PLD changes

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

...but then you have abilities that are different, that require things like positioning and understanding nuance and the underlying mechanics - like Wings having a cone, being based on your facing, and with a mechanic nuance in flashing it - and people complain about it and demand it be changed.

There's a difference between being actually different and being clunky/annoying for the sake of being different. For example, if Overpower required you to hit enemies with the very tip of the cone in order to do any damage at all, it would surely be a unique skill, but a very vast majority would be celebrating from the rooftops when they nerfed it into a circle 'get hit anywhere inside of it to do damage' ability. it's why you saw so many angry at Overpower's circleification compared to Veil getting streamlined. Overpower was intuitive to use on its own and very not-jank, thus its change was uneeded. Veil & Passage both had/have jank to them, thus why you see plenty of attitudes towards Veil's change as positive comparatively to Overpower's change.

People enjoy difference, so long as said difference isn't rooted in the ability being clunky or jank. Passage is a prime example of this. It's different, but its difference is rooted in it being extremely annoying to use, thus plenty of people would rather see it homogenized to being temperance 2.0 than having it exist in its current form. Similarly with Divine Veil, if the ability could be manually procc'd by the PLD without saccing a GCD to clemency at maybe like half shield strength, or if it could be procced by OGCD heals instead of purely GCD ones from healers, I doubt there'd have been many arguments towards wanting it simplified.

Or even better example, Living Dead. The skill was absolutely unique, but its uniqueness was rooted in it being effective garbage to control & use compared to the other tank options without a white mage cheat button, and the infinitely vast majority would rather have seen it be turned into hallowed 2.0 than kept as it was. Luckily Square managed to make it infinitely more usable while keeping a flair of its uniqueness.

For example, if Passage didn't require a channel and was deployed on the ground like salted Earth, and also had the ability to warp it around by pressing the button again during its duration so it could be more useful on movement heavy damage like DSR gigaflare, Passage would be infinitely more usable, less clunky and still retain its uniqueness among the tank CDs due to it requiring actual thought than the traditional 'fire and forget' 90% of tank CDs are. When some people argue about these skill's jankiness, they're likely not hoping the skill just gets homogenized, they're likely hoping Square will do something to the skill to keep it unique while making it not ridiculously stupid to use compared to other abilities.

Also besides the point, the people arguing for simplification of skills and the people arguing about jobs being homogenized after the fact likely aren't the same people. People can have differing opinions and be after different things.

[Renathras]

I'm a bit confused...how these aren't major changes?

PLD's overall sustained damage has been reduced (all the potency reductions) with its burst being where the damage is, and fits in the 2 min burst window. That's exactly what they said they would do. Likewise, the DoTs have been removed and its various utility and defensive abilities have been changed to be simplified. The rotation has been completely changed as well.

Where before you did (once combat was going) Royal, 2x Atonement, FoF into Goring (DoT), Royal, 3x Atonement, Goring, Requiescat, caster phase, Swords, repeat...

...now your filler is entirely Royal/Atonement/Holy Spirit (once per Royal), you use FoF into Goring (no DoT, just a big hit ability) into Requiescat and the caster phase/swords. I'm also not CERTAIN, but it looks like your spells aren't instant cast in Requiescat anymore.

Divine Veil is changed, Shelltron doesn't use Block, Bulwark is added as another defensive.

I dunno, seems like some pretty major changes. Not sure if for the better or for the worse, though it seems made to shoehorn PLD into the 2 min window until at least 7.0 so it won't be as far behind anymore...

[Kemeko]

If Divine Might was "Increase potency by 100% and no cast time" with the old rotation, Requiescat would have been a proper burst with little change. (Req) Holy Spirit = (FoF) 1.25 x Atonement, so Req Holy spirit and FoF Atonement power match. Divine Might = 2 x Holy Spirit (either Req or no Req) with multiple values. Since, Fight or Flight is 10 gcd, Requiescat is 5 gcd, so Requiescat should hit twice as hard as Fight or Flight. Build up Divine Might stacks, so you spend both Divine Might and Requiescat at the same time for big burst.

[ForsakenRoe]

Jeez I was hoping it wouldn't be 'Req, 3 Holy Spirits and a not-Primal Rend' but there it is, Req, 4 HS and a Confiteor-rend (no longer tied to a Req stack, for the players who couldn't count to 4), Goring Blade becomes Sonic Break, wait am I reading this right, that Req windows will be just 1 HS, and the other 3 stacks are used on Blades? I'm too tired for this but my initial read is 'pretty much what I expected of SE at this point'

edit: and why the hell does Blade of T/F/V have a non-Req potency listed? We can use it outside of Req now? It's barely stronger than RA combo, but doesn't provide Divine Might and it costs MP. Could we use it for keeping uptime while away from the boss? Oh right, they made all the bosses 100% uptime, so why the heck is this change here? Is it a noob-trap? Be pretty funny if it was

[Gserpent]

Jeez I was hoping it wouldn't be 'Req, 3 Holy Spirits and a not-Primal Rend' but there it is, Req, 4 HS and a Confiteor-rend (no longer tied to a Req stack, for the players who couldn't count to 4), Goring Blade becomes Sonic Break, wait am I reading this right, that Req windows will be just 1 HS, and the other 3 stacks are used on Blades? I'm too tired for this but my initial read is 'pretty much what I expected of SE at this point'

I'm not sure where blades figures into this, but you definitely need to use it during Req since their potency is garbage outside of it. Exclusivity of Divine Might and Req makes it clear that you will *not* be doing a filler combo until *after* you finish Req. So it will presumably be FoF and Req, while weaving Goring Blade, Spirits, and Circle.

