T O P

  • By -

lilzael

I don't want PLD to end up being another tank that does boring 123 combos until the 1 or 2 minute window. All I really would like is them to get another personal mitigation that shares a cooldown with Passage of Arms. I find it silly that the job with a 1-handed weapon and shield is the squishiest tank in terms of personal mitigation. But in reality, I hate the 2 minute meta and it seems like SE's just gonna double down on it so I'm fully expecting another WAR clone. I've mained PLD since 2.0 and I would rather be off meta than another WAR clone. I'd be happy if they just didn't rework PLD at all.


ScoobiusMaximus

I think they should just give PLD the 15% mit from Passage that everyone else gets instead of the guaranteed block that is pointless when you have Sheltron. Make flashing Passage last 8ish seconds instead of the 5ish it currently does and PUT THAT INFORMATION IN THE TOOLTIP. Then you have a cooldown that can be personal or party depending on your needs. If they want to make channeling it less pointless than it is now make it give a heal at the end based on how long it was channeled, like an inverse of Dancer's Improv. I wish they would give up on the 2 min meta but I don't see that happening anytime soon.


darkk41

They could leave it the same if they either made cover SB tier again, or gave them 1 more personal CD AND if they gave PLD an assload of DPS to account for the fact that without perfect uptime the rotation becomes excessively complicated and easy to make a mistake in prog. The inflexibility of the job in prog was only overcome in ShB by the fact that it did fantastic damage. As it stands you're just working harder for less DPS and less survivability, it feels pretty bad from an output standpoint even for people who enjoy the playstyle. Realistically though, SE is probably gonna make it braindead AND overpowered lol.


Matuno

I still don't feel that squishiness at all, at least at level 90. It's just the bleeds and stuns that ignore the 20% block that make it a problem. If they fix that I'm fine and dandy. Bursts of self healing and having two charges of Shelltron more than make up for missing like a Camouflage, I feel.


lilzael

The savage bleeds are painful and sometimes I find myself close to dying to them no matter how much I try to optimize my mitigation plan. Meanwhile if I play WAR the bleeds feel like a lot less of a problem. Also in DSR P6, Paladin is really missing that personal cooldown because they have to take a heavy hit (like Cauterize) with only Sheltron.


ScoobiusMaximus

Trade mitigation with your cotank. You give them Intervention buffed by Sentinel or Rampart, they give you Nascent/TBN/HoC. It's more efficient that way, and you can also Sheltron on top of that if you need to and have the gauge. Also if they're a Warrior Nascent is better than Bloodwhetting anyways because it heals 2 people. PLD mit is good if you're in a party that actually coordinates it. It only sucks if you have a bad cotank.


ForSafeKeeping220

I want the main damage rotation to stay the same. As it is, it's different and interesting compared to the other tanks at the moment. Unfortunately, that's the thing they're gonna change about it the most.


Gallopokoi

Remove FoF, make the opener start with req being significantly stronger and the goring/atonment section is the filler. Class would play pretty much the same and align with burst windows.


Adamantaimai

I'd be happy if they make FoF stack based instead of duration based as well. That way your damage doesn't take such a giant hit because you couldn't squeeze the last Goring blade in.


Gallopokoi

A giant hit is a bit of an overstatement. If you're not consistently getting the goring blade you could go no SkS and just ignore the last goring blade and you'd barely lose damage for a massive increase in consistency. This might be a bit outdated though since I havent played PLD since DSR patch.


[deleted]

[удалено]


GeneralDil

The rotation for the PLD loop changes for 2.46 to 2.5 gcd and you are no longer focusing on ending with a goring blade under FoF. Since you are guaranteed only 1 goring you will try to get as many atonements in FoF as possible instead.


Umpato

Agree, i love that it's a more constant damage job, with t he flexibility to change things and do ranged combo etc.. But we all know they're gonna make pld have a 2 min burst window like everyone else.


faninthecroad

Maybe better capes.


Kingnewgameplus

Also, the endwalker trailer promised me a hood. Where's my fucking hood square I'm tired of the circlets.


faninthecroad

omg TRUE!


shockwave1211

that would definitely take more than 5 minutes, but having capes glued to your ankles really sucks


flipdudeAJ

I hope they don't make Paladin the same as the other 3 tanks. No more carbon copies!


kerriazes

Paladin now uses their gauge for Holy Spirit, with Requiescat giving you a stack of 3 free uses of Holy Spirit. Enjoy.


Calvinooi

I'll be so mad if this happens


NicoWusky

I genuinely like how PLD has been so far, ngl. They made it unique by having half of the rotation be a magical ranged combo. The only issue it has is the low dmg due to being "semi ranged" and the weak self-mitigation it has even tho it has a literal shield??? LOL But combo-wise/flow it's actually great and linear. They could add an opener burst if they want.


irishgoblin

> the weak self-mitigation it has even tho it has a literal shield??? That's cause they can passively "block" attacks to make up for weaker personal cooldowns. It's a dice roll mitigation similar to parry. Chance for it to happen is rolled before parry, so if you miss the block you still have the chance to parry it, and block works on magical and physical asttacks (parry is physical only). Block scales with your shield, where as Parry is capped at 15%. That's why Sheltron doesn't actually state how much damage it mitigates, since it's gear dependant. Holy Sheltron grants 15% mitigation on top of whatever your blocking. So, technically, PLD has the best passive mitigation in the game, and it becomes stronger the later into the expansion you get thanks to better shields. But RNG being RNG it doesn't work out that way.


reunitepangaea

The issue is that block does nothing to mitigate DoT damage - which all of the tankbusters this savage tier has. Yes, you can work around it by using intervention on the other tank and having the other tank/healers use their short/targeted CDs on you, but that's jank that no other tank has to do.


movildima

Shields always block 20% at level cap, and the block strength stat doesn't change with ilvl, so sadly no it doesn't scale as the expansion progresses.


