Ideas for PLD

[Cyprian]

The recent updates for PLD have made them even more awesome then before, but it still feels like theres still not much love for PLD. :cry: Mainly their damage output, so I was thinking of some ways to help their damage.
I came up with a couple things, first is a JT I'd call Riposte, for those of you who don't know what Riposte means heres the definition: a fencer's quick return thrust following a parry, granted RDMs are known more as fencers in FFXI. With that definition you can devise what that'd do, if you can't.....you're just stupid... Granted this is basically a MNKs counter I was thinking of it maybe having some other effect which I don't know what'd is be...
Now my other idea I have no name for yet, but it'd also be a JT which activated on occasionally on Shield Bash, which followed through with a swing of the sword, because a shield bash is meant to knock back the opponent allowing a perfected time to strike.
What do you think? I'd enjoy any opinions or ideas. ^^

[Armando]

I don't mean to sound harsh, but we've gotten a ridiculous amount of upgrades. Just when I thought it couldn't get better, they redid Sentinel and Rampart to not suck outside of being hate tools. Now we don't have a single JA or trait that's short of being stellar, unless you count the relatively low proc rate of Resist Sleep. We were given Shield Mastery, and, as if it weren't good enough on its own, it was improved.

S-E's not gonna throw us any more bones for quite a while, and there's plenty of jobs out there that still haven't gotten what they deserve. That aside, Riposte is more in line with THF or RDM, it's redundant with Shield Mastery (in the way that it's meant to increase your damage,) we already have a lot of DD gear and terrific swords available to us, and they're not going to give us a JA that suddenly makes us do good damage for just sitting there and taking hits.

If you want more damage, that's what Haubergeons, Woodsman Rings, Assault Earring, etc. are for. They hardly hurt our ability to take hits, and greatly increase our accuracy. Sure, they're expensive, but every self-respecting DD has to get those things and often far more. On the other hand, we're one of the cheapest jobs to play and one of the few (if not the only one) that can level to 75 wearing full AF.

[Raydeus]

Yeah like Armando said, PLD is already capable of dealing decent damage with apropiate gear.

However I'd like seeing some kind of adjustment to PLD's defense so tanking gear would actually mean something when fighting against IT+ mobs.

Right now you get no benefit from going war turtle because all the extra +VIT and +DEF in Vana does practically nothing to reduce damage taken after a relatively low point. :worry:

[Quetzalcoatl]

well if u want a PLD that cause good DMG i think u could just use a great sword a life belt an optical hat and some STR food and there u go!^^ but i think its not a good idea when PT tanking lol our job as PLD is to take all DMG no to deal it and i think if PLDs could do more DMG with sword and shield maybe we will be the best job in the game^^ so dont worry about doing DMG just care about taking it and SURVIVE! lol

[TenchiHawkwing]

well if u want a PLD that cause good DMG i think u could just use a great sword a life belt an optical hat and some STR food and there u go!^^ but i think its not a good idea when PT tanking lol our job as PLD is to take all DMG no to deal it and i think if PLDs could do more DMG with sword and shield maybe we will be the best job in the game^^ so dont worry about doing DMG just care about taking it and SURVIVE! lol
Don't listen to this guy, we do more damage with Sword than Great Sword...

[Quetzalcoatl]

LOL plis tell me when sword hv more DGM than a great sword....

[TenchiHawkwing]

They don't have higher damage, but over the course of a minute a Sword in the hands of a Paladin will have done more damage than a Great Sword in the hands of that same Paladin.

In general swords have pretty decent DPS, also Paladins have more Sword skill than Great Sword skill, not to mention the TP gain of Swords like the Justice Sword and Joyeuse(as well as their DPS) is a sight to behold. When subbing Ninja a Paladin can access both swords at once with increased DPS due to Dual Wield (and an extra hit on the WS as well). A Paladin is just better off with a Sword in hand than a Great Sword in practically any situation in the game even without mention of Shields.

[Clever Ninja]

LOL plis tell me when sword hv more DGM than a great sword....

By your logic NIN sub is essentially worthless, which is obviously false >_>.

[Taskmage]

If you're at level 67, Quetzalcoatl, there's already an 18 point gap between your sword skill and your great sword skill. Compared to using a great sword, putting a sword in your hand gives you the equivalent of nearly two haubergeons worth of stats. Not to mention you get Vorpal Blade with sword at level 62, whereas great sword won't get a good ws until 68.

