So does every hate new PLD now?

[eagledorf]

Yes, it's just as boring as the other tanks now, and doesn't even have the 'excitement' of button mashing of GNB.

However, it's inevitable until SE gets rid of this 2-min raid buff alignment design. Because everything from DPS to fight scripts are based on 2 minutes, having just 1 job not on 2 min makes it impossible to balance.

The sooner they abandon this design and jobs can have actual rotations instead of 100 seconds of sleep followed by 20 seconds of face rolling, the better. With the understanding that they can't do that until the next expansion, I accept the change to PLD as necessary.

They need to increase PLD's DPS 3-5% though, it's absolutely insulting that they didn't already do that with patch 6.31 This means PLD goes into the second ultimate of the expansion gimped on DPS. Unforgivable, if you're going to make a mistake, at least make a different one than last time.

[shadowclasper]

No. Seems fine to me so far

[Fryfor]

No. Seems fine to me so far

Do you do savage?

[nia_saeli]

As much as I'd eventually like to see more polished challenging 4-man content than just Criterion dungeons, I'm disposed to agree, at least for the time being.

But the point stands that their aim to make PLD better benefit from buff is not what so changed PLD's gameplay.

The changes necessary to accomplish that goal were far fewer and subtler than what we got. The loss of Goring Blade, Holy Spirit spam (outside of no longer locking Conf combo behind it), etc., was wholly excessive.

We can look at the gameplay changes and rightly say, "This sucks." It would be wrong, though, to blame that on an inevitability to having halfway decent burst.

Now, if you wanted PLD to have overtuned rDPS enough to reach aDPS parity regardless even in 8-mans, then that's another story, but also not one specifically defined by its gameplay (only by the poorness of its major burst phase, regardless of what buttons are hit when).

I'll be honest, I don't know the impact of having "overtuned rDPS" vs "overtuned aDPS". Is there actually going to be issues if PLD were to have overtuned rDPS to be at parity with aDPS?

My understanding was that there was a specific DPS metric that mattered for tanks and PLD was doing substantially less of it. Regardless of which it is, my thought was that "the important DPS metric" could have been balanced for tanks without the 6.3 rework and with subtler changes to the rotation. If the "less important DPS metric" has to be higher or lower than "the important DPS metric", I don't particularly see the issue at the moment.

Regardless, I think we're both agreeing that the rotational changes were excessive.

[Shurrikhan]

I'll be honest, I don't know the impact of having "overtuned rDPS" vs "overtuned aDPS". Is there actually going to be issues if PLD were to have overtuned rDPS to be at parity with aDPS?

It's basically a matter of it overperforming in some comps while being balanced in others.

If it synergizes less with raid buffs, then it has only two options: to be underpowered in raid-buff-heavy comps or be underpowered in low-buff comps. Any broader parity would require it to be also have greater parity in its use of raid buffs.

Personally, I'd have been fine with it slightly overperforming in less optimal comps and slightly underperforming in optimized ones, as PLD has traditionally been a bit of an oddball pick anyways. I'm just pointing out the only point of logic there seems to have been in the direction of the change.

(Its execution on the other hand, isn't really defensible. It has one step forward in Divine Might and FoF affecting everything, and only steps back otherwise.)

Regardless, I think we're both agreeing that the rotational changes were excessive.

Yup. I would have been plenty happy to see Holy Spirit moved from a fixed Req consumer to prep Conf combo to a flexible ranged filler that's more iconic of PLD's unique ranged uptime capacity, and perhaps for FoF to grant 3 stacks of Sword Oath, with Goring Blade being untouched. The Goring change would be just... baffling... at least if not for so many other signs that the devs think we're all braindead.

[Lyth]

The reason why you don't rebalance numbers immediately after a rework is because there's a learning curve associated with making changes. PLD currently has a much bigger positive skew than the other tanks, which indicates that there's a lot more variation in performance of the bottom 50% of players than the top. Ultimately, that's either going to resolve with time, or it'll persist and indicate that there's actually a problem in the design difficulty.

There isn't a hard binary between 'being good with raid buffs' or not. If two non-buff providers have the same damage over time profile, by definition they have both rDPS parity and identical contributions under raid buffs. People just need to stop equating the latter with aDPS, because that's not what it measures.

[Shurrikhan]

The reason why you don't rebalance numbers immediately after a rework is because there's a learning curve associated with making changes.