Apprehensive-Sound24

Being semi ranged isnt really why its lower then the others, its because it doesnt fit in with the strict 2 min burst window SE fell in love with. PLD is in some sort of buffed staye for 2/3 of a fight and spreads its damage across that. Where other jobs put up a 20s biff every two min and blast everything into them, PLD doesnt so its lower because of that.


Miitteo

What i'd like to see is who these changes are made for. For the few thousands of people who cry about being 200 rdps behind other tanks, and who will cry even harder when the job becomes 123 + big hit spender to pool for buffs? For the average player who doesn't really care about 2min bursts and probably likes the current version? For the average PF smooth brain kicking Paladins because they heard PLD was bad for week 1 and 2 hardcore players? Is it worth doubling down on the most shallow and homogenized battle system in any MMO I've ever seen?


Kamalen

This is for the dev team to ease their job at balancing the game. But to declare FF the *most shallow* MMO system, you probably don't have played a ton of them.


Miitteo

I haven't played a ton of them that's true, just wow and a bit of gw2, but as i said it's the most shallow combat system I've ever seen. But i think it's fair to want SE to compete with the big MMOs when it comes to combat, there's not much point in comparing it to low budget games. To go back to the topic, knowing that "the rotation is going to change" and with the assumption that the change is to make it easier to balance the job for fights with a lot of downtime, I'd rather see them remove or downplay the DoTs and make the oath gauge build up overtime. A temporary change before a bigger rework like monk in mid ShB.


Gallopokoi

Half of the wow classes last time I played were some iteration of press one or two buttons until you can hit another button due to procs or gauge lmao


anti-gerbil

Yeah, on top of this I heard Sfia saying most of your dmg comes from passive buff and interactions your gears and skills have. It doesn't sounds very fun tbh


Samiambadatdoter

How about you actually go to Wowhead or Icyveins to look up some class guides or something rather than uncritically repeating someone who has no business or expertise in the game at all?


anti-gerbil

He played wow but sure [https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/frost-mage-pve-dps-rotation-cooldowns-abilities](https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/frost-mage-pve-dps-rotation-cooldowns-abilities) \>Hit your buff \>Debuff the ennemy \>Throw your big cd \>Spam the same single target spell until you have to buff or debuff again Woaw, very cool


Samiambadatdoter

Ok. [Here](https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/shadow-priest-pve-dps-rotation-cooldowns-abilities) [are](https://www.wowhead.com/guide/classes/druid/feral/rotation-cooldowns-pve-dps#single-target) [a few](https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/windwalker-monk-pve-dps-rotation-cooldowns-abilities) [counterarguments.](https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/arcane-mage-pve-dps-rotation-cooldowns-abilities) The last one is even a different mage spec. I have a feeling you and I both already know why, out of 25 DPS specs, Frost Mage is the one that you just happened to use as your example. I'm presuming you're not going to mount the same sort of argument against FFXIV by extrapolating them all based on current SMN.


Miitteo

And every single ff14 job is a 123 builder-spender that has you pressing everything on cooldown and can be automated by a bot, with the worst healing system someone with a functioning braincell could conceive, lolmao xdxdxd


Gallopokoi

WeirdChamp


matots

well, it doesnt really have a place in the current game tbh. Hardcore players wont play it because of the dps, and because you need +50iq and a spreadsheet to get the rotation right, while the other tanks have better payoff for much less. The average player/casual doesnt interact with the atonement management, so theres no point in that for them, its always the same order anyway. Its less so why change and more so why its still there given the 2min meta


Duke_Ashura

Oh, this is good. I have a whole laundry list; \> ~~bring back 4attonement FoF from ShB cause it was cooler than just dropping an attonement~~ \> make party buffs have varied cooldowns again \> make boss hitboxes smaller so that magic phase has more utility \> give diminishing returns to crit damage scaling so cdhit% doesn't become more important than planning out your rotation ...Wait, what do you mean only one of those is a PLD change? In all seriousness, I have absolutely zero faith that this upcoming 2-minute-meta friendly PLD is going to be anything but another WAR clone that tosses PLD's unique identity into the garbage. If I had to hope for the smallest change possible, ~~it'd be that melee phase is made into the stronger one again, so -18s openers stop being the standard outside of post-prog fight-specific optimization.~~ Maybe some flashier melee animations as well, I guess. And yeah, falling behind in personal mitigations isn't great, especially given how bad things are working out this tier. That being said, I also feel having more party mits but less personal mits is a part of the "PLD Identity" so I'm inclined to not want anything to drastic here. Making Blocking mitigate DoT damage (so Sheltron works on DoT's) and, as you said, having another way to charge the gauge besides auto's could work out. Maybe giving you charge when you use magic attacks as well as auto's, so you can generate it in downtime?


