How to fix Paladin

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

I will never forget; they took my cone away instead of giving it to the three other tanks. Absolutely ridiculous and the exact opposite of what should have been done. I made a vow to stand up and FIGHT for all of my Blue Brothers until this problem is corrected so any post fixing a tank job is lacking, if missing this crucial fix.

Well if you could take your fight back to it's own thread, this is about trying to get some actually needed fixes for Paladin, and AoE is the one department it isn't really lacking in.

[Derio]

PLD has reached critical mass. I expect in 7.0 they will rework the job completely particularly the defensive kit.

[Zarkovitch]

divine veil need shake off treatement, Magic phase need crit/dhit treatment,physical phase need the crit treatement. Those ideas are only band aids not repairation, I'll let the devs fix they're pld.

[Armandin]

Would making the magic phase(or just the blade combo attacks) make the rotation work within 60 seconds opposed to 63+?

[Curisu]

PLD is fine as it is.
Vail is never a problem to prog and a pld or any Tank don't need shields for raidwides.
20 sec CD is not a problem.
During prog you just skip the first FoF and start to do the full CD when the Kill is close.
Other classes need also a countdown.
Besides that, i hate insta pull tank's.
A at least 5 sec countdown should be the norm for all bosses.
Defensives Is also not a problem because in exchange of that you have a additional 15% group mitigation.

The thing that really needs a fix for PLD is it's level 70.
It is just not fun and basically unplayable in older Ultimates.
Like, i first timed GNB in Ucob and did 500 dps more then with my PLD.

[Absurdity]

While I agree with almost all your points and think PLD is fine, Hallowed/Bolide's "true" immunity is quickly becoming more obsolete as time goes on; the devs have been making more mechanics simply apply debuffs even with 0 damage/invuln. taking P4s for example, invulning a botched rot pass still gives you the damage down, even with true immunity. Hallowed offers no advantage against the Phase 1 tankbuster or phase 2 double buster that the other non true immunities can't do. In fact, Holmgang has a massive advantage in both halves of P4 in being able to immunity the 1st & last tank busters in Phase 1, and both double busters in Phase 2. While I would concede Hallowed is nice for Heart Stake, a DRK can make that TB a joke without their immunity even when taking both hits with aggro manipulation, so I wouldn't exactly give that too many points in hallowed's favor.

In P2S both HG and Bolide allowed you to easily keep full uptime during phase 4's Predatory Avarice+Dissociation with 0 risk involved.

[Plain_Est]

Add a 1% damage taken increase on all PLD DoTs. Good PLDs keep DoT uptime as close to 100% as possible and the party benefiting from this will increase rDPS and increase the class utility.

[eagledorf]

There's a serious new problem for PLD in the latest raid series.

I think in part to discourage complete cheesing with invulns, SE has put a bleed DoT on tanks for every tankbuster (in p8s part 2, it's before), which is in most of the turns more dangerous than the initial hit itself. Blocking doesn't work at all on the bleed, this means that not only does Paladin have 2 or more fewer cooldowns than any other tank, Sheltron is by a massive margin also now the weakest flexible cooldown of all the tanks.

On top of that because most PLD self-healing is the only one that's not on demand (locked behind a rigid, low-burst rotation), Paladins can't even help heal through the bleed without being an unacceptable DPS burden on the party by using Clemency. Meanwhile DRK can spam TBK before the tankbuster and after and a third time during the DoT while losing no DPS.

As a short-tern bandaid fix, I would recommend swapping the durations for Holy Sheltron (Knight's Resolve duration increased to 8s, Sheltron decreased to 4s), buffing the effect to Resolve to 20% mitigation, and buffing PLD DPS so they can use 1 Clemency without being the reason the party enrages. Eventually the lack of cooldowns and excessive cooldown on Hallowed need to be fixed because patchwork tweaks like this will inevitably either not be enough or cause PLD to be overpowered on future content.

The level of failure by SE to even remotely balance the tanks either defensively or in terms of DPS is staggering. SE, please hire somebody whose sole job is to prevent this from happening again, tanks have too many issues and it happens every single major patch.

[Rithy255]

Just a Reply to above because I reached character limit:

I can Kinda agree tank balance so far hasn't been the greatest, it's been passable... but not really good theirs been a lot of issues.
I think for bleeds we could simply make blocks mitigate damage, it's a pretty simple fix In my opinion, I think generally you could slightly buff the regen effect on holy shelltron aswell 400 potency would make it at least contend with Blood Whetting, I don't know if that would be too overpowerd. (maybe reducing the magic burst healing effect alongside that, so pld does get a rotation healing but their self sustain is more focused on their own input not rotation lineup).

Paladins getting a lot of niche tools such as cover and clemency is weird, I don't really mind clemency, it can make the class fun for more casual content when you have no healer or in niche progression situations its just nice, But cover feels really weird and pointless, I guess like clemency it does has its uses but it's really not a great ability in its current state, great at preventing wipes in casual content and even useful in certain situations in higher end duties.

I also kind of want intervention somewhat buffed, Why does its mitigation get reduced compared to holy shelltron? while warrior gets the healing effect and the main mitigation/shield effects go on the target With healing the warrior. Gunbreakers get a small shield bonus if they have a brutal shell (ect. ect.)

Paladin right now isn't weak defensive wise, but a lot of its defensive capability has weird downsides, blocks being janky sometimes Req Healing phase not being able to be controlled on the paladins part, that and Paladin is generally performing worse then Gunbreaker and Dark knight, Struggling to even keep up with warrior. Puts Paladin in a kinda bad spot as of late, not to say its useless but other tanks generally do it a bit better while paladins also have to worry about weird optimizations to it's rotation they have to worry about jank ect. Despite all of that I do think paladin is generally one of the most fun and unique tanks, It could do with adjustments in its defensive kit, without obviously making it super powerful. I do hope tanks in general get a lot of changes, a lot of people are generally unhappy with dark knight's general kit (not being weak but more how it plays). Warrior could use some slight buffs to its rotation. (100% PLD as well).

[Crater]

Sheltron is by a massive margin also now the weakest flexible cooldown of all the tanks.

Paladin's got a lot of problems right now and I don't want to downplay them, but this really isn't one of them.

The correct way to be handling tankbusters in this raid tier for any party composition besides DRK/GNB is for both tanks to use their short-mitigation skills on each other. Intervention, buffed by Rampart or Sentinel, is 28% mitigation on your co-tank with a 1000 potency heal, and in return you receive 28% mitigation and a 900 potency heal (GNB), 10% mitigation and a 25% HP shield (DRK), or 19% mitigation and 2000 potency of shields and healing (WAR). Since PLD has enough time to get to 100 Oath in between almost every buster in the tier, Sheltron can be added on top of this for 15% DR, 1000 potency of healing, and the 20% block on the initial hit.

PLD's problems (which are considerable) are, as ever, mostly down to having a rigid rotation that feels out of step with the design of the rest of the game and doesn't really pay off even if you do it well, and skills like Passage of Arms and Cover that are just too niche and situational to really produce much value. In terms of actual tankbuster mitigation, PLD is considerably stronger than DRK and GNB due to the ability to use Sheltron and Intervention at the same time, so long as you coordinate with your co-tank to trade mitigation instead of each player using their skills on themselves.