[Guide] Paladin Tanking Compendium (Last update 11/13/13)

[Avarice]

Stop right there!

Use either Allagan Hands + Allagan Feet, or Valor Hands + Valor Feet.

If you want to really min-max for survivability you can get yourself a Hero's Bracelet to replace your Allagan, but on the plus side if you choose not to do that you can continue wearing your Holy Shield +1. Everything else you are wearing/planning on wearing is perfect.

I already have the Allagan Hands, hence why I didn't list them on my "to do," but I don't have them equipped because there's no point wearing them with my Valor Feet. I didn't mean to cause any confusion; my plan is to get the Allagan Feet so that I can finally equip the hands, and then bench the Valor Hands/Feet forever.

[Obsidian]

In light of the proposed WAR adjustments, I made a big long dumb post on the official forums describing some of the kinds of changes I'd like to see for Paladin to keep WAR and PLD balanced against each other instead of just falling back to the 1.0 era of WAR domination (which was no better than the PLD domination going on right now).

Feel free to chip in there or here with your own ideas. Or just call me stupid. Whatever floats your boat.

[Carth]

As I said in the thread, the only thing I worry about is WAR's Wrath abilities pushing their DPS well beyond Paladin's. In terms of durability, it looks equal while in certain situations it can go one way or the other (WAR > PLD vs Magic; PLD > WAR vs a constant stream of high damage). Did WAR get too much mitigation skills? I'll say no. The HP leech mechanic just wasn't going to work unless they made the healing scale vs the content, which I think SE felt wasn't worth the trouble.

That said, I will agree that Bulwark's recast should be shortened to 120s, as it's nowhere near the same potency as Sentinel. I do however disagree with the proposed change to Tempered Will. I've already noted the irony to me saying this, but changing Tempered Will to act like Unchained just steps all over WAR. Furthermore, Tempered Will is a Gladiator ability while Shield Oath is a Paladin ability.

Usually I'd say leave it as it is because shit's situational, but since Holmgang turned into a bag of awesome I don't see why they can't do the same for Tempered. My proposed change for Tempered is to just grant immunity to all non-special debuffs (which means shit like Vulnerability up from Turn 2 would still apply), while also negating knockback. Seems to be a much cleaner tweak to me.

----

The thing about Sword Oath is it's actually underestimated. Assuming Curtana+1, you're getting ~133 Potency per Autoattack. With the proposed change of just giving a straight 10% damage increase, you'll be getting ~91 AA potency, along with 165 potency from Fast Blade, 220 potency from Savage Blade, and 286 potency from Rage of Halone. Spirits Within would be 330 Potency and Circle of Scorn would have a net potency of 275.

Current Sword Oath: AutoAttack x3(~399), Fast Blade(150), Savage Blade(200), Rage of Halone(260), Spirits Within(300), Circle of Scorn(250) = ~1559
Proposed Sword Oath: AutoAttack x3(~273), Fast Blade(165), Savage Blade(220), Rage of Halone(286), Spirits Within(330), Circle of Scorn(275) = ~1549

The current iteration of Sword Oath is actually stronger than a straight 10% buff across the board, and that was just 7.5's worth when you have SW/CoS up. During the cooldown, the auto-attacks are widening the gap.

If you want Sword Oath to be stronger, I would actually propose increasing skill speed or AA speed.

[Lucavi]

I agree with your Bulwark change, but I disagree with your sword oath change only on the grounds that there are better solutions in terms of a buff for it. Instead of straight damage, why not incorporate a enhanced TP gain? I hear my pld constantly complaining about running dry on TP on longer fights, especially fights where he has to pass the buck off to my War. Giving him increased TP gain would eliminate his need for paeon mid-fight and keep him running at full-speed without relying on anyone else holding back at any point - himself included. A flat damage buff would not stop the problem of plds running dry mid-encounter, and you'd still have to slow down at some point. I'd rather a Pld always be able to pump out its maximum rotation if its in a situation where it would have needed the extra damage from sword oath. Obviously this wouldn't consider situations where Pld was solo-tanking, as you wouldn't be using sword oath anyway!

[Obsidian]

I wasn't aware of the relationship for auto-attack potency and also didn't want to stick a stupid number on Sword Oath like 25% or something, but also consider that a raw damage increase would generate more enmity on PLD's main (only, really) combo (which, thinking about it, would pretty much necessitate some kind of enmity suppression attached to it, haha). The goal is just to make Shield Oath something more than the skill you use because you don't need Shield Oath. Skill speed or AA speed would be interesting (if you keep the AA potency), but Skill Speed would almost certainly exacerbate PLD's TP issue on longer fights, as Lucavi points out (I have to stop at least once on Cadeucis to let TP accumulate).

I feel really silly for forgetting GLD exists and Tempered Will belongs to it and not PLD. That said, if it's going to continue to block status effects, I don't think it can be once every three minutes. The ones worth blocking happen far more frequently than that. And I still feel like a way to bypass the damage reduction on Shield Oath would be really helpful. I thought briefly about tying that bypass mechanic to Shield Swipe and instead making it apply to the next weapon skill used, but without comboing you'd do less damage anyway, and I rather liked the idea of giving PLD another full combo to make use of (especially one that doesn't shit enmity so you can use it when off-tanking). At the very least, the Pacification effect needs to apply to more things or be swapped out with something that doesn't suck (a guaranteed block on the next hit? Short damage buff? I dunno).

