PLD changes

[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?