Remove/adjust Goring Blade.

[Renathras]

Goring Blade feels clunky and out of place. Potencies and grand ideas aside, it's just a weird thing to have to use. It doesn't even upset me to have another damage button for the sake of damage. I think what bothers me most is that it's a GCD, and I prefer my melee GCDs to have some sort of place in a combo. Goring doesn't have that place, at least in my opinion. Personal preference and all.

This.

I think that's the main problem with Goring now. It doesn't have a point. It's just kind of tacked on so someone, somewhere, can insist PLD didn't have any buttons removed. It's like AF on SMN, despite it having no real place or identity with the rest of the kit. Except at least that has some actual interaction as oGCD filler to increase the Job's APM and add in Ruin 4 management, small though that is. Goring is just "the button you press after FoF/Requi. It's not "exciting" like Double Down is since neither the animation nor the damage pop like that, and since PLD has Swords anyway, which is much more thematically over the top in terms of "omph". Double Down also has resource management connected to it, making it at least something to track. For PLD, Goring is just up every FoF/Requi window and you hit it on CD.

It doesn't seem to have a place or a purpose, and if the damage was baked into Swords combo or something, it wouldn't change PLD's balance at all. If anything, it'd make it SLIGHTLY shielded from bad crit RNG, since missing a crit wouldn't mean you are out all the lost damage as you have 3 other abilities that could get crits to reclaim some of it.

[Mikey_R]

...
Back to Goring Blade, making a mess lets you see things like [Shield Bash][Goring Blade], or wild notions like Goring Blade consuming Sword Oath 1/2/3, Divine Might, ...

You seem to be good at saying things but avoiding the questions/concerns I bring up. The main one being, Why do you have 2 combos that just focus one damage. I even mentioned it AGAIN in my previous post and mentioned how limiting/restrictive it was being in the flow of the rotation using the GCDs that you had laid out. So, simple question, why?

Also, there is no reason you have to buff Fast Blade or Riot Blade to keep a 350 average if you want to reduce Sword Oath stacks. Going down to 1 stack, you can increase Atonement to 440 potency and it will still average out to 350 potency. In fact, in this instance, since increasing Atonement by 60 potency keeps the average potency per GCD the same, you can distribute the potency however you want. Don't like Royal Authority and Atonement having different potencies? Increase both by 30 potency each and have them be 410 potency. Or, increase Fast/Riot by 10 potency and increase RA and Atonement by 20, still 350 potency on average. For completion, doing the same game with 2 SO stacks gives you 30 potency to play with, though it is a bit more restrictive.

Personally, increasing Atonement to 440 potency, with Royal Authority giving 1 SO stack (still stacking to 3), means for the burst, you are looking to compliment PLD's 3 GCDs with 3 out of the 4 potential buffs (1 DM and 3 SO), which you build up over the rotation. (Here, DM 2 SO would be 1330 compared to our current highest of 2 DM and RA, which is 1280, a 50 potency gain, for reference, the current lowest is DM, FB, RB at 930, a loss of 330 potency over double DM, even working on the average of the 2, [930 and 1280 average is 1105] which is 225 below the change, so less than the variance in the current burst and more consistent. Might break the whole just stick the burst in wherever you like though).

So again, why have a system in place that unnecessarily buffs GCDs to be just like another.

As for the maths, yes, I got the initial bit wrong, in my defence, it was 4am and noone should be doing maths at that time. However, I just want to point something out:

Ideal comparison of a text book Pld:

Burst of 40.0% of Total damage using 5 gcd = 5 / 24 = 0.208 = 20.8% of rotation (40.0% / 5 gcd = 8.00% per gcd)
Burst of 40.0% of Total damage using 10 gcd = 10 / 24 = 0.417 = 41.7% of rotation (40.0% / 10 gcd = 4.00% per gcd)
Filler of 20.0% of Total damage using 9 gcd = 9 / 24 = 0.375 = 37.5% of rotation (20.0% / 9 gcd = 2.22% per gcd)

If this is meant to represent old PLD's GCD breakdown, it doesn't, however, this again, highlights what I have been trying to say about Old PLD. Is it really a burst is (using the numbers above) 80% of your GCD is 'burst'? Burst implies high damage in a short time. If 80% of your rotation can be considered 'burst', then it isn't burst.