Reintroduce Goring blade it as a combo

[ThorinG]

As the title says, PLD needs another Combo and i think Goring blade can be reintroduced to fill that need, it will work as follows:

Combo 1: Royal Authority Combo:
FB -> RB -> RA: grants Divine Might + ATN ready

Combo 2: Goring Blade Combo:
FB -> RB -> GB : grants Sword Oath + ATN ready

Sword Oath:
Duration: 60 Seconds
Deals additional "Ranged" damage of 65 Potency with each Auto Attack
( for added visual effect, when Sword Oath is active Light "or Spirit" swords appears and fly to the target with each Auto Attack)

Other changes:

FoF combo action: instead of Goring blade we can have another action, i wish if it can be a faster or shorter version of Rage of Halone, if done then we can have another new attack as a prior version to Royal Authority.

Divine Might: healing from magic attacks is active only with Divine might spells, and to solve the odd Divine Might in the rotation, let Divine Might be consumed by Confiteor, adding additional 200 potency and grants a heal of 400 potency, the healing will be only on Confi. And not the follow up blade works.

Let me know what you think?

[Carighan]

So this is a combo I press every 60 seconds then, right?

I already have two 60s combos though:

* FoF -> Goring Blade
* Imperator -> Swordgasm combo

Like, all you're doing is replacing the former, right? And I don't exactly see why. The effect isn't even really neat, as FoF is a damage increase, and Sword Oath is a damage increase, and while temporarily making our autoattack ranged is "neat", the actual gain from that is marginal. And if you want to replace Goring Blade with something else, then you're effectively advocating for 3 combos every 60s instead of 2, and that's it.

That is to say, you start with stating "Paladin needs another Combo" as a given, and, no it doesn't? We have way too many buttons already. xD And you want to add more!

That being said, Goring Blade should, well, gore. Cause a long DoT, maybe even 60s, instead of so much instant damage. No functional change, same overall damage if it's on me, just fit the name better.

[ThorinG]

So this is a combo I press every 60 seconds then, right?

I already have two 60s combos though:

* FoF -> Goring Blade
* Imperator -> Swordgasm combo

Like, all you're doing is replacing the former, right? And I don't exactly see why. The effect isn't even really neat, as FoF is a damage increase, and Sword Oath is a damage increase, and while temporarily making our autoattack ranged is "neat", the actual gain from that is marginal. And if you want to replace Goring Blade with something else, then you're effectively advocating for 3 combos every 60s instead of 2, and that's it.

That is to say, you start with stating "Paladin needs another Combo" as a given, and, no it doesn't? We have way too many buttons already. xD And you want to add more!

That being said, Goring Blade should, well, gore. Cause a long DoT, maybe even 60s, instead of so much instant damage. No functional change, same overall damage if it's on me, just fit the name better.

Yeah i see you point, i was thinking of making the PLD rotation reminiscent of the pre-rework PLD (GB into FoF+Req into 2 RA and repeat), my suggestion basically will make the PLD rotation flows as follows:

GB combo -> FoF Combo-> imperator bladeworks -> ATON Combo (FoF end) -> RA+ATON Combo -> HS -> RA+ATON Combo -> repeat.

As for the button bloat i think they can remove at least 2:

-Let Sheltron be targetable on self or others, and remove Intervention.

- let Divine Might upgrades Holy Spirit to Holy Circle, attacking target and surrounding enemies with fall-off damage.

[Rithy255]

I do agree that we need two combos.

I personally don't see the purpose of current flight or fight as the point was to have a separate burst button from requiescat, theirs no point in having a cooldown like FOF especially if we move goring blade outside of it again.

Here's my changes

• Goring Blade combo reintroduced, now grants a buff "Blessed Blade" which will grant your next royal Authority its stacks of sword oath and divine might. (Not using goring blade combo will result in no stacks or divine might)

• Shield Bash reworked as a cone stun, that is a off global cooldown that also deals damage, it would be on a 20s cooldown, gives plds more to weave.

• Fight or flight now becomes a early version of requiescat, imperator deals a 200 potency strike, also buffing your next 4 attacks by 25%, upgraded versions will still have the buffed 25% in addition to buffing the potency of spells

• Holy spirit & goring blade introduced at lvl30 (Spirits within moved to 45) Blessed blade will grant the effects of "blessed blade"

• Holy Sheltron/Sheltron now can target allies, Regular Sheltron grants a regen effect of 100 Potency, Intervention removed.

