Why is everyone anxious about a PLD Rework?

[Rithy255]

Except paladin is being changed to fit 2minute burst meta, so thinking it's going to retain the sustain damage is sheer copium otherwise Paladin would be getting reworked lmao.
So like or hate it, that's the reality of where paladin is most likely going to go, is dump everything into raid buffs, with a big burst and a small burst every other minute.

But I seriously doubt Mikey's wish for Paladin rework will happen to be perfectly honest, since he's assuming the rotation loop will remain the same as it is at present, but it's SE they dumb every job down when they rework, so highly doubt it will come to fruition. And if, just if, Mikey's idea came to fruition, play around with a 2.22 GCD would be awful, which would get worse long term, due to SkS on other gear in past and future BiS, can't rely solely on GCD of one tier to base theories on.

I personally think they will likely do a couple of things, that will "ruin" pld at least for me.

Here's my current predications going off what I feel like will happen: (Trust me I don't want this lol)
1. Fight or flight, Likely going to be removed, it causes two bursts under 60 seconds, which makes PLD a sustained job in general
2. Super buff Req and blades combo even more.
3. They will likely remove atonement, I'm not 100% on this but it feels like a ability they will cut out, as PLD already has a magic burst and atonement is another "sustained" mini burst
4. Goring blade will be like warriors damage buff, giving you a 30 second dot, you can stack it up to 60 seconds, I believe they will really make goring blade more "loose"

I feel like they will make changes that fit PLD under 2 minutes but inside the 60 Second mark personally (Similar to how warrior is), If anything that they will do is change fight or flight and goring blade they are way too strict abilities with how current "Job design" works.

[Mikey_R]

I'm not a big fan of Circle of Scorn and the blade final dot overwriting each other. It's never been something I've liked and I would want to see that changed. Maybe it would be shifted to that the final blade spell gives you a lengthy buff that increases the damage of your next Circle of Scorn by whatever amount?.

Blade of Valor doesn't overwrite Circle of Scorn, so I will assume you mean Goring Blade, which it does replace.

However, that is the whole point. Blade of F/T/V is a stronger Goring Blade combo. That is how everything lines up and that is the intent.

Not that it probably matters because who knows what it happening in 6.3.

[Mithron]

I've always loved Fight or Flight because I started the game before there was Holy Spirit. PLDs had FoF, DRKs had Blood Weapon, WARs had Berserk; each of these were strict damage increases for bursting, but felt very different and unique. Blood Weapon even used to have a haste effect. I love Holy Spirit too, and I love PLD's class fantasy and job identity of being a knight who uses both their sword and shield and Holy Spirit in their rotation. Having these two kinds of burst phases means there's not too much emphasis on either side, which is important to me. If Holy Spirit is the only burst, then it feels like your sword is worthless and that makes the job far less enjoyable on a core level to me. Now that Holy Spirit has the sword combo finishers, I was hoping in the next expansion they would work on improving the physical sword skills PLD has, upgrading them much like DRG got upgrades this expansion to their base rotation skills. So a different Fast Blade and Riot Blade; it probably wouldn't change the 123 Atonement rotation, but that's fine: I like it and largely why I enjoy PLD so much. I like the consistent of the 420 potency Royal Authority + 3 Atonements then the (previously) 420 potency Holy Spirits for consistent damage throughout the fight, with minor bursts with Fight or Flight and Holy Sword combo.

[HyperiusUltima]

Or, the most likely change would be they increase recast of Fight or Flight to 2minutes, and allow it to affect all damage, so we'd have a big Requiescat burst in opener and every 2 minutes, and a small Requiescat burst every other minute.

So make it more similar to GNB where we squeeze everything into a 2m-focused 15s window? No thanks. The problem with this is that you still have the GCD issue; which is now more exacerbated as you'd have to make it apply to ALL damage for it to work. You'd then get a very scuffed PLD who has slightly less drift but the same gameplay. That doesn't fix anything. Again, 11 GCDs of FoF vs. 8 GCDs of Req.

The recommendation made by Mikey above would work well and still retain PLD's job identity as a sustained-damage tank. The "feel" of not having FoF would make it feel different, but it would open up the job to expansion later instead of being so rigid as it is currently with both rotations.