Right.

There isn't a hard binary between 'being good with raid buffs' or not.

Also right, but no one had made that claim anyways, only that Paladin was by far and away the job that made the worst use of raid buffs. Which it objectively was.

If two non-buff providers have the same damage over time profile, by definition they have both rDPS parity and identical contributions under raid buffs. People just need to stop equating the latter with aDPS, because that's not what it measures.

This, on the other hand, makes little to no sense.

rDPS parity is not the same as "identical contributions under raid buffs." rDPS is simply a metric that moves 100% of the value created by synergies from the exploiters to that of the buffers. If you are comparing exploiters, it is the worst metric you could look at for measuring parity.

When looking at the most a buffer can bring to an average (if increasingly meta) composition, you look at rDPS, because that's the only metric that accounts for their synergetic value. When looking at the most an exploiter can bring to an average (if increasingly meta) composition, you look at aDPS, because that's the only metric that accounts for their synergetic value.

If two tanks have the same rDPS but one has more aDPS, that means the latter is giving that much more rDPS to his team (even if that job doesn't get credit for that excess itself by that measure); their buffers are getting that much more rDPS.

Or, to put even more simply, between two choices with equal rDPS, every buffer is nerfed slightly (deals less rDPS, which is the metric that rewards buffers for team synergy) when taking the job with lesser aDPS (which is the metric that rewards exploiters for team synergy).

In comparisons between jobs that are purely exploiters, aDPS parity across sufficiently large sample sizes is precisely the closest measure we can get for identical contributions under raid buffs. People should equate "aDPS parity" and "identical contribution under raid buffs", because that aDPS is literally a measure of performance under party-wide raid buffs.

(nDPS, on the other hand, will be made useless for any broad comparison simply due to winner-gets-all skew of single-target buffs. One can't see how large the difference is between the job perceived to be the best target and its runner-up, because only categorical first place gets anything.)

[Lyth]

...

Two tank players with identical un(raid)buffed damage as a function of time curves (i.e. dps(t)) will have identical average rDPS. Also, if you were to pair them both with any raid buff of your choice, they would offer the buff provider with the exact same DPS benefit. This is the very definition of DPS parity. Their aDPS totals will only be the same if their raid composition is also identical and raid buffs are used at the exact same times.

[Shurrikhan]

Two tank players with identical un(raid)buffed damage as a function of time curves (i.e. dps(t)) will have identical average rDPS. Also, if you were to pair them both with any raid buff of your choice, they would offer the buff provider with the exact same DPS benefit. This is the very definition of DPS parity. Their aDPS totals will only be the same if their raid composition is also identical and raid buffs are used at the exact same times.

rDPS on a non-buffer is not influenced by the jobs' damage dynamics (function of time curves) beyond the basic multiplicity between its own buffs and whatever potency falls therein and the timing of the fight; it is, for non-buffers, absolutely irrelevant to team synergies... because the metric was made specifically to be irrelevant to team-synergies for non-buffers.

aDPS on a non-buffer, because it accounts for raid buffs, which in turn care about when that damage happens, is influenced by the jobs' damage dynamics, and is therefore pertinent to team synergies.

Only if two jobs have both the same aDPS and rDPS would they have the same damage dynamics as relevant to raid buffs.

If they have the same aDPS, they will produce the same contribution to the party.

Yes, one may thereafter have lower or higher rDPS and therefore produce a little more or a little less than the other when solo or in light parties, but performance when solo or in light parties is not a distinction that matters to any rewarded challenging content in this game.

Their aDPS totals will only be the same if their raid composition is also identical and raid buffs are used at the exact same times.

You have up >100,000 parses from which to compare, where top percentiles increasingly concentrate towards the very same compositions.

Nor would that be relevant unless one comparator were specifically only taken in raidbuff-light comps on the mere basis of perceived less raid buff value and the other only in raidbuff-heavy comps, yet even top-20 speedruns will quickly show that's not the case for any comparison one attempts among tanks.

[elioaiko]

They could just remove Goring Blade at this point. It's the same as GNB and NIN, and it's just there.

But overall, it's not worse, just meh. Divine Veil change was a good choice though.

There's just too much going on without it feeling like it's worth it.

I would say streamlining it would be best but then they'll just take everything away and just have Holy Spirit spam.