So does every hate new PLD now?

[Shurrikhan]

Which part of Paladin is using ice spells? Its abilities are all light/holy themed.

I think he's referring to Holy Spirit's looking more like it uses ice crystals than holy... whatever makes things look especially holy?

[ForsakenRoe]

I think he's referring to Holy Spirit's looking more like it uses ice crystals than holy... whatever makes things look especially holy?

In lots of other media, holy stuff looks more 'golden light', whereas here, it's a whitish-pale blue color, which lends more to the idea of it representing 'sterile'. Lots of stuff portrays 'the Light' with a capital L as being a benevolent, caring and nurturing force, often as the center of religions (WOW a good example). Here, 'Light' isn't caring, or benevolent, it's cold, does not discriminate, and does not 'feel'. It's just another 'destructive force' like a wildfire or tsunami. And it is scary when it's at it's full strength.

Imagine a practitioner of magic that says 'I have mastered the element of fire! I can sear the flesh from your bones!', and then another that says 'I have mastered the aspect of passivity, of stasis. I can force your body's natural processes to grind to a standstill, your heart to stop beating, your lungs to stop drawing breath, all as you are painfully aware of your mortality in those final moments', which sounds stronger? They're both pretty powerful in their own way, but something about the second one would scare me more I think. I understand fire, I'd associate the pain with 'this is what will kill me', but 'my body stops working how it should'? That's bloody terrifying. And PLD can throw that 'element' at their foes every 7-ish GCDs now. Guess it's a matter of perspective.

If anyone says 'Holy Spirit needs better animation' though, yeh agreed, snowflake looking animation looks kinda meh

[Gserpent]

Most of PLD's animations are pretty weak. Everyone makes fun of the dumb princess spin, but Rage of Halone doesn't look *that* much better. Atonement looks like crap compared to the Fang buttons or Fell Cleave, Holy Spirit looks like absolute ass compared to Holy Circle, etc.

[Rithy255]

Most of PLD's animations are pretty weak. Everyone makes fun of the dumb princess spin, but Rage of Halone doesn't look *that* much better. Atonement looks like crap compared to the Fang buttons or Fell Cleave, Holy Spirit looks like absolute ass compared to Holy Circle, etc.

I don't think atonement is meant to look as important as fell cleave, your magic blades are meant to be basically warriors fell cleaves, which the blades combo looks really and feels really powerful to me, I generally like atonements animation, just think it's over used though which in general I'd like to see less atonements in plds rotation.

Holy spirit looks meh, I'd like to see a animation change for that, goring blade looks underwhelming for a one time burst button, royal authority looks bad, I really dislike it's animation, most people would rather have rage of Halone even though it's not like the best animation, I really hope they change it's animation out of any ability but I doubt that

PLD also has some of the best animations with the Blades combo and Holy Shelton looks way cooler then any other Defensive, then again I think intervention looks underwhelming.

[Payotz]

I've played around with it and I kinda like it?
On paper I wasn't really very excited about the fact that Goring Blade is reliant on crits like every high potency move in the game, but the feel of job is pretty okay honestly.
I think the fact that you can fuck up and use req on holy spirits and all that jank makes it feel like you're playing the job, rather than the job playing itself.

It feels like a WoW class weirdly enough. Pretty sure it has a priority system now rather than a strict spreadsheet style rotation but I wouldn't know.
I am however, not a PLD main. The last time I played PLD on a "high-ish" level was O9S and O10S, so honestly, old PLD mains should be the ones that we need to hear from.

[Lamarcy2699]

I've played around with it and I kinda like it?
On paper I wasn't really very excited about the fact that Goring Blade is reliant on crits like every high potency move in the game, but the feel of job is pretty okay honestly.
I think the fact that you can fuck up and use req on holy spirits and all that jank makes it feel like you're playing the job, rather than the job playing itself.

It feels like a WoW class weirdly enough. Pretty sure it has a priority system now rather than a strict spreadsheet style rotation but I wouldn't know.
I am however, not a PLD main. The last time I played PLD on a "high-ish" level was O9S and O10S, so honestly, old PLD mains should be the ones that we need to hear from.

The entire burst is just a bunch of high potency skills, not just goring blade so if you do not crit/dhit in your burst you are losing a ridiculous amount of damage, and it can happen and it is extremely underwhelming. It's even worse because the basic 1-2-3 combo has been weakened to account for the high burst so you have 40s of hitting like a wet noodle and 20s of massive potency.

[Ayan_Calvesse]

I do not think the Paladin changes were the worst per-se. Rather it was the basic homogenization of the class to make it more similar to all the other tanks. I think others are a bit cheesed that Paladin gameplay just became more accessible.

[Lamarcy2699]

I do not think the Paladin changes were the worst per-se. Rather it was the basic homogenization of the class to make it more similar to all the other tanks. I think others are a bit cheesed that Paladin gameplay just became more accessible.

I've talked with other people about something similar and I have to disagree with the fact people are a bit cheesed that it became "accessible", because they're not making it accessible, they're over-simplifying. Simplifying jobs, imho, does nothing but make regular content boring to play. Hell I even find that level 88 paladin is "harder" than level 90 paladin because the entire blades combo on one button requires less thought than pressing 3x HS then confiteor and I find it funny because you'd expect to think more about a rotation as you levelled up, not less.