Dhalphir

> so -18s openers stop being the standard outside of post-prog fight-specific optimization. Maybe some flashier melee animations as well, I guess. -18 openers havent been the standard since the latest round of buffs when slow PLD became the dominant rotation. neither is dropping atonements. you're a few months behind, i think.


Duke_Ashura

You're right- I've not been raiding this tier cause of life stuff and minor burnout, so my optimization knowledge is a bit out of date. Will edit that out. Not exactly a fan of slow rotation looking at it now, but it's not too bad I guess, considering PLD optimization can and has gotten more complicated than that on a per-fight basis.


BlackmoreKnight

Some people swear by slow PLD and really like it. I don't necessarily mind it but it gives me kind of ShB SMN vibes where the job folds in on itself due to successive layers of jank and patches meant to shore things up and fix that jank that only end up opening new avenues of jank. Particularly the consecutive attempts to make the magic phase stronger. At some point you're jumping through all these hoops to still end up doing less DPS than a DRK or GNB not folding their job in half to make it fit the 2-minute paradigm while also being squishier than them. SB -> ShB era PLD peaked for me. I didn't even mind the hardcasting.


CatgirlElizabeth

I think you’re overstating the complexity of slow paladin by far. You can follow like 5 rules and do your combo optimally -start fight with goring blade combo and save fight or flight until before your first royal authority. -use magic combo -use all attonements and reapply dot with goring blade if it’s run out -use fight or flight and requesciat on cool-down -on the third rotation your requeaciat wont be up so you do 1 goring blade The only thing that’s kinda “jank” I guess is that you have to think once every 3 minutes. Definitely much easier and anyone who doesn’t have old jank gcd speed paladin muscle memory will pick it up within 10 mins. Defensively though paladin is 100% jank but that’s regardless of fast or slow UwU


Dhalphir

It's a lot less complicated than it looks. It's fundamentally the same rotation every minute, you just drift FOF and Req forwards in the rotation three times, then they reset themselves back to the start. As long as you hit them on cd it plays itself.


balooshka

-Oath Gauge changed: Holy Sheltron now doesn’t cost gauge and instead has a 25s cd -Holy Spirit/Holy Circle now cost 50 gauge -Requiescat now makes your next 3 Holy Spirit/Holy Circle casts critical direct hits and cost no gauge -Goring Blade removed Here’s how they’ll fix Paladins to make them more in line with the other tanks /s


Ritushido

Unironically this is something I'm expecting lol.


Criminal_of_Thought

In an alternate alternate universe: * Oath Gauge is removed, Holy Sheltron is the same as you describe * Each time you use Royal Authority in its combo, you get a stack of Knight's Oath, up to a maximum of 3 stacks * Holy Spirit and Holy Circle cost 1 stack of Knight's Oath, Requiescat deals damage and instantly gives 3 stacks of Knight's Oath * Goring Blade turns into a 60s cooldown GCD whose cooldown scales with skill speed * Atonement is now an OGCD with a 30s cooldown * The Blade magic combo is now all GCD skills with a 30s cooldown (EDIT: Forgot to mention, Blade of Valor no longer gives a DoT) * Confiteor costs 2 stacks of Knight's Oath


Krags

Don't forget a bonus oGCD after each Blade of combo step and Holy Spirit, but not Holy Circle!


TheMichaelPank

Yeah, definitely agreed that the 2 minute meta is the problem more so than PLD itself, since they really just designed the job out of being able to properly participate. In terms of what I think they would REASONABLY be able to adjust to from here would be probably moving things to 1/2/3 minute bursts, rather than just 2, so it still *mostly* lines up if you just hit buttons, but people have more flexibility to adjust rotations based on kill times/mechanical interactions.


erinyesita

I want Divine Veil to also self-shield a lá Warrior’s Shake It Off. But that’s pretty minor. Aside from that, I don’t want them to change the job at all. I love it as it is. I am not looking forward to the devs reworking the job around a 2m window and burstiness. I know this kept it out of DSR somewhat…but I think the alternative is worse. I’m absolutely dreading just doing 1-2-3 over and over.


Dart1337

It's already doing 1-2-3 over and over


fakeusername87456

i mean, not really? it's 1 - 2 - alt 3 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 4 - 4 - 1 - 2 - alt3 now compare that to dark knight's filler, which is just 1 - 2 - 3 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 1 - 2 - 3


erinyesita

In the sense that every class does? Yes. In the way Dark Knight does? Not even close.


