Please give Paladin access to Pugilist skill tree instead of Conjurer.

[Bibimbap]

It's funny, because tanks could use whatever they wanted in 1.X, but the majority wanted it changed to "classic FF Jobs," so now that's what we have.

Personally, I liked it more back then, because there was a reward for leveling every class to 50 since every class made you better. I had crap like Profundity II, Featherfoot II, Foresight II, Contagion, and Cure III on my tank. All of those skills came from different classes, but they all made me a better tank. Now, it's all about staying in the mold... pick your job, play your role, etc... that's what we have now. It's totally cool that you want things from different classes, but SE is probably going to balance it the way they see fit while keeping in-line with traditional jobs, because they already went down the other road and apparently people hated it. Good luck!

[Nictuswolf]

I was really angry when I found out Holy Succor was removed from PLD.

I would agree that Pug wouldn't be a good combo based on Lore.

I would however like to see more than just 4 abilities that are useful or should I say useless.

What I would do is give PLD traits that help with Conj abilities.

Such as :

Holy Advance: Increases Cure by 200% and makes it instant cast, double MP cost and gives it an 8-10 second CD.
Retaliation: Allows Protect to absorb 5% of damage received and reflect it back at the target. This ability can only activate ever 1.5 seconds.
Raise of the Champion: Allows you to cast Raise in combat and you receive no push back while casting, Raise becomes a 30 minute CD.


Obviously these could be played with a bit but it's a start and uses what we already have.

[Powercow]

I'm in the crowd of "just make Cure and Stoneskin useful for Paladin" over "replace all defensive spells with monk abilities."

A potential fix would be to make Shield Oath also double the effectiveness of your Cure and Stonekin spells when cast on yourself. This would make Stoneskin a rather potent 20% HP damage absorption shield with essentially no cooldown (for yourself only), but it would require you to not be interrupted and you're still limited by MP. This would make healing at least worthwhile, and could make for some interesting tactics where a Paladin essentially spams Stoneskin on himself to buy time for a healer to Raise a dead DPS.

[AjoraOak]

1.0 pre-jobs was awful, the 1.0 pld wasn't great at first either but they boosted its enmity and hp basically, at least if I remember correctly. In the end, the post buff Pld was the closest it had ever been to a reliable tank and now it's back to some strange non-healing tank which makes me think they just didn't know how to balance it with the mp regen ws and thus we have a no heal 2.0 pld.

I was hopeful that there'd be some kinda AF bonuses but it seems not, raise is much less useful now as well... ah well?

[Volsung]

It's ok for the spells to be "lackluster" for paladin, but as it stands, Cure is almost "useless" which
is highly different. I think the smart move would be when switching to PLD from gladiator to raise
a stat to make the cures more worthwhile.

If we can't do that we might as well do a different sub.

[Vire]

Remember you have to be very careful about letting PLD cure itself otherwise it will have better self healing then a WAR and a flat 20% damage reduction. I don't really know how you would fix this other then make protect and stoneskin worth casting, give them a combat raise like white mage but with a big cooldown or something and maybe give cnj some kinda defensive cooldown that pld can sub and take?

Right now the theme of the PLD class is damage reduction. It has to play into that.

[Duelle]

Yes, why not? I noted the reason why the spells were merged. But there is something to be said for the "fun" factor that is (at least for me) seeing and hearing shell go up on the party.

You can try to pad your response with the F-word, but that's still a terrible reason for wanting a spell. If the job genuinely needed it because it was missing from its arsenal, I might support such a mindset.

Why does that enhancement have to simply mean 5 abilities and a little damage/healing boost?

Because the five abilities we do get are pretty good on their own in helping flesh out a job's role. I agree on the toipic of job traits, but not affecting cross-class abilities, rather adding mechanics to flesh out the jobs by enhancing their native class abilities or helping the job itself stand out from the class it stems from.

We may not need cure as a mainstay for hate, but with an enhanced toolkit comes a deeper experience. Remember the days when a Paladin could hold hate on a number of mobs simply by curing themselves over and over?

Yes, and looking back on it, I can tell you it was a terrible model on multiple levels.

This isn't correct. Please replay FF IV, Cecil may not be a replacement for a white mage (changes depending on progression in the story); however, his healing is also nothing to sneeze at.

I've played FFIV, and Cecil's white magic was a joke compared to Rosa's. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, someone in the other forums put it best by saying the only real use for Cecil's white magic was that it saved you a turn by having him cast stuff like Protect so that Rosa didn't have to.

[Raijinvince]

It's 15 levels. With a level 30 giving you the 2nd class bonus and the mog cap, it'll take you like 2 hours. Not really a big deal.

[Duelle]

Remember you have to be very careful about letting PLD cure itself otherwise it will have better self healing then a WAR and a flat 20% damage reduction. I don't really know how you would fix this other then make protect and stoneskin worth casting, give them a combat raise like white mage but with a big cooldown or something and maybe give cnj some kinda defensive cooldown that pld can sub and take?

With WHM and SCH already having in-combat raises (as I mentioned, in a modern MMO in-combat rez border ridiculously close to OP without the proper limitations), we don't need another class having it. Much less dumping it on the tank, who will be too busy avoiding stuff while dealing with the boss while keeping them positioned. Same reason why having the tank off-heal doesn't work.

[SwordCoheir]

Quite frankly, I can see why they got rid of Holy Succor. With the introductions of more Cure Tiers, Cure I suffers greatly once you start getting past 20, and with Riot Blade you're MP is more or less infinite which gives PLD a bit too much of an edge especially in solo content if they had a decent cure to their name. Since they also got rid of bonus modifier stats MND/Cure Pot gear would have severely limited uses especially just having it for just Holy Succor so either you hurt your DPS/Enmity Generation or your Holy Succor would end up lacking power.

Although, I don't see why they couldn't give PLD a type of healing ability that's power is based off of VIT, STR, HP, or Defense, give it a 1-2 minute timer and have it consume between 50-200 mp to restrict spammage.

As a compromise to the 5 job specific abilities limit they can combine Sword/Shield oath into one ability as a rotating stance such as Sword > Shield > Off.