FFXIV What changes and additions I'd like for PLD

Adding to the list: PLEASE MAKE SPIRITS WITHIN NO LONGER SCALE WITH HP. The damage gets lower has your HP goes down and, as you said, PLD only has a GCD heal. That means if your HP isn't essentially full at all times, its damaged is significantly reduced.

I agree with all the skills that need change, but as you, I cannot say what would be the best change for them. One thing I'll like is to make Attonement as GNB Contiuation combo, instead of repeating the same attack 3 times, a cool 3 part combo, or if that's stepping too much into GNB, make at least an Attonement finisher like Confiteor, so you have a Melee rotation finisher and a magic rotation finisher. Every time I'm just wanting to go into the magic combo because Confiteor is so cool and the melee combo feels like a less cool phase to regain MP so you can go magic again. BLM has made it with Dispair, it won't even change how the job plays that much and I think it will feel way better. I'm fine with Divine Veil being as it is if Clemency is an OGCD. PLD needs better uses of it's Gauge, right now Sheltron and Intervention a not very interactive skills, and the game has enough mitigation already, so I would be fine if Clemency was an OGCD that consumed part of the Gauge so you can decide between healing and mitigating.

Personally, can we get their gap closer that a lower level. 72 is pretty nuts, maybe something like 52, then a second charge at a higher level. Edit: Another one I’d want to see, some more personal mitigation. Because not counting Role actions, after getting Sentinal you’ve only got two/three defense buffs that can help your survivability, one of which is Clemency. Meanwhile, Warrior gets five, Gunbreaker gets five and Dark knight gets four, before factoring role actions. Paladin needs at least another one for the lower levels, because while the tanks are supposed to work as both main and off tanks, Paladin is blatantly an Off tank and honesty suffers a little for it.

I'm looking forward to hearing more of your opinions on the classes, always good to get more sides and thoughts. As a scholar main, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts since I feel like it's the most divisive healer.

Gonna be commenting on the changes you want. This is coming from a PLD main and I don't mean anything negative if it does come up, this is all just in the name of fun/discussion! - Divine Veil SPEAK LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK. Fucking hell, I don't get why Divine Veil still needs a GCD heal to proc. The shield itself is... fine (though actually lower than Shake It Off since we have 2 AoE mitigation buttons), but it's so bad that you need a GCD heal for it to actually activate. - Cover Oh boy. I agree with the range and/or cooldown reduction. The problem is that Cover has basically been a problem since ARR, so I wouldn't be surprised if they leave it as it is, which is basically a glorified tank swap. Again though, really wish it was at least easier to use. More range wouldn't necessarily break it, though it would potentially make actually using it for tank stuff harder since you then also need to go further to break the tether. - Clemency Anything to make it actually useful in content. It's currently only useful if the healer has died and the PLD needs to take over healing for a bit. While that leads to some cool, clutch moments, I can get similar clutch moments by playing WAR, hitting Equilibrium, Thrill of Battle and Nascent Flash and just going "lol" to the enemies as I heal myself. Imho, I wouldn't be against making it oGCD but I'm also partially of the mind that it could be removed and I wouldn't miss it at all. - Passage of Arms That actually is already a thing. It's only like 3-5 seconds (I believe it is 1 server tick roughly) and doesn't affect the PLD (because of course it doesn't), but the "Arms Up" buff on the party members in the radius actually stays for a bit after you let go of the skill, so you only have to tap it and have the party members be inside the radius immediately. - Shield Bash If they can rework it into something interesting, great and I hope it actually would be actually good to use. My opinion is the same as it was with One Ilm Punch on MNK, remove it. That's hotbar space that can be used for another skill entirely. It's not worth it, just get rid of it. Low Blow is almost better in every way.

Oh nice, this is going to be a full on serie now :D

cover was the scourge of balancing raid content for the longest time, what you asked for is what cover used to be but every raid team wanted a PLD OT which is sad. I want the sword and board class to be the main tank its very odd that they're the tank that wants to tank the boss the least.

