Paladin 3.0 - Now with +1 Button

[Lucavi]

Well at least they're following up on the whole theme of Raw Intuition exposing you from every direction besides the front. Not even a piece of cloth draped across the back. So awful. Chivalric body will remain until 3.1+ I guess

Its just odd. I know there has never been a "traditional" warrior AF because anyone who started off as a warrior in a game just looked like their default self, with the exception of Knight and Berserker in certain games. You can't compare Warrior to, say White Mage or Dragoon, even in games where people don't really rock the full-blown AF, but at least they have an identity. I could say they don't want to roll War AF into viking themes because they could always release Viking as a job later (The AF speaks for itself, Limsa is a bunch of fucking marauders that plunder, and certain games, like FFIII and FFA:2 have done the job justice, ESPECIALLY A:2 with its focus on theivery, hard hits and lightning magic), but modern day depictions of vikings are cliched and horrible, and they could have actually stuck to the source material for Warrior AF, while keeping Viking looking like its stupid horned-helmeted modern caricature, and still had both end up looking different.

Pld, though, I agree with. I like everything save for the body. I appreciated them putting a little Cecil in there with the red interior of the frill thing, but eh, until they straight up allow for capes and hooded cloaks, I'm not feeling it.

The wind and water effects are too good in this game for me to not have a hooded cloak by now. Seeing my character's grizzled mane coming in from a rainstorm with a billowing, wet cowl.... bah, I want to see it!

[Taint]

PLD: Even Fashion out parses us

[Niiro]

The only way Viking/Berserker was ever gonna happen is if they had followed thru with branching classes.

And it's pretty clear they want everyone to forget classes exist at this point.

[BaneTheBrawler]

armory system RIP in pieces

[Dr. Pavel]

Sole member of the Adores PLD AF3 Club: check

I think it looks pretty good on my female cat but I can see how it'd look way too flowery and weird on male characters, it looked goofy as hell on Solkzagyl in the level 60 job quest.

[Ophannus]

Valerian armor is inspired from tactics ogre...maybe one day we'll see FFT inspired armor. I don't mind capes on PLD, i thought it was weird that ffxi plds didnt have capes, as every other knight/pld in ff series had a damn cape. Hell even dragoons had capes in older ff games.

[Lucavi]

Valerian Dragoon is straight up from Tactics Ogre, and I fucking love it!

But yes, lets work on that physics engine and get us some capes. Please. Make it happen.

[Seravi Edalborez]

So I was listening to LBR reflect this weekend about where Paladin is at the moment (with a couple inaccurate perceptions like "that's all Sword Oath does?" and "it's the mitigation tank" though they did admit the 2nd one isn't that relevant in a "DPS DPS DPS" meta) and have some silly ideas that will never happen about how to kick PLD up a level while not making it too complicated and not overly homogenizing it. Instead of trying to significantly up its DPS to the level of DRK and WAR, we will nudge it a bit and instead give them some increased utility.

Sword Oath: Make off-GCD and into a toggle that is not mutually exclusive with Shield Oath. Essentially this is now Darkside and Shield Oath is now Grit.

Shield Oath: Every time (x happens), PLD gains a stack of "Paladin's Pledge", which stacks to a max of 5 (less?). Stacks can be expended to power up certain actions or enable actions that require Pledge stacks. We're essentially making this like MCH ammo but with a trigger. Ideas for trigger:
-Every time you block with shield. This synergizes well with the below suggestion for Sheltron, but still has the same problem PLD always has right now: "fuck you we're doing magic".
-Every 10% of HP lost. Prevents you from building stacks too quickly.
-Here's an idea I like: Every time you use Shield Swipe (see below suggestion), Spirits Within, or Circle of Scorn. This is still making it MCH-y or WAR-y but whatever, it's the least "fuck you over"-y. Could also tie it to major cooldowns instead (Ramp/Sent) but meh.

Shield Swipe: 60s off-GCD that also adds Trick Attack-like effect for 10 seconds.

