Paladin 3.0 - Now with +1 Button

[Carth]

PLD gets the job done, but it's in no way optimal for any speedrun period. The lack of AoE damage really kills any hopes of that.

DRK is the better tank because it has more cooldown usage (Dark Dance is 60s while Bulwark is 180s. Just an example), and it just outright deals more tanking damage. WAR is just outright better in every conceivable way. The only argument you could make is Hallowed Ground being the better cheese button.

[Taint]

DRK for dungeons. Zero TP issues, allows you to sprint to pick up mobs using MP all while doing DPS.

WAR is best for everything else. Superior enmity, DPS, and mitigation. The self healing is what really sets WAR apart.

PLD just doesn't bring enough to the table to compete with DRK and WAR.

Raid wise. DRK brings INT down, and reprisal. WAR bring Path, Eye, Holmgang (3 min timer is super useful in Raids) plus the best opener for establishing enmity. PLD brings Divine veil (great JA on way too long of a timer) and Hallowed which gets killed by its 7 min timer.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Is there no niche or specific fight where it has any kind of unique cheesing use? I remember Hallowed being used to cheese some mechanics at times but I imagine Living Dead accomplishes nearly the same objective (granted that it requires a healer bailout) when needed and has a shorter cooldown to boot.

Rather, is it still the worst tank DPS in raids? By a huge margin or not that much? For frame of reference I've been out of it since before 3.1.

[Taint]

Is there no niche or specific fight where it has any kind of unique cheesing use? I remember Hallowed being used to cheese some mechanics at times but I imagine Living Dead accomplishes nearly the same objective (granted that it requires a healer bailout) when needed and has a shorter cooldown to boot.

Rather, is it still the worst tank DPS in raids? By a huge margin or not that much? For frame of reference I've been out of it since before 3.1.

Its the worst in all fights. For various reasons.

A9S is a physical fight but the damage output is tuned WAY WAY too low. You take the higher DPS and DRK plunging to Faust to completely avoid a tank buster will always be fun and rewarding.
A10S is another physical fight but you tank swap a few times. DRK/WAR swap much better than PLD/WAR. PLDs Royal combo using Savage blade is an annoying unnecessary pain during swaps, otherwise its a tie.
A11S tanks take very little direct damage, its more of a dance with magical raid attacks. Eye+reprisal win big here and you want INT down.
A12S sucks on PLD. The tank busters hit hard and are magical. DRKs Darkmind and Reprisal really smooth out the fight even at i270.

[vagus]

sE still hasn't fixed this? pLD still sucks as tanks?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Obsidian]

Rather, is it still the worst tank DPS in raids? By a huge margin or not that much? For frame of reference I've been out of it since before 3.1.

Under ideal circumstances it's probably the best single-target DPS of the three. The problem is that the rest of the toolkit is so bad that it doesn't matter, and ideal circumstances require a WAR to be present anyway.

[Carth]

Under ideal circumstances it's probably the best single-target DPS of the three.

What ideal circumstances are those? If main tanking, DRK should get ahead due to Low Blow procs.

[Edelweiss]

sE still hasn't fixed this? pLD still sucks as tanks?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

They won't make major changes to anything unless it's an expansion/start of a new cycle (x.0); this time it was specifically stated by Yoshida that we're getting two DPS roles because of the imbalance among healers and tanks.

Basically, their excuse about "balance" among tanks and healers as an explaination why we get two DPS roles with Stormblood is suspect; you could can make an argument that the "balance" among DPS is just as bad as it is among tanks and healers. MNK brings no party utility to the table, BLM and SMN aren't optimal for speedruns. Since you can argue it's a fundamental issue with the classes themselves, then they're in the same situation PLD is.

TL;DR: PLD is fucked up still, expect convoluted attempts to make it roughly even with DRK and WAR, 50:50 shot they totally miss the mark and its a repeat of Heavensward. Also bonus tank nerfs (STR/VIT scaling rolled back to .4 each or maybe other nonsense).

[Lucavi]

Are Drks that strong for raid tanking now? That's pretty awesome. I remember feeling pretty underwhelmed for awhile aside from that feeling of having cool new buttons to press.

Also, kicking mobs in the dick never got old. Ever.

[Dein]

DRK is about as good as it was when it was first released aside from a few QoL tweaks for some skills. The problem is, PLD just doesn't bring enough to raids to really warrant its use like everyone has said. Between the two classes I've felt that their dps is actually pretty close when main tanking against a single target but once more targets get added PLD falls behind fast. There's just no reason one tank should have almost zero AOE capability and I really hope this gets addressed in Stormblood.

