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  1. #321
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    Quote Originally Posted by Damane View Post
    isnt the change of cross clasding system allready a buff to pld dps? I mean unless they exclude all tanks from accessing dps abilitys


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    PLD's problem isn't (single-target) DPS. PLD's problem is literally everything else aside from single-target DPS.

  2. #322
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alkar View Post
    Tanks and healers getting the biggest change was mentioned by Yoshida himself, how can you not see it? Wether it's true or not remains to be seen but he said that. Also the big overhaul involves the cross class changes and them removing certain skills that are similar across multiple jobs to implement new ones that will make each one more unique, or so they say. Tanks and healers are the biggest offenders here because some spells and abilities are required to have no matter what and were copy pasted to all of them (cure spell tiers, raises, esunas, sentinel or other similar buffs, etc).
    It's not hard to see why these roles would get the biggest changes if all of this turns out to be true given that a good portion of their skillsets would have to be revamped.
    Yeah, same guy also said the biggest problem are DPS rotations. There's no huge gap between Tanks and Healers due to skill bloat, there is however when it comes to DPS roles, which is what he was talking about in the revamp, he even mentioned "less used skills."

    I can promise you Tanks and Healers use all of their skills lol, there may be 1 or two exceptions I can think of, but there's a ton of less used skills from the DPS jobs the majority of the playerbase doesn't use.

    Tanks and Healers honestly need the less changed to them, they're EASY to play and while on controller it can be a pain for some jobs (DRK's combos for example at times) but I promise you Yoshida is referring 99% to DPS jobs.

    Will Tanks/Heals benefit from it? Definitely, I suppose - but the skill gap is with the 50-60 rotation change and skill bloat, which is more of a DPS problem than it is tank/heal problem.

  3. #323
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    Point out a tank that uses Foresight and Tempered Will frequently. Point me to one that uses Clemency and I'll show you an idiot.

    Mercy Stroke is a pretty stupid skill too but I'm sure it's high on usage charts because it's off GCD. Every job has useless skills.

    Being a tank is easy. Being a good tank is not, and a bad tank is far more noticeable than a bad DPS.

  4. #324
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    Mercy Stroke is awesome! Time that shit right and you get a huge free heal. Not to mention a free 200potency attack

  5. #325
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    PLD and DRK need an overhaul because they play like ass compared to WAR.

    Sure people can find DRK fun but at the end of the day its a whole lot of button mashing to do similar DPS to a PLD and less DPS than a WAR.

    Stance dancing on DRK is clunky and costly, you lower your DPS to put grit on, due to its MP cost and turning it off leads to clipping.

    PLDs stancing dancing uses a GCD each way, but since the MP is useless the GCD is the only cost to DPS. (big cost but not clunky)

    Tempered Will needs another function, its 99% useless, easily could be paired with Awareness. Clemency is a joke compared to Equilibrium. Shield bash needs to be oGCD on a 20 second timer.

    PLDs AoE DPS should have been fixed with 3.0. It really kills the job.

    WAR needs a penalty for stance dancing, losing stacks would change the job a lot, while not crushing its smooth play.

    Slashing resist needs to just go away.

  6. #326
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    Just an idea for how they can balance tanks and bring them a bit more in line with each other while giving the player a fair bit more utility

    Warrior -
    Loses 3 stacks upon changing between Defiance and Deliverance
    Berserk - Recast Timer Increased to 2 minutes (+30s from current timer)
    - Inner Beast will increase the duration of Berserk by 5s with each use
    - Fell Cleave/Decimate/Steel Cyclone will reduce the duration of Berserk by 2s with each use
    - When under the effect of Berserk for longer than 20s the Warrior will become more vulnerable to incoming damage
    Raw Intuition, Vengeance, Berserk no longer provide additional stacks
    Fracture - When applied with Berserk you will gain a stack when the target suffers from Fracture's damage
    Butcher's Block - Reduced enmity generating.


    Dark Knight -
    Blood Price - Renamed to Blood Syphon, creates a tether to the current target the DRK is fighting, the longer the target is focused the greater the MP is recovered
    - Blood Weapon cancels the buff instantly upon use
    - Each tic recovers 3% of the players max MP (15% total MP recovery)
    - at 5s the player recovers 10% max MP
    - at 10s the player recovers 15% max MP
    - at 15s the player recovers 20% max MP
    Total max MP recovery - 60%

    Delirium acts as a slashing debuff.