Cover: You gain 10% (20%?) damage reduction regardless of whether or not you're actually taking the Cover hits for your Cover target. With a Pledge stack, target gains 10% damage boost for the duration ("Phalanx Formation: Under the mantle of a friendly shield, boosting damage dealt."). Essentially this is now (mini-)Rampart + mini-Bole. We could just give it one or the other and axe the Pledge.

Tempered Will: Also grants immunity to spell interruption for duration. With a Pledge stack, gives a AoE Regain to the party (15 TP/tick for 15 seconds).

Divine Veil: Cut the whole heal trigger part of this and make it just a on-demand party AoE shield (and include yourself). Requires a Pledge stack.

Sheltron: Give this the Disable treatment - lower duration to 6 seconds instead of 10, but have it block everything. Either make the cooldown longer or make it require a Pledge stack.

Clemency: Instant-cast with a Pledge stack.

Fight or Flight: Reduce TP costs for duration, like DRK's new Blood Weapon does. I considered suggesting this get a party AoE buff (5 or 10%) with a Pledge but not sure if that's too over the top.

Bulwark: Because we made Sheltron better, let's instead make this a block strength booster instead of a block rate booster. Boost block mitigation by (flat) 40% while active.
While we're at it, make a natural block worth a shit too, let's up that to 30 or 40%.

The design goal here is "if I can't do high DPS, I'll make sure everyone else does", adding real utility, and cementing PLD as the defensive/support tank. Over the top? Probably. But it's an idea from the peanut gallery.

edit: basically the return of PLD/NIN.

[Carth]

So I was listening to LBR reflect this weekend about where Paladin is at the moment (with a couple inaccurate perceptions like "that's all Sword Oath does?" and "it's the mitigation tank" though they did admit the 2nd one isn't that relevant in a "DPS DPS DPS" meta)

I had to stop listening when they said a 10% damage increase is better than current Sword Oath. It'd actually be fine if it was oGCD.

Your ideas are pretty good though.

[Lucavi]

I think that shield swipe would be pretty OP. I'd be fine with it just being off the GCD so I could actually use it.

[Dotsudoku]

PLD turning into the AST of tanks is a fantastic idea. Avoids the homogeneity of making all tanks equal DPS, plays into the idea of the support tank

[Carth]

I have been throwing out that general idea for the past few pages though.

[Seravi Edalborez]

After walking away from that post a bit, I realized that the downside to tying a lot of the support effects to Shield Oath would be pigeonholing it as a main tank. Could swap around the base and bonus effects so that it is also good as OT (in the case of double PLD) but honestly A: who gives a fuck and B: this isn't going to ever happen anyways.

The main idea is just that if you introduce an extra resource that is not particularly convoluted (Aetherflow, Wrath/Abandon, Ammo, Dark Arts I guess) you can open the door to a nice amount of extra shit and counterbalance it by saying it's limited or has a cost or whatever. Like we all want Clemency to not be shit or for 1/4th of our buttons to not be worthless in a raid environment, but it should be deeper than a kneejerk and I don't think they are ever going to straight up make Clemency that easy to use (which is why I proposed the interrupt-guard on Tempered Will, or maybe even on shield blocks which would make Sheltron like Surecast). I grant that this is also a sort of homogenization if you give every class a resource-manager but I dunno, I'd say PLD needs this.

Plus we know that they can both
-Turn a GCD into a off-GCD (Wanderer's Minuet)
-Put MP costs on off-GCDs (DRK.jpg)

So really the door is wide open in regards to what is POSSIBLE. It's just a matter of how much they want to rock the boat. Which is unlikely given how they want to keep PLD so simple.

Pardon my wishlisting, boredom strikes hard.

