Would removing clemency allow for a better pld?

[DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise]

Clemency, the reason for taxing pld.
Looked great when I started the job, but now I know how counter intuitive it is, it feels bad to use.

When you use clemency, you are sacrificing damage.
It breaks combos, some healers resent you for using it, some might expect you to use it, but either way it feels terrible to use.

It’s a completely different feeling than verraising or swiftcast raising a dead healer as a dps, that is satisfying. Clemency just always feels bad, even when the healer dies and you use it to keep yourself and the dps alive, you’re thinking to yourself, “I could be nascent flashing the dps without sacrifice”

Like, there are several pld “utility” abilities that seems completely unnecessary and counter-intuitive.

I’m just left thinking now, why not fundamentally rethink pld and clemency?

It’s not that I don’t enjoy pld. I actually am ok with it’s damage and like the rotation, it just irks me to think that pld is being held back by an ability that most every pld comes to learn to not use, or to hate using.

If clemency were simply removed, people could stop the whole “clemency tax” nonsense, and just make a much better pld job, eh?

[MistakeNot]

I think you are speaking nonsense.
If I use clemency, it is because I think it is needed. I don't feel bad about using it - there is no reason to feel bad about it.
And there is nothing counter-intuitive about it.
How would just removing clemency make paladin better? Answer is that it wouldn't.

[SoulSamurai]

I feel the issue in it is the lack of actual support in the entire lore and skill set of the class. Shield bash? Niche skill. Cover? Niche skill. Then Clemency a good skill that as mentioned breaks combos, uses MP (was issue pre EW), and lowers DPS dramatically. IMO they should make it OGCD 2,000 MP cost and a 10-15 second cooldown. Too much useage will kill your Req phase and keeps it balanced. This way it can act as a mitigation skill instead of a solo the last little bit of a dungeon boss when the group wipes. Or to the absolute minimum not break combos. Its already a DPS loss to use it why make it destroy a combo aswell.

[DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise]

I feel the issue in it is the lack of actual support in the entire lore and skill set of the class. Shield bash? Niche skill. Cover? Niche skill. Then Clemency a good skill that as mentioned breaks combos, uses MP (was issue pre EW), and lowers DPS dramatically. IMO they should make it OGCD 2,000 MP cost and a 10-15 second cooldown. Too much useage will kill your Req phase and keeps it balanced. This way it can act as a mitigation skill instead of a solo the last little bit of a dungeon boss when the group wipes. Or to the absolute minimum not break combos. Its already a DPS loss to use it why make it destroy a combo aswell.

Dude that even on a 60cd would be an improvement

[HisShadowX]

I love it as a solo option. For those who don't know the Hardcore Minority supported a system called Cross Class System so basically your Warrior could get Cure by cross class and was expected to level another class to get special abilities. THANKFULLY Square removed this because this sort of halted people joining since the only people who liked it are the Hardcore Minority and remember they destroyed and remade this game because Tanka made the original FFXIV for the Hardcore Minority and the sales were horrible. Never focus on a small minority who do not matter


When I first gained the ability you have to understand even though I joined the game in 2013 on the PS3 I did not get my first max level until early 2020. So a lot of Paladin abilities did not update until I got to that part in the story and done class quests. So when I got clem I LOVED IT! However, when I came back to Endwalker I noticed Healers really stopped healing and demanded you use Clem well they DPS'd.

The Paladin is in a real bad spot right now

[Aurora_Sylphy]

Nope. I'll murder you if you touch my Clemency . Jokes aside, Clemency is one the things I love about Paladin. I barely have to use it, but the amount of runs its saved where its just me and a DPS soloing the boss cause the other Healer and DPS croaked, and the remaining one does not have a raise. Clemency is like my 'break here in case of fire' button. I should never have to need to use, and if I do, something has gone terribly wrong and bad, but I would rather have it just in case I needed to use it. In addition, you are playing a tank. You DPS to help the party, and you try and maximize that DPS in-between doing your role (using your cooldowns, not stepping in red, etc).

The difference between Warrior and Paladin is that the Warrior has to think more about their skill. It lasts 8 seconds, and is on a 25s cooldown. Now 4 GDCS of pure damage to proc the healing is 1600 pot healing, sure. Let's take their 1-2-3-1 combo in that time. That is (200+280+400+200, plus a heal of 250 pot, for a total damage of 1100, and a heal of 1850 pot on the warrior, and 1600 on the target affected by it. And while the heal may be much larger, for a tank 90% a lot of that potency would be wasted overhealing.

Now to match that heal a little bit, let's look at a Paladin using Clemency and their 1-2-3 combo. Heals them for 500 pot, their target for 1000 pot, and damage done of (200, 300, 420) if we are using 1-2-3 combo, or if we have a stack of sword oath up due to completing the combo, at 1, 2 or 3 stacks those GDCs will be replaced with their sword oath use (so 1 stack: 420, 200, 300, total 900 pot dmg, 1000MP back; 2 stacks: 420, 420, 200, 1040 pot dmg, 1000 MP; 3 stacks: 420, 420, 420, 1260 total pot dmg, 1500 MP).

