Specific Paladin Buff/Change Suggestion

[Reisei]

Greetings.


As many have noticed, Paladin's offense is roughly 9% weaker than the damage output of other tanks right now.

But this post isn't about just raising potencies. Patch 6.0 made Paladin a bit more boring to play.
What I'm referring to is the loss of significant GCD manipulation and a satisfying finisher.

I will explain in four steps. The past, the present, why the present is less fun, then suggested changes.

Reminder: Paladin can get 11 GCDs into Fight or Flight


1. What was back then:

- The Fight or Flight opener starts with Riot Blade and ends with Goring Blade.

- Every rotation after the opener puts instead 4 Atonements into Fight of Flight, replacing a buffed Riot Blade, to gain a bit more damage.

- Because buffed Atonement was higher damage than Holy Spirit, Paladins would ideally end fights with 3 Atonements, then use Requiescat, Confiteor, and the boss dies.


2. What is now:

- The Fight of Flight opener starts with Riot Blade and ends with Goring Blade.

- Atonement potency is too low. Due to how the new Blade of Valor applies its DoT effect, shifting your combo to gain 4 Atonements is not a DPS gain anymore.

- Because Holy Spirit is higher damage than Atonement, we don't adjust anything in our rotation. The boss ideally dies after 4 Holy Spirits into one Confiteor.


3. Why what we have now is less fun:

- GCD manipulation is mostly gone. We do not adjust out combo to go from 3 buffed Atonements into one Confiteor anymore. This felt great because Paladins felt like they skipped a part of their combo in order to explode on the boss. Now we either follow our normal rotation and hope the boss dies at the right moment, after 4 monotone Holy Spirits and the Confiteor.

- Paladin's Blade of Valor combo deals so little initial damage, that we don't want the fight to end with it used. This is very sad since it looks and feels so satisfying.


4. Which changes would make Paladin more fun?

- Buffed Atonements should deal more damage than Holy Spirits. This would reward Paladins for being close and timing their rotation right. It would make jumping from Atonements to Confiteor and Blade of Valour much more explosive.

- The new Blade of Valor combo must have more initial potency than buffed Atonements or Holy Spirits. Not necessarily the first two hits, but the last one has to explode. This would make it feel great to end fights with it again.

- Circle of Scorn should have a cooldown of 25 seconds again. It meant that no matter when you press it, you can get one use of it inside of Fight or Flight. It also meant that Paladins don't always press Spirits Within (now Expiacion) and Circle of Scorn together, which made it feel a bit less boring. Right now these two buttons might as well be one.

These are my proposed changes. They would not affect casual Paladins, but bring great joy to top level Paladins.

Also please revert Clemency to what it was in Shadowbringers. Thank you for reading!

[Shurrikhan]

I mostly agree to your three suggestions; with PLD lagging behind, we'd mostly be able to warrant the added potency. Even if not, though, I'd correct for that internal balance (or, "dynamics") first and adjust overall potency thereafter as needed.

[NyneSwordz]

Are they lagging that much behind all tanks or is it just darks?

[NyneSwordz]

I think they may lower dark dps a bit. Paladin plays well and that's the most important thing

[Reisei]

Are they lagging that much behind all tanks or is it just darks?

We don't have a full tier worth of data yet - but when everyone plays well, Paladin is about 6% lower than Warrior, and 7% below GNB. DRK is close to GNB but a slight cut above.

I would like to keep the discussion about where the potency should be attributed to PLD.

SE knows Paladin deals a bit too little damage right now, and I am not worried they will get the balance right. What matters to me is how they do it. Targetting the suggested areas would make the job a bit deeper, as it was in Shadowbringers, and more fun to casual players, too, because the big Blade of Valor combo would have bigger numbers attached to it.

[Ampheni]

I think PLD just need a potency buff to at least be on par with warrior, nothing more and nothing less.

[Abomination713]

I just want my 50% increased heals while under Requiescat back. There was no reason to remove that effect since if we have to use Clemency for any reason while we are in our MP rotation, we have just wasted a good Holy Spirit/Circle for nothing now. Instant cast doesn't make up for using one of the stacks. I used to be able to plan around the healer dying and saving my Requiescat for all super heals for myself and the party to live at the loss of my own DPS. For tanks at 82+ I can see you trying to argue that since we have Holy Sheltron/Spirit/Circle, we don't need those super heals. However, what about PLD that aren't 82 yet? We have lost a huge utility that was unique to us and we should get it back.

Also, they should increase the heal potency of Holy Circle from 400 to 600. Makes no sense that it heals the same as Holy Spirit when it should heal more due to being an aoe skill and having lower damage. WAR gets healed per enemy they hit, yet PLD's is static so a potency increase is valid.

[NeoDivinity]

PLD GCD now has low GCD manipulation? i dont get it, thanks to Atones and Req realying on 30secs stacks you can shift your rotation easily w/o losing uptime at all.You may break a combo but never loss a GCD.

Lack of damage is easily solved with some balance and having the most versatile kit between all tanks, having it deal more damage than most of them would be unfair to say the least.
I do believe the discrepancy rn is a bit too much but also this is an easy fix

4 atonements was clearly not intended, it was just something that ppl figured out trough out the expansion. PLD has ever have been a tank that dont relies on big bursts but on consistency, this a reality since ARR.


Rotation wise with only 2 primals to experiment and few normal raids for now we can already see that the real problem is that, due to the downtime the optimal rotation starts with a -16 secs FoF.
BoV starter combo feels underwhelming for sure, but it's not a big problem for me at least since is just a filler to replace the buffless Goring.

To wrap it up i realize most of the point you bring are related to the ability to raise your damage, and its fine to want that, but if damage is what you're focusing on there's a role for that. The QoL aspect that PLD and WAR received are extremely good compared to ShB, but of course you're free to disagree.

[Shurrikhan]

PLD GCD now has low GCD manipulation? i dont get it, thanks to Atones and Req realying on 30secs stacks you can shift your rotation easily w/o losing uptime at all. You may break a combo but never loss a GCD.

I think the OP's point was that there's now little to no potency value in rearranging one's GCDs in 100% uptime situations.

[NeoDivinity]

no potency value in rearranging one's GCDs in 100% uptime situations.

than i really dont get it, on 100% gcd situation you would not need to rearrange anything unless you messed up combos, right now you can choose to use the 2nd or 3rd, atonement stack skiping 3 to 4 seconds of the rotation to gain damage out of the FoF window, based on how the party is aligning its buffs to fit the next window with goring+Req combo perfectly. My point is that on Endwalker we do have more options to control our GCDs and how to use it w/o losing uptime if we need to step away from the boss, situations that as a PLD you'll face for exemple on Trial 2 Chackrams phase if youre using the in/out strat as a Group 2 member.

the gap between the floor and the ceiling of the job is already quite due to this flexibility