Give us back the old Paladin

[TheMisled]

*Rant warning. This change really rubbed me the wrong way and I just gotta vent*

I cannot stress how awful this one feel to play versus the pre 6.3 PLD. Having separate physical and damage phases was fun and the consistent damage output worked wonders in most of the content in this game (especially in current dungeon formats where the buff could be rotated between w2w pulls to save waiting for CDs). There was no mind numbingly boring downtime which takes up 2/3rds of the rotation.it felt more structured and complex, and far more fun.

The changes to Divine Veil are great, having holy circle at the end of the AOE combo is a nice way to make it slight more interesting and the defensives are definitely a change for the better. But then the job was ham-fisted into this 2 minute window meta and stripped it of almost everything uniquely Paladin. Now it's just a knock-off Gunbreaker. If we wanted to play Gunbreaker, we would play Gunbreaker. We wanted Paladin.

Hell even Goring blade is a straight downgrade from it's previous iteration. Now it does less potency on a Longer cooldown and has been relegated to a solo weapon skill instead of being part of the 124 combo (which somewhat helped break up the monotony of constant 123 combos tanks are notorious for). I personally enjoyed it as a dot with no CD. You could apply it at any time and to make the most out of it and it was nice to have damage constantly ticking over on the enemy. The only change it really needed was making damage from DOTs a bit more obvious.

This has been a real mess of a change and while the number might look better in the high ends of play, that's all moot if the jobs just stop being fun and the job gets worst in everything else that isn't at the top percentage high end.

[Payadopa]

Hard disagree on Divine Veil. Why play an MMO if you want to have nothing to do with other players? It's like making Earthly Star as ridiculously big so you don't have to communicate anymore. Same with the 2 minute burst meta. Now all you do is press it when the fight starts and again at 2 minute intervals. Riveting.

[Riion]

I loathe the changes. It's like the worst of all possible outcomes. I hope more people speak up and devs consider rolling them back. Though, I'm not holding my breath.

[TheMisled]

Hard disagree on Divine Veil. Why play an MMO if you want to have nothing to do with other players? It's like making Earthly Star as ridiculously big so you don't have to communicate anymore. Same with the 2 minute burst meta. Now all you do is press it when the fight starts and again at 2 minute intervals. Riveting.

Yeah, I can sort of agree with the Divine Veil thing. The only issue is that unless the healer was actively looking for it, it was very easily missed. More often than not the healer would trigger it by accident or the paladin would have to trigger it themselves which made it quite inconsistent. If there were a better way to do it that involved multiple players, I'd say go for it, but until then, this is probably the best solution.

[Payadopa]

Yeah, I can sort of agree with the Divine Veil thing. The only issue is that unless the healer was actively looking for it, it was very easily missed. More often than not the healer would trigger it by accident or the paladin would have to trigger it themselves which made it quite inconsistent. If there were a better way to do it that involved multiple players, I'd say go for it, but until then, this is probably the best solution.

I guess, but you could always make a macro for it. It's only one change so eh but it has been happening for so many jobs at this point. It's kinda sad. I think there is a difference between making things accessible and making it (too) easy. The 5.0 design philosophy is such a letdown and in 6.0 I feel like all I get is traits and charges to abilities I already have. You can do better, SE. C'mon.

[Mikey_R]

Hard disagree on Divine Veil. Why play an MMO if you want to have nothing to do with other players? It's like making Earthly Star as ridiculously big so you don't have to communicate anymore. Same with the 2 minute burst meta. Now all you do is press it when the fight starts and again at 2 minute intervals. Riveting.

Should Dark Missionary, Shake it off and Heart of Light also have activation conditions more than just pressing a button?

[Kemeko]

Those three can stay as they are, instead make Divine Veil a healing version of Requiescat with a modern style while still retaining Paladin identity of giving away it's shields to others. Keep original animation because it matches Clemency as a set. Creates synergy with Cover adding further identity as a Paladin. Make the skill multiple purpose instead of just a simple one off function.

[Trait] Enhanced Divine Veil (Lv. 88)
Increases Divine Veil stacks from 3 to 6.