Also, as Clever Ninja pointed out, "dgm" rating isn't everything. Lances, great katanas, scythes and great swords have a huge dmg rating compared to one-handed axes and yet axe-wielding wars are the most desired DDs in the game right now.

[Clever Ninja]

In all honesty, PLD is just fine. A high level PLD in my old linkshell basically had a literal orgasm when the PLD changes came out, as it increased her efficiency so much. All that's left really is to let them shoot laser beams and make it based off Divine Magic, so that B+ Rating actually does something.

[Raydeus]

LOL plis tell me when sword hv more DGM than a great sword....

Because of our skill rating on GS PLD wont be doing more DoT with a GS than with a Sword anytime soon.

That being said, if anyone thinks a PLD/THF can't close Light with a SA + Spinning Slash and do almost as much dmg as a WAR would they need to go out and try it out. :biggrin:


It's a thing of beauty for a defensive job like PLD to be able to pull that much dmg. If you are gonna kill a NM (and have the chance to build up 300 TP) a SA + SS/GS will close a really nice SC and give you a good amount of hate to work with if you go defensive afterwards.

It's just a matter of knowing how to use the tools at your disposal. :thumbsup:


Edit> Not like you'll be using GS often, and never in xp parties, so please for the love of Altana if you are tanking use a Sword and a Shield, and even a Club if you want, but not a GS.

[BlackSerenade]

I don't mean to sound harsh, but we've gotten a ridiculous amount of upgrades. Just when I thought it couldn't get better, they redid Sentinel and Rampart to not suck outside of being hate tools. Now we don't have a single JA or trait that's short of being stellar, unless you count the relatively low proc rate of Resist Sleep. We were given Shield Mastery, and, as if it weren't good enough on its own, it was improved.

Ridiculous? Considering that we were pretty much completely neglected until just recently, I would say that those upgrades were a long time coming. I've always held the opinion that a Paladin should basically be a shield with limbs, and these upgrades help out with that. As it is, I don't think we need anything so much as we want SE to tell us that we can go ahead and be more DD oriented so people will shut the hell up and stop asking why we're wearing Woodsman's rings instead of VIT rings.

Anyone who has not read the old patch notes should do so now. Linkage is here. (http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/paladin/63484-pld-updates-beta-2006-current-day.html)

Do it for the lulz.

[Armando]

Completely neglected? We didn't get two shield system upgrades, Shield Mastery, an improvement to Shield Mastery, Auto Refresh, a Refresh effect neck piece that's dirt cheap, and an overhaul for Sentinel and Rampart that makes them nothing short of amazing JAs all in one sitting. Or even every other upgrade. Regardless, how long we had them coming is irrelevant, because we already have them. What matters is the situation now, and I don't feel the PLD job needs more. Any more radical changes might make us broken, and the other jobs need their updates before we get any other toys to play with.

Also, even if S-E gave us the green light, and announced publicly "Yes! When we designed PLD we wanted them to be offensive! It's the reason we gave them the highest DMG/sec weapons in the game (short of Ridill) and why they have access to most DD gear! Indeed, we would like to encourage all Paladins to be more offensive in EXP parties," I think people would still be going "lol y u hav woodman rings??? ur job is 2 tank." Some people will never use their head; the only it'll be accepted is if more people do it until it becomes a common occurrence and people realize it's good in the appropriate situations.

Also, lol at Great Sword being better...sorry. Had to get that out of my system.

[BlackSerenade]

Completely neglected? We didn't get two shield system upgrades, Shield Mastery, an improvement to Shield Mastery, Auto Refresh, a Refresh effect neck piece that's dirt cheap, and an overhaul for Sentinel and Rampart that makes them nothing short of amazing JAs all in one sitting. Or even every other upgrade. Regardless, how long we had them coming is irrelevant, because we already have them. What matters is the situation now, and I don't feel the PLD job needs more. Any more radical changes might make us broken, and the other jobs need their updates before we get any other toys to play with.

Lay off the 4chon for a sec. A quick glance at the patch notes shows that we were neglected for a long time. Keyword being were. The recent tinkering with the job is just the result of what should have happened gradually over the last several years, that's all I was saying. Otherwise I agree, we kick alot more ass now than we did 6 months ago.