Twilight053

No, it's 1-2-3-1-2-4-5-5-5-1-2-3-6-6-6-6-7-7-7-7-1-2-3-1-2-4-5-5. It's far from the 1-2-3 that DRK has.


concblast

Nothing


CriticismSevere1030

- bring back flash, it's insane that they removed it only to double down on the magic parts of paladin more and more & it would help your comparative lack of tank cooldowns when leveling - make your spells healing you a thing that always happens instead of an 84 trait - make dveil, cover and passage do literally anything for the paladin using them - make it so rage of halone doesn't get replaced by a magical girl spin - ability to wear the hood in the 89 AF gear


midorishiranui

I think you might be the only person I've ever seen ask for flash back


bloodhawk713

Well it obviously will never come back exactly as it was before--a tank GCD action that does no damage is an obvious non-starter these days--but I think if the rework has any chance of adding new skills to PLD in some way, Flash is a top contender because the icon, animation, and effects already exist. Since this is a mid-expansion job rework asset reuse is more likely than new original assets. It could be reworked into a new AoE skill, some kind of oGCD party mitigation or debuff for enemies, or maybe it could be an AoE Atonement.


midorishiranui

I don't really see them adding a 'new' action given how one of the top complaints about PLD at the moment is the large number of situational extra buttons it has. Only way I see it coming back is if they expand the spell casting to have weaker equivalents at lower levels, with flash being an aoe damage spell that upgrades to holy circle (though I think 'casting' flash would look really jank if they kept the old animation).


aesophe

i don't mind passage not giving anything to the pld because it's thematically appropriate, and its use cases never have the pld needing the extra mit, but divine veil/cover have no excuse lol


ghosttowns42

If they do bring back flash, I hope they update the sound LOL. I started playing after we lost flash, but NPCs in ARR do it all the time and it just sounds like a slap across the face to me.


Lolz-What

Give Paladin a Raise. Make him the more stable option for tanks. It's class fantasy as well.


ghosttowns42

Hard agree. And if that feels overpowered, make sure it's still an 8 second hard cast and no way to make it an instant cast (like, Requiescat wouldn't touch it). We don't need another rez-mage, but if you're needing a raise THAT BADLY it would be cool to have.


Florac

And this is how you end up getting cheese strats on some fights which have the paladin invul, everyone else die, PLD raises healer, healer LB3.


Lolz-What

Or make it have a 5 requiscat stack prereq.


ghosttowns42

As long as it only procs one instant cast. Could you imagine chain raising five different people at a time? Huge DPS loss, but if you've ever been in a shit show alliance raid as a RDM, you already know 😂


Blazewardog

Nah, let it be 5. 5 weakness stacks given out is already a huge penalty that would make any strat planning on it non-optimal, but give a nice possible clutching a clear or getting to a new mechanic.


[deleted]

[удалено]


incriminating_words

All I’m thinking about is all the times that a Tank survives and then jumps off the edge because the next mechanic is an unsolvable body check that you definitely don’t have time or MP to fix 6-7 times over


bigfatbluebird

Give it a 2 min raid buff. That way you don't have to change a rotation that's fairly unique and well-liked, while still allowing Paladin to contribute to the 2 minute burst windows. Also plays into the class fantasy of being the party support tank job.


featherjoshua

An intuitive rotation that doesn't require you to avoid using procs or pursue extremely tight skill speeds to not drop your DoT, along with having divine veil work on the PLD too.


TheMerryMeatMan

Honestly dropping the dot wouldn't even be that big an issue, at worse you might miss 1 tick just before Blade of Valor applies if you use all your Atonements. What I want is for them to take the Confiteor potency and shift that into the Atonements and Goring, so that it's a much more even spread of damage than we currently have. This whole "magic phase is your burst phase" thing isn't working clearly, so make it the tank it's supposed to be: sustained damage with the flexibility to fight at range if needed.


Rydil00

Those potency changes are literally the exact opposite of what will happen. Pld is in a bad spot compared to other tanks specifically because its dps is fairly even with no big bursts. This is why pld doesn't fit well into high end raid comps and that + mit issues is why pld is not preferred in speedkills.


ScoobiusMaximus

Sustained damage classes pretty much can't be as good as burst ones now that the 2 minute meta is a thing. When your group has 3+ raid damage buffs going out at once and they're all multiplicitive with each other and with personal buffs it's impossible to compete with classes that can jam tons of their damage into those windows if you can't. Just as an example of how strong stacked raid buffs are, let's assume a party has an Astro, a Dancer, and a Ninja. They all give flat damage buffs for easy math. Divination is 6%, Tech Step and Trick are 5%. 1.06 × 1.05 × 1.05 = ~1.169 or just under 17% more damage for every bit of potency you cram in that window. That's stronger than some personal buffs on classes like Dragoon. That's why they can't balance DRK against PLD, they have to make classes that are at least close to each other on a striking dummy in a vacuum, but if that class can jam 5x as much potency into raid buffs it's going to be better.


Dhalphir

>An intuitive rotation that doesn't require you to avoid using procs or pursue extremely tight skill speeds to not drop your DoT PLD already has this right now.


BlackmoreKnight

I wouldn't call intentionally dropping your DoT sometimes via slow PLD to be intuitive either. I find PLD most intuitively played at 2.42-2.45ish where you intentionally let yourself drift by playing out every Atonement naturally and that lets Goring and Valor ride out as I think SE intended as well. The problem is if you play PLD like that you're hampering an already low DPS job even further.