    Paladin -
    Shield Bash renamed to Shield Dash
    - 20s oGCD acts as a gap closer and stun, the greater the distance the higher the potency of the stun, base potency 70, capped potency 250 - greater enmity generated based on distance as well.
    Shield Swipes enmity reduced
    Flash rework -
    Sword Oath - Single Target 150 potency attack with enhanced enmity
    Shield Oath - AoE target 110 potency attack, greatly enhanced enmity
    Circle of Scorn places a holy circle on the ground greatly enhancing the TP recovery of all players standing inside of it, 15y
    Sheltron - No change to block chance, can now block against magical attacks - Devastating Attacks (TB) can only be reduced by half if magical ( Ex. your block strength is 24% that's cut to 12%)
    Clemency - Full Cure / Cleanse for the PLD - Consumes 95% MP w/3 minute recast timer. Removes all removable debuffs - Greatly enhanced enmity upon use Instant cast

  7. #327
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    WAR - I wouldn't over fix, what isn't broken. I do think they need a penalty for stance changes however.

    DRK - interesting idea but the job is already over complex IMO. If anything I'd just delete dart arts. Its a cool ability but it over complicates the job and is why 99% of DRKs suck.

    Paladin needs less enmity as an OT, and more enmity as a MT. Shield swipe could be a conal move. Clemency sounds solid, put it on a 2min CD, depletes all MP, and give it a 20 % magic shield for anyone in a 5 yalm range for 5 seconds.

  8. #328
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    I posted this whole disaster on reddit so I'll paste it here if anyone is interested. In general I'd rather they bring PLD (and DRK) up to WAR rather than cut WAR down. Can't be bothered to fix the formatting but it's readable anyway.

    Spoiler: show
    You can't "maintain" balance that isn't there. PLD is pretty clearly the distant third choice for 95% of content.

    PLD's problem is much the same as MNK's problem. It's a specialised job whose specialisation does not serve a purpose or bring a net benefit to the party. They want it to be a "defensive" tank but not only is it not even the best in the game at what it's meant to specialise in (hello WAR), the few in which it could use its toolkit to the fullest are never utilized in-game (ie, places where you can abuse Sheltron). It's a fundamental design flaw, or rather a conscious design choice, that holds PLD back.

    I'm not saying PLD's toolkit would be great even if the devs were more generous in providing circumstances where it could succeed, because its toolkit is definitely critically flawed in a variety of ways compared to WAR (and probably DRK but I don't play DRK). To get the dumb rebuttals out of the way early; **no, PLD does not take "way less" damage than the other two in any fight** (it will in fact take more damage than the other two in magic fights and marginally less in physical ones by virtue of Sheltron). And no, PLD does not need more raw DPS; it already is arguably the best single-target DPS of the three tanks. The problem lies with how it achieves that DPS, and that much like MNK, topping DPS meters doesn't matter when you're pulling the raid DPS down by being there.

    Some of the key problems some of which are dungeon-specific, some raid-specific, and some apply to both:

    * Clear lack of any raid utility whatsoever. Not a deal-breaker on its own but it's a back breaker when combined with the rest of this list. It doesn't increase raid DPS, it doesn't decrease incoming raid damage. WAR and DRK can both do at least one of those things (and WAR can do both).

    * Absolutely inadequate crowd control. It is, by a country mile, the worst tank for Duty Finder dungeons because of this. If it could compensate by speeding up boss kills it wouldn't be as annoying, but it can't.

    * No synergy with other tanks. DRKs want to MT because of Reprisal, but they want a WAR OT because of Storm's Path/Eye. PLD and WAR both want to OT but WAR wants to pull for burst, but WAR's DPS combo doesn't have a threat multiplier. PLD's DPS combo has a threat multiplier in it which makes tank swapping a pain in the ass with WAR.

    * A clunky toolkit marred by useless skills. Every job has useless skills (hello, One Ilm Punch and Haymaker), PLD's just sting even more because the entire kit is a disjointed mess. It's got one enmity combo, one DPS combo that has an enmity modifier in it anyway, and its best DPS combo can only be used once every 24 seconds because the ender is a DoT. That combo also happens to be the one that restores MP (but not enough MP) so if you're ever in a situation where you need MP (group pulls usually) you have to completely destroy your DPS to recover it. Sentinel's cooldown is brutal, Bulwark on the whole is a worthless skill, Tempered Will is so incredibly niche in its utility that it's borderline useless and also has a stupid cooldown. Divine Veil has a ridiculous trigger for no discernible reason. And then there's Clemency, or as I like to refer to it, "the slap in the face that hits me every time I remember they made Clemency at the same time they made Equilibrium." Cover is... Cover.

