So does every hate new PLD now?

[Shurrikhan]

This is such a bizarre post.

I specifically told you that two tank jobs with the same dps(t) curve have the same rDPS by definition, but not necessarily the reverse. And yet your reply is...

Yes, because you've provided prior contexts for that interpretation both here and across the other threads in which you've made the same spiel that only rDPS should matter (that DRK doesn't have any real throughput-contribution advantage, yada yada).

I specifically told you that two tank jobs with the same dps(t) curve have the same rDPS by definition

Not if by "curve" you mean... a curve (the rates of change over time). That's not how rDPS works. It does not care about when that damage is dealt nor, therefore, how it might be affected by raid buffs. It is purely an average. (aDPS is as well, but it is influenced by timing in the sense that actually matters -- how the density/timing of that damage is affected by raid buffs.)

You then proceed to argue that two jobs couldn't possibly be designed the same burst profiles, which is even more bizarre, given that it's at the center of this discussion.

I argued that none currently do. Which is objectively true. You keep using that treating your hypothetical as if it were a given based on the actual state of the game. It isn't.

Meanwhile, I pointed out that the point of the change was to make PLD's burst profile more in line with other tanks. Now, why was that change necessary? Because aDPS parity --not rDPS parity-- is what best compares the contribution that non-buffers provide to their party? Why? Because aDPS accounts for what all a non-buffer brings to its party, while rDPS accounts instead for what all a buffer brings to a party, while ignoring the part of that synergy exploiters bring. Unlike rDPS, aDPS accounts for the timing of damage dealt causes it to be influenced by raid buffs. (Yes, that means DRK contributed a whole lot more throughput over PLD than just what is marked by their differences in rDPS.)

I am a buff provider. I'm the type of person who should care most about this 'hidden rDPS effect', much moreso than the people demanding buffs in compensation. Because when you do less damage under buffs, it directly affects my gameplay. You do realize that you can specifically analyze how much damage under a buff can be attributed to individual players, right?

Yes, I'm the one who pointed out to you that you can literally mouse over the fflogs to see exactly how much damage from each player, and across the whole party, came from which buff when last you said it was impossible to account for them individually and that all aDPS comparisons would therefore be bogus (regardless of the massive samples sizes).

Have you seen how much of that Arcane Circle damage actually comes from an individual tank in a good group? 75-100 dps.

And? You're looking at the weakest duration-ed buff and only at its contribution among non-DPS. Of course the individual numbers are going to be small.

But hey, let's actually make the comparison and see the differences: We'll take the very best PLD (16th place rDPS) and the very best DRK (2nd place rDPS). Fight lengths within 10 seconds of each other. Both have Chain Strategem. The PLD gets 84 dps from Chain Strategem (or, thereby contributes 84 rDPS to the SCH). The DRK gets 181.

The second best PLD parse in the game shares a few more buffs with the second best DRK in the game. From Divination, the PLD got 82 dps, while the DRK got 203. From Radiant Finale, the PLD got 66 dps, while the DRK got 167. From Battle Voice, the PLD got 67 dps, while the DRK got 140. From Wanderer's Minuet, the PLD got 42 while the DRK got 43.

Add those up, and the differences are just as significant as... any difference in rDPS, because it is still absolutely part of what they contribute to a group. When a DRK contributes some 275 more dps (3.6% more total throughput) to its party across the compositions average among 99th+ percentile parses, it doesn't matter to those parties whether it comes from rDPS or aDPS, but the difference in actual contribution may well still matter.

And if it's such a big deal, then just improve PLD's burst profile. That's a much better decision than giving it a flat out rDPS advantage over everyone else, when I've already shown you how these two concepts can co-exist. Don't be greedy.

???

Someone explains the most likely reason why PLD's damage curves were changed. You imply it wouldn't matter anyways on the basis that they only needed rDPS parity. Yet, after --across here and other threads-- having had clarified for you that no, rDPS parity among non-buffers would not be parity in anything but solo content, just explaining what two options that leaves...

If two jobs have different dps(t) curves that cause them to benefit differently from raid buffs, they cannot simultaneously have parity in settings with raid buffs (as noted by average aDPS) and in settings without raid buffs (as noted by rDPS).

Which brings us back to the point long since already established: If you want PLD to have parity in its actual, total contribution in 8-mans (as noted by aDPS) without having changed its damage profile, then it needs to have excessive rDPS.