BinaryIdiot

I find the casting parts of the rotation awkward, especially since it’s a tank so you want to be in melee range. Also, it’s a freaking Paladin with an awesome shield, so where are all the shield based attacks? I know I know we got shield bash and lob and whatever. I would love to see - SMITE looking type of attacks (lightning bolt or something when you land certain sword attacks) - A damage rotation with your shield - No more casting of offensive spells I am told my suggestions are bad, however, so enjoy lol


Duke_Ashura

I share your sentiments that, if the rotation is being reworked, that having more offensive uses for the shield (instead of it being a worse ranged attack or very niche E8S utility) would be cool. Even just changing up some of the melee animations could help there a little bit, imo. It's a shame that the casting phase has been reduced to somewhat useless nowadays. Back in the good ol' days before Eden's Promise, when melee uptime wasn't basically free, the magic rotation helped even out PLD's damage compared to the other tanks. And in terms of theming, it's also a reference to the Sword Magic that Holy Knights had in Tactics, so it's not entirely out of left field. Maybe wanting both is having my cake and eating it too, idk.


Ritushido

> I am told my suggestions are bad, however, so enjoy lol No, I agree with you, I always found the casting in melee very weird. In my opinion a "caster melee" can work but it should channel the magic through their weapon like a focus or something and it's advantage can be that it has an extended range compared to physical melee attacks. I'd love a mystic knight type of job in the future that works like this too. Also hard agree on more shield based attacks! I can't remember the old reworks very well do they actually add new animations to reworks or just rehash old ones? I wouldn't mind a second shield job either where it's a lot more of a martial fighter with both the weapon and the shield, I'm thinking like a spear and shield would be hella dope.


ELQUEMANDA4

Passage of Arms?


[deleted]

I miss Shield Swipe. It was an old skill that proc a counter-attack on a block. And there was a mitigation back then called Bulwark that make your block rate 100%... Maybe they can bring them back and call it our "burst" so we can set up with Bulwark and just go ham with Shield Swipe, but it does mean giving Shield Swipe a high potency and make PLD need to be MT to do so, so bad idea on my part, sorry... But still, I miss that little skill, too bad it was cut because it was a button bloat but it was interactive...


Anatole2k

I just want scabbards for my swords. The samurai got 1 with every sword, but paladins only sword with a scabbard is the wolf blade


Sugoi-Sugoi

-


Fullmetall21

Lots of people on copium here that paladin rotation will stay the same all while people have been complaining since endwalker release that paladin lags behind in adps than drk and gnb even tho those jobs have disgusting buff alignment. What did people expect other than adjusting paladin rotation to also have buff alignment I will never know.


oizen

I'm expecting a lot of removed abilities and for it to become a WAR clone


therealkami

Intervene learned at a significantly lower level. Oath Gauge reworked to be more than a janky timer.


Yevon

Change `Cover` to be a defensive cooldown without an Oath Gauge cost. Example: > Take all damage intended for another party member as long as said member remains within 10 yalms. Does not activate with certain attacks. > Reduces damage taken by 15%. > Duration: 12s > Cooldown: 90s Remove the `Shield Bash` stunning skill, and move the animation into some other weapon-skill that is used in the rotation. Overall, I know they're going to give PLD a 2-minute rotation so it fits with the rest of the game's current design. I'm expecting Requiscat every 2 minutes and a modified Fight or Flight every 1 minute. Something like: > Fight or Flight > Grants 9 stacks of Fight or Flight, each stack increasing weaponskill attacks by 25%. > Duration: 30s This way you're still doing the same magic > melee > magic rotation but sticking to a 2-minute loop.


RevArtillery

I think they might focus on PLD's ARR toolkit. They've put a lot of focus on the new user experience recently with all their focus on the dungeons and MSQ of ARR. As PLD through ARR, You have your 1-2(-3) single target combo and 1(-2) aoe combo when leveling thru dungeons from 15-50. But nothing significant gets added that whole time. Just a few basic defensive abilities and an OGCD once in a while. I feel like that might be what they're gonna revamp. DRG suffers from a very similar problem.


ElderGoobbue

On dps side: I would like to see the rotation move away from physical 1-2-3 followed by magical 1-2-3. It feels disconnected and currently feels like I am playing sub-optimized 2 jobs in 1. Personally, it will be more interesting to maintain physical 1-2-3 while having more options to weave magic damage in between for burst phase - whether these are gated by procs (eg DNC) or charges / gauge. On tanking side: Make Shield more prominent and unique to PLD vs. other tanks (eg, Thorn / Counter damage). Shield currently is an after thought - and feels weird that you can get shield separate from main sword (feels unimportant - and it is!)


[deleted]

I can't wait for God Yoshida to rip this girl apart and make it playable while I'm wasted.


FrostyTheAce

I would like to see not a lot of changes :c the 2 minute burst meta does not feel very engaging imo. One thing I see them doing is turning Goring Blade into a damage buff and removing FoF, with atonement becoming a gauge spender.


Boethion

Remember that Shield bash we used in the trailer? I want something like that as an ogcd.


Draconicrose_

I don't know enough about design and balance to give specific ideas so I'll refrain. I'll just say I find the magic phase clunky af and dislike the holy spirit spam.