    * I know some people are going to want to fight me about Bulwark so let me just address it now. It's a terrible skill in general. Completely worthless in raids because a CHANCE to block is not good enough to guarantee surviving a tank buster, and only slightly less worthless in dungeons where it's the skill you pop with Foresight once you've burned every other ability you have because your team took too long to kill the group you pulled and you're about to die. If it had a shorter cooldown it might be at least a serviceable skill in dungeons.

    * PLD is punished by the cross-class system. This may or may not change with the combat system changes, but as things currently stand PLD not only benefits the least from the cross-class system, it is actually punished by it. PLD has access to the least useful skills, but other tanks get free access to Provoke, meaning other tanks essentially get an extra job-specific skill for free because they don't have a native Provoke equivalent they are forced to learn. This is a major issue.

    * Clunky and uninspired stance system. PLD's stance system is mechanically clunky compared to DRK and uninspired compared to WAR. A lot of problems with PLD's kit could be remedied if Sword and Shield Oath augmented or enhanced other abilities.

    There are a number of things they could, and should, do to make PLD a more attractive option in both Raids and Dungeons:

    * The most obvious is that it needs better crowd control and a way to contribute to raid DPS. I'm not keen on just giving it flat AoE damage, I'd rather they do something with Flash and Circle of Scorn. Make one of them increase enemy damage taken or something. Lord knows the Blind effect of Flash isn't doing anything.

    * Make Clemency not an insult. The fact that they thought up and implemented this skill at the same time as they made Equilibrium absolutely blows my mind. Clemency is inferior in every way. Leave the MP cost, double the potency, make it instant. At least then it might actually help you or your healer every once in a blue moon.

    * Get rid of the curing requirement on Divine Veil. It's just fucking stupid.

    * Increase the amount of MP Riot Blade restores. Or provide another way to restore MP faster. Or ideally both if PLD is going to get more skills that use MP. Having to spam Riot Blade for MP is a major pain in the ass and an even bigger DPS loss.

    * Cut the cooldowns of Bulwark and Sentinel. Sentinel's by 30 seconds, Bulwark's by 60. Bulwark is a useless skill in raids and on a shorter cooldown it would at least be sort of useful in dungeons occasionally.

    * Do something about PLD's combo chains. I'm not really sure what the best solution would be, but something needs to be done about where the threat modifiers in these chains are to make tank swapping less painful. Making Goring Blade a normal action instead of a DoT would probably be a good start.

    * Improve the Oath stance system. Bare minimum, stance swaps should probably be instant. Ideally they would add some kind of stack mechanic or ability augmentation PLD can leverage to address some of the problems outlined above.

    * Do something to make Cover less shitty. Add some kind of enmity suppression/transfer to it, or TP regain, or anything to make it useful.

    * Change the effect on Rage of Halone from STR down to a flat physical damage decrease. We have no idea how useful Stat Down effects like Halone and Dragon Kick are, I'd rather they both just decrease damage dealt by a flat amount.

    * The big one... take Storm's Path away from WAR. I don't know if giving the effect to PLD (in place of the current Halone debuff, probably) is a great idea, but as long as WAR has Storm's Path, it will always be one of the two tanks you take to anything. WAR can already increase raid DPS with Storm's Eye, it shouldn't also be able to decrease raid damage so dramatically.

    Above all else I hope they're more inspired/intelligent with the skills they give PLD from 60-70, because looking at what it got compared to WAR from 50-60 is pretty frustrating given the situation PLD was already in going into Heavensward.

    **TL:DR** They should look at that angel boss from The Lost City of Ampador (Hard) for inspiration on how to improve PLD. A lot of its mechanics could translate very well to PLD.

  9. #329
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    Pld isn't gonna change; we're gonna see war and drk get shit on. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it.

  10. #330
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    Quote Originally Posted by Shenrien View Post
    Just an idea for how they can balance tanks and bring them a bit more in line with each other while giving the player a fair bit more utility
    I know WAR has been a princess job for 3+ years but there's no need to shit over the class like that with your rework. Give them a penalty for stance dancing (1-3 stacks), adjust some cds (like Vengeance's recast matching Shadowall/Sentinel), mess with potencies, allow any two tank combo to cover slashing+path and you can probably call it a day without ruining completely ruining the gameplay of WAR.

