What classes do you think today are underpowered?

Paladins are fine in raids, it's the group game where they're not great unless skipping having a cleric is your main goal. If you're going classic group lineup (Tank, Healer, Slower/Utility, 3x DPS) I think you'd be mad to take a pally over an SK or even a warrior unless it's undead content.

At this point I just wish they'd get rid of 100% of the undead-focused junk in the pally toolkit, replace it with stuff that boosted damage vs regular mobs to be in line with war / SK. Solo play is absolutely miserable as a pally because non-undead stuff takes forever. Yeah being able to self heal it is nice, but other than the novelty I don't find it particularly engaging to spend 3-4x the time per mob to kill compared to an SK or war.

Also anyone saying they should bring back splash required raids as a way to ensure pally viability, please no. If my main raid viability comes from casting splash every 45 seconds I'd rather just take a nap. Requiring pally splash specifically (or any single class ability) imo is bad raid design since it fails to account for the realities of raiding in 2023. For example, how many guilds would feel comfortable doing an event that had a hard requirement of 6 bards? I know mine could pull it off more often than not, but from what I understand that's the exception rather than the norm.

I'd take a paladin in groups over a warrior any day. Plus the fact that soloing is even an option puts you in the top 50% of classes. Please stop talking about overpowered tanks in a thread about classes that need help.

Literally any class can solo these days with mercs. For some classes it's insanely painful (clerics, pallys vs anything but undead, etc) but it's doable. Bet a warrior can handle non-undead blues a hell of a lot faster than I can.

This.

I would even prefer paladins over warriors in most raid scenarios.

The original post specifically mentioned Wizards and Paladins as being underpowered. Your determination to make everyone focus solely on improving the wizard class as if no other class could possibly be considered underpowered compared to their archetypal peers is disingenuous.

That said, "fixing" Paladins probably isn't all that tough to do and it certainly isn't something that should be done in a vacuum or to the exclusion of other class-balance fixes. Here are the things I would look at doing the following things (none of these change how a Paladin is currently played, nerf another class, etc...) as a start and then see if there are further needs:

• Implement the post-launch tasks for the NoS expansion
  • Add in "Champion's Oath" as stated as stated in the post-launch tasks for NoS.
    • This should include the upgrade / update to the SK Reaver's Bargain for balance
  • Look at improving Steely Stance as stated in the post-launch tasks for NoS.
    • Likely solution is to increase the duration and proc count similar to what was done with the Focus AA: Extended Preservation of Marr

• Remove the negative agro mod on "Ostracize" (Ostracize / Admonish / Censure / Remonstrate / Upbraid) line of spells.
  • The negative mod to reduce hate is no longer needed and it's removal would improve the use of the spell while tanking. We don't have to worry about accidentally pulling agro from another tank now that stun agro has been fixed and we can simply remove the "Preservation of XXXX" buff and turn off "Bold Attacks". It's original design was, AFAIK, a workaround for those issues.

• Either add Ardent Audacity and it's line of spells to the Focus AA: Improved Demand For Honor or create a similar AA. This is a minor upgrade that would simply make it easier for Paladins to preload a target with their resist debuff agro over time spell before trying to land their "Trial For Honor" line of spells.

• Add in the "missing" ranks to the "Blunted Blade" Combat Ability.
  • Similar to the omission of an ability to match "Reaver's Bargain" ("Champion's Oath"), omitting the upgrades to this Combat Ability should be considered a balance problem since Paladins have never received an upgrade while SKs have received some updates ("Spite of Ronak" / "Spite of Kra'Du" / "Spite of Mirenilla").
  • New versions should be acquired at Levels: 104 / 109 / 114 / 119
    • Add in missing SK versions at lvl 104 & 119 for balance purposes
    • For the sake of consistency, change the lvl 99 versions (from / to)
      • 8: Increase 1H Blunt Minimum Damage Modifier by 90%
      • 8: Increase All Skills Minimum Damage Modifier by 90%
  • Damage should be increased for the new Paladin versions by: 121% each time to match the damage increase of SK versions.
    • Note: adjust 109 & 114 versions of SK line after adding in 104 version
  • Stuns should be set to affect mobs equal to 103 / 108 / 113 / 118 / 123

• Fix / Modify our Alliance line of spells:
  • Move the upgrades to be in-line with the non-priest versions
  • Increase the damage done
  • Decrease the spell casts needed for trigger to be more in-line with other classes
  • Replace the stun (which works on very few raid mobs) with something like a PBAE rune from the target not the Paladin
    • the mobs it would actually work on tend to be adds during phases with a bunch of other adds so it's impractical to use anyways because you wouldn't have enough Paladins on the mob to trigger it because they'd all be tanking something else as well

• Move one of the lines of tanking disciplines on Timer 11 to a separate timer (1,6,7,8,10, 16 & 18 are all open and available combat timers).
  • At 120 this would split "Armor of the Forthright" and "Fervent Penitence"
    • These Combat Abilities are simply too similar and should either be split, combined or one of them reworked to be an offensive based ability. I obviously lean towards splitting them to allow them to be used separately.
      • I think all of the Paladins I know pick 1 and only 1 to use for the sake of simplicity because the difference is so minimal so it's wasted effort by the developers in the current state.

• Lower the recast time on our big, self-only heals by 2/3 (150 to 50). This would be the "Penitence" line of spells ("Penitence" / "Contrition" / "Sorrow" / "Grief" / "Expiation" / "Propitiation" / "Culpability")
  • Could be implemented via an AA line or just simply via the spells themselves
  • Could also be done progressively as since their need has diminished over time due to other instant heal abilities and decreased need compared to other spell lines.
  • There used to be a time when it made sense to load 3 of this line but that's no longer the case. It's getting harder and harder to justify even putting it on the spell bar - I currently don't at all and I doubt many Paladins still do.