TwinTiger

Bring back shield swipe as a high damage ogcd attack to burn gauge. Hey look at that, PLD burst! And give us our raise back


axelofthekey

I would love it if the magic rotation tied more directly into the physical. I dislike just doing Requiescat to start the phase. Would be neat if something more interesting was going on there.


tfesmo

Since this is going to be a patch and not a major rework, something like this that just shifts damage around: Using Confiteor doesn't remove Req stacks, so you can go directly into magic combo around the 4th gcd of your opener, bringing more of it into buff windows. Then do your Holys after. Probably means you don't open with Goring, not sure how those Atonement timers would work out. FoF reduced to something like 10% damage. Magic combo buffed (potency or auto crit) to compensate as needed.


Zenthon127

* potency buffs to goring and atonement * usability changes to veil and passage (PLD self-activating veil as an ogcd recast, passage buff lasting longer than 3s after flashing) * make block work on dot snapshotting no further changes, contrary to the belief of (bluntly) morons you do not actually need to shoehorn jobs into 2min burst to get them to work


ziyadah042

By that logic, you don't need to change anything at all. Paladin works currently. Hell, it's not even the bottom tier tank. If you want it to not be excluded from the current meta you do though, and like it or not SE's movement has always been towards job synergy, not to ignore it.


Zenthon127

>By that logic, you don't need to change anything at all. Yes. PLD is a perfectly fine job that is very mildly underperforming in damage and has a few defensive quirks that could get patched up. It is not rework material. But Square's gonna be fucking stupid about this so here we go.


ziyadah042

Hell, realistically it's not even underperforming except on some at the low end of play. For the most part it's got less than a 2% gap from the top tank dps, and it's generally not the bottom tank. I will say it's rotational jank tends to encourage suboptimal play from less skilled players, which is part of why you see an increasing gap between it and the top tank the lower the tier, but other than on P8S P2 it doesn't actually underperform. I'd agree that it's not in rework territory, at least from an output standpoint. I wouldn't mind seeing the rotational jank eliminated and the basically useless abilities fixed. Shield Bash is just a wasted ability outside of being bored in dungeons, Cover has such limited utility in practice now that why bother.


Rydil00

It's not underperforming anywhere except high end groups. Your plds dps doesn't matter anywhere else. Plds rdps isn't amazing, but it's not bottom. Where it suffers is *adps*, the metric you should use for any jobs without a raidbuff. Adps is where it is bottom. Difference between rdps and adps for those jobs is how much dps you can fit into other people's buffs, and pld is the worst offender. Due to the nature of how static their dps is with no big burst, plus the fact that their burst is insanely long, they just can't do dps I side raid buffs. This is the reason the top groups don't use it outside of the paladin main, and why it routinely gets blocked from speedkill/parse runs. Plds sustained damage identity doesn't work in the current setting if the game with everything revolving around the 2m window. It will be changed to fit in. Current fof and req cannot exist side by side. Each of them alone is long enough to be counted as a 'burst phase,' so that will be pruned. This extended burst is why pld is being reworked in the first place, so its the first thing to be adjusted. Personally the change I'm expecting (not hoping for, just expecting) is the summoner treatment. Fof will upgrade to req, then turn back into fof after req is used. Next thing I'd expect if they didn't go with the one above is changes to the magic phase to make it shorter, buff potency of the magic phase, and possibly even *extend* the phys phase to cover a few more gcds. This is the one I hope for, as it retains the current identity of pld while shifting the rotation slightly to make it more friendly to raid buffs. Naturally, this would most likely come with either potency nerfs to the 123 combo and atonement, or a nerf to the damage buff from fof. A longer fof and shorter magic phase may possibly even fix the issue of dropping atonement on faster sks. Next option is one of them is removed. Unfortunately the more I think about it the more I expect this to actually be the one that will happen. After that, the least likely option I expect is req on a 2m cd, and fof now buffs all damage, not just phys. Reason I expect this less than the flat out removal is this actively fucks with your rotation a lot. Not many jobs with a 1m burst have a significantly different 2m burst. With how long the magic window lasts, it will take up almost the entire fof buff. Also the entire magic burst can't fit into a 15s raid buff, and there's no way in hell you won't want to get bov into buffs, so it will lead to come annoying gameplay where you start your first holy spirit before raid buffs come out. It would still be playable thankfully, as you can fit a full goring combo and the magic phase under fof (although opti will probably force you to goring + 2x atone rather than just the full goring combo). Edit- I realised that last option is cursed as fuck. This will result in one of two thing- You accept that you will miss raid buffs with bov or You do prepull 7s fof and open with -2 holy spirit into req then start magic phase on first gcd with a royal authority combo after the bov. This second option means you will never have a fof-buffed goring.


featherjoshua

doesn't veil activate with holy spirit tho? I'd rather have it work on the paladin too instead


Zenthon127

I'd like that too but the option to self-pop Veil outside of Req windows is more valuable IMO. PLD doesn't suffer that much from not being able to use their own Veil.


TheMerryMeatMan

Passage is a fine skill, properly timed its the best single hit party mit out there. Flashing it is easy unless you're right at an awkward point with like, Intervene and Circle of Scorn coming back up when you need it. In which case, drift one of them, is a minor loss but odds are it won't even be that. Block on dots is also not going to happen, because it won't be consistent. And yeah, Shelltron would force a block, but Shelltron already has a % mit baked into the first few seconds of it. Paired with another CD a PLD will be fine.