PLD turning into the AST of tanks is a fantastic idea. Avoids the homogeneity of making all tanks equal DPS, plays into the idea of the support tank

Really this is the kind of thing I would have liked to see on AST: tie certain moves to stack the odds of getting a certain card. Even with the little bump AST got, I feel my proposed PLD buffs just kind of shit on it and Ninja both in terms of what it's providing for consistent raid utility. But I mean, has PLD ever been in that position where everyone agreed it was OP? Everyone should get a turn, I guess.

[BaneTheBrawler]

i'd rename your Pledge buff Royal Authority, remove that as an ability, buff rage of halone, and give plds a decent aoe dps skill. Something similar to Holy (aesthetically), perhaps.

[Seravi Edalborez]

i'd rename your Pledge buff Royal Authority, remove that as an ability, buff rage of halone, and give plds a decent aoe dps skill. Something similar to Holy (aesthetically), perhaps.

Flash: With 5 Pledge stacks, becomes Holy Blade (whatever). 350pot AoE, ignores Shield Oath damage penalty, has increased enmity.

'course the downside here is I made only 3 abilities grant Pledge stacks and none of them can be pre-stocked out of combat Use less stacks or have higher potency, idk.

[TheDirtyHobo]

There's no way most of that shit happens, though. It's way too much actual rework when they can just tweak some numbers and effects on things and call it a day.

Though giving the oaths the grit/DS type rework was something I had been toying with in my head. I was thinking along the lines of making Oaths cost the same current MP, non-exclusive, off-GCD 1min duration/recast.

[Carth]

While I was leveled synced below 50 (and realized how much of a fucking snoozefest PLD is with 1-2-3 syndrome), I realized the main issue going from level 50 to 60.

Sword Oath represented ~18% of PLD's damage back in 2.x, and Shield Swipe gave a damage increase. With the introduction of Goring Blade and Royal Authority, both of these abilities, especially Shield Swipe were lessened in value.

In other words, PLD's damage is held back by the GCD. Of course everyone knows this. However, what isn't talked about is how PLD's meta was effectively reset once it hits level 60 and made Rage of Halone even more cancer than it was back in 2.x. Previously, it was all about forcing as many Shield Swipes as possible. Now all of our damage comes from Goring and Royal due to the absurd amount of potency packed in them, forcing the dynamic of Shield Swipe's low TP cost and Potency increase to no longer be a thing. I think SE realized this too, which is why they tried to make it more attractive by giving it an enmity boost. Shield Swipe is supposed to be PLD's method to managing TP (which worked decently in 2.x), but the problem now is that's all it does at the cost of less dps in a dps-based meta.

To summarize, PLD's simplicity is hurting the job because the toolkit lacks synergy. Outside of Fight or Flight, everything about PLD is based on potency since there isn't any modifiers (DRK is roughly the same but they have way more oGCDs and proc-based abilities to make up for this). This makes Goring and Royal trounce literally everything in PLD's toolkit since everything else is a DPS loss.
Shield Swipe and Shield Bash needs to be reworked from the ground up, and there needs to be a better flow within Paladin's abilities. As it stands, the design of the job is biting itself in it's ass and it goes beyond the Oaths being stuck on GCD or Clemency being a joke.

[MrSamuels]

Realistically we can only expect potency buffs for abilities. Hopefully the Tokyo Game Show they actually mention about Paladin being on the radar because them being so quiet about it really has me dubious any of these concerns are even listened too.

I was raiding last night and had another "wow this is really underwhelming now moment" with Paladin. Spirits Within... I know it has a silence which is helpful when needed but this ability is awful when Main Tanking, really no need for the HP requirement to be there anymore, or you know let it scale from HP more so VIT could at least have a little bit of value for a tank.

[Lyall]

Spirits' damage being related to HP% and not HP total seems strange. On one hand, it makes a bit of sense due to the ilvl bloating, but...

[Carth]

Spirits' Within's mechanic is only really there because it's traditional (I only really know XI's SW works similarly, except it's HP total). As it stands the mechanic is pretty terrible because, as stated previously, potency is really the only thing driving PLD forward.