Paladin 3.0 - Now with +1 Button

[Niiro]

Pfft, if you want to stance dance without dick-punching yourself go play WAR.

[Carth]

The mutha fuckin Oaths need to be mutha fuckin oGCD.

I agree.

[Edelweiss]

I agree.

Also no MP hit or combo breaking (i'd prefer the latter, if they still think it's necessary to penalize us somehow, beyond a oGCD timer).

[Niiro]

Need that MP for........uh.........yea I think the MP cost can stay >_>

[Edelweiss]

While we're on the subject, Oaths also mean a hit to enmity generation (as there goes one fucking GCD, plus your combo). Spellcasting also kills combos and enmity too.. and you can't block or parry during casts to boot.

It really is just like FFXI (being unable to block or parry during casts, at least before that update during ToAU).

[Carth]

The MP cost is no longer an issue since we're using Riot Blade a lot more, plus Shelltron. Also helps that Clemency is garbage.

[Edelweiss]

The MP cost is no longer an issue since we're using Riot Blade a lot more, plus Shelltron. Also helps that Clemency is garbage.

Clemency is garbage now, but assuming it becomes mildly useful come 3.1, we could find ourselves in a hole again with Riot Blade continuing to be insufficient to even get enough MP for a Flash, let alone Clemency or Stoneskin, etc. Basically, it's not promising, though it'd be a better problem to have over the job just being a dumpster fire.

[Niiro]

I have little faith in Clemency being made useful.

The devs are so terrified of upsetting the precious balance to risk PLD having any useful amount of self-sufficiency.

[Carth]

It's sad because in order to a defense tank to work, they have to be self-sufficient in order to make up for their lack of personal damage.

As it stands, Clemency has the same issues as 2.0 Inner Beast, added with the fact that it's not instant. So it's even less reliable than Inner Beast was.

[TheDirtyHobo]

Also going to echo that Hallowed Ground is a tired argument. Yes, it's the most overpowered mitigation tool in the game, but it's on a 300s cooldown. This means you're only using this once in a fight

It's 420 seconds, and even then you could still reasonably use it twice on some fights (Nael and Bahamut in particular). 300s you could fit it in twice on almost every fight.

[Lucavi]

Just make Pld a Holy Knight from Tactics and be done with it. Making one job innately more tanky than another is meaningless in a game where you optimize all tanks to be able to clear all encounters (requiring defense, hp and mitigation, duh.) All tanks take hits, all tanks hold hate, all tanks should deal damage. Give Pld flashy holy sword skills, including an AOE one for AOE tanking situations, and have those skills do both damage and apply status effects ala. FFT. Get oath off the GCD and get swipe off the GCD and presto.

Gimmie my paycheck, SE.

[TheDirtyHobo]

It's sad because in order to a defense tank to work, they have to be self-sufficient in order to make up for their lack of personal damage.

No, in order to make a defense tank work, you need to increase healing/mitigation checks and decrease DPS checks. The reason they don't work right now is because when the dev team implements such strict DPS checks that weren't anticipated to be cleared yet, players work around it by maximizing the damage that their healers and tanks do to push them over that edge. If they continue that difficulty pattern, we're going to hit a point where DPS checks are simply impassable without solid healer DPS no matter how many weeks you gear up with tomes. Whether that's a good or poor design is completely subjective.

[Taint]

It's 420 seconds, and even then you could still reasonably use it twice on some fights (Nael and Bahamut in particular). 300s you could fit it in twice on almost every fight.

Yeah but that doesn't change how much better Holmgang has become in 3.0 and its on a 180 second CD. Its pretty much a 60% potency Hallowed on a less then half CD timer. (6 seconds and WAR can self heal about 60% of their HP in 1 GCD)

[Carth]

My mistake on the HG cooldown. Been on DRK too long I guess.

