Give us back the old Paladin

[AnotherPerson]

Aren't healers complaining at how little they have to heal now? At least every friend I have who heals in savage/ultimate says that. It's definitely better now than it was in the pandaemonium first tier with how much tanks need to be healed because of DoTs but adding more self healing only takes away from healers. Second, what do you mean healers have more engaging DoT gameplay than old PLD? Healers just press one button every ~30s and call it a day at least PLD had it baked into the rotation and it flowed well. Sure you can argue the old burst was just as easy but it at least punished harder for messing up unlike now how you can only mess up but using a physical GCD (except boring blade) during blades combo. Also at least the filler required a bit of thought of knowing when to drop the atonement and when to do your dot and if you do make a mistake, how to correct it. Now it's literally just 1-2-3-4-4-4 spam and that's not fun to me. PLD absolutely was not the worst DPS out of the tanks before, that was WAR and this is easily verifiable.

Yes and no, healers are complaining about the amount of downtime of pressing the same DPS button in contrast to the amount of time spent actively healing (which are mostly done instantaneously with oGCDS and without much thought required). Usually that leads to 2 points of discussion - add more DPS-oriented skills to keep engagement or add more damage to heal. Renathras is one of the few who oppose giving more DPS rotations to healers. This is a more recent thread if you want to see where that discussion is going.

[Lamarcy2699]

Yes and no, healers are complaining about the amount of downtime of pressing the same DPS button in contrast to the amount of time spent actively healing (which are mostly done instantaneously with oGCDS and without much thought required). Usually that leads to 2 points of discussion - add more DPS-oriented skills to keep engagement or add more damage to heal. Renathras is one of the few who oppose giving more DPS rotations to healers. This is a more recent thread if you want to see where that discussion is going.

I see, thank you for the clarification. I don't play much of a healer myself but as I said I have friends who do and that's just something to they say a lot so I naturally assumed it was the case. I can't exactly speak for healer mains on this one but the thread looks like an interesting read so I'll definitely check that out.

[Renathras]

Yes and no, healers are complaining about the amount of downtime of pressing the same DPS button in contrast to the amount of time spent actively healing (which are mostly done instantaneously with oGCDS and without much thought required). Usually that leads to 2 points of discussion - add more DPS-oriented skills to keep engagement or add more damage to heal. Renathras is one of the few who oppose giving more DPS rotations to healers. This is a more recent thread if you want to see where that discussion is going.

One of the few on the forums. Though even there, there are a number of people with the "Either give us more to damage or give us more to heal (or both)" camps. Most of the people that are "more DPS buttons" only are so because they genuinely feel that the game design can't support a GCD healing model. Thing is, it used to, so it clearly can. It's more a matter of if the community would adapt to it...which it probably can, since it managed to adapt from it just fine.

I'm actually in favor of a hybrid approach where each Healer is given a different rotation (one like today probably WHM, one based on DoTs probably SCH, one based on GCD buffs probably AST, and one based on non-DoT damage rotation like RDM or SMN probably SGE); so I'm not, strictly speaking, opposed to more DPS buttons. I'm just opposed to them across the board. I don't favor trading one form of homogenization for another, with the other being even more divorced from the concept of Healer than the present.

Aren't healers complaining at how little they have to heal now?

Some are.

Many aren't.

This last tier nearly broke a bunch of groups because the Healers weren't used to the spicier damage from all the bleeds and were having to adapt to actually needing to use some GCD heals, which they'd gotten used to not using.

Ultimates are weird, since the healing is HYPER scripted (moreso than any other encounters in the game) and comes in very exact, but heavy bursts. It's why an AST could solo heal the last one.

By "more engaging DoT gameplay" - If you apply something as part of your standard rotation, it's not engaging, especially if it's rigid. Old PLD and still DRG both have/had DoTs that area applied as part of their standard rotation. They don't have to track a DoT timer to know when to refresh it, they simply do their standard rotation and the DoT is applied. Both Goring and Swords DoTs were applied this way. If you were simply doing your rotation, your DoT had complete uptime on Old PLD. There was no chance of your DoT falling off unless you deviated from your rotation, since the DoT was tied to the rotation. It wasn't a separate button, it wasn't a timer you watched for when it was about to fall off to reapply it. WAR Storm's Eye was more engaging than Old PLD DoTs, because Storm's Eye isn't part of WAR's standard rotation (Storm's Path is), meaning they had to at least keep an eye on its timer to know when to get ready to refresh it. Old PLD's main two DoTs, Goring and Swords, were both braindead since they required no thought to apply. The only thought was in Circle ofScorn (which you used/still use on CD or you were wrong) and in remembering to use FoF before the first Goring of your physical phase so its buff would capture both DoTs.

