Reintroduce Goring blade it as a combo

[Arohk]

Bloat removed is easy on Paladin.

• Low Blow / Interject - merged so it does a stun, but if target cannot be stunned it will instead interrupt them (this applies to all tanks)
• Holy spirit - Now upgrades into Holy circle, holy circle is a cleave AOE attack like confiteor that does less on the rest of the enemies.
• Shield Bash - Removed (Unless they do something interesting with this skill)
• Intervention removed - Paladin can now target a player with holy sheltron (small recast like oblation so you can double target still)
• Fight or flight - upgrades into req, that upgrades into Imperator we don't need two burst buff skills.

5 Skills removed without changing the core of Paladin, I could likely go over more, but I'd love to see 5 skills gone for rotational and cool gameplay abilities paladin can get instead, the job is being held down by abilities that aren't even needed.

hey, you seem to undestand my point pretty well.

[Rithy255]

hey, you seem to undestand my point pretty well.

Don't know if that was sarcastic or not but either way it's just my opinion on what should be changed, though I still want a alternative combo path as I enjoyed having one in older versions of paladin. (though it doesn't need to be a strict DOT)

I want jobs to feel important and fun, we have many ways of reducing hotbar bloat though, theirs so much skills that are redundant if that is what you mean by removing bloat then yes I agree I think skills that don't necessarily serve a proper purpose or can easily be put into another skill (like cleave holy circle or sheltron being able to target allies so we don't need intervention) now we got rooms for things to actually make the rotation feel more fun and ways to actually add abilities through expansions.

[Misdes]

Honestly I'll be happy with just about any change to Goring Blade to take it off a 60s timer. As it stands it makes PLD and GNB feel far too similar outside of burst windows.
My dream is to just get the old DoT back...

[Carighan]

Honestly I'll be happy with just about any change to Goring Blade to take it off a 60s timer. As it stands it makes PLD and GNB feel far too similar outside of burst windows.
My dream is to just get the old DoT back...

Eh it's not like Paladin has too few buttons, quite the opposite. Hence having Goring Blade be able to be pressed more often isn't really helpful, although it wouldn't be a problem either I suppose. The biggest question is whether it shouldn't just be removed without replacement. Because again, plenty buttons already, see the commenter above who recommends a lot of folding/removing skills, and I fully agree with that!

[Rithy255]

Eh it's not like Paladin has too few buttons, quite the opposite. Hence having Goring Blade be able to be pressed more often isn't really helpful, although it wouldn't be a problem either I suppose. The biggest question is whether it shouldn't just be removed without replacement. Because again, plenty buttons already, see the commenter above who recommends a lot of folding/removing skills, and I fully agree with that!

Paladins issue is that it has few too actual buttons, along with other tanks, compared to DPS rotations are slower, theirs way less buttons and because every tank is a Super Tank they don't really have to manage defensives that well outside of anything that isn't Savage+ So you have the gameplay loop of a DPS who's slow.

Goring blade and more combo actions (like a melee DPS) is exactly what tanks need to have rotational varity, PLD is slower then DRK/GNB but had more actual GCD buttons and complexity for this reason, now Paladin is a super slow bland job with a bland rotation.

Why can't we remove Actual Bloat skills Like Shield Bash, having magic AOE/single targets not be separate, Having both intervention and holy sheltron, Having a bunch of defensives that all do the same thing, Theirs so many examples of actual bloat, a GCD skill to manage is not "bloat" it's actual gameplay.

Tanks (and healers) as I see it need to be reworked from the ground up, but Lets not pretend we have damage button bloat, the actual issue is those serval skills that all serve the same purpose or outdated mess skills like shield bash, that only get justified because some guy will cry about deep dungeon paladins.

Meaningful GCD skills need to be added, goring blade should be reverted to a gcd rotational button as paladins rotation is very bland, Though a larger rework that adds depth and complexity is more or less needed for every tank, even some procs and RNG would be great.

[PyurBlue]

Why can't we remove Actual Bloat skills Like Shield Bash, having magic AOE/single targets not be separate, Having both intervention and holy sheltron, Having a bunch of defensives that all do the same thing, Theirs so many examples of actual bloat, a GCD skill to manage is not "bloat" it's actual gameplay.

I feel like the actual problem with a lot of those things is encounter design. Single and AoE target separation is necessary if you care about precision targeting. Shield Bash is a pretty unique defensive that can provide heavy mitigation in combination with Low Blow, but it's almost never warranted. Keeping Low Blow and Interject separate means a player has to interpret what is happening and respond correctly instead of smashing the universal "stop castbar" button. Defenses that work differently warrant having different defenses. Original Bulwark was terrible for TB but great for mob packs. Guardian having a shield gives it something that Rampart can't do, which is negate damage based status effects. I think all of these are interesting to some extent but they require content that is also interesting. Sheltron and Intervention are the only two that I can safely be consolidated though I personally don't mind having them on separate buttons.

We could go the route of giving tanks deeper DPS rotations, but then I feel like there would be no meaningful distinction between tanks and DPS.

