Why is everyone anxious about a PLD Rework?

[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.