How about buffing PLD spells?Follow

DISCLAIMER - I'm a paladin. I love being a paladin. I think we're a very capable job as things stand now. I just think we could maybe be a little better.

Ok, so here's my rationale behind this. Right now, PLD cross class abilities are virtually worthless in a party setting. We get Foresight from MRD, which is great, but outside of that there's nothing special. Meanwhile, WAR has access to some of our best abilities (Provoke, Flash, Convalesence). We do get access to some basic WHM spells but they will almost never get used in a party setting. This seems like a huge waste to me, as I feel that making these spells useable would accomplish a lot - it would differentiate us from Warriors in playstyle, it would give us more options/things to do in battle, and it would help us feel more like what a paladin traditionally is. Here are my thoughts on what we get:

CURE
Our cures are too weak to be useful. Yeah, we've all probably found ourselves in an "oh s$%&" situation where we've tried to spam cures to stay alive, but does it ever really work? Not really. I'd like to see our cures strengthened to the point that they are actually worth casting... not so strong that they mitigate the need for a healer, but strong enough to wear we might need a little less attention from them. Curing ourselves can help us to have another tool for building enmity, as well as give the healers time to cast other spells. If the healers are able to cast an extra stone or DOT spell or two it might even help us close the DPS gap we have with our WAR comrades. Finally, stronger cures might help us keep a party alive just a little longer should the healer(s) die... maybe that extra time is enough to finish off a boss.

RAISE
I'd like to be able to cast it in battle. If you're the primary tank that's probably not going to be a big help, but this would be huge as far as the OT is concerned. It varies from fight to fight, but the OT doesn't always have a lot to do. Being able to raise a fallen comrade in battle can help keep the OT busy while allowing the healers and summoners to focus on the things they'd rather be doing (and a lack of swiftcast will keep this from being at all overpowered IMO).

PROTECT
I don't think there's huge need for a buff here... it is what it is. It might be interesting to make it a bit stronger than a scholar's protect while still being weaker than a WHM's. At least then it would have some situational uses.

STONESKIN
Honestly, I haven't bothered to level my CNJ high enough to unlock it yet... and I don't feel like I'm missing out or anything by not doing so. If anyone has any suggestions or ideas, feel free to throw them out there.

ESUNA
We don't get it... but why not give it to us? It's not like it's all that powerful since it only removes one ailment at a time. This would also give a PLD off tank something else to do to help out.

Two ideas I have for implementing these buffs for paladins:
1) Give us a job trait that just flat-out buffs our spells. Boring, yet practical.
2) Attach these magic buffs to Sword Oath to make it more useful. I've always kinda wanted to see Sword Oath get a bit of a buff since in a party situation we spend 99% of the time in Shield Oath. If switching to Sword Oath strengthened your cures and other spells there might be real reasons to switch over to it (yeah you'd lose some defense, but just throw up a cool down while you're in Sword to mitigate it). I like the idea of doing more of the "stance dance" and this might help to encourage that.

I think these changes would be a lot of fun. Granted, it's probably just dreaming on my part, but it can be fun to speculate some time. What do you guys think.

When Titan jumps, cast stoneskin.

When King Mog is about to use his meteor attack, cast stoneskin.

Any time there's a lull in any fight and you find yourself with two and a half seconds to spare and MP to burn, cast stoneskin. It scales with HP and allows you to preemptively mitigate damage for yourself or other players. Can't complain about this spell at all.

Although I do agree about cure being a complete waste on paladin, which is a shame IMO. A quick and easy remedy for this to keep it somewhat relevant would be to add a moderate amount of magic damage to paladin weapons, with more powerful weapons having slightly more magic damage. It wouldn't have to be a lot, but just enough so that is scales proportionally with the rest of your attributes.

I find stoneskin more usefull that foresight.

I do not see any impact done by having foresight activated.

What if we halved the casting time of a Paladin's Cure to compensate for the lesser amount being cured?

The cure isn't very much in group-based content, but sometimes I find it is helpful for trying to solo FATEs, but my main beef with it is the slow casting time.

Now, if it cast twice as fast, then you could fire off cures every so often to lessen the burden on your healer.

OR, what of we had something like... Rage of Halone gives you a 50% chance your next Cure is instant cast?

The only problem i currently have with PLD is enmity on more than one monster.

A warrior can just Overpower everything, deal damage and gather hate that way. Not to mention the other AoE's it has and power attacks.

Paladin currently can only flash as his AoE, and use a laughable 100 potency Circle of Scorn. No monster is going to be impressed by that 50+.

On anything where you have to pull large groups and keep hate on them, they act like you're not even there. Flashes are fine for a bit, and Circle of Scorn (it doesnt even have enmity on it) should count as one attack atleast, but it cant measure to up DPS hitting something. And you can only focus your attacks on one enemy as PLD :/

The solutions i see can be summed up as:

- Give PLD more AoE attacks
- Reduce/remove the 25 second recast on Circle of Scorn.
- Boost Circle of Scorn's Potency from 100 to 200 at the very least
- Add an enmity modifier to Circle of Scorn.

I play both WAR and PLD (Tanking Rocks!) and I have to say, I feel it is far easier to hold hate as a WAR. Especially given the environment of speedruns, where its AoEs and spam-Cures, I don't feel Flash and Overpower stack up equally.

PLD has a lot going for it, particularly in survivability, but I agree with everyone who's pointed out that PLD could use some enmity buffs. I mean, I don't use any CNJ skills on my PLD, I feel I get far more out of Bloodbath and Mercy Stroke.

This conversation has opened my eyes to the utility of Stoneskin though, and I feel I need to incorporate that into my PLD repertoire.

Kind of an a side-note, I have found a little trick that sometimes is helpful when I'm a PLD OT (mostly in CT, I haven't been able to try it out anywhere else) is to use Cover on the MT. Esspecially in fights where there isn't really anything to off tank or if the MT needs a few more moments while the Healers are catching up after a bad AoE or something. Clearly, a situational tactic, but one that has been of some use for me.

This is pretty much what it boils down to. AoE tanking on Paladin is as simple as AoE tanking on WAR; they're simply different methods. One uses Flash spam weaved between Riot combos and the other uses Overpower as needed with Steel Cyclones; one takes less damage but deals less and one deals more and takes more.

It's fairly balanced.

All they need to do is add Reprisal.

Yeah, SS can be used on other people too ya know. I've seen low life players saved from unavoidable damage thanks to a timely PLD SS.

Cover is incredibly useful. Every time I'm AoEing on BLM and pull threat then watch the PLD proceed to not use cover, I die a little on the inside. This is particularly prominent in turn 4 as a healer as well. You know when the healer will be pulling aggro so why are you not using cover in advance to shield him from the first few swats?

There are so few situations in this game where I'd want a WAR MTing over a PLD from a healer's PoV. The only exception is Twin where the PLD is more useful for stunning because, hey: the WAR has only one stun and one root.

Can't believe how little stoneskining the MT when you are the OT is emphasized.

Edited, May 5th 2014 2:36am by HitomeOfBismarck