Paladin - A little too simple?

[Tanaya]

Starting off I will say as an endgame paladin, I currently like this job, and for the most part we're pretty balanced. My only balance concern is how much we rely on Flash for Add Tanking and how late we get Circle of Scorn.

Paladin is my first (and currently only) job to 50, and I'm currently in the process of getting Warrior to 50. That said I didn't come here to compare WAR with PLD because that just defeats the purpose of this thread. I don't want Paladin to be more like Warrior, because there's no point in having two tanks working the same way.

But I will say Warrior as a whole has more complex mechanics that takes time to figure out, while Paladin is more of a "what you see, is what you get" type of job. We have the most basic rotation in the entire game, only given slight more complexity once you get Spirits Within and Circle of Scorn. Our defensive cooldowns do their job and I like them, and I always attempt to use the best cooldown for the situation, but they're very simple. When off-tanking, we have Fast Blade > Riot Blade to avoid grabbing too much threat off the MT, and when enmity is solidified, we can switch to our Halone combo.

Which leads me to Sword Oath. Call me naive, but I was hoping for a stronger balance between this and Shield Oath. To be frank, Sword Oath does too little to compete with Shield Oath as a MT, and perhaps this was by design (it's hard to beat 20% damage reduction). When I initially saw these these abilities, I was hoping we'd have to stance dance and use them at the appropriate times, but Sword Oath is too plain as a DPS stance, while Shield Oath is, in a similar manner, too plain as a tank stance.

As a whole, I feel Paladin doesn't have much complexity and is too straightforward as a job. You stack VIT, you get as much defense as possible, and you mitigate as much as possible. No curveballs, no buts, or anything of that sort. Though, I will give credit where it's due. Stun being on GCD allows for interesting application, and Add tanking as a Paladin is challenging in comparison to Warrior.

I'm not here to scream the sky is falling and SE needs to do something. I'm just here to ask if other Paladins feel similarly.

[Soulburn32]

start solo tanking end game bosses if you want more to challenge you

[Tanaya]

^You can bypass the character limit by just editing your post. And I do find Add tanking more fun than main tanking as PLD.

start solo tanking end game bosses if you want more to challenge you

I have. Lack of challenge isn't exactly the issue I'm having though. It's the lack of options.

Which is something that is rather tricky to implement on a job that is, for all intents and purposes, in a good place in terms of balance. We have abilities that are just junk for the most part (Shield Swipe, almost every cross-class skill), and the rest just serves to mitigate damage. Sword Oath is outright terrible to use as a MT for anything endgame-related as well. But while we can poke and prod at the individual issues that Paladin has, it doesn't negate the fact that Paladin as a whole is a job that works.

As for the current topic at hand, I feel if anyone wants to add more complexity to Paladin, it should start with changing Sword Oath to make it more competitive with Shield Oath.

[TouchandFeel]

We have abilities that are just junk for the most part (Shield Swipe, almost every cross-class skill)

I find this to be very true. Most of the abilities that we can use cross-class seem like they might be neat, but for the most part don't really bring much to the table, especially once you get towards end-game content.
The CNJ abilities are okay at best but only when soloing and cure is pretty much useless.
The MRD abilities are a little better. I use Bloodbath+Flight/Fight+Convalescence together in boss fights to slow my health degrading if the healer needs some help.

[Giantbane]

The MRD abilities are a little better. I use Bloodbath+Flight/Fight+Convalescence together in boss fights to slow my health degrading if the healer needs some help.

Convalescence doesn't seem to improve Blood bath "heals". Blood bath is a health absorption instead of a direct heal, it restores health based on damage done. Convalescence and other +heal% abilites don't appear to improve that type of health restoration at all.

[TouchandFeel]

Convalescence doesn't seem to improve Blood bath "heals". Blood bath is a health absorption instead of a direct heal, it restores health based on damage done. Convalescence and other +heal% abilites don't appear to improve that type of health restoration at all.