The DoTs themselves weren't engaging, since you did nothing special to apply them and you weren't tracking when they fell off. There was no risk of them falling off unless you weren't doing your rotation at all, in which case you had bigger problems.

Contrast Healer DoTs, which while not terribly engaging either, were still more engaging since they could fall off. They weren't part of your standard rotation (insomuch as Healers...have a rotation), so they could fall off and you had/have to pay attention to their timers to know when to refresh them, and have to refresh them manually and deliberately. It's not an automatic part of "Well, if you're spamming Glare correctly, your DoT will be up 100% of the time without you having to do anything", which is what Old PLD's DoTs were.

That is - by being "baked into the rotation", it wasn't engaging, since the DoT application and risk of it falling off were nonexistent unless you simply weren't doing your rotation.

"the old burst was just as easy"

That's my point, yes. The punishment is just an accessibility argument, not an argument of good design. Being punishing isn't inherently god-tier design.

The filler didn't require thought, though, that's my point. The entire rotation was Royal, Goring (FoF just before -3), Royal, Goring, Swords, repeat ad nausea. That's not terribly engaging compared to New PLD, with the difference being New PLD actually gives the player agency. Where you move your HS to, for example, gives you agency in how the fight plays out (both in terms of sustain and disengages), where Old PLD didn't. The rigidity of Old PLD meant you had two options: Doing it right or doing it wrong. There was no variation. The only "choice" you had in an entire 2 minute or so rotation was "do I drop an Atonement from the first Royal or the second Royal?", which was less agency than New PLD has.

PLD was the worst Tank in terms of damage before. Recall that WAR got buffs in 6.1 and 6.2, that put it ahead of PLD. PLD also had a wider spread (variance), while WAR's (due to being easier) was much narrower. PLD _IS_ doing less damage now, which I suspect will be addressed with some kind of potency buffs in the next patch, but PLD wasn't doing god-tier damage before. It was back of the pack before the change. P1S (using it because it was well before the patch and people aren't running and parsing it in modern gear), the first PLD in the list, that is, the top PLD in damage in the fight records, is...well, I'd like to tell you, but I went through 10 pages, the top 1000, and they were all DRK and GNB. There is not a single WAR or PLD in the top 1000 for P1S.

...okay, I kept going. 1168, page 12, is the top PLD.

P4 phase 2 the top PLD? 537 on page 6. PLD's median report was only a smidge above WAR's, as was its absolute 100 max, but its low point was also well below WAR's. PLD's upper quartile (75%) was about even with DRK and GNB's median (50%). And that's for all of P1-4S.

PLD is also the bottom of Ex4 per the current spread. WAR (oddly enough, though I guess it makes sense as that fight's hectic and WAR is easy to keep chugging along with) is the top, then GNB, DRK, then PLD (though GNB's 100 is actually a big higher than DRK's which is a bit higher than WAR's, which is...higher than PLD's). We get the same picture in Ex3, just with GNB and DRK swapping places.

No, PLD was not topping the charts before by any stretch of the imagination. You may be able to find individual PLDs that were top for specific moments in time, but merely clicking over and looking at the bar graphs OR the long-form rankings, the truth reveals itself.

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Now, don't mistake my argument:

New PLD isn't perfect, and Old PLD had a different "feel", which it's valid to complain about if you enjoyed the feel of it. I'm not being sarcastic when I say this. Feel is a good chunk of how enjoyable a Job is to play, balance, numbers, and mechanics be damned. A Job can be the best in the world but not feel good, and it won't be fun. A Job can, conversely, be doing poorly in a balance sense but just feel good to play.

But in objective terms, Old PLD was not just fine or anything. It was not topping the charts, it wasn't in a happy place, and the nuance was often not actual choice but a binary "doing it right or doing it wrong" situation.

Now, as a person that advocated for the old WoW talent trees before they were taken away, even such illusions of choice can sometimes be good for a class or good for a game. So I don't want to discount that. But objectively speaking, New PLD does actually offer more true choice and agency to the player than Old PLD did. It offers more skill expression, it just doesn't punish failure as harshly.

