PLD changes

[fulminating]

Why is it the worst parts of gunbreaker and warrior stapled together?

[Mikey_R]

So, since the servers are up, a couple of things,

Requiescat is to buff the Confiteor combo.
If you were to do the full 3 Atonements and Holy Spirit off of Royal Authority, the filler combos will drift from where you started by 2 GCDs, which does matter since you will be using Holy Spirit/Atonement/Royal Authority in the buff phase. How this will affect things I do not know yet, but it is worth mentioning.

[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.

[Eorzean_username]

Rotation changes

• Bold of them to keep FOF as an activated action instead of a Trait.
• Goring Blade change is hilarious in a sad way. I think the SE office had a contest for "least creative possible way to modify Goring Blade", and this won. Literally just, "I give up"-tier design decision.
• Generic Tank combo system now. Royal Authority stands in for Storm's Path/Solid Barrel/Souleater; Atonement stands in for Storm's Eye/off-burst Gnashing Fang; Holy Spirit stands in for Fell Cleave/Burst Strike/Bloodspiller as the "sometimes I press something else" Gauge dump (but without a gauge, in an exciting twist).
• Generic burst system now. FOF stands in for No Mercy; Goring Blade stands in for Sonic Break; Req stands in for Inner Release/Delirium; Confiteor+Blades stands in for other "spamfests" like Inner Chaos+FC+Primal Rend/Bloodspillers/burst Gnashing Fang.

Nothing surprising, SE basically only knows how to rearrange the same basic puzzle pieces into slightly different shapes, at this point.

Will it play "bad"? Nah. People enjoy WAR in its current state, people will enjoy PLD. It'll be just another chill Job where you press things as they light up, and try not to do anything ridiculously-foolish with your keypresses.

If anything, it fits into the current game design better now. Any complaints should probably be directed at that overall design, rather than Paladin specifically just for trying to fit in. But also realistically, this design is widely-successful, so I don't expect it to change. Most players simply do not care.

Gap-closers dealing damage

This is still annoying as hell, and still looks ridiculous visually, as the player model keeps furiously head-butting itself into the opponent in the middle of a burst-cycle, and I still envy Monks for being freed from this tiresome and spammy ritual.

Circle of Scorn

Still incredibly basic and boring, but I guess SE needs to save something to sell us in 7.0 as our level 94 "upgrade".

Looking forward to Circle of Chastity in 2024.

Proc'ing Holy Circle during AOE

This is actually a good change that helps to break up the monotony of Paladin AOE. While minor overall, this is a good idea from a "playfeel" perspective.

Shield Bash

I think the hate on Shield Bash is excessive.

It does have niche uses in places like Eureka and Deep Dungeon as a last-ditch control tool.

On the other hand, if I follow my own argument of, "Buttons shouldn't exist if you barely ever press them"... then hm. I guess Shield Bash is pretty much antiquated in nearly all other content.

...I don't know. Because I personally get good use out of Shield Bash in certain content, I don't mind it. But I would also understand, and not really care, if Shield Bash got assassinated.

To be honest, I feel like Shield Swipe was the better "Did you know that I have a shield?!" action — having a reactive proc on Paladin was fun. The old Shield Swipe was a bit too RNG, but something similar — like a 40% proc when spending Atonement — would inject some flavor back into Paladin (and also actually do something with that increasingly-decorative Shield in the off-hand slot).

[Eorzean_username]

• Divine Veil
• Sheltron

Cool. Thank you, SE. These are sensible changes that improve Paladin's defensive functionality.

Bulwark

Nononono! You didn't understand, here...

Blocking is a problem, because Blocking is fussy and selective about when it works, and what types of attacks that it works to reduce.

Bulwark needs to have the Camouflage treatment of an additional flat, unconditional damage reduction. Otherwise, this is going to be a gimmick, rather than an actual reliable additional defensive tool.

Oath Gauge

Still a sloppy mess. Still makes defensive mitigation contingent on melee uptime, which is warped, and not an issue that other Tanks deal with. Still accomplishes nothing that simply putting Sheltron on 2 charges wouldn't also accomplish.

Oath Gauge remains a pointless tacked-on gimmick. I mean, yes, most Gauges are pointless tacked-on gimmicks, but Oath Gauge is especially-egregious.

Cover

Still a hollow shell of its former functionality. Still overpriced. Still excessive CD for the underwhelming and mediocre effect. Still doesn't need a Gauge cost.

Still yet another action that's bloating out the Paladin action-set not because it really serves any good purpose, but simply because SE feels like "Paladin has to have this!", and refuses to think of a way to make it actually belong in a regular, functional usage system.

In a game with limited action slots, each action should feel meaningful, and see regular and satisfying usage. There's no point giving Paladins Cover if it's a trap button outside of the most exotic niche gimmick situations; if it's something that's meant to be iconic, then its usage should be supported and encouraged. Give it whatever shape or form it needs to allow that, rather than letting it wallow off in a dusty corner of most hotbars.