Yeah, I noticed that it doesn't seem to work with Bloodbath.
I use it when, as I stated, the healer needs some help, so Convalescence helps me get more healing from what the healer can do and Bloodbath is just a little extra.
The description for Convalescence is pretty misleading IMO, since it makes it sound like it would work with Bloodbath.

[Kitru]

PAL needs the Riot Blade combo to get extended to a third that's "got" to be used once every 2-3 Halone combos. Some people have suggested adding some type of self-heal, though, personally, I think they need to rip the 10% Str redux from Halone and put it on the Riot Blade extension, if only to balance out the need for WAR to rotate into Storm's Eye every time. Either that or give an mp cost to Halone so that you have to swap in Riot Blades to maintain resources. The fact that all PAL has to do is spam Halone because it applies debuff *and* is the max enmity/damage rotation makes them both boring and *way* better at WAR for enmity generation (same damage but they get to spam their high enmity combo 100% of the time rather than 50-66% of the time).

PAL is boring because there isn't any complexity *at all*. You have a single AoE threat ability and a single damage/threat combo. Riot Blade only exists to recover mp after you've bottomed yourself from Flash spam so, unless there's a *lot* of add tanking in a single fight that can't be handled with target swapping, you really just use Halone ad infinitum because Halone does *everything*. On top of that, it's not like *anything* that PALs have has a downside to its use so it's all incredibly straightforward. Hell, even their AoE has no downside since it doesn't impact their ability to use ST attacks (because it costs MP rather than TP) and doesn't break CC.

I don't want PAL to be the same as WAR, nor should it be, but it most definitely needs to be fixed such that it's not just a single combo spam that does absolutely everything that you could ever want. It needs a reason to use Riot Blade, which it really doesn't have. It needs to have some stuff that actually has a potential downside so that you actually have some choices to make, rather than just having a single option that's the explicit *best* option for any given scenario.

[Jahaudant]

PLD is extremely simple and I wish the job was far less passive than it currently is.

I suggested the following in another thread, and I still believe it would be a great change without causing serious imbalance.

Bulwark as we know it should be completely changed from a buff skill, to a weapon skill that combos from Riot Blade which would also be tweaked slightly to provide it with some synergy with the new focus of the combo - mitigation. The new Fast Blade > Riot Blade > Bulwark combo would work like this:

Riot Blade
Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Combo Action: Fast Blade
Combo Potency: 230
Combo Bonus: Restores MP,
Shield block the next magical or physical attack
Duration 1 second.

Bulwark
Deliver a shield attack with a potency of 100
Combo Action: Riot Blade
Combo Potency: 200
Combo Effect with Riot Blade: Increase block rate by 40%
Duration 5 seconds.

This would give PLD more of an active role in that they need to constantly evaluate whether more enmity is required (via Halone combo) or more mitigation is required (via Bulwark combo).

The idea is that you can time Riot Blade to help mitigate particularly damaging attacks that you know are coming, and that the buff from Bulwark is reduced in potency and duration from it's original and the duration is low enough that you cannot maintain 100% uptime on it even if you spam that combo. Starting a Halone combo will see your Bulwark wear off shortly after Savage Blade, leaving you without the buff for at least 10 seconds. Additionally, even spamming the new Bulwark combo will see your shield block buff drop for 2.5 seconds per cycle but it wears off just around the same time you use Riot Blade. This is to try and move away from the mindless 1 2 3 spam we currently employ, and promote use of good timing, and force tanks to focus more heavily on what they are doing, and what is coming next.

[Churchill]

You would lose hate if you had another combo to work in. That's not an assumption or a guess, it is a fact.

[Jahaudant]

You would lose hate if you had another combo to work in. That's not an assumption or a guess, it is a fact.

Threat management is what this change forces you to consider, but your assertion that doing anything other than Halone for 7.5 seconds would immediately drop you from the top of the enmity table is simply wrong.