Neither Req nor Confetti say that one or the other ends Req, so I'm assuming then that Confetti doesn't end Req, but only consumes a charge. Req specifies that Confetti "combo actions" will be boosted by the effect, so it's fair to assume the three Blades spells will each take a stack.

This means that Req will be used *exclusively* for Confetti combo at level 90, and the only reason snowflake and circle are mentioned is for not-90 content. It's literally just Inner Release with more oGCDs to weave. Pretty much what we expected.

Why is Atonement so weak? It's only 30 more potency than an unbuffed, no Divine Might Holy Spirit. It looks like it's going to even be barely a PPS gain to use it.

Atonement is now effectively a complete replacement for our old Goring combo. It's 380+380+380 (1140) instead of 200+280+380 (860). But the problem is that the combo gives you a Divine Might charge, which adds an extra 450 to the end at the cost of it being a 4th GCD...

I dunno. Atonement definitely feels like it needs a potency bump. Otherwise, any time you could fit four GCDs, you'd just do the Authority combo even if you have Sword Oath stacks on hand... Not to mention, Divine Might is also giving us the 400 potency cure every 4th GCD, which is presumably meant to finally give proper compensation to PLD for lacking a cure on their filler combo.

[VictorSpoils]

Cover is getting the Undraw treatment.

[VentVanitas]

Why is Atonement so weak? It's only 30 more potency than an unbuffed, no Divine Might Holy Spirit. It looks like it's going to even be barely a PPS gain to use it.

[Darkstride]

Jeez I was hoping it wouldn't be 'Req, 3 Holy Spirits and a not-Primal Rend' but there it is, Req, 4 HS and a Confiteor-rend (no longer tied to a Req stack, for the players who couldn't count to 4), Goring Blade becomes Sonic Break, wait am I reading this right, that Req windows will be just 1 HS, and the other 3 stacks are used on Blades? I'm too tired for this but my initial read is 'pretty much what I expected of SE at this point'

edit: and why the hell does Blade of T/F/V have a non-Req potency listed? We can use it outside of Req now?

Unless I'm reading it wrong, it seems more like the 4 stacks of Requiescat are intended to be used to buff the entire Confiteor > Blade combo. Your normal combo instead grants a buff to Holy Spirit.

[ForsakenRoe]

I understand the Confiteor/Req/Blades thing now I think, the non-Req potency for the Blades is for if you're mid combo and run out of Req stacks, cos you did HS-HS-Conf-Blade(run out here)-Blade-Blade. Which means I guess yes it's a potential noobtrap of sorts. Ridiculous. I cant even picture what the rotation's gonna feel like with Atonement still existing in the same form, Fast, Riot, RA, Atone, Atone, Atone, HS, repeat for 50s till next FOF is gonna be so weird. Being able to move the HS about in between the Atones is... nice I guess, but the question is if it/Atone still break the 123

And why do we STILL have bloody Shield Bash? PLD was already kinda suffering for hotbar space and with Bulwark being added back I'd assumed we'd be removing useless crap like Shield Bash. But no, still there. Weird priorities

Unless I'm reading it wrong, it seems more like the 4 stacks of Requiescat are intended to be used to buff the entire Confiteor > Blade combo. Your normal combo instead grants a buff to Holy Spirit.

Yeh, we do 4 HS in Req. At 80 we swap one out for Confiteor, and at 90 we swap the other 3 out for the Blades. I think. Which is definitely different from pressing IR, then Primal Rend, then 3 Fell Cleaves

I dunno. Atonement definitely feels like it needs a potency bump. Otherwise, any time you could fit four GCDs, you'd just do the Authority combo even if you have Sword Oath stacks on hand... Not to mention, Divine Might is also giving us the 400 potency cure every 4th GCD, which is presumably meant to finally give proper compensation to PLD for lacking a cure on their filler combo.

Holy Spirit costs MP right? I assume the limiter on us being able to just ignore Atonement like that is that we'd run dry on MP, Atonement is our main source of regenerating it

[Rithy255]

My main disappointment is how PLD's still gonna feel really bad until like Shadow bringers, the Job needs more of its abilities earlier, or weaker versions don't even get a gap closer mind you until 74? Its likely going to feel really bland in HW content (more then it was), you're just going to be pressing 1, 2, 3 until like stormblood where you get to press 1, 2, 3, 4 or pressing that 4 button a lot, Goring blade changes weren't great but make sense, POA still kinda annoying. Intervention Should be removed, it's pointless now just make it so the recast timer of holy shelltron is shorter so you can fit two into double tank busters, Shield bash and cover remain still here despite being useless, Also the job is going to be way too Crit depedent in it's burst it's giving out like a bunch of near 1000 potencies (with FOF effecting both), so I can imagine a lot of PLD's are going to depend on crit chance to do good damage.

I'm happy that holy spirit now can likely sustain you better outside burst windows, you should have more choice and timing for when you want that small healing effect unless you're in burst, Divine veil is amazing thank you, Bulwark is basically a rampart that's a bit weird with DOTS eitherway it's gonna be pretty good and make PLD pretty stronger defensively, I'm also happy that PLD is generally likely going to be a stronger/better class in general. They didn't remove Clemency either so all is good.

I guess I'm really neutral on the changes as a result, I feel like they're going to need to still change a few things about PLD, but this current structure works, I'm just not a fan of how it will feel really boring to play in early content, goring blade changes weren't good either imo (the ability doesn't even look strong or something with 700 potency...)