[Action][Ability] Divine Veil (Lv. 56)
Divine Veil Effect: Increases the healing potency of Clemency, Holy Spirit, Holy Circle, and Confiteor, spells will require no cast time, and healing spells will cost half MP
Additional Effect: Grants 6 stacks of Divine Veil
Duration: 30s
Barrier Effect: Prevents damage up to 10% of your maximum HP for each stack of Divine Veil (Up to 3 and up to 6 while under the effect of Cover)
Additional Effect: Grants 1 stack of Divine Veil to all nearby party members within a radius of 15 yalms when Clemency, Holy Spirit, Holy Circle, or Confiteor is executed
Duration: 30s
Barrier Effect: Prevents damage up to 10% of your maximum HP for each stack of Divine Veil (Up to 3)
Additional Effect: Grants 1 stack of Divine Veil to all nearby party members within a radius of 15 yalms when the effect of Divine Veil ends
Duration: 30s
Barrier Effect: Prevents damage up to 10% of your maximum HP for each stack of Divine Veil (Up to 3)
*Divine Veil changes to Divine Oath while Divine Veil is on recast.

[Action][Ability] Divine Oath (Lv. 56)
Reduces Divine Veil recast time by 30 seconds.
Oath Gauge Cost: 50
*This action cannot be assigned to a hotbar

[Rithy255]

Hard disagree on Divine Veil. Why play an MMO if you want to have nothing to do with other players? It's like making Earthly Star as ridiculously big so you don't have to communicate anymore. Same with the 2 minute burst meta. Now all you do is press it when the fight starts and again at 2 minute intervals. Riveting.

So it's good that a ability is just Inconsistent, for a worse shake it off? the changes were to make it more useable in all types of content and less annoying to use, Divine veil works with other players it's a raid wide it protects/heals them, having a ability that expects a GCD heal and is clunky to use outside of req, it's not really "unique" like a lot of people say, it's just worse.

I liked the changes in general, it needs more tuning but I'm glad they're looking into PLD's issues, the old job was fun but this new version isn't as bad as people make it out to be, just needs some abilities changed such as goring blade needs to do something else or be removed, I'd like something like 2 atonements and atonement not breaking combos, some abilities should also be merged to make space on the hotbar, Change passage of arms as well.

Divine might and having magic/ranged/sustain outside of burst is also a great change, I think it makes the job way more flexible as you're able to hold it for ranged and sustain if you need it, I'm pretty sure not a lot of jobs have something similar to that sort of flexibility (maybe Ninja? but I'm pretty sure its still a big loss), the Jobs actually still really fun it needs a few changes that's all.

[Riion]

I liked Veil's old functionality. You could toss it out way early and forget about it. It encouraged PLDs to learn the fight to optimize its use. And with how Divine Might works now, it would have been easier than ever to self-trigger. Though, I am glad it now actually applies to yourself too. All that said, I can live with the Veil changes. It's the complete gutting of the offensive rotation that has, in my eyes, destroyed the job. Now it's 20 seconds of burst followed by 40 seconds of sleep. It's so boring and homogenous now. PLD's rotation used to have two distinct phases that added enough variation to keep things interesting. That's gone now. Honestly, I feel like I lost a friend with these changes.

[Rithy255]

I liked Veil's old functionality. You could toss it out way early and forget about it. It encouraged PLDs to learn the fight to optimize its use. And with how Divine Might works now, it would have been easier than ever to self-trigger. Though, I am glad it now actually applies to yourself too. All that said, I can live with the Veil changes. It's the complete gutting of the offensive rotation that has, in my eyes, destroyed the job. Now it's 20 seconds of burst followed by 40 seconds of sleep. It's so boring and homogenous now. PLD's rotation used to have two distinct phases that added enough variation to keep things interesting. That's gone now. Honestly, I feel like I lost a friend with these changes.

On old PLD during non req window, you were practically just refreshing your dots making sure you got two under FOF, doing 1, 2, 3, Atone(3x), I feel like FOF really didn't make PLD feel "distinct" you'd practically be doing the same rotation if we had old PLD but they removed FOF.

Not saying I didn't enjoy PLD overall but the second burst (fof) was hardly anything interesting.