I've always loved Fight or Flight because I started the game before there was Holy Spirit. PLDs had FoF, DRKs had Blood Weapon, WARs had Berserk; each of these were strict damage increases for bursting, but felt very different and unique. Blood Weapon even used to have a haste effect. I love Holy Spirit too, and I love PLD's class fantasy and job identity of being a knight who uses both their sword and shield and Holy Spirit in their rotation. Having these two kinds of burst phases means there's not too much emphasis on either side, which is important to me. If Holy Spirit is the only burst, then it feels like your sword is worthless and that makes the job far less enjoyable on a core level to me. Now that Holy Spirit has the sword combo finishers, I was hoping in the next expansion they would work on improving the physical sword skills PLD has, upgrading them much like DRG got upgrades this expansion to their base rotation skills. So a different Fast Blade and Riot Blade; it probably wouldn't change the 123 Atonement rotation, but that's fine: I like it and largely why I enjoy PLD so much. I like the consistent of the 420 potency Royal Authority + 3 Atonements then the (previously) 420 potency Holy Spirits for consistent damage throughout the fight, with minor bursts with Fight or Flight and Holy Sword combo.

If you're worried about the strength of the spirit overtaking that of the sword, then consider the fact that just the base rotation for FoF is 5525 potency in total, you are adding potency that would far outpace Holy Spirit's own potency through filler if we're taking into account Physical vs. Magical. The entire Filler Rotation with 3 Atonements would be 2,725 potency, roughly HALF of the damage you'd be outputting under FoF if you baked in FoF's 25% Damage increase into the current physical rotation. For 2 Atonements in filler, it'd be 2,200. That burst phase in particular would be outdone by your sword's contribution if you baked FoF's potency into the kit via trait, as it wouldn't apply to Magical damage. I would almost want to believe it'd be close enough to make PLD a very viable choice in terms of damage, up there with DRK and GNB if they did it this way as a sustained damage tank.

[Gserpent]

The talk about SkS/SpS and GCD is another can of worms they need to deal with - materia sucks and it should maybe just be deleted at this point. Give classes passive traits or active buffs that set their GCD to a specific point and design from there. Even from a sweaty parsebrain standpoint, the amount of actual control and influence a "custom" GCD gives you over your DPS is so minuscule that it's hard to take it seriously. Especially when just playing "good" will still net you a high purple result on most classes, which is more than enough to clear savage and ultimate. It would also allow them to be a bit more free with class design - if you have a comparatively rapid GCD like MNK, you don't really feel a need for lots of oGCDs to make the rotation feel less bland and boring. WoW spent multiple iterations fiddling with the idea of letting players adjust or customize their gear through one system or another, and they all got removed because they were unnecessarily complicated and didn't really present any kind of meaningful player choice, since it was literally just (relatively) simple math to determine which stat to focus on and which stat to dump.

And as much as I hate it, I think Rithy255 is probably close to how the rework will look. Goring Blade becomes the effective replacement for FoF, being a near-passive damage boost that's pretty much always active as long as the player has a pulse like WAR or DRK, Atonement removed or otherwise sidelined (I still favor a "it's basically Raiden Thrust" solution, myself), skills with absurd potency boosted even more to compensate for the damage deficits caused by removal of FoF, and so on. Square-Enix has been especially prone to giving classes PRESS FOR BIG NUMBERS buttons on 30 or 60 sec cooldowns ever since EW came about, and we can probably expect those buttons to turn into automatic crits down the road because that design (big damage numbers designed to fit neatly into raid buffs) results in substantial parse differences when they *don't* crit, since they become such a large amount of your total DPS for the fight. That also ties back into my "materia is bad and needs to be removed" comment above, too.

[Rithy255]

Reply to above (couldn't fit quote).

I wish I could give my "dream ideals" on what to do with Paladin instead but yeah.. :/ I have a lot of changes that I'd like to see making the oath gauge and defensives in general more interactive, my only issues with PLD has always been more on the defensive and utility side personally, I think it makes sense trying to fix up PLD's rotation a bit, but a total rotational change? that's not something I want at all... but it does make sense at least when you think about it.

My "Ideas" on what they will do really just comes from what makes the most sense and is the most easy (to me), I don't feel like the pld rework in 6.3 is going to be aimed at keeping pld players happy really, I could certainly be wrong but I feel like I'm on the mark at least with removing FOF (they could also make it 120 working with magic, but I think they would go with removing it) and with how they will change goring blade into something that stacks up to 60 (like warrior) because PLDs goring blade makes it "too strict" for current design, looking at most Dots/damage buffs they either stack or they're not a big focus in the rotation like pld's dot upkeep.... I can definitely see req also at least making Confiteor auto crit/dh something I personally don't really care about but I know people dislike auto crit/dh's (which is totally fair), possibly some other abilities like the blades combo follow up.

