconds duration yet hallowed still has the longest recast. But on the flip side the long recast is still hallowed grounds only drawback.

Overall I’d say PLD is sitting pretty, WAR is up there with it, GNB could use some work and DRK really needs help.