• Replace the undead only line of stuns with a new spell.
  • Great role-playing spell / idea but bad execution for following reasons
    • Relative lack of undead mobs in most of the recent expansions (ToV an obvious exception).
      • Few if any undead only zones and the other timer 5 spell is preferable in a mixed mob setting despite the advantages to the undead only stun.
    • Move away from higher red con mobs to tougher blue and yellow con mobs which can be stunned with our normal stun spells.
  • My replacement spell idea (there have been other ideas thrown out by people like an AE stun spell instead of a pure undead stun)
    • A general purpose direct damage spell (not modified by body type) that is more mana efficient than our other spells but less damage than our undead only direct damage spell.
      • Idea is to allow more spell based damage without increasing aggro or healing output that is more friendly to our mana usage issues. Essentially a better version of Ostracize from a damage and mana usage angle without the heal on target's target. Could be a magic based version of the SK spear line that does something like 10% less damage. Name it something cool like Mithaniel's Lance of Anger / Fury / Acrimony / Indignation / Outrage / etc...

And you can kill named and even do some missions. Most classes can't do that without help. And at least you can use a rogue merc instead of a cleric merc if you had to molo unlike a warrior but considering everyone wants a tank you'll never be in that situation.

I didn't say anything about wizards. Try reading.

Brother if you'd ever seen how long it takes to solo a live mob, let alone a named or mission you'd understand why that benefit isn't really as big of a deal as you think it is. And rogue mercs are so godawfully low in DPS that they're a net XP loss every time I've done hour+ comparisons. Better off just using a cleric merc so that you can mess about on your phone or second monitor while slowly whittling it down in that circumstance.

Soloing a mission is seriously a meme or challenge task that you do once for the fun and thrill of it. Entirely unpractical use of time otherwise, at least for a pally. Maybe SKs it's a different story but I can't say for sure.

This. I easily solo TOV missions (except velk) and zland, but in TOL I think the only soloable mission would be Shei, although it'd take probably 2 hours. I got Door blob down to 15% a few weeks after release, but it took so long that I don't care enough to try again.

Isnt there suppose to be some class balance stuff they were gonna do?

Class balance does not mean what most think class balance means.

Not on the roadmap...so kiss it goodbye.

I basically agree with the whole post, and have voiced similar wants for the class in this and other threads....

The only thing I'd add about these two sub topics, is that for the splitting of the defensive on timer 11, you'd have to do the same for SKs, which I advocate for, as they have a timer limited defensive disc that they also have to choose between the two... and I don't know enough about a warrior to know if they do as well.

I know of no decent paladins still loading self only heals. I did bring up in the bug thread that our Aurora line of group healing was likely meant to be a quick group heal, as it is in the quick heal tab, but has a 3 second cast like all of our "normal" group heals. Fixing that seems like low hanging fruit.

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/aurora-line-paladin.292034/

Any group would love a pally tank. They are beasts currently for tanking. Without splash. Unless you are a bad pally and can't tank. I can't really help you with that.

Warriors' analogue to Guardian disc is stronger than knights' (1 min lower reuse, 1 min longer duration, no dps penalty. is nice.), but we have no analogue disciplines to Mantle discipline or Armor/Penitence (Carapace/Influence for SK)

The one "defensive" discipline warriors have sharing a timer with something else is our Armor of Runes disc that caps out in functionality as (i.e. does not always or even usually work out as~) a sideways 38k boost to max hp, for 1 minute with a 10 minute reuse. It shares timer with our 30s proc rate disc that has 30 minute reuse instead of 10. Thanks to the quality of warrior weapons, the proc rate booster is reasonably powerful on its duration, just for agro not defense. The upshot is that the discs are highly dissimilar and neither is core to our operation.

Do you not understand context? If a group has a choice between a Pally and an SK, unless the content is undead they are gimping themselves by taking the pally. (unless they're skipping having a healer by doing so) Pally DPS is just so damn low compared to war / sk, and their AOE threat isn't amazing either if you're the type who like to fill extended target.

I have tanked all raid content and achieves, group missions and achieves, and have solo'd group missions for fun. I'm not saying I'm the best pally out there, but I'm at least competent.

Well said, but (and I can bet on this) the devs. will ignore the huge disparity in power and bring nothing for pallies. This has been true since I started playing and will likely continue into the foreseeable future. Hmm, what if I made a sign like "Darkpaw UNFAIR to Pallies" and walked down the street and picketed their offices.

That is a joke BTW, the walk from my house to their offices is about 23 miles and it's hot and my pool is very, very nice. On the other hand my kids could use a field trip and... Dear, what park is in Carmel Mountain Ranch?

Tanks as an archetype are far too powerful already. No tank, relative to the rest of the game, is underpowered, even a little. Nobody needs to be brought up to the level of SKs. SKs are outrageous, and have been for years. At some point that very obvious reality needs to be addressed, and not by making the rest of the tanks more overpowered than they already are.

Except you can just let the pally get a killshot or two and then they have very respectable dps for 5 minutes assuming you’re 2H tanking. This can also be achieved in group missions by killing a couple mobs out of the base pop in the zone before starting. Innately no pally dps isn’t the greatest but it’s not very hard at all to achieve quality dps on a pally.

Everyone please stop attacking so I can get the kill shot.

It is pretty easy to leave a few with low damage and attack the rest if there's a bunch in camp. I usually balance/AE to make my DPS looker better than it really is instead of just killing anything outright.