PLD changes

[Rongway]

The truly baffling thing is that they managed to make it _stricter_ than it was previously. Yeah, dropping atonements to realign periodically always kinda felt a bit jank, but now we are back to dropping atonements or hardcasting. And we can't even just go into the FoF burst, we have to do a 3 GCD lead up (or a 5 GCD lead up if you want to do double Divine Might Holy Spirit).

It looks like it's not that strict though. You can basically fill any of the extra FoF GCDs with anything--including Fast Blade or Riot Blade--as long as you FoF promptly every 60s and you don't break your 1-2-3 such that it costs you a Divine Might. They made it really hard to do crap damage. And even when you can cram two Mighty Holy Spirits and a Royal Authority into a single FoF, the funny "just do a bunch of weak Holy Spirits" rotation still sometimes pulls ahead.

[nia_saeli]

It looks like it's not that strict though. You can basically fill any of the extra FoF GCDs with anything--including Fast Blade or Riot Blade--as long as you FoF promptly every 60s and you don't break your 1-2-3 such that it costs you a Divine Might. They made it really hard to do crap damage. And even when you can cram two Mighty Holy Spirits and a Royal Authority into a single FoF, the funny "just do a bunch of weak Holy Spirits" rotation still sometimes pulls ahead.

Wait, really? How does that work? Is that related to crit-DH variance? Or am I missing something?

I was assuming that hardcast holy spirits were just the "Oh well, better than nothing" kinda damage floor for it. I wasn't aware that it could pull ahead. Kinda cool.

[Rongway]

Wait, really? How does that work? Is that related to crit-DH variance? Or am I missing something?

I was assuming that hardcast holy spirits were just the "Oh well, better than nothing" kinda damage floor for it. I wasn't aware that it could pull ahead. Kinda cool.

Without doing a thorough battery of simulations, here are my thoughts.

Royal Authority and Atonement1, Atonement2, and Atonement3 are the same potency, so you have lots of flexibility in which of the four go in the extra FoF slots. You might not think of it that way, but there is a difference between

Royal Authority + Mighty Holy Spirit + Atonement1
Mighty Holy Spirit + Atonement1 + Atonement2
Mighty Holy Spirit + Atonement2 + Atonement3

There's basically always some way to get a Mighty Holy Spirit and an Atonement or Royal Authority in two of the FoF filler slots, leaving only one that could be the worst case Fast Blade. And when you do end up with that Mighty Holy Spirit + Atonement + Fast Blade worst case, you naturally set yourself up for the Mighty Holy Spirit + Royal Authority + Mighty Holy Spirit best case two FoFs later.

Trying hard to force (Mighty Holy Spirit + Royal Authority + Mighty Holy Spirit) or (Mighty Holy Spirit + Atonement + Atonement) might sometimes require you to drop so much potency elsewhere that you might as well have just gone with the Fast Blade worst case. And as for weak Holy Spirit, on its own it has the same potency per GCD as a complete melee combo with a Mighty Holy Spirit, so that's why it does well as an out-of-burst filler when you can afford it; it's just so expensive you can't always. If you had infinite MP, you could FoF a Mighty Holy Spirit + Royal Authority + Mighty Holy Spirit every minute by using five weak Holy Spirits and this is probably why they made it too expensive to do so every minute.

Sorry, I'm rambling and repeating myself at this point. I may have spent way too long staring at that spreadsheet (which I still could have messed up). It'll be interesting to see what the Balance folks come up with.

[CKNovel]

PLD feels like a magic Gunbreaker.
My feedback was to not make it a third Warrior.

Divine veil changed, Divine might brings a bit more healing to PLD kit outside burst, the new defensive cooldown is very good.
I still have some problems with cooldowns (PoA, cover...) and gauge generation.

But basically, PLD traded its dot for divine might, which I don't think is bad.
Overall, PLD rotation is fun, the potency are simply adapted for burst rotation while keeping the nature of the job.

[Impishwerth]

I feel like I do less damage now, everything feels weak.

[ClusterDreams]

Even with some of the QoL changes to the defensive kit, the biggest issue is that the class feels bad to play now. It feels legitimately awful to play, especially in encounters with inconsistent uptime.

The 60s rotation feels overly restrictive and punishing because missing a single GCD has the potential to ruin your ability to sync with raid buffs. The 120s rotation feels a lot more flexible in this regard. However, it feels extremely clunky with the need to stop and hard cast in the middle of every filler combo.

Idk what SE is doing. This doesn't even address the main concerns that they voiced with the job. I feel like as more people get their hands on the job, the people who played it before are going to move on to other jobs and not many new people will play this. Because why would you pick this over Gunbreaker?

I'm probably going to take an extended hiatus after this tier until sometime during the next expansion because I don't think I've ever been this frustrated with the current state of the game and its direction.

[Gserpent]

Even with some of the QoL changes to the defensive kit, the biggest issue is that the class feels bad to play now. It feels legitimately awful to play, especially in encounters with inconsistent uptime.