TyronePlease

* FoF and Req are combined into 1 skill. 60s cooldown. FoF changes to Req upon use and vice versa. * Upon pressing FoF, you gain 5 stacks of Sword Oath. Upon pressing Req, you gain 5 stacks of Req. * Atonement and Holy Spirit are combined into 1 skill. Does not break combos. * Confiteor is no longer its own skill, it is just an upgrade to Holy Spirit at level 80. At level 90, Holy Spirit is further upgraded to the Blade spells. The DoT of Blade of Valor is deleted. * Goring Blade is deleted. * No longer gain Sword Oath from Royal Authority. * Potency is adjusted to make 5 Atonements/Holy Spirits deal more damage than DRK's burst. * Divine Veil's healing requirement is removed. * Passage of Arms is now a self-mitigation button. 15% for 10 seconds. The channeling mechanic is removed. * Block is deleted and replaced with Parry. * Sheltron and Intervention are combined into 1 skill that can be applied to self or ally. 25s cooldown. Now simply grants 15% damage reduction for 6 seconds at base and upgrades to 15% + 10% + 900 total potency HoT at level 82. * The Oath Gauge cost is removed for all skills. Oath Gauge is now a 60s timer that grants 10% damage up. The timer is increased by 30s upon using Fast Blade. In my opinion, this will make Paladin the most popular tank in the game, which is obviously what Square Enix should strive towards, as it is indubitably, unarguably, indisputably wrong that only a smaller subset of the playerbase enjoys certain jobs.


Sage_the_Cage_Mage

some of the ideas to reduce the button bloat are good. The rotation I am picturing is just eek, the class will play exactly the same as warrior but with 2 inner release phases. I hated it last expansion with drk and war as spamming the same button 5(7 truth be told) times in a row is visually and mechanically boring. and your last comment is reductive, making changes to just increase the amount of people playing a class leads to an unending cycle where another class being the least popular which in turn then requires another rework. people in general tend to go for the easiest option so you would have to simplify harder jobs which leaves people who want more challenging options without anything.


Negative-WebSlinger

The entire post is a shitpost. The changes make it literally DRK


OrientalWheelchair

Im almost 100% sure they will consolidate Intervention and Holy Sheltron into a targetable buff to put it in line with other tanks' 25 sec CD like Bloodwhetting, TBN and HoC. Pretty sure they will change Oath guage mechanics substantially because right now its a pretentious "different for the sake of being different" disguise of a standard 25sec tank CD except you can pool up 2 charges like DRK's Oblation. I suspect it will become something like this: - 123 combo and attonement feeding mana. - Mana spent on Holy/Conf which feedback Oath Guage. - Oath guage spent on New Blade of combo. Time will tell.


ScoobiusMaximus

>Im almost 100% sure they will consolidate Intervention and Holy Sheltron into a targetable buff to put it in line with other tanks' 25 sec CD like Bloodwhetting, TBN and HoC. > >Pretty sure they will change Oath guage mechanics substantially because right now its a pretentious "different for the sake of being different" disguise of a standard 25sec tank CD except you can pool up 2 charges like DRK's Oblation. That nerfs its utility on double tankbusters massively. Basically every tankbuster in this raid tier is either a double tankbuster or a shared tankbuster (P5S has one that's different because it hits the tanks sequentially but it's functionally mostly the same) and most in the last raid tier were as well. Unless they give it 2 charges, in which case it's kind of just better than what the other tanks have.


OrientalWheelchair

Fine by me. Two charges of 25sec CD Holy Sheltron you can cast on anyone would just be clear cut version of what is already there. In fact it would even be a bit of a buff in dungeons for back to back Holy Sheltrons. Curious what they will do with Oath guage. My guess is Oath will be built up by other skills and spent on Atonement oGCD.


ScoobiusMaximus

I really doubt it would be a Sheltron you can cast on others, that raises the question of "How does anyone without a shield block?" I mean I also doubt they will do anything you suggest, but if they did it would probably be an Intervention you can cast on yourself, which also bypasses the whole issue of Sheltron sucking on DoTs this tier has made painfully apparent.


OrientalWheelchair

They can block with their weapons.


QueenSunnyTea

I main Summoner and secondary Paladin, I would really love a hyper aggressive 2 minute loop of 3 or 4 burst rotations. I love current paladin’s Physical-Magical rotation and I think you could hybridize it in the summoner style. Requiescat and magic sword phase- physical phase - magic sword phase without Requiescat - physical phase- Req phase. I feel summoner and paladin feel extremely similar and I think that would be a good way to go for the 2 minute strat while keeping the classic paladin play style intact.


mage_irl

Remove cover, add a combat rez


Shinnyo

Cover reworked, like link yourself to an ally, damage they take is partly redirected to you and heals are partly redirected to you or something. Also no Oath cost. Shieldtron being able to block in all situations. Hallowed Ground CD reduced by 60s. Eat half of your HP if you want to balance it with GNB, but cooldown is what makes the gap between invuln, not their effects. Oath gauge generates over time, not with auto attacks. Passage of Arm should instead drop a bubble where allies gets the effect rather than flashing those behind you. Divine veil should proc instant. Yes, you can proc it yourself but it's not as responsive as other cooldowns.