As for Greatswords..No. DON'T YOU EVER SAY THAT AGAIN, YOUNG MAN, OR SO HELP ME I WILL TURN THIS CAR RIGHT BACK AROUND AND WE'LL GO HOME.

[DrivenTooFar]

The only thing I think they have left to give us is a Paladin only spell. Mainly because we are the only job without an only spell and quite frankly, I don't want to be left out of that. Other than that, I think SE has done a pretty good job with everything else.

[Taskmage]

The only thing I think they have left to give us is a Paladin only spell. Mainly because we are the only job without an only spell and quite frankly, I don't want to be left out of that. Other than that, I think SE has done a pretty good job with everything else.Hmm, I'll give you that. Every other spellcasting job as at least one thing that only they have access to save pld. They should get some love in that department too. Maybe a self-target Reflect spell in the late 30s-mid 40s? A White Wind type healing spell would be fun to play around as a tank, too. Perhaps faster and cheaper than Cure IV but on a long timer?

But I also agree with what others have said in that paladins have gotten tons of great stuff lately and will at very least have to wait their turn again before SE considers tweaking them again. That and the job doesn't really need anything new right now.

[Vyuru]

Lay off the 4chon for a sec.

Let's not be throwing mud in the issue here please.

A quick glance at the patch notes shows that we were neglected for a long time. Keyword being were.

Really, yeah, the updates to pld were nice and all, but I honestly think they needed them about as much as drg needed a new two hour, also known as not at all.

Let's look at some of the tweaks:

Max hp lowered
No more elemental defense increases as you level
Max mp lowered
Sentinel's effectiveness is lowered
Pld are now forced from the DD slot to the tank slot, almost like ninja >.>
Shields no longer negate damage when blocking an attack.

And it seems to be about here that SE starts giving the shield mastery traits, and stuff like that. So in other words, it looks to me like pld got a helluva lot of nerfs that SE has only started to change. Think ranger.

And despite all those nerfs, pld have been the best and preferred tanks ever since I started to play, back in 02/11

Looking at the patch notes I'd have to say no, you guys were not neglected for a long time. Pld seems to be just about right at the moment, and I think SE should focus on something more like Drk for instance, or possibly Pup, before the focus turns to Pld again.

[DrivenTooFar]

Hmm, I'll give you that. Every other spellcasting job as at least one thing that only they have access to save pld. They should get some love in that department too. Maybe a self-target Reflect spell in the late 30s-mid 40s? A White Wind type healing spell would be fun to play around as a tank, too. Perhaps faster and cheaper than Cure IV but on a long timer?

I've always liked the idea of Paladin getting Reflect. This would seem like a really cool spell, especially against the Colibris. It could also help with damage mitigation and hate. For damage mitigation it would be obvious. The enemy casts the spell and gets hit with it. For hate, a Black Mage could cast it on the Paladin and have it reflect onto the enemy, tricking them into thinking it was the Paladin. Of course, reflect would have to be destroyed once a spell hits it to keep it from being overpowered.

White Wind would be cool also and I always thought that maybe they should have some kind of -aga healing. I'm not sure they would do this one though.

[Malacite]

I would like to see a bit of an offensive boost to PLD as well, but here's the primary change I think SE should make in regards to the stupidly low diminishing returns on DEF.

Change PLD's Defense Bonus traits to 10% damage reduction. This would greatly help a PLD to sustain him/herself with little support from the mages, and help level the playing field against Utsusemi (no dmg taken)

[Hankthetank]

Geared well a Paladin can already deal Damage on par with anybody in a merit party setting. If a significant DD buff was given to us, the playerbase would be screaming for a nerf before years end.

If you want to deal damage, all you have to do is dress for it. No new ability is required.

Sincerely,
Hank

[IfritnoItazura]

PLD is fine as is; Lv.57 so far, and I don't feel any need for a new spell, job ability, etc. Neither need nor desire changes to them, either. (Really, all I want is more Gil and time to acquire better gear, and there's nothing S-E can do about that.)

FFXI dev team's resources are limited; I much rather they spend their time and money to even out the exp'ing in ToAU area compared to RoZ, CoP, and other area, or fix up other jobs, or do something about the utter imbalance between TP spam vs. SC+MB.