[Rithy255]

I feel like the actual problem with a lot of those things is encounter design. Single and AoE target separation is necessary if you care about precision targeting. Shield Bash is a pretty unique defensive that can provide heavy mitigation in combination with Low Blow, but it's almost never warranted. Keeping Low Blow and Interject separate means a player has to interpret what is happening and respond correctly instead of smashing the universal "stop castbar" button. Defenses that work differently warrant having different defenses. Original Bulwark was terrible for TB but great for mob packs. Guardian having a shield gives it something that Rampart can't do, which is negate damage based status effects. I think all of these are interesting to some extent but they require content that is also interesting. Sheltron and Intervention are the only two that I can safely be consolidated though I personally don't mind having them on separate buttons.

We could go the route of giving tanks deeper DPS rotations, but then I feel like there would be no meaningful distinction between tanks and DPS.

Well lets break it down.

• Single target & Aoe are clearly not important to keep seperate because A lot of paladins rotation is already cleave, confiteor doesn't have a AOE Varation. Cleave AOE good for skills like Holy spirit imo.
• Shield bash is a skill that is never useful in 99.99% of content it's only usecase is deep dungeons, it's unique in the fact it's never used, it holds back space for abilities that could actually be useful/fun.
• I don't know what your even talking about with Low Blow and Interject honestly, both should be merged, both are very niche and should be merged for the sake of having actual room on tanks to put interesting skills.
• Rampart doesn't need to exist mostly because we already have bulwark, sheltron & Guardian Having so many defensives to the point they become useless is bad, I'm mostly in favour if making it so tank has one short defensive and one long + invul, we do not need a bunch of different defensives that just mitigations.

I'm not really convinced by much of what you've said

And just to add theirs already no meaningful difference between tanks and dps, Tanks are already boring slow DPS, they should at least be given fun rotations.

[Misdes]

Paladins issue is that it has few too actual buttons, along with other tanks, compared to DPS rotations are slower, theirs way less buttons and because every tank is a Super Tank they don't really have to manage defensives that well outside of anything that isn't Savage+ So you have the gameplay loop of a DPS who's slow.

Goring blade and more combo actions (like a melee DPS) is exactly what tanks need to have rotational varity, PLD is slower then DRK/GNB but had more actual GCD buttons and complexity for this reason, now Paladin is a super slow bland job with a bland rotation.

Why can't we remove Actual Bloat skills Like Shield Bash, having magic AOE/single targets not be separate, Having both intervention and holy sheltron, Having a bunch of defensives that all do the same thing, Theirs so many examples of actual bloat, a GCD skill to manage is not "bloat" it's actual gameplay.

Tanks (and healers) as I see it need to be reworked from the ground up, but Lets not pretend we have damage button bloat, the actual issue is those serval skills that all serve the same purpose or outdated mess skills like shield bash, that only get justified because some guy will cry about deep dungeon paladins.

Meaningful GCD skills need to be added, goring blade should be reverted to a gcd rotational button as paladins rotation is very bland, Though a larger rework that adds depth and complexity is more or less needed for every tank, even some procs and RNG would be great.

I agree with so much of what you've said in this thread but I think this is the most important bit. Paladin's button bloat is insane right now and so much of the kit serves little to no purpose ESPECIALLY outside of High-End. (I still wanna pull my hair out every time I use Bulwark)
I would love to see Shield Bash reworked, maybe into an OGCD (Perhaps Shield Smite from the PvP kit?), Bulwark put back on Sheltron and at the very least make Goring Blade a filler skill again. Keep preaching!

[PyurBlue]

Well lets break it down.

All of that makes sense but it's not exactly addressing the point I was making. While there are a bunch of niche, useless, and redundant abilities this is because we don't have encounters in which to use them and not due to the abilities being inherently worthless. Shield Bash going from something to be avoided to having value in deep dungeon is an example of what I mean. We're not gaining anything just from having the skills, we also need the right environments in which to use them.

And just to add theirs already no meaningful difference between tanks and dps, Tanks are already boring slow DPS, they should at least be given fun rotations.

I would rather address this by differentiating tanks instead of giving up and accepting them as another flavor of DPS unless there is no way to improve encounter design at all.

[Rithy255]

All of that makes sense but it's not exactly addressing the point I was making. While there are a bunch of niche, useless, and redundant abilities this is because we don't have encounters in which to use them and not due to the abilities being inherently worthless. Shield Bash going from something to be avoided to having value in deep dungeon is an example of what I mean. We're not gaining anything just from having the skills, we also need the right environments in which to use them.



I would rather address this by differentiating tanks instead of giving up and accepting them as another flavor of DPS unless there is no way to improve encounter design at all.

1. Shield Bash being useful in content would mean other tanks would need a version of shield bash, I rather it become a generalist DPS Ogcd skill for that sake, Other abilities like bulwark (as I've pointed out) are already covered by skills like Sheltron, so I see no use of having multiple defensives that do bassically the same thing (mitigate damage). Their use case is "see tank buster and press button" but we already have buttons for that.

2. I agree but I also disagree, Tanks should get more interesting separate tank mechs, making use of skills like Cover unironically would make tanks pretty cool, but this doesn't mean tanks shouldn't also get to do more stuff DPS wise, I'm also in favour of Healers having more to heal but still having more dps buttons as both aren't mutually exclusive funnily enough. Giving tanks/Healers more fun DPS options is the safest bet to at least make these roles actually more fun in all types of content though.


As a side note, if you had any examples of how you would make tanks more interesting I'd be willing to hear you out, I think it's really hard to actually design meaningful tank mechanics that would justify keeping skills like Shield Bash.