    One pet peeve with WAR though: the prep time for the good Unchained pulls is really not fun to do and borderline unusable in PUGs or when spamming fast trials. I'd like to see Unchained simply become a 3-5m CD that costs no stacks.

    Quote Originally Posted by Taint View Post
    DRK - interesting idea but the job is already over complex IMO. If anything I'd just delete dart arts. Its a cool ability but it over complicates the job and is why 99% of DRKs suck.
    Dark Arts is a huge part of why DRK is fun to me and while it clearly raises the skill ceiling of the job, I think the real reason most DRKs suck is how much pandering and PT support the class needs to perform optimally - if you have no NIN, no WAR pull, and/or bad usage of enmity skills from your PT members then you might as well play something else. It's a job that thrives in a good environment but feels awful in bad ones.

    The class feels good when tanking out of Grit spamming Syphon combos - that side of the job needs little fixing outside of minor QOL changes imo. The problem (as you sorta pointed at earlier) is DRK gets really clunky whenever you're forced to play defensively or stance-dance (which happens in early prog, shitty PT setups, and will happen if the bosses ever start hitting hard).

    I'd start by giving Power Slash an MP drain that's as least 1/2 or 2/3s as good as Syphon's and maybe boosting its potency by just a little bit. Few other bandaids that would help: make Grit cost no MP, make Dark Arts bypass the Grit penalty for boosted skills, boost Blood Price in some way when Grit is on (or simply give Grit a very minor MP regen).


    I'm not going to bother suggesting PLD fixes because this expansion I've only played it when BSing around in EX trials, but from my limited experience: the job's skillset has issues for sure, but there's definitely a problem with encounter design to go along with them. For example the job stands to excel anywhere with single hit phys tank busters thanks to Sheltron, but there are very few bosses which use this type of buster frequently in HW and they're mostly easy content (Sephirot, Sophia, Thordan). Halone's debuff might feel meaningful if any PT-targeted HW AOEs were physical (like T13 Earthshaker). Divine Veil would be a lot more impressive if Deployment Tactics and fairy buffs weren't more than enough to bypass all HP checks, etc. The job has some skills that are great in theory, just not really needed in practice.

    Regardless of everything, I expect to see all tanks get butchered in the expac. If the developers intend to bridge the gap between good and bad players (which for tanks comes down to cd mapping and aggressive vs defensive playstyles because their base rotations are fairly simple for the most part) then there's no way tanks are going to stay as they are now. I just hope they don't completely ruin aggressive tanking in the process.

  11. #331
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    Quote Originally Posted by Obsidian View Post
    I posted this whole disaster on reddit so I'll paste it here if anyone is interested. In general I'd rather they bring PLD (and DRK) up to WAR rather than cut WAR down. Can't be bothered to fix the formatting but it's readable anyway.

    Spoiler: show
    You can't "maintain" balance that isn't there. PLD is pretty clearly the distant third choice for 95% of content.

    PLD's problem is much the same as MNK's problem. It's a specialised job whose specialisation does not serve a purpose or bring a net benefit to the party. They want it to be a "defensive" tank but not only is it not even the best in the game at what it's meant to specialise in (hello WAR), the few in which it could use its toolkit to the fullest are never utilized in-game (ie, places where you can abuse Sheltron). It's a fundamental design flaw, or rather a conscious design choice, that holds PLD back.

    I'm not saying PLD's toolkit would be great even if the devs were more generous in providing circumstances where it could succeed, because its toolkit is definitely critically flawed in a variety of ways compared to WAR (and probably DRK but I don't play DRK). To get the dumb rebuttals out of the way early; **no, PLD does not take "way less" damage than the other two in any fight** (it will in fact take more damage than the other two in magic fights and marginally less in physical ones by virtue of Sheltron). And no, PLD does not need more raw DPS; it already is arguably the best single-target DPS of the three tanks. The problem lies with how it achieves that DPS, and that much like MNK, topping DPS meters doesn't matter when you're pulling the raid DPS down by being there.

    Some of the key problems some of which are dungeon-specific, some raid-specific, and some apply to both:

    * Clear lack of any raid utility whatsoever. Not a deal-breaker on its own but it's a back breaker when combined with the rest of this list. It doesn't increase raid DPS, it doesn't decrease incoming raid damage. WAR and DRK can both do at least one of those things (and WAR can do both).

    * Absolutely inadequate crowd control. It is, by a country mile, the worst tank for Duty Finder dungeons because of this. If it could compensate by speeding up boss kills it wouldn't be as annoying, but it can't.