No, in order to make a defense tank work, you need to increase healing/mitigation checks and decrease DPS checks. The reason they don't work right now is because when the dev team implements such strict DPS checks that weren't anticipated to be cleared yet, players work around it by maximizing the damage that their healers and tanks do to push them over that edge. If they continue that difficulty pattern, we're going to hit a point where DPS checks are simply impassable without solid healer DPS no matter how many weeks you gear up with tomes. Whether that's a good or poor design is completely subjective.

The problem with this is if the DPS check is lowered, then WAR/DRK gains more value making those DPS checks easier just for the fact that their tank stance deals better damage than PLD's Shield Oath. However, if the Healing/Mitigation check is raised, then PLD gains more value (granted it's not magic-only damage), but could also cause issues for WAR/DRK if they can't mitigate the damage threshold well enough. Pretty much goes back to what I say about fights favoring PLD's tools. A delicate balance SE seems to be struggling with.

[Kiarax]

I think the unfortunate truth is just that if classes remain as they are, WAR+DRK is always going to be more optimal in stronger groups. PLD was (and still kind of is) the "safe" option for tanking and in a higher skilled group you probably don't care about that. Weaker groups might appreciate a PLD, especially on something like A2S where there's significant physical damage coming in and Hallowed Ground can completely trivialize the final wave (which is probably what most groups will struggle with the most), but good groups will be able to work through things fine without it. There's just no way PLDs toolkit can bring more raidwide DPS than having a WAR or DRK in their place, even if we see something akin to Earthshakers again where utilizing Cover can actually be a DPS gain it's not going to be enough to bring up the parties DPS by that large an amount. I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with that design decision (WAR is the big dick DPS tank, PLD is the safe tank, DRK falls in the middle of both) but for tryhard progression and optimizing killspeeds it does pose a bit of a problem, largely due to the combination of how strict current DPS checks are time gated gearing just meaning everyone has to work real fuckin' hard right now.

[TheDirtyHobo]

You can't make a situation in which all 3 tanks are always optimal choices, there's always going to be tradeoff. The problem with fights now is that tradeoff is one-sided as PLD's safety net features aren't necessary, but DPS is extremely necessary. Making things heavier on the healing and tanking side and lighter on the DPS side equalizes the compromise and allows for greater freedom of playstyles and groups without getting rid of the potential for optimization. Right now I think the biggest fluctuation of group skill levels is on SCH and WAR (and WHM to an extent, but more for their capacity to solo heal while the SCH is in cleric). The difference between good and bad ones is far greater and makes a significantly larger difference between a group being successful or failing than whether your MNK is amazing or just average. I love DPSing on healer but I personally don't think it should be required for a group to advance.

[Jem]

Oaths oGCD.
Swipe oGCD with a TP restore tied to it.
Make it so that shield blocks can situationally block magic (either when under Bulwark effect or with Shelltron and increase recast to compensate)
Do something with Clemency

If they want to be extra adventurous, have it so that when Cover is active you restore TP or MP for every hit you cover.

I'd be happy with just the first two though so that stance switching wasn't such a chore and Swipe had a use beyond 20 TP. It's annoying that if you need to stance dance or use swipe, it's guaranteed that debuffs are dropping for a GCD unless you are at a point where you can trim out Royal Authority.

[Niiro]

Allow magical attacks to be blocked and parried at half effectiveness (would be flat 10% for parry, block would vary by the shield).

Now that every tank has block and parry cooldowns I don't see much harm in this other than making block/parry not completely useless in a lot of situations.

[TheDirtyHobo]

I'm somewhat okay with most of the tank busters being magic because it normalizes damage instead of relying on RNG for breathing room. No more "I only had Bulwark for this flatten and I still didn't get a proc"-type bullshit. It also serves to make DRK's mitigation slightly weaker without falling off the face of the earth; Dark Mind mitigates the buster itself but not the hits before/after it, making it more akin to IB than standard PLD cooldowns.

[Neon_Sea]

Can a flash get some damage? Sheiiit