A lot of people think the Oath gauge might become a attack spender? which is possible I don't think we'd get something that major but it's also a possibility that does make some sense when looking at the other tanks, most are "builder & spenders" which it would be easy to copy warrior or something and design "new" Paladin that way it would also come into question what they'd do to holy shelltron, cover, intervention and how they could possibly make those abilities "work" without the gauge system (being on 25 seconds CD, would easily mean pld is miles behind any tank in defensives). It's certainly a possibility...

I'm holding out a bit of hope until we actually see the rework (can't say I'm not afraid), Problem is how much I'm attached to Paladin it's always my "go to" job and always been more comfort pick when grinding experts or something, it's a Job I feel most comfy on harder content, It's a Job I just thematically really enjoy and It's really got me down that it might not even be something I enjoy anymore.

[ForsakenRoe]

You guys are coming up with all these ideas on how to fix the 63s loop and I think it's simple: WAR now has 3 Fell Cleave and BIG HIT (Primal Rend). DRK has 3 Bloodspiller. PLD has 4 Holy Spirit, and BIG HIT (Confiteor). See the difference? This is SE we're talking about, I fully expect their 'solution' to make the rotation line up properly is not to change Atonement in any way, instead just dropping two stacks from Req, buffing the potency of Holy Spirit again to make up for the one that is lost. Since it's 600p under Req, 1/4 of that damage would be cut, so 150. So they can just slap +50 on each of the Blade combo steps again and call it a day. Also I expect they'll be making Req grant 'Confiteor Ready' status and changing Confiteor from 'Requires Req' to 'Requires Confiteor Ready', to mirror Primal Rend's functionality, because they'll have internal data showing how many people over-use Holy Spirit and flub their chance to use Confiteor to finish the Req window.

As for Rithy's latest comment about changing the Oath gauge to be a more offensive thing, it'd at least be 'interesting' cos holy heck it's bad now. They can change Sheltron/Intervention to '20s CD, Has 2 Charge shared between Sheltron and Intervention.' This makes it so you can back to back 2 Sheltrons still, or a Sheltron and an Intervention, or whatever. They should remove the gauge cost from Cover though, the reason it was busted good in SB wasn't the lack of gauge cost, it was the 20% damage mit trait it no longer enjoys

If they did add the charge stuff to Sheltron though I think it'd be potentially interesting to throw Clemency on the same charge counter so you can actually use it without feeling super bad about it (and so PLD has some self-heal option below HolySheltron levels). And you'd be able to choose what tool to use based on situation. If you're taking the hit, Sheltron, co-healer taking the hit, Intervention, but you can also Clemency after. Or in Double TB situations, maybe you Sheltron yourself, they do their CD stuff, then you Clemency THEM and get half of the heal too. Oh wait this sounds almost interesting so there's no chance

[Gserpent]

You guys are coming up with all these ideas on how to fix the 63s loop and I think it's simple: WAR now has 3 Fell Cleave and BIG HIT (Primal Rend). DRK has 3 Bloodspiller. PLD has 4 Holy Spirit, and BIG HIT (Confiteor). See the difference? This is SE we're talking about, I fully expect their 'solution' to make the rotation line up properly is not to change Atonement in any way, instead just dropping two stacks from Req, buffing the potency of Holy Spirit again to make up for the one that is lost. Since it's 600p under Req, 1/4 of that damage would be cut, so 150. So they can just slap +50 on each of the Blade combo steps again and call it a day. Also I expect they'll be making Req grant 'Confiteor Ready' status and changing Confiteor from 'Requires Req' to 'Requires Confiteor Ready', to mirror Primal Rend's functionality, because they'll have internal data showing how many people over-use Holy Spirit and flub their chance to use Confiteor to finish the Req window.

As for Rithy's latest comment about changing the Oath gauge to be a more offensive thing, it'd at least be 'interesting' cos holy heck it's bad now. They can change Sheltron/Intervention to '20s CD, Has 2 Charge shared between Sheltron and Intervention.' This makes it so you can back to back 2 Sheltrons still, or a Sheltron and an Intervention, or whatever. They should remove the gauge cost from Cover though, the reason it was busted good in SB wasn't the lack of gauge cost, it was the 20% damage mit trait it no longer enjoys

If they did add the charge stuff to Sheltron though I think it'd be potentially interesting to throw Clemency on the same charge counter so you can actually use it without feeling super bad about it (and so PLD has some self-heal option below HolySheltron levels). And you'd be able to choose what tool to use based on situation. If you're taking the hit, Sheltron, co-healer taking the hit, Intervention, but you can also Clemency after. Or in Double TB situations, maybe you Sheltron yourself, they do their CD stuff, then you Clemency THEM and get half of the heal too. Oh wait this sounds almost interesting so there's no chance

I'd just remove Cover at this point. I don't like the idea that a class might be paying some kind of "tax" on an ability that largely never sees use. I don't even put it on my bars because it's basically useless. For Clemency, you could just make it an instant cast oGCD Ability with charges and a cooldown - baby Tetragrammaton, basically.