Since WAR is getting undeniably more effective at crowd control, does anyone object to adding increased enmity to Circle of Scorn?

That character limit on the OF is really aggravating lol. It does not facilitate real discussion in any way whatsoever.

Edit: The problem with the "wait and see" approach is that we'll end up having to wait three months to the next patch to have whatever imbalances these adjustments cause to have them addressed, which is just going to perpetuate this pendulum effect where one tank completely eclipses the other.

[Seravi Edalborez]

That character limit on the OF is really aggravating lol. It does not facilitate real discussion in any way whatsoever.

Can get around that by editing once you have a post up, though then the issue is post limit.

[Obsidian]

Yeah I figured that out, haha.

[Kirbyprime]

So, it's been several months in and I want to bring up Shield Swipe. Anyone using it? Useful? Yes? No?

I personally don't have it on my bar since it's hard to justify losing a GCD off potential Halone combos but it is a DPS spike which PLD doesn't have too much of.

[Carth]

Shield Swipe is crap.

[Exoduso]

I almost never use it unless I really want to pacify a mob, but most bosses are immune to it anyways so yeah... it's crap.

I finally got allagan hands to drop, which tips accuracy in my favor for the first time since I used Darklight legs...
Sitting on +1 shield/sword, Valor head/body/hands/feet, allagan belt and allagan legs, but all my damn jewelry is darklight (plus a hero's ring).
Kind of annoying that I had to go the allagan legs/valor feet route for the time being, but at least with allagan hands I don't have to worry about accuracy anymore until allagan feet drop so I could convert to the allagan feet/valor legs combo.

[Avarice]

I rarely find myself using it; it's damage isn't bad, but being on GCD, using it detracts from putting another RoH combo in, and RoH is a better damage skill.

[Jem]

I rarely find myself using it; it's damage isn't bad, but being on GCD, using it detracts from putting another RoH combo in, and RoH is a better damage skill.

Whilst true that RoH is more damage, Shield Swipe is still a DPS gain as you need to do the full combo to get that 260 RoH potency and that averages out at 203.33 whereas Swipe is 210.

I generally only use Swipe in longer fights or on complete fodder like WP bosses. Longer fights because it can help you running out of TP without having to resort to the TP song. Fodder bosses because hate doesn't shift off me anyway so may as get that slight bit of extra damage is.

I mean correct me if I'm wrong but really the only reason not to use Swipe would be if doing so is going to cause you to lose hate or if the STR debuff would wear if you don't Halone asap.

It's not like using it resets the Rage combo, it just delays it by 1 action. If it reset Rage combo then yeah it would be worthless.


EDIT: We actually had this conversation on our LS forum the other week and we all pretty much agreed we wanted it to be changed. I think 1 person said they wanted it off GCD and useable whenever with a longer recast, someone else said just off GCD with same trigger conditions and I said maybe make it like an inverse conal effect in front of the PLD with same trigger conditions. Or the obvious answer of make Pacification actually land on shit.

[Eurlin]

I generally only use Swipe in longer fights or on complete fodder like WP bosses. Longer fights because it can help you running out of TP without having to resort to the TP song. Fodder bosses because hate doesn't shift off me anyway so may as get that slight bit of extra damage is. .

Pretty much only reason I use Swipe is because My coil group likes to race each other in Cad fight. I mean I'm not going to lose hate so I help win the race! Also Swipe is like he said a great way to manage your TP, so we wouldn't need an enhanced TP thing in those long fights. I Don't think I've ever had TP issues in anything yet.

[Carth]

Shield Swipe for TP management is nice, but that requires a block to trigger it, making it sort of unpredictable unless you have Bulwark up. I'd rather just use Flash a few times.

Taking Shield Swipe off the GCD would be the best move SE could make.

[Jem]

It's unpredictable in that you don't know when exactly it's going to happen but over the course of a decent duration fight, it's going to happen plenty even without Bulwark up. I mean I don't go 'Oh fuck, I'm at 60 TP best start using Swipe now'. I use it proactively to make sure I don't get down to those levels in the first place.

Like for Caduceus I just use it whenever it procs. If DD's were pulling it off me I'd think twice about that but it's yet to happen.

[BerenTebogo]

I use it pretty much exactly as Jem describes. Long fight? Use swipe on cool down, never bitch about TP.

[Carth]

I'll agree that if you have time to have a solid lead in enmity over the DDs, it's worth using for the extra damage gained. That said I find that to be really rare, and T1 and I guess Titan HM have been the only cases where I feel like I'm getting TP starved.

[Raldo]

Silly question from a non-PLD:

Can you use Shield Swipe mid-combo (i.e. between Savage Blade and Halone), and still continue your combo afterwards? I know some on-GCD actions break combos, so I wondered if that was one.

[Jem]

It doesn't break combo.

[BerenTebogo]

I work that shit in everywhere. Shield swipin' dreadnaughts left and right.