[Edelweiss]

It's more that it loses the least from being the "main" tank, though I guess if it's something you can tank in Deliverance or outside of Grit it's still a matter of supplying Low Blows procs and shit to the DRK (which means more DPS).

[Alistaire]

sE still hasn't fixed this? pLD still sucks as tanks?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The only times in 3.x PLD got better was when SE designed fights around them. There hasn't really been any work in improving the job itself.

[Taint]

Low blow isn't a big factor is raids due to the slow pace of parriable attacks. Shield swipe can at least be force priced.

DRK pulls away due to having an excellent burst. When you have 10 seconds of burst DRK and WAr shit in PLD. The more organized the group the bigger this gap is.

On a dummy PLD is quite impressive.


But even with equal DPS DRks toolkit is round and strong.

[Edelweiss]

DRK pulls away due to having an excellent burst. When you have 10 seconds of burst DRK and WAr shit in PLD. The more organized the group the bigger this gap is.

^This as well.

Burst DPS is the only DPS that matters, to be blunt.

In addition to the non-existant burst DPS, it doesn't help that Divine Veil, for example, still has the absurd healing-recieved conditional attached to it to actually make it take effect on the party (which is something they outright refused to remove despite changing it to allow Clemency to trigger it).

[Obsidian]

They didn't change Clemency (well, they did but not in the way you're talking about), they changed the trigger condition. It originally couldn't be triggered by curing yourself. Which was somehow even more retarded than the way it is now.

Meanwhile WAR is over there with Equilibrium.

[Edelweiss]

Reread what I said.

I mean I guess maybe it wasn't clear, but yes, i'm not talking about casting Clemency on a party member. It still doesn't change the fact it's downright retarded. lol

[Obsidian]

I understand what you wrote. Originally to trigger Divine Veil you had to be cured by another player. You couldn't trigger it by curing yourself with Cure or Clemency. It wasn't a flaw with Clemency. They changed Divine Veil so that you could cure yourself to trigger it, either with Cure or Clemency.

And yes, the conditional activation is fucking retarded.

[Lucavi]

Give Pld Biotic Field from Overwatch and I'm happy(ier). Pld needs more diversity. A shit ton more of an identity other than "guy with white armor that uses a sword and board and likes to twirl his sword around when activating average abilities."

They need a lot, but I'd love to have a strong front-line aoe HOT to both build aggro on everything around and keep the squishy melees in the fight.

[nyttyn]

Both PLD and WHM have serious identity issues at the moment, along with Scholar basically being the most broken class in the entire game for PvE content thanks to the fairy. I honestly believe them when they say that they didn't introduce a new tank or healer because of re-balancing the current triads - they're both absolute messes right now.

Of course it's entirely possible they were blowing smoke out their asses when they said that. However, if we take into account the fact that, between it taking them like a year of dev time to make a new class, the fact that Paladin basically needs to become a new class entirely with how badly so many of their skills need to be either changed or replaced altogether, Scholar's supremacy being caused by deep-rooted issues in the class design itself that raw number tweaks won't properly fix, and White Mage needing a lot of love as well...we're left with the exciting possibility that they spent so much effort on PLD it basically is a new class now, which would explain both why there were only two new classes, and why neither was a tank or a healer.

The alternative, again, is that they just gave us more damage and called it a day, but class design in this game is generally good and I'd honestly rather be hyped for Paladin getting to potentially be a real, interesting class rather than just assume the worst.

[Kiarax]

I mean, Paladin is literally by design always going to be weaker than DRK and WAR when it comes to DPS, they said themselves that that's how they designed the 3 tank classes and I don't see them ever budging on that. As long as that's the case PLD is always going to be inferior to DRK because the extra mitigation they bring is never going to be relevent enough to give up extra DPS. The only exceptions would be bleeding edge progression if we actually get a hard raid tier again (aka Divine Veil is the only way to live through some raid aoe kind of like how insane A4S was in the first couple of weeks) or if Cover can straight up break mechanics similar to Earthshaker in T13 and it results in a substantial DPS gain for the party (also ridiculously unlikely). I enjoy PLD and it can help cover weaknesses in bad groups/PF parties in some silly ways but I don't think it'll ever have a place in any optimized group setting. I'd love for 4.0 to prove me wrong though.