Paladin 3.0 - Now with +1 Button

[Avarice]

They said aggro changes would happen 3.1 for all tanks

That's too far away. Why would someone make their raid group suffer because they can't do the shit that's needed for the content because their job is handicapped? Raid-wide DPS is really important this tier, retardedly so, and for PLDs to do DPS, they need as much up-time in Sword Oath as possible, and with shit retarded enmity modifiers (especially if someone's group doesn't have a NIN) that's just not going to happen and while making the healers cry bloody murder at the same time. My group's PLD loves the job, absolutely loves it, pushed hard and killed all through A1-A3 on it, but A3 was super fucking close, more than it should've been, and to go into A4S with it, when the check is going to be even tighter? Why add weeks to progression?

All they had to do, at the very least, was adjust the enmity modifiers (there are other things that need addressing, but we'll start small); it was a simple text editor fix and they didn't do it.

[Carth]

Surprising results.

PLD with new enmity mods:

PLD Opener Enmity: 3460
-With Shield Oath: 7958
--Damage Penalty: 6366.4
---Fight or Flight: 8276.32

Now for DRK:

DRK Opener Enmity(With Carve and Spit): 3770
-With Grit: 8671
--Damage Penalty: 6936.8
---Darkside: 7977.32

PLD has the better enmity opener as long as they have Fight or Flight. You can check my work or the rotation that I use (and I feel is the best possible enmity rotation) above.

[Jem]

That's too far away. Why would someone make their raid group suffer because they can't do the shit that's needed for the content because their job is handicapped?

So much this. The differences between jobs matter most when content is fresh and at its most challenging. If the fix comes once everyone is overgeared and even the most sub-optimal set-up can clear it then what does it matter?

Nobody cares about one job being behind the others when it makes no difference to success. People do care about it when taking a certain job is seen as lowering the chance of winning (I.e. When PF's prefer certain jobs). Of course it still matters, just a lot less in the eyes of the majority.

Ideally the fix should have come at 3.07. I'd be a lot less salty about nothing being done if they hadn't given MNK a buff. The other job changes were fine but if they have time to dish out unnecessary buffs to jobs, then they have time to address jobs that actually need changes.

[Jem]

Surprising results.

PLD with new enmity mods:

PLD Opener Enmity: 3460
-With Shield Oath: 7958
--Damage Penalty: 6366.4
---Fight or Flight: 8276.32

Now for DRK:

DRK Opener Enmity(With Carve and Spit): 3770
-With Grit: 8671
--Damage Penalty: 6936.8
---Darkside: 7977.32

PLD has the better enmity opener as long as they have Fight or Flight. You can check my work or the rotation that I use (and I feel is the best possible enmity rotation) above.

What about without tank stances? I don't think anybody is saying PLD has an enmity problem with Shield Oath up. The issue is when you have Sword Oath up and generally outside your initial FoF period. With FoF up you can probably keep hate if you open with multiple Halones but you're going to struggle once FoF ends and if you want to actually use your other more damaging combos. At least that's how it feels to me.

[Carth]

What about without tank stances? I don't think anybody is saying PLD has an enmity problem with Shield Oath up. The issue is when you have Sword Oath up and generally outside your initial FoF period. With FoF up you can probably keep hate if you open with multiple Halones but you're going to struggle once FoF ends and if you want to actually use your other more damaging combos. At least that's how it feels to me.

Kiarax's parse shows PLD still have better enmity generation by ~10% (guesstimation because parse doesn't have Reprisal/Low Blows procs/Blood Price to account for).

Something odd is going on though, because while I was spamming for Eso tomes, a DPS that was doing 1.2k dps for a decent amount of the fight was right on my ass shortly after my opener as PLD (managed to stay on Sword Oath because Neverreap mechanics). Unless DRK has that issue too, which I wouldn't know from experience because 1.2k dps is extremely rare on DF.

[Kiarax]

Yeah DRK has it the same, it's extremely easy to lose hate if you're trying to push your own DPS. I actually managed to kill Aki lastnight in A1S with a royal fount when I lost hate for a second since I don't use Grit at all pre-split! The way I see it is the enmity combo is there for a reason, if we could hold hate simply spamming our DPS rotation it'd be real silly.

I'd love to see them make Oaths/Grit off the GCD (and not break combos) so we could easily swap in to it with Halone/Power Slash prepped to minimize our DPS loss but I don't actually think keeping hate as either class without your tank stance is actually a problem. You adjust to the numbers your DPS are doing and play around it, yeah you're gonna have to give up some damage to keep hate established but that's part of the risk and extra management that comes with dropping your tank stance. In my eyes finding that perfect balance to maximize your DPS is what differentiates a great tank/player and someone who is just average and content with fulfilling their role and not trying to do better.

As a slight aside, I like to believe they added Shadewalker to NIN exactly for this, if you're using your tank stance this skill is essentially completely worthless, but it lets NIN bring even more utility/DPS to a raid by allowing the tank to push their DPS even harder. I actually love how they've designed PLD/DRKs combos now and I'd be a little disappointed if they changed it (and I'd like to see WAR see the same changes).

[Jem]

I think really the issue stems from the outlier in WAR rather than PLD and DRK. Side by side PLD and DRK are pretty reasonable, it's only when you compare them against WAR that things start to look lopsided. WAR seems to gain a lot over those 2 for a very limited loss.

[Carth]

I don't have the numbers on WAR to make any comparison, so I don't want to make any assumptions. All I can really say is WAR has it better since they can easily switch back 'n forth from tank to dps stance, which probably adds on a lot to their effectiveness.