There is a long list of things to fix, and item "Paladin" is checked and done. Move on.

[BlackSerenade]

Let's not be throwing mud in the issue here please.

Hey, is it my fault he was being nigra? I think not.


If you want to deal damage, all you have to do is dress for it. No new ability is required.

Quoted for truth.

[Malacite]

PLD is fine as is; Lv.57 so far, and I don't feel any need for a new spell, job ability, etc. Neither need nor desire changes to them, either. (Really, all I want is more Gil and time to acquire better gear, and there's nothing S-E can do about that.)

You clearly haven't hit the DEF cap then. I have several PLD buddies, who can all pop berserk and still take the exact same damage as before. This is outright stupid, and needs to be fixed. As someone said before, a PLD/WAR using a "turtle" strategy should actually be feasible, but sadly isn't due to diminishing returns.

[IfritnoItazura]

You clearly haven't hit the DEF cap then. I have several PLD buddies, who can all pop berserk and still take the exact same damage as before. This is outright stupid, and needs to be fixed. As someone said before, a PLD/WAR using a "turtle" strategy should actually be feasible, but sadly isn't due to diminishing returns.

That's interesting, but exactly how does that get in the way of a PLD tanking?

From speaking with a couple of Lv.75 PLD's, it seems like PLD's currently "tank" in the traditional sense in many merit parties, using sushi and a good deal of attack gears. I don't think they terribly minded that defense has a "diminishing return" on T-VT mobs or whatever they are hunting in those parties.

Maybe this analogy would make sense: Humans need oxygenated air to live--but, above a certain percentage, we won't get significant additional benefit from more oxygen in the air. That hardly means the human body is broken and need to be fixed. We're not perfect, but good enough, I say.

* * *

Have you leveled PLD yourself? If not, give it a shot; it's quite fun, and just fine the way it is--at least up to Lv.57, I assure you.

[Vyuru]

don't think they terribly minded that defense has a "diminishing return" on T-VT mobs or whatever they are hunting in those parties.


I kind of wonder about that sometimes, just howmuch of a diminishing returns is there?

At lvl 61+ T ranges from +1-3 levels above you, VT from 4-7, IT from 8-12.

I think it's safe to say that you'd see a difference in amount of damage taken from a +12 lvl above you mob, and say a VT +4 lvls above you. But between T and VT? Maybe if it was 1 lvl above you vs 7 lvls above you, you might see a difference. But I'm guessing that there are certain areas you can exp where the mobs are between 3-7 lvls above you, so there would be really little difference in T and VT besides exp.

I know I've encountered that with drg while soloing, there would be mobs that conned EM and mobs that conned T, and more often then not I could take the T mobs for WAY more exp and spend only an extra 20 mp to do it in and maybe tag on an extra 20-30 seconds in comparison to fighting a EM.

[Karinya]

You clearly haven't hit the DEF cap then. I have several PLD buddies, who can all pop berserk and still take the exact same damage as before. This is outright stupid, and needs to be fixed. As someone said before, a PLD/WAR using a "turtle" strategy should actually be feasible, but sadly isn't due to diminishing returns.

This contradicts both my personal experience and the best known theories of how attack and defense work (the Studio Gobli/VZX formulae), so I'm going to have to ask for more evidence.

Please specify what monsters they were fighting, what gear and food they were using, and if possible, provide parse results.

In my experience, the difference between full defense gear and full defense gear + Defender is immediately noticeable on HNMs and Dynamis/Limbus mobs; with Berserk your defense would fall to near DD levels, and they take roughly double the damage I take per hit.

DEF has diminishing returns, but there is no specific point that is a "cap", hard or soft; and improving DEF will continue to significantly reduce damage taken until you are being hit for 0 on a regular basis, something which is impossible or nearly impossible to achieve on EM or higher mobs.

At most, you might force the attacker into the part of the pDIF curves where their maximum possible damage doesn't change, but their minimum and average damage still decreases as you continue to add DEF. If you didn't look carefully enough this might give the false impression that more DEF isn't helping. (But if you add *enough* DEF you can get past that region and start decreasing their max damage again.)