    * No synergy with other tanks. DRKs want to MT because of Reprisal, but they want a WAR OT because of Storm's Path/Eye. PLD and WAR both want to OT but WAR wants to pull for burst, but WAR's DPS combo doesn't have a threat multiplier. PLD's DPS combo has a threat multiplier in it which makes tank swapping a pain in the ass with WAR.

    * A clunky toolkit marred by useless skills. Every job has useless skills (hello, One Ilm Punch and Haymaker), PLD's just sting even more because the entire kit is a disjointed mess. It's got one enmity combo, one DPS combo that has an enmity modifier in it anyway, and its best DPS combo can only be used once every 24 seconds because the ender is a DoT. That combo also happens to be the one that restores MP (but not enough MP) so if you're ever in a situation where you need MP (group pulls usually) you have to completely destroy your DPS to recover it. Sentinel's cooldown is brutal, Bulwark on the whole is a worthless skill, Tempered Will is so incredibly niche in its utility that it's borderline useless and also has a stupid cooldown. Divine Veil has a ridiculous trigger for no discernible reason. And then there's Clemency, or as I like to refer to it, "the slap in the face that hits me every time I remember they made Clemency at the same time they made Equilibrium." Cover is... Cover.

    * I know some people are going to want to fight me about Bulwark so let me just address it now. It's a terrible skill in general. Completely worthless in raids because a CHANCE to block is not good enough to guarantee surviving a tank buster, and only slightly less worthless in dungeons where it's the skill you pop with Foresight once you've burned every other ability you have because your team took too long to kill the group you pulled and you're about to die. If it had a shorter cooldown it might be at least a serviceable skill in dungeons.

    * PLD is punished by the cross-class system. This may or may not change with the combat system changes, but as things currently stand PLD not only benefits the least from the cross-class system, it is actually punished by it. PLD has access to the least useful skills, but other tanks get free access to Provoke, meaning other tanks essentially get an extra job-specific skill for free because they don't have a native Provoke equivalent they are forced to learn. This is a major issue.

    * Clunky and uninspired stance system. PLD's stance system is mechanically clunky compared to DRK and uninspired compared to WAR. A lot of problems with PLD's kit could be remedied if Sword and Shield Oath augmented or enhanced other abilities.

    There are a number of things they could, and should, do to make PLD a more attractive option in both Raids and Dungeons:

    * The most obvious is that it needs better crowd control and a way to contribute to raid DPS. I'm not keen on just giving it flat AoE damage, I'd rather they do something with Flash and Circle of Scorn. Make one of them increase enemy damage taken or something. Lord knows the Blind effect of Flash isn't doing anything.

    * Make Clemency not an insult. The fact that they thought up and implemented this skill at the same time as they made Equilibrium absolutely blows my mind. Clemency is inferior in every way. Leave the MP cost, double the potency, make it instant. At least then it might actually help you or your healer every once in a blue moon.

    * Get rid of the curing requirement on Divine Veil. It's just fucking stupid.

    * Increase the amount of MP Riot Blade restores. Or provide another way to restore MP faster. Or ideally both if PLD is going to get more skills that use MP. Having to spam Riot Blade for MP is a major pain in the ass and an even bigger DPS loss.

    * Cut the cooldowns of Bulwark and Sentinel. Sentinel's by 30 seconds, Bulwark's by 60. Bulwark is a useless skill in raids and on a shorter cooldown it would at least be sort of useful in dungeons occasionally.

    * Do something about PLD's combo chains. I'm not really sure what the best solution would be, but something needs to be done about where the threat modifiers in these chains are to make tank swapping less painful. Making Goring Blade a normal action instead of a DoT would probably be a good start.

    * Improve the Oath stance system. Bare minimum, stance swaps should probably be instant. Ideally they would add some kind of stack mechanic or ability augmentation PLD can leverage to address some of the problems outlined above.

    * Do something to make Cover less shitty. Add some kind of enmity suppression/transfer to it, or TP regain, or anything to make it useful.

    * Change the effect on Rage of Halone from STR down to a flat physical damage decrease. We have no idea how useful Stat Down effects like Halone and Dragon Kick are, I'd rather they both just decrease damage dealt by a flat amount.

    * The big one... take Storm's Path away from WAR. I don't know if giving the effect to PLD (in place of the current Halone debuff, probably) is a great idea, but as long as WAR has Storm's Path, it will always be one of the two tanks you take to anything. WAR can already increase raid DPS with Storm's Eye, it shouldn't also be able to decrease raid damage so dramatically.

