Paladin get's skills WAY too late.

[Thanad]

Well as in the title. I don't know if anybody in SE even bothered to play PLD at low levels but it plays horribly. PLD is only tank that get's gap closer at 72. Like wtf? What the devs think? That we do only lv 100 dungeon and raids? If so why does sync exists? It's stupid.

Holy Spirit and Holy Symbol should be moved to lv 50, same with Intervene.

All other tanks also should get their AoE and gap closers at 50 so no one plays like crap.

Atonement combo moved to 65-70 lv range and Blade combo to 80-90 lv range.

PLD also suffers for severe bloat. Maybe plz add options to merge 1,2,3 into 1 button like in pvp and merge Cover into Intervention. Cover as it is it's useless most of the time. Shield Bash is also useless in it's current form.

The skills in general just comes online way too late. I'm getting so used to to not having skills, than when i have them i forget to use them. That's not ok.

Most of the jobs have that problem. PLAY YOUR JOBS AT LOW LV SQUARE, SEE HOW CRAPPY THEY FEEL AND FIX IT.

[dwodmots]

I agree with your point about late skill unlocks, but the rest of your opinions are just bad. Cover is an amazing tool during prog and there's not that many DPS buttons. If anything we need to split up some abilities with too many functions, like taking the shield off the 2min def CD and giving it it's own button.

[Thanad]

Yes, Cover is soooo awesome. I hear it every time yet it's used like 1 in 1000 runs. Super good skill. The only reason it exists it's cause it's like legacy skill. Pretty useless but it's there, but being a legacy skill doesn't make it good. Good skill is Fight or Flight or Rampart or Sheltron. Why? Cause they don't need specific scenario to be useful. They just are. Cover isn't.

[Carighan]

I mean all jobs suffer this bloat, but there's hope: Picto and Viper show that SQEX finally understands that autocombos are the future, and they already added the option to un-combo skills for those players who hate progress and good design. We can assume that more and more things such as the 1-2-3 of Paladins will become a combo in the future.

BTW, if you merge Cover into Intervention, you lose the amazing Intervention in most situations since you would die if you used Cover there.

[Loggos]

Yes, Cover is soooo awesome. I hear it every time yet it's used like 1 in 1000 runs. Super good skill. The only reason it exists it's cause it's like legacy skill. Pretty useless but it's there, but being a legacy skill doesn't make it good. Good skill is Fight or Flight or Rampart or Sheltron. Why? Cause they don't need specific scenario to be useful. They just are. Cover isn't.

Cover is a situational skill but that doesn't make it bad. The idea that skills are only valuable if they are not scenario-specific reinforces FF's overly scripted design philosophy. No thanks to that. Randomness (which we have far too little of in this game) is often the factor that spices things up but that also means that not every fight will feature every scenario. And some scenario will happen more frequently than others.

Situational skills allow for at least a little bit of job identity and gameplay moments that break out of the mold of FF's perfectly choreographed fights. If a fight goes well there are many skills that will never be used. There might be no res, no provoke, no shirk, no stun, no spell interruption, no invuln. Sometimes you don't even need big heals. See the issue of healers pressing 1 for the majority of an encounter.
Unfortunately that's the nature of FF's current battle design.

That doesn't invalidate the existence of skills that can be used in situations when a fight doesn't pan out according to its script, like when players make (repeated) mistakes.
Those occasional moments where you get to press your "oh sh*t" button make the 99 sleep-inducing runs where nothing happens more bearable.
I don't think the gameplay experience will really be improved if they cull the last traces of unique job flavour even further.

I'd much rather have have them create content that makes using cover (and healing lol) more meaningful again.


Also, that's your anecdotal statistics. Personally I both use cover and see cover used frequently enough. So whose anecdote is right?

[Thanad]

TBH i think Passage of Arms is what Cover should have been all the time. A giant shield that protects the party.

[Carighan]

TBH i think Passage of Arms is what Cover should have been all the time. A giant shield that protects the party.

But PoA isn't a party shield? That's Divine Veil.

[Allegor]

I agree with most of it, there's no reason PLD gets their gap closer like 10 levels later than the other tanks, and speaking of bloat, I still wish they merge FoF and Req/Imp. Ever since the rework I find it redundant they're separate buttons since they now fit in the same ogcd window and it'd be one less double weave to worry about.

[Carighan]

I agree with most of it, there's no reason PLD gets their gap closer like 10 levels later than the other tanks, and speaking of bloat, I still wish they merge FoF and Req/Imp. Ever since the rework I find it redundant they're separate buttons since they now fit in the same ogcd window and it'd be one less double weave to worry about.

That's a sensible merge, OTOH. Same with Expacion and thingy, since you never want to use them separate anyways. There's 0 player interaction or player brain investment in these.

That being said, the whole gets-things-later... ask a DRK about their TBN. :P

[Thanad]

Equally bad design. DRK should get weaker version of TBN early like 50 and then improved version as they lv up. Most classes plays bad below 70. Some like PLD till Atonement combo and Holy Mark. Which is like 74 if remember right.