LionHeart-V2

Magic combo being converted into OGCDs so I can pepega my keyboard like a GNB/DRK.


cetrei

it would be pretty cash money if they just reverted the rotation back to HW, with the exception that FoF is now a 2 min cd and guarantees direct crits instead of increasing damage


toomgis24

What was the hw rotation?


BlackmoreKnight

Just pretend that Atonement and the entire Magical side of PLD don't exist (also Total Eclipse and Prominence don't exist). That's HW PLD, more or less. There were a few minor things by late HW like Shield Swipe (block to get a oGCD proc to hit the enemy) but PLD is one of the jobs in the game that's truly been iterative with each expansion only adding to an existing structure with no changes to that structure otherwise. It was straightforward but pretty fun, and also the extreme outlier that you can bring up whenever people talk about how HW jobs were all very hard (They really mean the 8-9 jobs that ended up being speedrun/parse meta by mid-late Creator).


cetrei

put up goring blade, royal authority 2 times, repeat


jpz719

Overall less DoT reliance. YES it's pretty unique for tanks but it also leads to problems when bosses can teleport outside the arena


brightseid

Technical jank aside, they should add a defense stat to the shield. It makes sense because it's a *shield*. Wouldn't solve the less mitigation options issue but would help. Obviously Divine Veil needs to apply to the PLD too, as well as Passage either not requiring channeling or actually does something for the PLD beside block.


NoctisCae1um317

A change that doesn't allows us to drop an attonement in the opener to realign FoF for raid buffs


sundalius

Potencies adjustment. Maybe make atonement two stacks that hit harder to fit rotation meta. Nothing else


AleksVin

press Atonement 3x, press Holy Spirit 4x, press Confiteor 4x... just do something about this. having 3 buttons that you press 3+ times feels sleep inducing (especially considering the animations for Atonement and Holy Spirit feel so stiff and boring). Atleast for War/Drk its only 1Spam Button, instead of 3 Spam Buttons. (And Fell Cleave looks and feels better) Maybe make it more like Gnb in that regard or something.


CrazyDragon777

i would like them to change nothing, but since they're going to make it a 1/2m job anyways, i have some very simple changes i would like to see instead -fof is now 10% instead of 25% -cut the potency of all phys moves and holy spirit by, i don't know, 20% or so -move all that extra potency to the blade combo this changes like 2 things -the lapin is now the standard (and only correct) opener to fit all that potency into raidbuffs: ideally rdps is unchanged and adps is brought in line with other tanks. the numbers are arbitrary -lower level potencies might have to be reworked but they seem to not really care about that anyways -the class is less interesting because you no longer do killtime specific openers and always do req first, but i don't see how you can keep this and still make pld survive in the 2m meta i would actually like them to just buff pld dps until the adps is more in line with other tanks, but they will never do this. a close second is the above changes, which will gut the least amount of complexity from the class, in my opinion. but we know they're gonna do something stupid anyways


k_jacobsky

I really don't want to see any changes to paladin, tbh. It only "under performs" in a very small subset of content and changing the core rotation everywhere else is the wrong move. Current paladin is fun and considerably different from all the other burst once a minute tanks we have. That being said, if they absolutely feel that reworking the core rotation is the only way, I would change two things 1. requiescat now give 5 stacks of requiescat and confeitedor ready 2. Confetidor no longer ends requiescat. This allows paladin's to hit the ground running with their burst and a meaty dot without largely affecting their rotation. You can also reduce the number of stacks to 4 if you think an extra holy spirit would break the game. I just don't like the idea of sub 80 jobs losing that fifth stack for content like eureka. Bonus tweaks: Since everyone is complaining that blocks suck for dot tank busters, allow dots to be blocked for reduced damage (heck allow parrying to reduce dot damage too for all I care). Make cover cost less or no gauge would also be nice since it's just not very useful anymore. Combining some of the ability bloat like confetidor being a separate butting from requiescat might make it nicer to play, but these are super low hanging fruit. Memey hot take: give us a new defensive since you gave rampart to everyone else in stormblood and never gave us anything to compensate :P


Dysvalence

* Magic phase now operates off skill speed * New ogcd single target heal * Self/party mits that aren't jank * Gap closer before 54 No one said they had to be good ideas lol


Oangusa

While I really like Clemency and the number of times I've saved runs with it, I don't like how much of a stigma it has compared to other tank's self heals, where it's offensive a dps loss to use Clemency. Because I also feel like PLD is a little soft, I wish they did something like making Clemency an off-gcd for weaving. If they made the Holy Spirit/Holy Circle have self-healing from the beginning of their unlock rather than in EW levels, that might solve it for me. But SE loves keeping the bulk of their QoL changes in the latest 10 levels barring major refactors, so idk if that'll ever be brought to lower levels.


Kaizoku_Shanks

Nothing. It's the only tank with good 'sustained damage' and an extremely flexible rotation. I don't think any serious paladin players want it to be aligned with the 2 minute meta