    Above all else I hope they're more inspired/intelligent with the skills they give PLD from 60-70, because looking at what it got compared to WAR from 50-60 is pretty frustrating given the situation PLD was already in going into Heavensward.

    **TL:DR** They should look at that angel boss from The Lost City of Ampador (Hard) for inspiration on how to improve PLD. A lot of its mechanics could translate very well to PLD.
    As for the MP regen issue, I'm on your side. Why didn't they just go the WAR route and make Riot combo with both Goring and RA? Could keep the MP spam, no real issue with threat generation due to that play of the combo, and do good deeps.

    Clemency I can SEE where they were going. PLDs in all FFs have minor(shitty) healing, and they tried that with Clemency. I think, though, that there's no place for "classic" PLD in XIV. They should go more in line with Equilibrium, and make it an instant oGCD(maybe keep the mana cost or lower it, and add cure potency?)with a 1-2 min CD. A nice second "Oh fuck me" button like Thrill of Battle + Equilibrium is in Defiance.

  12. #332
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    I'm wary of going down the healing road with PLD because it's just never going to be good at it comparatively and healers will 99% of the time beat you to the punch anyway. That being said, it wouldn't be hard to make Clemency not-shit because the MP cost alone makes it prohibitively difficult to spam (even if PLD's MP regen wasn't ass). It needs to be instant, and it either needs to have its potency doubled or give the target a shield similar to Adloquium (maybe drop the healing part altogether). Then you could at least help your MT in a pinch with a tank buster or something.

  13. #333
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    Agree 100% on the instant and double potency. If they give it a shield, it would obviously conflict with SCH/AST's shields, or else PLD would be "required" for tanking big hits, since it would mitigate shit even further than we already can. I think that's what Veil was trying to be, but came up short. Idk how I'd really improve it without making it OP. Like I said, RA should be part of the Riot combo, just for hate related issues, but that's the "biggest" change I could see.

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    Offhand, I can think of two ways to implement a shield that doesn't "directly" stack on top of SCH/AST:

    1) make it a baby Holmgang/LD, meaning the shield is only consumed to keep you from dropping below 1 (but obviously not unlimited); this gives you just a little extra wiggle room, but not so much that your balls aren't shrinking

    2) make it a combo heal+shield (like Adlo) that only shields for the amount of net healing, so if you cast it at full HP you get no shield, but if you get rekt and cast it after, then you get full heal+full shield

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    Quote Originally Posted by Obsidian View Post
    I posted this whole disaster on reddit so I'll paste it here if anyone is interested. In general I'd rather they bring PLD (and DRK) up to WAR rather than cut WAR down. Can't be bothered to fix the formatting but it's readable anyway.

    Spoiler: show
    You can't "maintain" balance that isn't there. PLD is pretty clearly the distant third choice for 95% of content.

    PLD's problem is much the same as MNK's problem. It's a specialised job whose specialisation does not serve a purpose or bring a net benefit to the party. They want it to be a "defensive" tank but not only is it not even the best in the game at what it's meant to specialise in (hello WAR), the few in which it could use its toolkit to the fullest are never utilized in-game (ie, places where you can abuse Sheltron). It's a fundamental design flaw, or rather a conscious design choice, that holds PLD back.

    I'm not saying PLD's toolkit would be great even if the devs were more generous in providing circumstances where it could succeed, because its toolkit is definitely critically flawed in a variety of ways compared to WAR (and probably DRK but I don't play DRK). To get the dumb rebuttals out of the way early; **no, PLD does not take "way less" damage than the other two in any fight** (it will in fact take more damage than the other two in magic fights and marginally less in physical ones by virtue of Sheltron). And no, PLD does not need more raw DPS; it already is arguably the best single-target DPS of the three tanks. The problem lies with how it achieves that DPS, and that much like MNK, topping DPS meters doesn't matter when you're pulling the raid DPS down by being there.

    Some of the key problems some of which are dungeon-specific, some raid-specific, and some apply to both:

    * Clear lack of any raid utility whatsoever. Not a deal-breaker on its own but it's a back breaker when combined with the rest of this list. It doesn't increase raid DPS, it doesn't decrease incoming raid damage. WAR and DRK can both do at least one of those things (and WAR can do both).

    * Absolutely inadequate crowd control. It is, by a country mile, the worst tank for Duty Finder dungeons because of this. If it could compensate by speeding up boss kills it wouldn't be as annoying, but it can't.