Old PLD performed fine as a Tank, but so did every other Tank, in terms of being able to keep agro and mostly in terms of mitigation. Old PLD actually had a slightly weaker personal mitigation suite (was "missing" one and another was based on block, which didn't work against bleeds) than the other Tanks, but it was still generally functional. Though it was bottom tier in terms of DPS, which is largely all people care about once you've met the bar of "don't die to tankbusters and can keep agro", which every Tank can.

I also have my own complaints with New PLD, such as several of the abilities seem tacked on "just to keep them" (I have a similar issue with New SMN where the entire Energy Drain/Aetherflow/Ruin 4 just seems tacked on legacy and is dissonant with the new design...but in that case, New SMN has such a slim kit already that removing them would remove what relatively few abilities it has overall). Like I see no reason for FoF and Requiescat to be two separate buttons (since you'll always use them together) or why Goring Blade...even still exists.

But on the whole, it wasn't a bad rework.

I do agree that Homogenization is an issue, and the 2 minute meta is driving that hard right now. Healers still have that worse than Tanks, though. I guess I just don't feel that the Tanks are the same playing them. Maybe it's just me, though. DRK is the only one I don't play, but WAR, PLD, and GNB all feel different to me to play. Any Job in the game can be distilled to "button that does damage, resource spender, buttons that don't do damage", but at an actual, functional analysis level, the three all play differently from one another (as differently as you're going to get and still be Tanks in a fantasy setting, anyway...)

I highly disagree that PLD is a GNB clone. Honestly, it feels closer to WAR to me than it does to GNB. People say it's the same because it builds a resource to spend, but GNB's stocks to 3 and it has 3 different ways (4 if we include AOE...let's not) to spend it vs PLD's 1 + 3 where there is only one way (again, ignoring AOE) to spend each. Not to mention two of the hallmarks of GNB play are that it has a super rigid rotation (more akin to DRG and, honestly, OLD PLD was more akin to GNB in that sense) and a fast pace, high APM rotation. PLD lacks both of those. Old PLD was closer to GNB in the rigid rotation department, and New PLD doesn't have a higher APM or pacing than Old PLD did. PLD is still thin on oGCDs...which I honestly like. "Builder-spender" is hardly GNB exclusive, as WAR has the same thing. Indeed, DRK is the one Tank that DOESN'T strictly work that way...because it doesn't build in the same way.

[Lamarcy2699]

PLD had buffs in 6.2 which is when the new tier released making the old one locked out. You are comparing data from a pre-buffed old PLD to a buffed old PLD. In the current spread yes, PLD IS doing the worst because they nerfed the job from what it was in 6.28 going into 6.3, which is what I am referring to. To get a better comparison, you look at data from current tier fights and compare them to how they perform after changes within the same tier/timeframe. If there was no data for this, I would not have made a point about it. But just to amuse you, endsinger, hydaelyn, zodiark in patch 6.28, PLD was last overall because of its ranging damage spread because the job was easy to mess up on and those who actually cared for the fights or even going out of their way to log them stopped doing so after 6.1 because there was no point in actually doing so (look at number of logs and you'll see what I mean) and in the top-end of 95+ (you know, when people do their rotations somewhat properly and don't die), PLD performed 2nd highest or 3rd highest. In 6.3? Dead last in endsinger and zodiark but not with Hydaelyn. Asphodelos is a locked zone so no new logs can be uploaded currently and can't recieve data for 6.28. My point is that it WAS in a good position damage-wise and they nuked it.

Also yes you're right. It's rather disingenuous of me to call PLD a GNB clone (not like its entire burst structure is basically 1:1 with GNB- oh wait, Confiteor and Blades=GF and Double Down, boring blade=sonic break without the dot, CoS=Bow Shock, Atonement=Burst Strike, DM HS=Bullets without the gauge that lets you stack them) when in reality it's the offspring of all the tanks combined into a disaster of a job. It has the MP management of DRK and the simplicity of WAR and basically everything GNB has (but worse).

"But in objective terms, Old PLD was not just fine or anything. It was not topping the charts, it wasn't in a happy place, and the nuance was often not actual choice but a binary "doing it right or doing it wrong" situation." So there should be no difficulty in the jobs at all then? I kinda liked how there was a clear distinction between a PLD who knew what they were doing and a PLD who didn't and now the only thing seperating them is "who can crit/dhit more" because the job requires less thought than it did before and you actually have to go out of your way to mess up on new PLD. If I'm going into a savage or an ultimate I'd like to be able to know that I cleared because I knew how to play my job as well as doing the mechanics correctly not just doing mechanics while doing something so incredibly simple that it's almost mind numbing.

