So does every hate new PLD now?

[Lamarcy2699]

1. It will be easier to potency buff PLD to hopefully be slightly higher
2. It really doesn't matter that much anyway, if you wanted a tank for DPS you bring DRK/GNB, You only really bring PLD for either fun or progression, the defensive benefits it's seen lately are actually pretty decent.

Do I like that every Job is always playing into every 120 window? no but I can also see how PLD's going to be much less annoying to balance for the future, A lot less people will be afraid of picking up the job to do good damage now, Ideally I'd actually want PLD to keep a separate combo the 1, 2, 3 Atonement (3x) spam isn't really great for the job and having stuff like FOF, Goring blade and Circle of scorn feels pointless to me, currently I don't even agree with every change I think the job is still in need of Improvement.

They likely undertuned PLD on purpose Imo rather then accidently overturning the job, even if they wanted to make PLD do more dps then it was, what then? gnb or drk becomes the "non" meta tank and people complain that gnb or drk don't have enough damage.

EDIT: also while yes PLD was only slightly behind dark knight, that doesn't actually account for how much PLD contributed to raid buffs as dark got more high potency damage in raid buffs the Job was contributing way more overall DPS, Hence why PLD bursts more now.

It still currently doesn't apply that much more towards raid buffs than before but we already have raid buffs contributing a SIGNIFICANT ammount of damage to the party through the dps, just adding to that makes jobs like MCH redundant. Not good enough to be a partner/benefit too much from buffs yet bringing one decreases your groups dps by a bit over a DNC or BRD. Same can be said for PLD/WAR now. It's a sad state to see jobs just become redundant because a better version of it already exists. Yet unlike MCH which feels different to play than the other ranged phys, WAR plays far too close to DRK as does PLD to GNB, almost like another reason not to even bring them because as I said, a better version already exists. It's also not like it was massively drifting to the point where not all your skills would not be under raid buffs, just that it'd get slightly earlier as every 2 min window passed. It'd have to be a really long fight to truly notice but even then adjusting for one fight that takes a while seems very impractical. Coming from ShB PLD, it should have been a lot better than where it currntly has been the entire expansion, but the change to 2 minutes is the cause of that. It's a system that, yes, allows for balancing to be easier but also leads to homogenization where the identity of jobs is becoming less visible. Rotations are also becoming an absolute joke. I mean mash the same button four times is not engaging gameplay for what is supposed to be a burst. Just seriously look at healers, because that's where tanks are now going it feels like.

[Shurrikhan]

It still currently doesn't apply that much more towards raid buffs than before but we already have raid buffs contributing a SIGNIFICANT ammount of damage to the party through the dps, just adding to that makes jobs like MCH redundant.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

Raid buffs don't make exploiters (non-buffing / pure personal damage jobs) redundant. Having more exploiters or fewer (outside of taking single-target buffers) is irrelevant, as a job of half party-wide buffers and half exploiters will tend to perform equally to a job of all party-wide buffers as long as their rDPS is balanced. Single-target buffers, though, need ideal buff-users, specifically, in order to maximize their rDPS; AST and DNC would waste rDPS potential without a job each with maximal 2-min burst and maximal between-bursts damage (such as on BLM, SAM, MCH depending on timing).

Whether PLD has higher aDPS relative to its rDPS or not (i.e., whether it makes better use of buffs and therefore grants its buffers more rDPS) makes no difference to exploiters, and therefore does not upset any balance the likes of a MCH (or any other exploiter) would care about.

It merely makes it easier for PLD to be balanced simultaneously for 4-man content and 8-man content. Previously, for PLD to have aDPS parity (which is the parity one should be focused on in comparing tanks' damage, or any that of other selection of purely exploiters), it'd have to have a significant lead in rDPS and be overpowered in 4-mans. Now, they need simply turn the tuning knob to put it, say, just above WAR in both rDPS and aDPS.

As for gameplay, that is almost entirely a separate issue. Goring Blade did not have to be gutted for PLD to get use out of raid buffs more equal to the other tanks. It solely required compressing its burst phase. Yes, change Goring Blade from a 3-GCD skill to a 1-GCD skill compressed that (by 2 GCDs), but they could as easily have had FoF grant 3 stacks of Atonement (a compression of 3 GCDs), or even just left it at the Requiescat phase going directly into the Confiteor combo (already a compression of 4 GCDs) and FoF applying to all damage.

[nia_saeli]

It merely makes it easier for PLD to be balanced simultaneously for 4-man content and 8-man content. Previously, for PLD to have aDPS parity (which is the parity one should be focused on in comparing tanks' damage, or any that of other selection of purely exploiters), it'd have to have a significant lead in rDPS and be overpowered in 4-mans.

Apologies for interjecting, but I just felt like I should point out that: "Balance in 8 player content is the only balance that matters" or so I keep hearing.

If it's fine for a job to be bad in 4-player content for the sake of Savage Raid balance, it's also fine for them to have a job be overpowered in 4-player content for the sake of Savage Raid balance.

If SE actually cared about the balance in 4-player content, then Raw Intuition/Bloodwhetting would have been nerfed/normalized to be inline with the other tanks right now because WAR is so oppressively good in all content from level 56 onwards with the sole exception of Savage/Ultimate raids.

IMO, it would have been absolutely fine for PLD to be "the super high DPS tank" outside of 8-player raids.

[Shurrikhan]

Apologies for interjecting, but I just felt like I should point out that: "Balance in 8 player content is the only balance that matters" or so I keep hearing.