    * No synergy with other tanks. DRKs want to MT because of Reprisal, but they want a WAR OT because of Storm's Path/Eye. PLD and WAR both want to OT but WAR wants to pull for burst, but WAR's DPS combo doesn't have a threat multiplier. PLD's DPS combo has a threat multiplier in it which makes tank swapping a pain in the ass with WAR.

    * A clunky toolkit marred by useless skills. Every job has useless skills (hello, One Ilm Punch and Haymaker), PLD's just sting even more because the entire kit is a disjointed mess. It's got one enmity combo, one DPS combo that has an enmity modifier in it anyway, and its best DPS combo can only be used once every 24 seconds because the ender is a DoT. That combo also happens to be the one that restores MP (but not enough MP) so if you're ever in a situation where you need MP (group pulls usually) you have to completely destroy your DPS to recover it. Sentinel's cooldown is brutal, Bulwark on the whole is a worthless skill, Tempered Will is so incredibly niche in its utility that it's borderline useless and also has a stupid cooldown. Divine Veil has a ridiculous trigger for no discernible reason. And then there's Clemency, or as I like to refer to it, "the slap in the face that hits me every time I remember they made Clemency at the same time they made Equilibrium." Cover is... Cover.

    * I know some people are going to want to fight me about Bulwark so let me just address it now. It's a terrible skill in general. Completely worthless in raids because a CHANCE to block is not good enough to guarantee surviving a tank buster, and only slightly less worthless in dungeons where it's the skill you pop with Foresight once you've burned every other ability you have because your team took too long to kill the group you pulled and you're about to die. If it had a shorter cooldown it might be at least a serviceable skill in dungeons.

    * PLD is punished by the cross-class system. This may or may not change with the combat system changes, but as things currently stand PLD not only benefits the least from the cross-class system, it is actually punished by it. PLD has access to the least useful skills, but other tanks get free access to Provoke, meaning other tanks essentially get an extra job-specific skill for free because they don't have a native Provoke equivalent they are forced to learn. This is a major issue.

    * Clunky and uninspired stance system. PLD's stance system is mechanically clunky compared to DRK and uninspired compared to WAR. A lot of problems with PLD's kit could be remedied if Sword and Shield Oath augmented or enhanced other abilities.

    There are a number of things they could, and should, do to make PLD a more attractive option in both Raids and Dungeons:

    * The most obvious is that it needs better crowd control and a way to contribute to raid DPS. I'm not keen on just giving it flat AoE damage, I'd rather they do something with Flash and Circle of Scorn. Make one of them increase enemy damage taken or something. Lord knows the Blind effect of Flash isn't doing anything.

    * Make Clemency not an insult. The fact that they thought up and implemented this skill at the same time as they made Equilibrium absolutely blows my mind. Clemency is inferior in every way. Leave the MP cost, double the potency, make it instant. At least then it might actually help you or your healer every once in a blue moon.

    * Get rid of the curing requirement on Divine Veil. It's just fucking stupid.

    * Increase the amount of MP Riot Blade restores. Or provide another way to restore MP faster. Or ideally both if PLD is going to get more skills that use MP. Having to spam Riot Blade for MP is a major pain in the ass and an even bigger DPS loss.

    * Cut the cooldowns of Bulwark and Sentinel. Sentinel's by 30 seconds, Bulwark's by 60. Bulwark is a useless skill in raids and on a shorter cooldown it would at least be sort of useful in dungeons occasionally.

    * Do something about PLD's combo chains. I'm not really sure what the best solution would be, but something needs to be done about where the threat modifiers in these chains are to make tank swapping less painful. Making Goring Blade a normal action instead of a DoT would probably be a good start.

    * Improve the Oath stance system. Bare minimum, stance swaps should probably be instant. Ideally they would add some kind of stack mechanic or ability augmentation PLD can leverage to address some of the problems outlined above.

    * Do something to make Cover less shitty. Add some kind of enmity suppression/transfer to it, or TP regain, or anything to make it useful.

    * Change the effect on Rage of Halone from STR down to a flat physical damage decrease. We have no idea how useful Stat Down effects like Halone and Dragon Kick are, I'd rather they both just decrease damage dealt by a flat amount.

    * The big one... take Storm's Path away from WAR. I don't know if giving the effect to PLD (in place of the current Halone debuff, probably) is a great idea, but as long as WAR has Storm's Path, it will always be one of the two tanks you take to anything. WAR can already increase raid DPS with Storm's Eye, it shouldn't also be able to decrease raid damage so dramatically.