[nia_saeli]

I highly disagree that PLD is a GNB clone.
Not to mention two of the hallmarks of GNB play are that it has a super rigid rotation (more akin to DRG and, honestly, OLD PLD was more akin to GNB in that sense) and a fast pace, high APM rotation.

This is probably a vibe thing so feel free to disagree here, but if we consider the following:

PLD Filler 1-2-3-4-4-4 is essentially two of GNB 1-2-3 (without the benefit of solid Barrel's healing/shield)
Goring Blade is Sonic Break (without the DoT)
Req is a damaging Bloodfest (with a less interesting resource generated in "Confetior Ready")
FoF is just no Mercy
Confetti is like Double Down
Blade of Faith Combo is like Gnashing Fang pre-Continuation that happens half as often.
(DM) Holy Spirit is Burst Strike with a cap of 1
Spirits Within/CoS are Blasting Zone/Bow Shock

If divine might stacked to three and they added a Holy Continuation that procced after Sword Combo or Divine Might Holy Spirit, it would be almost _exactly_ like a more flexible Gunbreaker.
(Yes, I am aware that you could probably do this with any of the tanks, but PLD and GNB feel especially similar in this regard)

I think considering "strictness" and "high APM" as a Hallmark of Gunbreaker play is fine and all, but that's why it's not a "gunbreaker clone" but instead a "more flexible, half-baked gunbreaker" (like a level 60 gunbreaker). It's a point of comparison similar to how post 5.0 DRK felt like a WAR with more oGCDs.

It's fine if you don't see it that way, but from my end I have my hotbars set up (mostly) the same between the two jobs so PLD just plays like a lesser version of GNB.

The old rotation had a lot of room for improvement, but it was satisfying to have about 45 seconds per minute of buffed GCDs where each felt impactful. Learning fights and how to min-max each of the buffs accordingly was the skill expression (I would argue that the fight by fight openers were 100% skill expression. The naive rotation for PLD was absolutely "good enough" for most content (yes, even savage prog).

The new 6.3 version, while flexible, has minimal skill expression since every fight will play out exactly the same. Divine Might doesn't provide skill expression, it just gives a slightly more damage and mobility than slide-casting previously. With only 5 meaningful GCDs per minute (Goring + Confetti combo under FoF) the other 75% of our rotation is just filler with minimal DPS impact. It doesn't feel at all like adding any more mastery or skill expression to me.

[Renathras]

This is probably a vibe thing so feel free to disagree here, but if we consider the following:

Right, but that's what I mean about if you pull things into too much of a vacuum, everything feels the same.

For example, what if we looked at it this way:

PLD Filler 1-2-3-4-4-4 is essentially two of WAR 1-2-3 (without the benefit of Storm's Path's healing)
Goring Blade is Primal Rend (without the gap closer)
Req is a damaging Inner Release (with a less interesting resource generated in "Confetior Ready")
FoF is just Infuriate (with only one charge)
Confetti is like Nascent Chaos
Blade of Faith Combo is like Fell Cleave spam under Inner Release (indeed, it's MORE like this than it is Gnashing Fang)
(DM) Holy Spirit is Fell Cleave when used to prevent overcapping Beast Gauge
Spirits Within/CoS are Upheval

...indeed, some parts (Req/Confet Inner Release/Fellspam) are PLD being more like WAR than like GNB.

And unlike GNB, WAR and PLD have a similar APM.

.

But that's my point: People are zooming out as far as the first TOP clear group and saying PLD and GNB look the same, when PLD from that distance looks just as much (if not more) like WAR. It plays more like WAR and has a cadence more similar to WAR, with a similar APM. And, personally, I find APM determines how a Job feels to me more than most other things.

From my end, I have all 4 of my Tanks (even the DRK I'm leveling still) and half my Melee set up the same way. And all four of my Healers are almost set up the same ways. That's not really a PLD/GNB thing, I don't think.

...but I'm not using that to say they're all the same. NIN and DRK arguably play very similar - a busy burst with lots of weaves followed by a really lax "filler" downtime period until the next burst phase - but no one's arguing that DRK or NIN are clones of each other, even though they have a lot of overlap in playstyle. Hell, NIN and WAR do! I think when people zoom that far out to make comparisons, you run into the problem of almost every Job in the game, and almost every design possible, will ultimately appear very similar.