[Prothescar]

WAR's primary advantage has been touched on multiple times: our strongest DPS combo (though not the most important one) also happens to be our enmity combo. Neither DRK nor PLD share this feature. WAR is built around stack accumulation and consumption, as well as strong DPS cooldowns, buffs, and debuffs, for its primary damage output. Lower average potency on combo attacks, but higher potency on spike damage (Fell Cleave, Decimate) which causes WAR's relatively low potency (compared to DRK and PLD's DPS combos) Enmity combo, which is for all intents and purposes akin to Halone and Power Slash, an ideal thing to weave in even when going for 100% Rawrrior status. Effectively, WAR is building enmity while achieving maximum DPS whereas the other tanks need to sacrifice their DPS in order to build enmity.

The design for the classes is disparate, they're gonna play and perform differently in certain scenarios as a result. I'd love to see PLD get some TP efficiency, stance efficiency, and mitigation efficiency updates; the big focus on their shield when the shield can't be used to prevent most of the dangerous attacks in Savage Alex is ridiculous. The balance between enmity combos, on the other hand, is fine: the issue lies in not being able to switch between Shield and Sword oath as readily as a WAR can switch between Deliverance and Defiance to make up for WAR's ability to use its enmity combo without losing DPS. Unfortunately, unless they add an Unchained-like ability for PLD, you're always going to lose DPS by doing this, but still. I believe that's intended.

[TheDirtyHobo]

Effectively, WAR is building enmity while achieving maximum DPS whereas the other tanks need to sacrifice their DPS in order to build enmity.

That's a valid playstyle in itself, but it just highlights the balancing issue when WAR is doing more damage than the other tanks with their "weaker" skills and generating more enmity in the process.

[Carth]

WAR's primary advantage has been touched on multiple times: our strongest DPS combo (though not the most important one) also happens to be our enmity combo. Neither DRK nor PLD share this feature. WAR is built around stack accumulation and consumption, as well as strong DPS cooldowns, buffs, and debuffs, for its primary damage output. Lower average potency on combo attacks, but higher potency on spike damage (Fell Cleave, Decimate) which causes WAR's relatively low potency (compared to DRK and PLD's DPS combos) Enmity combo, which is for all intents and purposes akin to Halone and Power Slash, an ideal thing to weave in even when going for 100% Rawrrior status. Effectively, WAR is building enmity while achieving maximum DPS whereas the other tanks need to sacrifice their DPS in order to build enmity.

This wasn't exactly what I was wondering about, since that was obvious. I'm more wondering about the exact diffrence in numbers between PLD and WAR's enmity over the course of a fight, similar to what my math and Kiarax's parse shows above.

[nyttyn]

It's a lot easier to hold aggro against bosses, I've found, if you open in Shield Oath, Shield Toss for intial aggro, Rage of Halone combo once, and then burn a GCD to swap to SwO for the rest of the fight. You lose a GCD and a bit of damage in total, but it gives you more or less twice the aggro of two SwO Rage of Halone combos, a threat lead that helps considerably with keeping aggro.

It's super depressing they refuse to acknowledge PLDs shortfalls though (nonexistant AoE damage, threat issues in SwO (which they have, at least, acknowledged) thanks to the lower damage as well as threat modifiers on our threat combo, clunk en masse and useless CDs), and I'm probably gonna change to warrior. (Who thought it was a good idea to give us Sheltron and then make nearly every single dangerous attack, and all of the really dangerous tankbusters, magical damage??)

[Taint]

It's a lot easier to hold aggro against bosses, I've found, if you open in Shield Oath, Shield Toss for intial aggro, Rage of Halone combo once, and then burn a GCD to swap to SwO for the rest of the fight. You lose a GCD and a bit of damage in total, but it gives you more or less twice the aggro of two SwO Rage of Halone combos, a threat lead that helps considerably with keeping aggro.

It's super depressing they refuse to acknowledge PLDs shortfalls though (nonexistant AoE damage, threat issues in SwO (which they have, at least, acknowledged) thanks to the lower damage as well as threat modifiers on our threat combo, clunk en masse and useless CDs), and I'm probably gonna change to warrior. (Who thought it was a good idea to give us Sheltron and then make nearly every single dangerous attack, and all of the really dangerous tankbusters, magical damage??)

Sheltron is ok in A2s A3s but it really needs to be 2-3 seconds of block since AAs constantly take it. A2s I just put it up after the dolls use blitz since they turn around and cleave. A3s I try to time it with Fluid but AAs like to steal it.

[Jahaudant]

How about a channeled block with no cooldown? Just toggle/hold the skill to hold up your shield and block 100% of attacks at the cost of not being able to use skills for the duration, or even auto attacking. Maybe have it prevent attacking for a minimum duration of like 5 seconds so using it it always costly dps wise even if you only use it for a split second on a buster.

Edit: Talking about how Sheltron might be changed.

[Kiarax]

Disregarding any real opinion of them doing that, can you imagine how fucking hilarious it would be to watch the full VIT Rage of Halone spamming PLD that have no idea what they're doing suddenly just start doing 100 DPS because they're constantly channeling a block for mitigation? I want to see it happen just because it would be a beautiful disaster.

[Aiurily]

make sword oath passive, and then just make shield oath disable it. that way instead of wasting a GCD to go DPS, you just drop shield oath and end up only using a GCD to go back into tank stance. basically, grit. would be neat

[Jahaudant]

You're right. Implementing that would be a complete disaster even if it was somehow genuinely useful.

[Taint]

The best OF post of all time:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Paladin-Exodus

I really wish I wasn't banned so I could get involved. Also nobody has mentioned WARx2 is probably best for everything.

[Niiro]

That's.....probably one of the most sane and logical OF threads I've ever seen.

[Carth]

Oh look, a thread that I can actually read and agree with.

OP will probably get banned in a week though.