Clemency

Still junk, especially with the excessive MP cost. But Clemency could be free and it would still be junk, because it eats a GCD to do something that no one needs a Tank to do, and no one expects a Tank to do.

Trading out damage for healing in XIV is barely ever an effective decision, and most cases argued in favor of Clemency are selective-memory bias from players that either don't understand the game fully, or want to believe that they made more of a difference than they actually did.

Clemency will continue to exist mostly as a trap for new players who need excessive comfort-zones when tanking trivial content, or who enjoy dragging/carrying underperforming and unprepared players through simple content where sandbagging your own damage output doesn't preclude clearing.

"But one time in prog with my static I saved a healer" is not justification for an action that's almost always a useless trap. You could have done that with Nascent Flash too, except it wouldn't have sandbagged your own output and derailed your rotation.

Clemency continues to be "flavor bloat" in an action set that's swollen with a lot of this kind of, "But ALL fantasy Paladins have to have this!" fluff junk.

Passage of Arms

I think that aggressively-defending the cone-channel function of Passage is a perplexing opinion, and a pointless hill to die on, as well.

The very fact that you have to put on thick black-rimmed hipster glasses and tip your chin upwards in order to brag about how clever you are for using Passage correctly, is exactly why Passage is poorly-fit to the current game. It does not belong in XIV in this state.

The fact that the biggest defense of Passage is "but you can just flash it really quick, so you never have to see it, nor actually use it as intended!" just underlines how poorly-designed the action actually is.

The fact that Passage is, by-and-large, only effective in situations where mechanics happen to work out in your favor such that you can actually rely on coordinated players to stand close enough together for the Paladin to be able to spin around and "flash" an ambiguous conal animation out their backside for 0.2 microseconds, and then rely on lingering snapshotting to hopefully mitigate something (maybe)... is not the endorsement that some players think it is.

Complaining that changing Passage would be "homogenisation" is like complaining that someone who has a leg amputated is "homogenising" themselves by being fitted for a functional prosthetic. Yeah maybe, but who cares? It's an obvious practical improvement. Sometimes, it's actually okay to want to be like everyone else.

"But I can keep hopping around on one leg because I practised!" That's cool? Impressive even? But it's not grounds to ban prosthetic fittings from everyone else that wants them and benefits from them.

Currently, for the vast majority of users, Passage serves only one practical purpose: putting up unnecessary additional "bloat mitigation" during 10-second-long untargetable boss-ult wind-ups, so that you can look cool, and pretend that you're actually accomplishing anything meaningful or noticeable.

And that's nice and everything, but I think that hotbars should be filled with actions that are more than just fancy real-time GPosing, and have an actual practical and functional purpose in most content.

Dark Missionary just works. Heart of Light just works. Passage of Arms should fit the same pattern, and just work.

If SE is going to such lengths to standardise problematic and niche outliers, they need to do it consistently, rather than this bizarre whack-a-mole approach.

[Burmecia]

Me and the dummy right now.

[Enkidoh]

Re: Shield Bash - it's main benefit (perhaps it's only real purpose), is it serves as a second Stun for when Low Blow is still cooling down, but it's slower execution means Low Blow is still the prefered Stun for non-boss/high end content. It's just one of those niche abilities not really meant for end game content. Unfortunately, it's also long been rather underwhelming - back in the old days when TP was still a thing it consumed a huge amount of TP effectively mucking up any rotation, and even now is slow and rather clunky to execute.

But it's probably safe as far as any risk of being removed in the future is concerned, as it's now appeared in two seperate opening/promotional FMVs for the game (the roe PLD uses it against a Garlean soldier in the 1.0/ARR 'End of an Era/New Beginning' trailer, and the EW opening movie Derplander as PLD uses it against a FFXI-style 'Dark Dragon' Blasphemy, so it's position in GLA/PLD's toolkit is probably secure as SE probably consider it an 'iconic' PLD ability like Cover, despite being rather useless gameplay wise. I just wish they maybe buffed it up a bit (maybe redo it's animation so it didn't take quite so long to use).

[Kemeko]

Or have Shield Bash combo straight into Goring Blade/Royal Authority/Atonement as a (1-3) combo. It would fix the rotation stability and you could do something like Shield Bash->Royal Authority->Holy Spirit with the new buff making it more flexible with mobility.

[Lyth]

You could always upgrade it to 'Shield Rush' and add a fixed-distance forward dash to it.

[Mikey_R]

Here's an interesting thing, magic does not break your combos now, including Clemency. This means Holy Spirit after Royal Authority has some flexibility on when to use it, though the Divine Might buff does not stack. Atonement does still break your combos though, so no flexibility there.