Quote Originally Posted by Seraphor View Post
Block from (Holy) Sheltron just feels awful, because you already get block via rng anyway.
Every time I use it I'm thinking "I might have blocked that anyway" so the skill feels borderline useless.

Compared to other tanks where it's a 100% additional 10-20% mitigation.

Then there's the Oath gauge, meaning you don't even have your on demand mitigation tool available unless you've hit the required number of physical GCDs.

As for the rotation, I've leveled to 89 now and I still don't understand it.
I get that you have three priorities, your Royal-Atonement combo, your Goring DoT combo, and you magic combo. But these don't have an intuitive order to them and don't seem to line up. You want your physicals during FoF which is obvious enough, but what about Goring? It's duration is pitiful so do I aim for 100% uptime or what?
By trying to feel it out logically, it seems like it should be Goring > Atonement > Goring > Atonement > Requiescat > Repeat. But that doesn't quite line up (Req ends up with 3-5s left on the CD by the time I'm ready for it) and it comes with the paradox of "do I open with my DoT or with the magic combo to make the most out of MP as a resource?"

Nothing about this rotation makes any logical, intuitive sense.
GNB on the other hand clicked instantly and always feels satisfying as every single cooldown gets hit on milisecond it's available again.
I wouldn't go so far as to call Block awful, it's nice to guarantee the 20% mitigation on most busters (exception for busters that are designed to Crit or during certain buster that afflict a stun or Down for the Count), and it still guarantees mitigation on consecutive autos for it's duration, especially on quick successive attacks it gets great value, but Holy Sheltron alleviates, the only removing RNG element, and adds more mitigation and regen effect to bolster the skill further. Also no it's not "additional 10-20% mitigation" since all percentage based mitigation applies multiplicatively in this game, and all are similar when you pair rampart and short mitigation, or 30% mitigation plus short mitigation, save of course DRK and TBN which is not affected by diminishing returns, as it's a set HP value.

Oath gauge is generated by Auto Attacks not GCDs...it takes 22.5 seconds of full uptime to generate 50 Oath Gauge...which is slightly faster than GNB and WAR's respective short mitigation at 25 seconds.

PLD's rotation doesn't have a priority system per se, and is the hardest tank to optimise at high levels of play, but at a casual level it's actually straight forward to play. As long as you're play at 2.45GCD or faster you can fit 11 GCDs under Fight or Flight, so you get your highest hitting physical weaponskills in under that 25 second window, just as straight forward as GNB. So typical, Fast Blade -> Fight or Flight at 2/3rds of you GCD coming off cooldown, Riot Blade, Goring Blade, Royal Authority Combo, Atonement x3, Goring Combo into Magic Phase, and continue.
Honestly MP is a non issue and should not be even considered. Optimised openers and rotations may lead with Requiescat first, but that's when at level 90. Overall PLD does require some actual thought compared to the other tanks, which is not a bad thing, as it can allow for a higher skill ceiling expression, the only draw back is, in PLD requirement for more effort than the other tanks to optimise, it is still significantly behind DRK and GNB in DPS who require less effort to play.