• Extra space - Holy spirit upgrades into Holy circle a cleave AOE version, Low blow & Interject merged into a skill that will apply a stun, if target cannot be stunned you will Interrupt target, 25s with two charges.

[Carighan]

Fully agreed, we already have a 60s burst selfbuff, and that even enables a whole new combo, so it's strictly sperior to FoF and that effect can be fully merged.

I'd not do the Shield Bash thing though. For one, weaving is just finger busywork with no gameplay depth, and second it'd mess with one of the few cool situations, chain-stun in M6S. It'd be cool to have more gameplay in it, but I'd do that via adding some sort of defensive gameplay to it: Every X seconds, the next Shield Bash becomes "Concussive Shield Bash", applying a "concussion" debuff that reduces damage dealt to the Paladin who used it for a few seconds. Heck I could see that as our short-CD tbh, so every 20-30 seconds it has that effect. Quite fitting for a shield-bearing class to frequently bash enemies with it.

I'd totally be on board with a few more changes though. The level changes are a good idea. The HS/Intervention removal too, though I hope they get the cycle-CD faster than it is, or double weaving HS on us + HS on the other tank in the same weaving slot would probably clip the GCD but eh, minor issue.

I'd also:

* Remove Bulwark. Balance a self-defense-usable Shield Bash like I said above so it effectively replaces it.
* Re-work Holy Sheltron so the effective damage reductions are the same, but it's done via forced blocking + buff to blocked percentage. The blocking is moved here, more for lore/visual purposes. Ideally with an animation where we hold the shield higher/front in the initial 4s.
* If impossible to keep it functionally identical, maybe 100% block rate for 8s + 20% extra block percentage for 4s? Stronger in those 4s, weaker in the other 4s?

[Mikey_R]

All I'm going to say is you have to be careful with how it will interact with the burst phase.

For example, in the past I have done rotations with Goring Blade being a 20 second DoT and 30 second DoT, neither works and I highly doubt a 60 second buff will work either.

For fun, I'll work it out;

Essentially, we are looking at 60 seconds worth of time between Goring Blade uses. At a base of 2.5 seconds, you have 24 GCDs to fill, minus 1 for Goring Blade, 4 for the magic swords then another 5 that accounts for the rest of the Goring Blade combo, we are at 10 GCDs so far, so 14 remaining, which does conveniently fit 2 full Royal Authority combos in.

So, how does it look in practice?

Fast > Riot > Goring > Con(1) > BoF(2) > BoT(3) > BoV(4) > Atone(5) > Sup(6) > Sep(7) > Fast(8) > Riot(9) > RA(10) > Atone(11) > Fast(12) > Riot(13) > Sup(14) > HS(15) > Sep(16) > RA(17) > Atone(18) > Fast(19) > Riot(20) > Sup(21) > HS(22) > Sep(23) > Goring (24) >>>

Your burst is now fixed every minute compared to now where it is based on your buffs that change every minute, even with 100% uptime. Now, whether you prefer that or the current one is down to the individual, however, for me, I would prefer the more flexible option we have now, makes it more interesting.

[Arohk]

No thx, it is good as it is now, dont need more skill bloat.

[Rithy255]

No thx, it is good as it is now, dont need more skill bloat.

Go play gunbreaker or drk then, if you really enjoy 1, 2, 3. It's also not "skill bloat" to rework a existing skill.

Sorry but I don't want goring blade to remain a 60s burst button that doesn't interact with PLD's kit in anyway, we already have 4 60s burst buttons why do we even need goring blade?

[Arohk]

Go play gunbreaker or drk then, if you really enjoy 1, 2, 3. It's also not "skill bloat" to rework a existing skill.

Sorry but I don't want goring blade to remain a 60s burst button that doesn't interact with PLD's kit in anyway, we already have 4 60s burst buttons why do we even need goring blade?

they can add more skills, but not more bloat to the hotbar, reduce the button bloat, then we can talk about adding more stuff.

[Rithy255]

they can add more skills, but not more bloat to the hotbar, reduce the button bloat, then we can talk about adding more stuff.

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.