Personally, I think that'd have been fine, as we don't have any meaningful 4-man content anyways, but perhaps they're future-proofing for later variations of Criterion Dungeons or the like.

There will always be some differences in jobs' ratios between their rDPS and aDPS so long as each job has a different profile/dynamics/curve to its damage, but you can shrink the most egregious examples to future-proof for balance across multiple settings (e.g., both light and full parties).

...is being "greedy"? ???

Perhaps you should actually take the time to read what you're quoting.

Hrmm.

[Lyth]

??????

I think that rDPS parity is the cornerstone of job balance. If jobs don't have similar rDPS values, then they're not balanced. If you want to create a second order model to look at dps(t) distributions and push them to similar burst profiles, that's fine. The data exists but it's not tabulated in a way that makes it easy to compare.

By curve, I'm referring to the distribution of your damage output over time. You can look at actual damage output if you like, or damage per second. In simple terms, if your burst profiles are similar, then the unmeasured benefit you provide to buff providers will be similar. But so too will your rDPS. What you're arguing for doesn't work, because this unmeasured benefit isn't consistent. Let's say every buff provider gains 20 rDPS extra from having you around as opposed to another tank, so I give you an 80 rDPS disadvantage. Well, then groups run a comp without buff providers and then just take the tank with higher rDPS. If you want to be obsessive about that 20 rDPS gain, then you have to just make the burst profiles identical as well. But that doesn't change the need for rDPS parity. That's why the first order model exists.

Also, I'm not sure why you would offer up singular data points on Crit and DH rate buffs. How can you even begin to guess what the benefit is off a single value? If you Crit on every attack for the next 15 seconds, is that because of the buff? What if you would have rolled the exact same string of Crits even without the buff? What if we compare a data point where players get no Crits across the entire group? It's incredibly easy to cherry pick data on this type of buff when there is no compiled data set on it.

Next you're going to try to offer me numbers on Everburn, I can just sense it.

[ataren3]

Yes, overall I'm not a fan of PLD.

Does it feel nice that it conforms to the 2 minute bursts now? Yes. (Do I LIKE 2 minute burst in general? Nope)
Do I like the single target rotation? Not at all.
Do I like the new AoE rotation? Yes.

I don't like how simple and boring PLD has become with the change, mostly because they didn't bother addressing a major issue with PLD with the rework anyway: Atonement spam.
Atonement is a good damage dealer for PLD. Atonement gives you MP back from a holy spirit or confi combo. Atonement is also a button you spam 3 times and in both the old PLD AND the new you still want to drop stacks to conform to the 2 minute burst. I don't like that. It feels bad playing a class with the intention of literally losing damage stacks just so you can deal good damage in a consistent window.

I like that the new rotation allows you to use holy circle a lot more frequently. That ability was almost as niche as cover because you could really only spam it during req stacks for dungeon pulls; now it's quite literally part of your AoE rotation which is nice.

[Lyth]

There's no 'burden of proof' here.

If you want players to be able to make up their own minds about the data set, you need transparency. It's very easy to present information in a way that is manipulative, simply because not everyone has a background in mathematics. If I can see dps contributions under Arcane Circle by job organized by percentile, I can see which jobs synergize best with me. I can also see if there's a significant discrepancy in those values that needs to be addressed. The same is true for all buffs, be it Mug, Embolden, Litany, Battle Voice, or whatever. You don't even need to make the distinction for 'single target' vs. 'raid-wide' buffs, it's useful information around which we can have an honest discussion. You don't have the same transparency with a back-of-the-envelope aDPS estimate because you don't know what smorgasbord of buffs were on offer even as a population average, and we can't tell if we're actually looking at contributions just from two minute buffs or random party wide BRD songs that are also thrown into the mix at random. The data is already all there, it's just not tabulated the way rDPS/aDPS/nDPS is. I don't think the issue is time investment. People just need to express an interest in it.

rDPS isn't a proxy, by the way. It's just the original raw DPS numbers reallocated, with no damage discarded. And it is a relatively robust parameter based off how it's calculated.

[Shurrikhan]

rDPS isn't a proxy, by the way. It's just the original raw DPS numbers reallocated, with no damage discarded. And it is a relatively robust parameter based off how it's calculated.