Ok..so...I mostly agree with you on almost every point, though I do have a couple things. While I would like Cover to be more useful, from what I heard it's how it is now because the old version was closer to what you described and it kinda hurt balancing. Divine Veil I like but I wouldn't mind if they altered it. I would also love the idea of Passage of Arms having a lingering buff. My biggest disagreement is with clemency. While it would be cool to have an off global heal to help and not have healers complain and such, I can say from personal experience that Clemency as it is now is amazing. There have been plenty of times where I've been playing with friends and due to a mistake or our healer being overtaxed by randos that Clemency was the difference of winning or losing. Yes I know it was "hurting my DPS" but dps doesn't matter if the party ends up dying due to the healer being overtaxed. The thing is as it is now it can be a gamechanger but if it was off global, then the move would have to be reworked entirely, one of the reason being Requiescat. Since Requiescat boosts both attack AND healing magic, and at high levels gives no cast time to spells. Due to this, in very dire situations I've managed to help keep the whole team alive until the healers could take over. Example: both healers were down in a trial I did (forget which one since it's been months). We had a summoner rezzing but they didn't have swift and the party just got hit with a raid wide attack. So I used Requiescat and throw out clemency after clemency on every party member up but myself. I kept everyone alive, I was fully healed thanks to clemency healing me whenever I healed others, and the healers got up and only had to focus on healing themselves upon rezzing. That run was successful, and I had one of the healers actually say they normally complain about paladins using clemency but admitted I saved that run, and that they'd be rethinking complaining about paladin using clemency in the future. So...yeah. Changing Clemency to off global would likely conflict with how paladin is set up now and would make moments like what I described above probably non-existent. Well I wouldn't be opposed to paladin having an off global heal, I would want to keep clemency as is and have this off global made in a way that doesn't conflicted with it. 100% agree on shield bash though. It is kinda worthless as is and once I got low blow, I never used shield bash again and never needed to. I WANT it to be useful but it's actually more of a hinderance in it's current state.

I’d like for pld’s physical and magic phases to feel a little better to flow between. I feel like the window for finishing the magic combo is a little too tight before your dot runs out. Maybe requiescat (or whatever big sword thingy is called) could extend the dot by like 5 seconds . I like it being tight, but I just want it slightly looser as a more casual player

Divine Veil: I don't know, in high end you want to avoid gcd heals, but there will always those big blasts that you will put out shields for. Clemency: No arguing that it is way to niche, since you will avoid it like crazy to not loose out on damage (maybe let it buff your Confiteor dmg, when used under requiscat to heal) Cover: I wouldn't give it shorter CD, because it is super powerful, but definetely needs more range (maybe remove shield gauge cost) Passage of Arms: The change you describe is already there to some extend. You can channel it between two gcds and the reduction lingers on the party for some seconds after. The fact that you have to stand still to channel offsets the fact that it's the most powerful party wide damage reduction available. You can argue though that the lingering effect should be part of the ability instead of being a result of serverticks. Shield bash: I think it had only one actual use in Shadowbringers, that was stunning adds in e8s intermission, otherwise it is completely useless. I would not mind if it stays a gcd, but make it so it does not break combos and has some effect beyond stun, that actually helps in a boss fight

Oh BTW Passage of Arms DOES have a lingering buff. It continues to give the 15% mitigation to your party for 5s after you stop channeling. It's no 30s regen like AST has, but it's long enough that you can tap it in a single weave window and mitigate an upcoming raidwide aoe for your whole team.

I just got into Paladin and I really think these changes would be great. Got yelled at yesterday in a roulette dungeon by a healer for using clemency on a dps that i thought was in risk of dying, but i love the idea of making it oGCD for some personal sustain. Divine veil and cover dont feel great to use and honestly I have shield bash on a hotbar with no hotkeys because i have never had a situation that demanded it :/

So glad that I decided to get into FFXIV after you started the crap guide series. I've been meaning to for a while, but that was the thing that finally pulled the trigger. Now I'm also super happy that I get to hear more of your thoughts on things now that I'm begining to understand them better 😄

Making clemency an oGCD really hurts the ability to solo which is a great aspect of pal. We should get a new oGCD instead that heals maybe tied to a small Def buff. I think it's a better solution to allow solo runs to continue.

As well it would be nice if they gave paladin some sort of extra tanking ability? Relying on clemency as a fourth dr skill sucks, especially as good healers would already be dealing with your health fall and wasting it suddenly kinda sucks. Giving paladin more to make it a reliable on tank would be nice imo.

Oh another video this is good day indeed!!

One thing I'd personally really like is for it to be a 60s loop instead of a 63s loop. Maybe make Holy Spirit be 2500MP instead of 2000 and increase the potency to compensate. It's just kinda weird that basically every other job works on either a 60s or 90s rotation, but paladins get one extra random GCD in there because... reasons. Funnily enough, BRD is the other job that needs similar changes, with it's extremely janky 80s loop.

Nice.

While I don't have that much time in the game nor do I have a PLD maxed since I'm fairly new, right off the bat I feel some parts of the job end up a little awkward when you're playing as either MT or OT against a single target. As you described, it's awkward to have to sprint over to someone to save them with Cover bc of the short range, plus in the case that you're MT, the boss is going to turn toward you, which could well make the rest of your team more susceptible to damage. It seems to just feel better never to use Cover as MT. On the other hand, Shelltron feels out of place when you're OT against a single target bc you can't use it unless the boss constantly does aoe damage. Just from looking at abilities alone, it seems that PLD can be an excellent OT with all the utility they can provide and as OT, it's easier for them to use that utility on allies against a single target. Naturally, OT runs into the same problems as MT when adds need to be taken care of. This is just my perspective as a sprout, and I get that I'll probably change my mind as I progress

As a paladin main, Yes.