How to fix Paladin

[eagledorf]

you are selling Hallowed Ground way too low. In contrast to Walking dead, HG shields you from damage which allows you to cheese or outright ignore certain mechanics. WD cannot do that! Same with Superbolide. I agree it should have a lower CD, as Holmgang still remains supreme even after several recast nerfs (some at SE headquaters apparently thinks putting tank busters timings 4-5 min from each other is just right, so only WAR can cover them)
I suggest a CD reduction of WD to 4:30, SB to 5:00 and HG to 5:30. This way, DRK can cover some tank busters that only WAR is currently capable of, while GNB and PLD might see more invul usages than just "once in a life time".

So if you look at the current Ex trial as one example (of many), every other tank can ignore the stack tank buster by invulning both. Paladin is the only tank that can't cheese mechanics with invuln, it's PLD that's unique more so than WAR. This carries across every encounter to some degree or the other since 6.0 dropped. Dragonsong Ultimate PLD is there only job that can't invuln in DRK Thordan and have it back for Cauterize, Pandemonium savage PLD is the only job that only gets one invuln for a buster in every turn, etc.

I do agree with you the real problem is the other invuls and Holmgang are also broken. IMO you should have to actually do mechanics and invuln should be for emergencies, not Holmgang every second tank mechanic. If you want tanks to actually have things to do, Holmgang should be about 5 minutes and Hallowed stay at around 7. I doubt SE will fix that though, so the only way remaining to balance the tanks is reduce Hallowed to around 5 minutes so it can cheese everything too.

Regarding adjusting no. 3, with enough potency increase it really doesn't break anything, it just means you always use 2 attonement instead of 3-2. It also means PLD players can finally aim for zero skill speed since it doesn't work on the whole casting combo (I guess an alternative for that is to make skill speed actually work on PLD like somebody else suggested). There are other adjustments that could be done instead, the casting phase could be reduced, this has the advantage of BoV fitting inside shorter party buffs like Battle Litany so in that sense it's a better option than cutting Sword Oath.

PLD definitely doesn't have the most flexible rotation at all, any loss of uptime or missed skill is devastating because the rotation is so rigid you'll miss the next party buff burst window unless you just drop skills from the rotation to press FoF exactly on time.