Now, none of this implies that maximizing your DEF is necessarily the best possible approach to a party situation. With only 6 people, your personal damage may be significant to overall damage, and on weak mobs, damage is a larger portion of hate (plus, you also have to consider +enmity gear compared to DEF). This does not mean DEF is useless, but that something else is more useful. I don't think this implies that the game or the PLD job is broken. The same person can contribute to the party in more than one way, and I don't think sacrificing some DEF for more damage is necessarily wrong. You still probably have better DEF than anyone else in the party and have the shield skill, traits and JAs to reduce your damage taken even further, while at the same time managing hate (somewhat - hate is hard to manage on weak mobs, especially when the DDs aren't cooperating, which is most of the time).

However, I think Hank goes too far by saying that a PLD can do damage "on par with anybody". A PLD needs better gear to do equal damage. Hank's DD PLD gear is superb - about the best possible short of Excalibur or Ares armors - and I have no doubt that he can match or even beat the damage of an average WAR or MNK. But that's an unfair comparison, and I'm pretty sure that if those jobs have the best possible gear for them - even ruling out relic weapons and Salvage gear - they'll still come out on top.

[Armando]

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that the PDIF formulas we know apply only to players hitting mobs, because when mobs attack us the PDIF ranges just don't act like Studio Gobli's formulas say they should. You'd think that with Cocoon, Protect, and Defense food you'd get a Too Weak mob 15 levels lower than you to start hitting for 0, yet all you get is hits that are still doing 10-30 depending on the mob. Moreover, I recall reading a long time ago that PDIF for mobs vs mobs has a limit of like 3 or 4 (like jug pets hitting Lv.0 mobs, for example.)

Also, I don't quite buy that you can pop Berserk and not see a difference. I was tanking Toramas last weekend, and my food just wore and the party was basically waiting for the last 4-5 mobs that I need to level so we could disband, I decided to try Sushi instead of Defense food since the damage I was taking seemed to be ok. I immediately noticed the difference in damage taken. Granted, the Toramas are IT mobs 9-11 levels higher than me, but even so. I also notice a difference when I click on Berserk for WS and forget to turn it off.

[Lmnop]

I think it'd be more accurate to say that when popping Berserk, these turtling Paladins see no difference. i.e. damage taken per swing goes from 40-55 to 45-62. Most of those numbers in between are where you'll prolly fall more often, so it comes out looking the same by the human eye.

About this plateau concept of hitting so much defense that you don't notice any more... Karinya, you say that if you contnued to add enough defense that you would eventually break through the "glass ceiling" and continue to notice good damage reduction anew. Would this level be anything feasible? I'm not talking about getting mobs to hit for 0 damage. I just mean like... maybe I should use one of my shitty examples:

As a Warrior, when I get hate I swap into my defense set. This ups my defense around 60 points. I end up getting hit... just as hard (or so it'd seem). I've seriously gotten hate before, gotten chomped for 90 damage so I swapped into defense gear. Wanna guess how much the next swing hit me for? over 120. I haven't done a lot of testing on how much Defender reduces damage taken at my level. Mostly because every time I use Defender, I die the very next swing regardless (the forgotten JA). Anyway, I'm assuming that what's happening is that even though I'm increasing defense, I'm stuck in one "tier" and I simply need more defense to pull over the hump and into PLD levels.

So what I'm getting at is - would PLD have yet another hump like this? DD gets hit for 90, standard PLD gets hit for 50. Would a super-defense PLD then get hit for 20? I'm thinking not. I'm thinking the best he could do - even with 999 defense - is probably 40. And then I guess there's what Armando said... would this be because of "the formula" or simply because mobs apparently have a much wider attack range.

[Malacite]

I can't recall exact specifics, but I do know it was before the sentinel change and he was using mostly AF and Tacos for food.

Even so, it still just seems wrong. As Armando said, you'd think piling on assloads of DEF would work, but it doesn't; It does have a noticable affect during EXP, but not to the extent you'd think it ought to.

Hell, just playing my BLU through the dunes using defense food, protect and cocoon I was still taking a good chunk of damage. While it did help, somehow having close to 150+ def in the dunes seemed like it should have had a more profound impact, but that's just me.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

It seems to me that the only real problem with PLD is player perception. Three years ago, when I started playing, player perception of WAR was very poor. We were looked at as being sub-optimal tanks and DDs who should just switch to either PLD or DRK.