    Above all else I hope they're more inspired/intelligent with the skills they give PLD from 60-70, because looking at what it got compared to WAR from 50-60 is pretty frustrating given the situation PLD was already in going into Heavensward.

    **TL:DR** They should look at that angel boss from The Lost City of Ampador (Hard) for inspiration on how to improve PLD. A lot of its mechanics could translate very well to PLD.

    I agree with most of this.

    I find DRK stance dancing WAY more clunky. The MP drain becomes a big problem if you need to swap unknowingly and its a DPS decrease to prepare for it. Turning off Grit has that annoying delay. I find PLD swapping to very smooth in comparison, since you always have MP available and its always a GCD. I'm not saying its better (its not) but I don't find it clunky, its just an unnecessary DPS loss.

    Shelton recovers MP. It wasn't mentioned in the MP rotation section.

    100% agree on Path/Eye really forcing you to bring a WAR. That and reprisal is a huge tool for progression. PLD has nothing to compete with DRK or WAR in the raid setting.

  16. #336
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    Didn't mention Sheltron's MP recovery because it's only one Flash worth of MP every 30 seconds and realistically you can't always be using it every 30 seconds if the tank buster is blockable. The lion's share of your MP is coming from Riot Blade spam which is mega shitty if you actually need your MP back (dungeons).

    In terms of clunkiness I just meant that it costs you a GCD to go to and from each Oath, which is annoying. Activating Grit doesn't cost you a GCD (dropping it does which is kind of stupid) so from my perspective it's less "clunky" but honestly probably just as irritating. I don't play DRK though.

  17. #337
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    Quote Originally Posted by Obsidian View Post
    Activating Grit doesn't cost you a GCD (dropping it does which is kind of stupid)
    Quote Originally Posted by Obsidian View Post
    I don't play DRK though.
    Activating Grit is on the GCD. Cancelling Grit delays your GCD due to the way stance cancelling works, but it doesn't cost a full GCD. On top of the GCD loss(es), the MP cost also means you lose 3/4 of a DA cast.

    It's definitely a lot clunkier than Oaths.

  18. #338
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    Ah, I had it backwards then. Ignore me.

  19. #339
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    Really don't want to see War nerfs. I'd rather see jobs buffed than nerfed unless a nerf happens because of an outright broken ability. Warrior has beastly abilities and a truckload of variety (especially for a tank class), but nothing breaks the game wide open. Pld needs more AOE damage, less resource starvation, more active damage through combos and abilities, a bettter unique asset (lowering an attribute stat is alright, but we can do better in 2017) and far less ability bloat. A lot of their defensive abilities could either be rolled into passives, combined into single abilities, or could be worked into buffs on the back end of combos or instant attacks. I agree with most of what was said above about Drk changes.

    I really want to see more passives, even if they are passives we have to "choose" or "spec into". So many abilities across the board could simply be passives and allow for more useful or at least, more focused skills to be introduced. The foundation is decent, but SE needs to take the gloves off, shed the last of the XI-UI restrictions and go whole hog on true Job identity. From the looks of it, Sam seriously looks and sounds like its going to have its own identity.

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    I dunno about SAM having a unique identity. It does combos with 3 basic moves and the output changes depending on the order of the combo? Sounds exactly like a repurposed Ten-Chi-Jin from Ninja. And then a power-up ability that unlocks moves based on how powered up you are? Sounds exactly like the Monk chakra system. I wouldn't be surprised if SAM is a straight mashup of the two jobs with one or two unique OGCDs. After all, it's not like the HW jobs did anything different besides their specific one or two "job identity moves". MCH is the same template as bard just with ammo and turret instead of songs. DRK and AST play very closely to the template of WAR/PLD and WHM/SCH as well. Yeah they have some unique stuff but "new jobs" since HW have been very obviously just stealing the template from another job and tweaking certain abilities to do something slightly different. If SAM isn't a straight mashup of NIN/MNK I will be fairly surprised.

    The problem and the reason they have to do this is their idea of balance is to keep everything as homogenous as possible so "everyone can enjoy the game the same no matter what job they're on!" The restrictions on what they allow themselves to do with the classes are just too great to overcome currently. Maybe that will change with 4.0 but I highly doubt it; SE hasn't proven itself capable of radically different thought when it comes to the basic systems of the game, no matter how many people complain about the lack of actual balance and the lack of an interesting battle system.

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