[Curisu]

I'd just remove Cover at this point. I don't like the idea that a class might be paying some kind of "tax" on an ability that largely never sees use. I don't even put it on my bars because it's basically useless. For Clemency, you could just make it an instant cast oGCD Ability with charges and a cooldown - baby Tetragrammaton, basically.

Cover is a life saver and a great situational skill, just like clemency is.
Removing them just takes away a unique and situational skill.
And no, having Clemency on a oGCD with one charge does not help.
I want to spam that heal to save a run, I don't care about my dmg and rotation when I can save a run and clear.
Clemency made my groups first p4s clear possible, cover saved multiple runs in e12s by putting it in a healer.

They can be extremely strong and make things possible that no other tank can do, but they are situational and not used under normal circumstances.
And this is a big part I like about PLD.

[AnotherPerson]

I’d like to know people’s opinions on this since I’m noticing a lot of anxiety over changing their rotation* mid-expansion. These have happened before with other jobs, namely those that have inherent job issues that haven’t been brought up until new systems and changes in the expac are already in place.

You know, I'm actually quite afraid of a PLD rework only during this period of time only due to their job design choices as of late. Healer forums are going up in flames from simplicity of pressing 2 damage skills over and over again, from normal content to high-end content due to downtime, but the developers have yet to change things. It can then be inferred that the developers think this job design philosophy is the right thing to do because they don't believe the playerbase is good enough to handle any complexity. No one still wants to play healers because the role itself is boring when there's such a significant amount of downtime in every type of content (normal to high-end). Rather than just giving healer damage skills back for 2 expansions now (4 years), they still tried to convince people to play not play tank/dps and play healers instead without making any changes to the number of damage skill variety. SAM losing Kaiten is also a big sign of reducing complexity -- they didn't merge Shoha with Shoha II when they mentioned button bloat, but instead directly removed Kaiten and turning the Samurai gauge into purely a Shinten gauge. No one even expected Kaiten to be removed. I haven't even seen complaints about Samurai until Kaiten got removed. If healers and DPS were targeted with these changes, why wouldn't tanks be next on the list? The rework would suddenly be a good opportunity for them to "try it out".

So what if the the PLD rework in 6.3 was to give a similar healer gameplay experience to tanks by reducing the complexity immensely? What if they will remove every damage skill but 1 single target, 1 aoe, and 1 ranged attack? There would be no issues with aggro generation because they can just triple the aggro generation on their main skills and have the combos just be an upgraded trait like healers main attack skill.

Lately, SE has been removing DoTs from the game in general. Healers lost a lot of DoTs/AoE DoTs until it became the standard 1 DoT per healer. SMN no longer have DoTs. Goring Blade is a DoT. Circle of Scorn is a DoT. Whose to say one of these skills won't go next?

Then, because blocking cannot compete with mitigation under bleeds and critical hit, PLD just gets a bunch of new mitigation skills to replace their damage skills. Because it's a starter class and because there have been complaints that their rotation drifts (atonement), it could also receive the White Mage treatment of being simple to play by losing their rotation entirely.

To fit in-line with the 2 min burst meta, PLD could just get 1 additional skill to use every 120 seconds - which will be their "super burst phase" (Confeitor-> Blade of Valor combo). So instead of 2-1-1-1-1-1 like healers, tanks is 2-2-2-2-2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1. To reduce any issue of critical hit variance, the Confeitor combo will always critical hit. At best, they say "they heard the complaints of a 2 min burst meta" and changed the 1 additional skill's cooldown from 120 seconds to 60 seconds.

Because people say tank anxiety makes them play really badly, now that tanks don't have a DPS rotation, they can fully focus on mitigating correctly. And this kind of change is actually a possibility, because they removed healer DPS skills. For the vast majority of players who were playing healers before, they can DPS and heal simultaneously. The healer DPS skill changes wasn't targeted for them but for people who struggle to heal and DPS -- aka heal anxiety from having to worry about DPS buttons. So the PLD rework change could very well be made for tank anxiety.

I think this kind of change will be what I'm most afraid of from happening. It's a very lazy way of doing things, but it's something that works for balance, and all their decisions lately have been taking the easy way out for balance. There's a very low chance SE would do this because this is PLD we're talking about and tanks at least have very good precedent on changes, but the Kaiten change blindsided so many people that at this point, anything is possible. I sure hope I'm overthinking things.