If you mean a paladin rotation by "paladin gameplay" then you must not remember that every button was useable before the patch without the perfect rotation and you've misunderstood why the job was changed to what it is now. Paladin was changed because it didn't fit with the current design for jobs of endwalker with the 60s/120s rotations due to its natural drift, not to appeal to more people. The job was already there and anyone could clear most content within the game without learning how to play a job because they just like its aesthetics, it just takes a longer time. It's only when you get to content that has enrages that not having a coherent rotation becomes an issue and you have to learn a somewhat cohesive pattern of attacks from simply reading tooltips and seeing what does what. Not saying you have to min-max because i certainly dont, just pressing your buttons in a way that is keeping the combos going and keeping the GCD rolling. Not to mention even the extremes are having rather leniant DPS checks recently so it's Savage and Ultimate left being the only ones that seem to require a coherent rotation. So if you cant understand a rotation to as simple as "keep GCD rolling and use things before they run out/as the timer goes away" then the later Savage fights, and definitely Ultimate, are not for you.

[Ayan_Calvesse]

I've talked with other people about something similar and I have to disagree with the fact people are a bit cheesed that it became "accessible", because they're not making it accessible, they're over-simplifying. Simplifying jobs, imho, does nothing but make regular content boring to play. Hell I even find that level 88 paladin is "harder" than level 90 paladin because the entire blades combo on one button requires less thought than pressing 3x HS then confiteor and I find it funny because you'd expect to think more about a rotation as you levelled up, not less.

If your level 88 Paladin you do not have the entire blades combo; 3 steps of it are earned at level 90...
Weaving paladin prior to the patch could be annoying with having to drop atonements to ensure you kept goring up with the FoF windows and such; when I say "accessible" I mean that the complexity of the steps got stripped away for content where "damage matters" so generally savage raid content where the 2 minute window is the king of the meta. I should clarify as someone who got accidentally saddled with tank maining; Paladin rotations were quirky. They are less so now and require less effort to pull consistent and comparable numbers to ones fellow tanks - thats where the "gunbreaker light" comment often comes in - Gunbreaker is rewarding but its FAST and the faster you are; the better you get doing damage with it. Paladin is just Gunbreaker without needing to be fast...so your damage numbers plateau pretty fast.

I think the issue is that "Good" paladin play just isn't really rewarding; its just lukewarm - but to people who sucked at playing old paladin - new paladin is something they can play "good". The result was the good players being brought down and the low ones being brought up to a very vanilla experience.

Personally I dislike Paladins rework more so because I hate the instant cast "Holy Spirit" animation - it feels awkward and clunky and out of place and not like a "instant" but more like a very fast cast but still far less fast then a swing of my sword - with divine might we are seeing more "Holy Spirit" casts consistantly outside of Requiscat burst so it just makes the entire melee flow feel wrong....and not even sure why we have Goring blade still.

I think people were expecting Paladin to gain a identity from the rework; not be watered down to "Tank with shield" next to "Tank with Axe" and "Tank with Gunblade" and "Tank with Greatsword"

[Lamarcy2699]

If your level 88 Paladin you do not have the entire blades combo; 3 steps of it are earned at level 90...

I think the issue is that "Good" paladin play just isn't really rewarding; its just lukewarm - but to people who sucked at playing old paladin - new paladin is something they can play "good". The result was the good players being brought down and the low ones being brought up to a very vanilla experience.
Personally I dislike Paladins rework more so because I hate the instant cast "Holy Spirit" animation - it feels awkward and clunky and out of place and not like a "instant" but more like a very fast cast but still far less fast then a swing of my sword - with divine might we are seeing more "Holy Spirit" casts consistantly outside of Requiscat burst so it just makes the entire melee flow feel wrong....and not even sure why we have Goring blade still.
I think people were expecting Paladin to gain a identity from the rework; not be watered down to "Tank with shield" next to "Tank with Axe" and "Tank with Gunblade" and "Tank with Greatsword"

I think I messed up on my wording for the level 88 part, I meant to say that because you don't have the blades combo at that level that the rotation is "harder" because you have to think to press different buttons and not just spam the same button 4 times.
I definitely agree on the GNB light and Goring Blade comments though. Goring feels like it was designed to be sonic break with no DoT and all damage but it feels completely underwhelming, clunky and out of place to use. Divine Might is alright when doing dungeons for a slightly more interesting aoe combo than just 1-2 (this is the nicest thing I can say that came out of the PLD rework, and it just adds to the GNB light) but for single target HS just feels so out of place to use after an atonement or RA.
I also see your point about good paladin gameplay, I guess it's just my opinion that jobs shouldnt be reworked because people feel obligated to do that most amount of damage for the least amount of effort (even if that wasnt the reason for this update) the jobs were already there and you could use them in sooo much of the games content without knowing a thing you were doing, just press buttons and win. I don't mean that as in I dislike simpler jobs but rather completely stripping jobs of their identity/uniqueness because of it I really dislike. It was the uniqueness and quirkiness of paladin that I loved. P4S phase 2 for example, my group wanted one of the tanks to do the 2nd bait for Act III so i swapped to the less optimal opener and had my magic phase ready. Same as P8S p1, we have a really good BLM who took the front melee spot for easier uptime and I did the same thing there so I could do my magic phase and take the range position. Less optimal? Sure. Was it fun? Absolutely. Little things like that are what made Paladin feel really good to me and now all of that has been replaced with hardcast HS spam.