To sum up, using Clemency on a DPS for an on demand 1000 pot heal, 500 pot self heal, and dealing anywhere from 900 pot dmg to 1260 pot damage, and getting back 500-1500MP, not including passive regen. Warrior on the other hand heals themselves for 1850 pot, their target for 1600, and deals damage of 1100 pot. We are not counting other abilities but only things that are on the GDC and do not have cooldowns.

Warrior always deals more damage then the worst case for a Paladin, and heals more. However, they are stuck in a loop of needed to wait 17 secs (not counting the 8 secs of healing while the buff is up). That means they cannot use it on demand, and need to wait a further 7 GDCs on average between skills to be able to use it again (in half that time a Paladin would have more then enough made back the MP they spent on Clemency). So I think it's a fair compromise really, and everything in the game is balanced for all classes so the raw damage number is kind of pointless (as in max damage on one class being higher then the other, and not playing miserably and outputting well bellow the damage your class is supposed to do)

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I don't even think Clemency is what is "taxing" Paladin this time around anyways. I'd rather see Cover be less of a totally niche skill and at least return a portion of its mitigation to justify the 50 gauge cost vs Holy Sheltron + Provoke / Intervention. Or have some of the healing effects introduced at Lv82+ be moved down a bit so it isn't so top-heavy in that regard.

Also please put a built-in Awareness (can't be hit by critical hits) effect into Sheltron so Paladin doesn't feel like utter pain when doing old content with random (all pre-80 content) or forced criticals (Dun Scaith: Diabolos Hollow, O3S: Critical Hit buster, Shinryu EX: Tera Slash). Having your Sheltron be completely deleted because you can't block a critical hit is just dumb since Awareness got removed.

I think since Paladin seems to be within about 5% of DRK's dps numbers, I consider it fine. If anything, I want DRK to be reworked and be tuned down.

[DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise]

Well what I like more about nascent is I don’t have to do calculus about when I heal. There’s just no downside to it, someone lower on health? Nascent, not a big deal, they full health.
Also it’s 400 potency per enemy hit, and it can crit, so if you hit 10 enemies with 1 gcd it’s a 4000 potency heal, do it in your crit window, and well it doesn’t matter invincibility is invincibility.
Also after using shake it off in a few raids, it’s comedy how much better it is than Devine veil.

Ultimately though, you need to do math in order to figure out if you should use clemency.
Nascent, there’s literally no reason not to use it.
I don’t want to be complaining about warrior it’s just, kinda makes you question why pld was ever taxed for clemency.
Seems like the entire job identity is caught up on something that you’re discouraged from doing

[Aurora_Sylphy]

Well what I like more about nascent is I don’t have to do calculus about when I heal. There’s just no downside to it, someone lower on health? Nascent, not a big deal, they full health.
Also it’s 400 potency per enemy hit, and it can crit, so if you hit 10 enemies with 1 gcd it’s a 4000 potency heal, do it in your crit window, and well it doesn’t matter invincibility is invincibility.
Also after using shake it off in a few raids, it’s comedy how much better it is than Devine veil.

Ultimately though, you need to do math in order to figure out if you should use clemency.
Nascent, there’s literally no reason not to use it.
I don’t want to be complaining about warrior it’s just, kinda makes you question why pld was ever taxed for clemency.
Seems like the entire job identity is caught up on something that you’re discouraged from doing

I mean, you don't need to math to use Clemency. I was just using potency numbers to show the actual heal and damage difference to support my argument that there is not really any issue.

Warrior uses Nascent Flash off CD most of the time wasting a lot of healing on bosses (trash packs are different). It does a lot of healing and is off the GDC but is thus reliant on two factors.

1) Being able to get off a GDC on the target boss (for example a Paladin can heal on downtime (if for whatever reason your healer can't, Warrior cannot since they need to use a GDC attack on a target to heal)
2) It not being on cooldown

Issue with Paladin clemency
1) On GDC, meaning one less damage GDC
2) Heals less and deals less damage then Nascent Flash most commonly.

Benefits of Nascent Flash
1) oGDC
2) not relient on a resource

Benefits of Clemency
1) Usable at any time if you have MP (which unless the target is loosing massive amounts of HP constantly you are not going to run out of MP

Now this is single target. AOE mob packs is basically another story in which Warrior is basically broken (though in a fun way),but I would doubt removing Clemency would really make them ever change much about Paladin (or give Paladin something simillar). I do agree Shake It Off is great, but once again, I doubt they would add more if they took away Clemency.

[DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise]

@Aurora what I meant by calculus is that when using clemency, we do it as emergency backup.
Just because someone is taking damage doesn’t mean we stop what we’re doing and use clemency.
What I’ve sound with nascent so far is, it’s more like dance partner.
I’m going to use my tank cooldown anyways, and if someone has taken damage (usually a sage for some reason), I just nascent them and continue without thinking about it.

Honestly I think this is a far better way for a tank to approach group support is in a way that fits into normal flow, which nascent does beautifully.
Whereas with clemency it’s something has to get really dicey before it’s time to even consider it, because we aren’t the healer, we are the tank, we tank and do damage.
For warrior, and hell, even drk, that flow isn’t impeded