The 60s rotation feels overly restrictive and punishing because missing a single GCD had the potential to ruin your ability to sync with raid buffs. The 120s rotation feels a lot more flexible in this regard. However, it feels extremely clunky with the need to stop and hard cast in the middle of every filler combo.

Idk what SE is doing. This doesn't even address the main concerns that they voiced with the job. I feel like as more people get their hands on the job, the people who played it before are going to move on to other jobs and not many new people will play this. Because why would you pick this over Gunbreaker?

I'm probably going to take an extended hiatus after this tier until sometime during the next expansion because I don't think I've ever been this frustrated with the current state of the game and its direction.

What they're doing is very transparently not actually playing some of the classes. Like, explain to me how Sheltron not affecting the shiny new tankbuster bleed concept makes it through a raid tier where "our team got too good at the fight teehee" unless that team is just literally not playing that class? How does a team go "oh wow, not being able to block bleeds is an issue, we'll fix that" and then AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME add in a new button that recreates that exact same problem that they just addressed? Laziness, incompetence, stupidity - I don't know which it is anymore, take your pick.

I've said it before, but whoever has been overseeing class design/systems changes for Endwalker needs to step down. Or, alternatively, if there is no one currently in such a position (and, no, I don't believe Yoshida can be that person because even if he wants to oversee everything, XIV is too damn big of a project for a single person to maintain proper oversight on, especially not when that person is also a board member of the corporation and therefore probably has a lot of responsibilities that aren't just management of the game project), then they need to create and fill that position.

Because Endwalker is the worst I have ever seen their battle system design. It's fucking garbage. It took the worst parts of Shadowbringers changes (mind you, ShB also made positive changes) and doubled down on them, without really giving many positives in return. Why did Blood Weapon get changed to a charge-based system in recognizance of how latency fucks with that skill, but it took them a goddamn year to realize the same issues applied to Hypercharge? I think it's a case of, like so many things, a project is started and the internal structure remains the same throughout because "well it's always worked out fine," but the project has grown too large and too complex for the previous internal structure to handle it.

But we know nothing will change. Paladin being complete dogwater now and an example of some of the laziest, most incompetent design work I've seen in the game's history doesn't matter to the Limsa AFKers who buy single-use $18 outfits with hats that don't work for two of the game's race options. They're making money hand over fist off those folks so that the rest of Square-Enix can build bonfires out of it, so why would they change anything?

[ClusterDreams]

What they're doing is very transparently not actually playing some of the classes. Like, explain to me how Sheltron not affecting the shiny new tankbuster bleed concept makes it through a raid tier where "our team got too good at the fight teehee" unless that team is just literally not playing that class? How does a team go "oh wow, not being able to block bleeds is an issue, we'll fix that" and then AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME add in a new button that recreates that exact same problem that they just addressed? Laziness, incompetence, stupidity - I don't know which it is anymore, take your pick.

I've said it before, but whoever has been overseeing class design/systems changes for Endwalker needs to step down. Or, alternatively, if there is no one currently in such a position (and, no, I don't believe Yoshida can be that person because even if he wants to oversee everything, XIV is too damn big of a project for a single person to maintain proper oversight on, especially not when that person is also a board member of the corporation and therefore probably has a lot of responsibilities that aren't just management of the game project), then they need to create and fill that position.

Because Endwalker is the worst I have ever seen their battle system design. It's fucking garbage. It took the worst parts of Shadowbringers changes (mind you, ShB also made positive changes) and doubled down on them, without really giving many positives in return. Why did Blood Weapon get changed to a charge-based system in recognizance of how latency fucks with that skill, but it took them a goddamn year to realize the same issues applied to Hypercharge? I think it's a case of, like so many things, a project is started and the internal structure remains the same throughout because "well it's always worked out fine," but the project has grown too large and too complex for the previous internal structure to handle it.

But we know nothing will change. Paladin being complete dogwater now and an example of some of the laziest, most incompetent design work I've seen in the game's history doesn't matter to the Limsa AFKers who buy single-use $18 outfits with hats that don't work for two of the game's race options. They're making money hand over fist off those folks so that the rest of Square-Enix can build bonfires out of it, so why would they change anything?

Agreed with all of this. There's really no other explaining away the issues with this game's battle system other than some classes simply are not played by the design team. On the whole, the current state of FFXIV feels like we're in a worse version of Shadowbringers.

[ForsakenRoe]

Agreed with all of this. There's really no other explaining away the issues with this game's battle system other than some classes simply are not played by the design team. On the whole, the current state of FFXIV feels like we're in a worse version of Endwalker.

Can we get 'Stormblood Classic' servers, take me back to the days of Aero3 and Royal Road

[Sottiri]

Can we get 'Stormblood Classic' servers, take me back to the days of Aero3 and Royal Road

I'd hop onto this in an instant, I'd love to play with tank stances/aero 3/miasma 2/tornado kick/foe's requiem/refresh again