If it's fine for a job to be bad in 4-player content for the sake of Savage Raid balance, it's also fine for them to have a job be overpowered in 4-player content for the sake of Savage Raid balance.

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).

[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.)

[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.

[Renathras]

Having gotten a chance now to sit down and really dig into it...I don't hate it, no.

It feels smoother and more polished to play than before. There's still some weirdness with dropping an Atonement, but I feel like the right way to view that is Atonement as sort of a "filler" "cast this when nothing else is up" kind of a thing. It's not exactly lower priority than your standard 1-2-3 combo, but a SINGLE Atonement is lower priority than a 1-2-3 combo. I'm not sure a good way to say it, but basically, if you have to drop ONE GCD, dropping any part of your 1-2-3 or dropping Divine Might boosted Holy Spirit or dropping Goring Blade or dropping any part of Swords combo are all more detrimental. So when freeing up a SINGLE GCD slot, Atonement is the lowest SINGLE GCD ability in priority worth dropping. (Like if you've played SMN, think of Atonement like Ruin 3 - the thing you press when you don't have better things to press, and the thing you drop if you have to give up a GCD during a rotation for any reason to ensure your higher priority moves get used instead.)

It also feels a bit more dynamic and flexible now. Though your free movement phase is a bit shorter as you can't add in several Holy Spirits to it in a block, you get more single-GCD pockets of movement, such as needing to disengage for a point blank AOE that allows you to greed one GCD, run out and use HS for a second one, then Intervene back into melee to use Atonement or your 1-2-3. And HS can be moved around quite a bit to accommodate this, since it can be used any time after Royal Authority, which is 5 weaponskill slots during your normal rotation (you can use it right after Royal or after the 1st Atonement, 2nd Atonement, 3rd Atonement, Fast Blade, or Riot Blade), and it can be used during your burst phase either at the start (preferably still after Goring so you can prevent it from drifting, but in a pinch before), or during any point of Confettie/Faith/Truth/Valor or right after the combo, after the 1st Atonement, or after the 2nd Atonement (after the 3rd would push it out of the burst window, which you should avoid unless absolutely necessary)

That's a lot of flexibility there.

And base, unbuffed Holy Spirit has 350 potency, which is greater than your 1-2-3 average (287), and only 30 weaker than Atonement (380), meaning if you have a long movement/disengage phase (e.g. 2-3 GCDs worth), you can use Divine Might buffed Holy Spirit for the first GCD and then the 2nd (and 3rd if needed) GCDs can be Holy Spirits as well, at a relatively negligible 30/60 potency damage loss, respectively. It's not nothing, but if you have to use a couple HS for movement like that, you can cut out that same number of Atonements during that 60 second filler phase for a minor DPS loss that allows maintaining uptime. Unbuffed HS's cast time is 1.5 sec, which allows slidecasting (as Healers are very used to) for additional movement, or obviously, for extended disengages.

That is, you have 5 Atonements per 60 second period, and you can replace up to all of them with Holy Spirits if the fight demanded such. Note that you can avoid or minimize this by properly moving your buffed HS around, as I said above. Meaning the only time you have to actually make this 30 potency tradeoff is if you need to move for 2 or more GCDs of disengagement. Considering the alternative is Shield Lob, at potency 100 a SUBSTANTIAL DPS loss from Atonement's 380 (280 loss vs 30 for substituting a HS for an Atonement), that's a pretty good deal.

My only real complaint at the moment is what it was before anyway (so no worse), which is PLD has too many buttons still, and just got one more. At the risk of dumbing things down, there's no reason for Fight or Flight and Requiescat to be two buttons at this point. Baking FoF's effect into Requiescat (or more likely, making Requi a Trait upgrade to Fight or Flight) would fix that problem and make a slot for that old-new defensive CD we got. Well, that and making Requi not REQUIRE MELEE RANGE STILL. It still doesn't ENTIRELY fix the problem of PLD's button bloat, but it helps. Other options include removing Goring and baking that damage into Swords instead (same argument - you don't use Goring outside of FoF anyway, which is where you're going to use Requi/Swords), which would also make Atonement drops an option for trading HSs (disengage) rather than an unintuitively expected part of the nominal rotation. Another option would be taking Circle of Scorn and Expaciation and combining those into one ability (likewise Spirits Within) rather than two. Each of these would free up one hotbar slot, respectively, and as they're all cases of abilities being used together anyway, it just reduces redundancy.

Another alternative would be providing players a toggle (would need to be optional since some people don't like it) to combine the 1-2-3 single target and 1-2 AOE rotations into single buttons. This would free up 3 slots as well. Though some people like extra buttons, so I'm not pressing the issue, some do like the combinations in PvP, so it probably wouldn't be horrible to allow these as toggles for people that wanted them, as each would require different muscle memory to do correctly anyway.

And, of course, having a more usable Divine Veil [that FINALLY affects the PLD, too!] and PLD's "missing" CD in having Bulwark back, paired with Shelltron now being a flat damage reduction, are all nice buffs that should make the Job better off overall.

.

Summary:

I don't dislike it at all. It's very flexible with disengages and forgiving with the general rotation (allowing some substitutions here and there), and largely seems to be a more polished and better working version of what we had before that allows some actual tactical choices in one's rotation.

It's not perfect as it retains a bit of the old PLD clunk, and Goring Blade (in particular), FoF as a distinct button from Requiescat, and Circle of Scorn/Expaciation being separate buttons all seem to be a bit redundant and "filler-y"; but it seems to be an improvement that will work well enough overall.