What would the game be like today if SE had stepped in 3 years ago and increased the power of WAR in response to poor player perception?

[IfritnoItazura]

I can't recall exact specifics, but I do know it was before the sentinel change and he was using mostly AF and Tacos for food.
There's been no change to how defense work with that update, AFAIK.

Even so, it still just seems wrong.
My little car refuses to go any faster than 90 mile per hour, no matter how hard I press on the throttle pedal. Seems OK to me; diminishing return isn't just an in-game thing.

My car is fast enough to get me where I want to go in a reasonable time, and PLD is good enough to tank Lv.10-75.


As Armando said, you'd think piling on assloads of DEF would work, but it doesn't; It does have a noticable affect during EXP, but not to the extent you'd think it ought to.

How confusing; defense has "noticeable effect" yet it "doesn't" work. =/

I'd like to repeat my suggestion earlier: Try playing Paladin if you haven't already; it's quite fun, and you'll see it works well as a tank with good support from party--exactly as S-E intended, I'd imagine.

[Karinya]

Try playing Paladin if you haven't already; it's quite fun, and you'll see it works well as a tank with good support from party--exactly as S-E intended, I'd imagine.

That is both true, and exactly the problem. Ninja works well as a tank *without* support from the party, not at all as S-E intended. (Except on status-happy mobs like torama, but players can and do easily just avoid those.) Defense (defined broadly as keeping the party in good fighting condition and dealing with whatever attacks the monster throws at you) was designed to be a group effort, but ninjas subvert that design.

Other people in the party don't want to provide that support, or don't want to invite jobs capable of providing that support when they could be inviting jobs that do the big damagez. Add in that ninja itself was designed as a DD and has the damage potential to match, and you can quickly see where the problem is: it's a DD that tanks with no sacrifices or tradeoffs and lets everyone else with defensive responsibilities be lazier, or dropped from the party entirely to replace them with another DD.

Nerfophobia may lead to every encounter being as trivial for *everyone* as it is for ninjas; that's my main worry about the future of the game. Some things just make the game too easy and need to be nerfed no matter how many people whine about it. (Unless they split the game into easy servers and hard servers... I don't think that would work though. Everyone would go to hard servers to prove to themselves they're not a wimp, then when they're hard, some would wimp out and complain about how the hard servers are too hard.)

[Timian]

Tiamat hits me for JUST AS MUCH wether I wear Koenig or run around butt naked.
Know why?
Because HNMs with sky high weapon damage ratings, and higher STR than you can ever hope to match in VIT will completely ignore your defenses - no matter how buff you are.

Stacking VIT or DEF is completely useless from an endgame point of view.
Use those slots to stack Enmity, HP, Haste or something else that is actually useful.

PLD/NIN with a haste/enmity build is an elite tank.
Far better than your standard NIN/WAR.
NIN/DRK is another elite tank (in my opinion, alot better than any PLD-build,
but that's another topic).

Fact of the day: Any endgame tank that subs WAR isn't playing up to his/her potential.

Now, with that said; on topic:

PLD doesn't *need* anything at all.
We have access to very nice DD setups. (I parse quite well with a Princely/Kraken setup)
We can solo *almost* on par with an RDM, with the latest updates.
We can tank pretty damn well, provided we use our heads.

[Malacite]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but pre-patch Sentinel used to give a large defense and hate spike upon activation.

Anyway, it just seems as though defense just doesn't perform as it should. Might just be my eyes betraying me but I still think it doesn't lower damage taken from mobs as much as it should.


On a side note, how the hell does a DRK/NIN tank o. O? Use stun to get hate/shadows up? I'm really curious about this one.

EDIT: Meant NIN/DRK sorry (I'm kinda sleepy tonight)

[Armando]

From what I've read, plenty of Haste to lower the Stun recast. Mainly use Stun for hate, throwing out the occasional Bind/Blind/Sleep if you need more. Of course, Last Resort and Souleater are also good hate tools.

Also, Sentinel did give a Defense bonus, but if I recall correctly it wasn't very big.

[Timian]

DRK/NIN tank? Not in a million years. =P
As I'm sure that was a typo though, I'll just say that NIN/DRK does indeed spam Stun - yes.