Yes, reallocated in a way that removes from view the team synergy that non-buffers bring to the table, just as raw DPS alone would leave out of view much of a buffer's value.

rDPS is therefore a robust parameter only for jobs who would have more rDPS than raw DPS. It's a shit metric, though, for comparing the value of any two non-buffers, while raw DPS* (or, yet more usefully, aDPS) would instead be the obvious metric, because it still includes their contribution to team synergy.

If I can see dps contributions under Arcane Circle by job organized by percentile, I can see which jobs synergize best with me.

By all means, I'd love to see all that, but if you really are concerned with/by the complicating contexts of those measures, then your best bet is probably still just going to be simple relative potency maps.

Those, in turn, won't be percentile-dependent unless different percentiles of a given job consistently progress through different rotations as rotation-affecting player error decreases. You simply look at what the job would optimally press when, in a similar fight, and calculate the relative potency. Import the optimal rotation for the fight, insert the modifier over the given actions and see what relative potency results from it. Easy. Consistent.

(That said, not too shockingly, those early bits of on-paper theorycrafting also happened to show the very same imbalances we have already seen via aDPS, such as that 6.28 DRK would have about double the contributed synergy that 6.28 PLD would bring, because its relative potency is that much more concentrated.)

[Vallerie]

RE: the thread title

No, not everyone hates it. In the couple of weeks since the patch dropped, I've (willingly) played PLD probably more than I did since Heavensward combined. While I do come at this from the perspective of someone who before the patch enjoyed playing every tank but PLD to an extent, I do think some of the changes and streamlining were good ideas.

- Holy Spirit after Royal Authority gives some much desired flexibility. While with Requiescat only having Blade combo in it now means your sustained ranged phase is shorter now, the Divine Might uses more than compensate for it in my opinion with ability to disconnect for a GCD at nearly any point with no loss to damage
- Overall potency balancing means that, even if the rotation is not a perfect loop, you no longer need to drop Atonements to compensate for it. While you still can spreadsheet optimise, the gain of doing so is so minimal it doesn't really matter in vast majority of contexts, just fill the tail end of FoF with w/e high priority attacks you have available to you in the moment
- Divine Veil is much more useable now that you don't need a healer to trigger it or use it during the burst
- Having the extra DCD in Bulwark is nice, especially coming from DRK where Dark Mind only works on some things
- I just find it more enjoyable, but that's obviously a personal thing

Mind you, it's not perfect. Goring Blade and Atonement do feel somewhat disjointed, and the lack of attention given to Cover, whether that means improving or axing it, is somewhat disappointing. It wouldn't surprise me if, like with Monk changes, this is just a bandaid fix with more comprehensive rework coming in 7.0, but even if it's not, it still went from tank I leveled purely out of sense of obligation, to probably my second favourite tank.

[fulminating]

I really have tried to like the new paladin, but it just doesn’t feel nearly as good as it did. It’s quite hard to tell if it’s going well, and it doesn’t flow nearly as nicely. The rework annihilating lower levels and amounting to a 2% dps loss at 90 is also rather frustrating.
That a few of the issues I had were unaddressed - shield bash breaking combo, certain buttons not transforming (rage of halone could turn into atonement when you have stacks, req could become confettieor. On a similar note req and fof should probably be merged now, goring blade is orphaned) - further makes it feel off.

[Inosaska]

I'm returning back to the game and honestly don't have any issues with Paladin.

[Curisu]

After playing it a while I like it a bit more then the old one.
The only thing that is annoying is Boring Blade.

It could just be removed and no one cares. Or make it apply FoF to free up a hotbar slot.

[Voidedge_Ragna]

Played War from 2.0 till 5.0 which killed it (at least in my opinion), played pld from 5.0 to 6.3 and now quit pld to play drk.

The new rotation doesn't feel nice, they removed the tiny speck of difficulty pld had and replaced it with "if its shiny press it"
Raising the floor and lowering the celling, drg and ast ... your next on the list have a plan B.

On a side note, it was horrible timing as we were still reclearing 8s for loot and then they just throw the entire Job over.
And dont get me started on why pld needs a split on Sheltron blockrate to add Bulwark.

Muscle Memory is also gonna screw you if you did paladin for years and use requiescat.
But remember boys, 2 min meta is more important then how a job feels.