This is because there are only so many kinds of damage rotation profiles: Proc based, priority system, builder-spender, resource based. Almost every damage rotation can, in some form or another, be put under the umbrella of one of those four. And there's often overlap between them, such as proc based leading to a priority system (RDM) or that a resource can be set up in a builder-spender system (like Arcane Mage used to be in WoW with its mana). But those aren't meaningful ways to look at things, because at that "altitude", everything looks the same anyway.

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Again: I get some people liked Old PLD. I'm not speaking against that.

What I'm speaking against is that Old PLD was good or that New PLD is bad; New PLD offers more flexibility, choice, agency, and skill expression than Old PLD did. The main differences are that Old PLD was less intuitive (you HAD to read guides to play it well), was more clunky (so "mastering clunk" was required to play it well), and was more punishing to failure (so you were more actively griefing your party if you fat-fingered something on Old PLD). And I know it's a feel thing...but I NEVER felt Old PLD's buffed GCDs "felt impactful". Nothing "felt impactful" about landing Goring under FoF.

The new version is more flexible and has far more skill expression, since you have actual choices, and those choices aren't "Do you wish to play wrong today?" The entire rotation before was filler outside of Requiescat, so that's really no different. Old PLD didn't feel like adding any mastery or skill expression to me. But that's because I've never considered "mastery of clunk" to be skill. I consider it more "fighting the controls". A lot of old games were considered hard if they were challenging but had tight controls. Stuff like Battletoads. But then you had games like Superman 64, which were hard to beat because they were just so bad with such horrible controls. Then you had the games that were easy but also had good controls that were smooth as butter and a joy to play, and so were fun, stuff like Kingdom Hearts, I guess.

I don't mind Jobs being like Battletoads (some being like that are good for the game, imo), I like Jobs being like Kingdom Hearts. I'm not really in favor of Jobs being like Superman 64.

Don't mistake me, though:

I don't like homogenization, and would be fine if Old PLD remained. The 2 min meta is killing the game, imo, since it's forcing all Job designs into a 2 min burst cycle system, which prevents a lot of other types of Jobs (DoTs, sustained damage, etc) from being viable.

I'm just saying that, objectively, New PLD is actually NOT a botched rework, and is a decent Job in vacuum (e.g. if they had added an entirely new Tank and it was New PLD, it would be fine; I just don't like things being taken away from players that did enjoy them, felt the same way about SMN, too), and it's not a GNB clone any-more than WAR is.

EDIT:

PLD had buffs in 6.2 which is when the new tier released making the old one locked out. You are comparing data from a pre-buffed old PLD to a buffed old PLD.

No, I'm comparing actual data, not cherry-picked data.

It's kind of weird because there was no new Savage released in 6.2, but if we're talking PLD's overall performance, that shouldn't matter anyway. All the data agrees that PLD was on the bottom, either slightly above or slightly below WAR (when WAR wasn't top, which it was in Ex4 - the example you brought up had PLD at the bottom!). The P1-4S data says this. The Ex3 data says this. The Ex4 data says this. Hell, the Aglaia data says this.

Literally every piece of commonly run content in 6.2 had PLD at the bottom in terms of damage. I can't find a single boss fight that shows PLD consistently topping the charts. Can you find any one and actually give me a pointer to it? Because I can't find any. I can find a few isolated cases where a PLD was topping the charts for brief periods, but those seem to be highly volatile and not representative of the Job as a whole. All the general metrics say the opposite, and I can find just as many individual cases where PLD is not the top Job. If Savages, Extremes, Alliance Raids, and Ultimates are all saying the same thing, I'm sorry, but I don't see how you can be right.

I DID say that New PLD seems to be doing even less damage than Old PLD (which is in direct opposition to the goal of the rework, meaning they'll probably patch it to boost its burst), but there's not a single site or fight I can find where PLD was the Tank Job topping the others overall.

It's rather disingenuous of me to call PLD a GNB clone ... when in reality it's the offspring of all the tanks combined into a disaster of a job.

You could just as easily say they're the offspring of PLD. As I point out above, WAR and PLD are actually more similar than PLD and GNB in a number of ways. Inner Release is far more similar to Requiescat than Bloodfest is.

In the current spread yes, PLD IS doing the worst because they nerfed the job from what it was in 6.28 going into 6.3, which is what I am referring to.

Yes, but this is what I'm saying you're wrong about:

PLD was ALREADY the worst in 6.28. That's why they even did a rework in the first place. Why do you think they reworked PLD and not WAR, GNB, or DRK?

The simple answer is the obvious one - because PLD was doing worst in the meta and they were trying to prevent it being shut out for the entire expansion until they do...whatever they're going to do in 7.0.

It wasn't in a good position in 6.28. That's WHY they nuked it.

Note that WAR wasn't doing fantastic either, but they buffed its potencies and it was doing decently. PLD was not and had a wider spread, meaning people below 75% were often doing less damage than the average WAR was.

So there should be no difficulty in the jobs at all then?

I hate it when people do this bad faith argument nonsense. "When did you stop beating your wife?"

I ask you, where in...

"But in objective terms, Old PLD was not just fine or anything. It was not topping the charts, it wasn't in a happy place, and the nuance was often not actual choice but a binary "doing it right or doing it wrong" situation."

...are the words "there should be no difficulty in jobs"?

I didn't even MENTION difficulty. I mentioned that there was no choice - YOUR ARGUMENT - and instead of making an argument for how you thought there was, you asked me when I stopped beating my wife.

[Lamarcy2699]

Right, but that's what I mean about if you pull things into too much of a vacuum, everything feels the same.
No, I'm comparing actual data, not cherry-picked data.

You're not, you're comparing something completely different. If I was cherry picking data, I would only choose the fights that make PLD look good. Just because PLD had a shaky start at the beginning of EW until 6.2, does not mean PLD was in a bad state in 6.28 just before 6.3 was released.

[Lamarcy2699]

PLD was ALREADY the worst in 6.28. That's why they even did a rework in the first place. Why do you think they reworked PLD and not WAR, GNB, or DRK?

I didn't even MENTION difficulty. I mentioned that there was no choice - YOUR ARGUMENT - and instead of making an argument for how you thought there was, you asked me when I stopped beating my wife.

PLD absolutely was NOT the worst in 6.28, if you did your rotation properly you'd be around DRK damage and if you've experienced players who can't get that high then that's not the jobs fault, it's quite literally (and I do not mean this in the memey sense) a skill issue. People found PLD "too complex" that they messed up their rotations and started to fall off hence why the spread of dps was so big. PLD got the rework because of its reliance on even spread of damage which set it apart from other jobs because it didn't fit well into the meta so they made it a "bursty" job to fit. Keyword here being well because yes WAR still underperformed that is true but PLD was absolutely fine where it was in damage, it just didnt give that much out during raid buffs due to its natural drift and different nature to its burst structure. The only people who suffered taking a PLD over GNB/DRK were damage buff givers like DNC but even then the difference would be (from what I have seen going from 6.28 to 6.3) ~30-40 dps gain for their respective buffs. That doesn't even cover the amount of dps PLD lost going into 6.3.

[Lamarcy2699]

I hate it when people do this bad faith argument nonsense. "When did you stop beating your wife?"

I ask you, where in...

"But in objective terms, Old PLD was not just fine or anything. It was not topping the charts, it wasn't in a happy place, and the nuance was often not actual choice but a binary "doing it right or doing it wrong" situation."

...are the words "there should be no difficulty in jobs"?

I didn't even MENTION difficulty. I mentioned that there was no choice - YOUR ARGUMENT - and instead of making an argument for how you thought there was, you asked me when I stopped beating my wife.

First off, that's the most atrocious analogy I have ever seen. Second, everything you have been saying has been heavily implying that you don't want difficulty so that is an error on my part if you didn't mean to make it come across like that. While difficulty is subjective, my idea of "rotational difficulty" is a rotation which is rigid enough to where you can either do it right or you can do it wrong and actually requires you to think so that's just my interpretation. There can exist nuances within a rigid rotation like openers or how to recover if you mess up or if you should DoT or get some instant damage out. If anything new PLD has less nuance than old PLD. The rotation is just as rigid with the exception of DM HS.

[fulminating]

PLD remains the least played tank across the tier, with 20k recorded parses for 6.3 compared with the ~30k of drk/gnb/war. In fact, it seems that the rework has had the effect of increasing Warrior's playrate rather than paladin - rising from ~45k to gnb/drk's ~60k and pld's 30k in the 6.2 patches.