Agree with this. To add it should be feasible to have a ward component or DR reduction similar to what guardians have for going left side in their prestige. Could even add this to the crusade buff and just increase the resist amount on raid armament. +1 to the crit modifier also.
Agree on our temp ward, my paladin don't even bother to cast it most of the time. I'm not 100% sure about manawall, with Divine Aura + stonewall and the ability that les group damage heal us + 1 extra life that comes back quickly, lay on hand and several % based heals we are already doing fine. I cannot compare to other tanks, since i don't play any. If we miss survability a fix to manawall is needed. Last faith is extremely hard to time due to short duration. Take into account a bit of lag and you must cast it in a 2 second window ... Now if mob auto attack ht 3 seconds later and not 2 and faith had been useless.
yeah. Our utility is awful. The only reason to bring a Paladin to raid is Faith reflect, which requires them to main tank, basically. And they're even talking about nerfing it again. ~1% of the mob's health over the course of the fight is too much I guess :/
Paladins are mostly fine, their heals just need to be "Instant Cast." and their melee damage needs a slight increase.
Yeah, we're fine. Especially our buffs (utility), our ward (15-16k damage) and manawall (200-250k damage). What`s the reason to change our heals and make them instant cast? Our heals is already at 0.25/0.75. And it will not help against spike damage and not add any benefit for us or any members of the group/raid.
There is no point in having insta-cast heals when you hardly get any benefit out of it, its about underpowered skills/spells not about those which are useful and decent.
It's a 2 part thing. If they increase their ease of use and reduce situational application, then they would have to decrease their effectiveness. In theory, an instant cast heal is no different than a 1 trigger reactive, except that you can decide when the trigger is applied. Imagine how balanced that would be for a 50% heal. and then realize that good players are CURRENTLY utilizing their heals at high levels of effectiveness, and that those same good players are not inhibited by the act actually clicking the button. (addendum: lag is obviously the wildcard. With that said, lag will always BE a wildcard, whether they are instant cast or not. There is always luck involved in a world where 2 shots exist.) Instant cast heals as effective as ours would be hard to justify, and like I said.. many players are already getting A LOT out of them. It's just not something I would say "Hey, go fix this, instead of something else." Maybe some AAs could be tweaked in the future to reduce base cast time, since all of the healing AAs are virtually pointless right now. But again, that's an avenue for future improvement.. not something necessary at the moment. If they touch heals, I'd like to see the temp buffs on them brought up to par. I'd like to see the ward retuned. I'd like intercept to be reworked. And if you consider it a heal, fix the holy avenger too. Holy Avenger is the least satisfying, least useful thing I've found in this game, on any class. There isn't a situation in which this button should be clicked, at any level of play. Seriously. Try it on 8 targets. It's a joke.
The heals are fine, even the group heal is now quite meaningfull, sure it less confortable that something passive like an extra-life (but we do have one). Main issue is faith usabilty, it would love to see its max duration increased a bit, 6 seconds may be with the prestige aas. Also DA does nothing if we get hit for more than half our max hps, may be it should do something also against huge hits, not sure what since reducing incoming damage by half our Hps seems too strong. What i know for sure is that when running domination I may need faith of the fallen on paladins, and lot of healing too + DP, mythical stone skins and may be cyclone, in the meanwhile zerk require almost no healing and just keep the group alive.
It's pretty common knowledge that Zerkers are insane for survivability right now.. moreso than they probably should be. They're practically unkillable, in most situations. Paladins have very little in the way of hard saves, this is true.. but this isn't a huge problem. We have a solid save rotation between Stonewall, Devout Sacrament, and Crusader's Faith. Those three abilities on such short recasts are amazing. Our only weakness is one-shots. If we have to start stacking saves, things become a problem. For some big hits, it's common to use LC, DS and CF at the same time. You'll turn a one-shot into a two-shot and hopefully heal to full before the next swing connects. LC will also inflict pretty good damage if coupled with another save. Unfortunately, you will run out of things to click unless you get a lucky reset. And then things fall apart quickly. That combo being necessary to survive means a paladin probably shouldn't be tanking it. Faith is my favorite ability in the game. It's powerful, it's versatile, and it rewards me for doing what I should be doing: Taking damage. The only thing I would change about it is "Reduces caster's avoidance / chance to block to 0%" for the duration. While I appreciate the meta involved in swapping off of my shield, turning my back to the mob and cancelling other tanks' avoid buffs for increased damage, that is hugely involved. It's also one of those tricks that make all of the difference. Without doing that, it's hugely inconsistent and I could see the complaints being justified. I would rather balance the ability around 0% avoidance than having it be powerful when using the trick, and weak when not. If tank incoming damage was more predictable, this wouldn't be an issue, but it currently isn't. We live in a world where mobs hit for half or all of your health bar, per swing, every couple seconds. Steady damage would result in much more consistency.
Ah, its awesome, Maer! Sometimes we argued with you about our abilities, but now you have said what I want to say. Like it or not, but at the beginning of any expansion, when you dont have good gear, one shots is a real problem. I have already expressed my opinion, but I repeat again. I'd really like to see reworked divine aura as well. I dont understand why reflexes save anytime, anywhere and also have a base reuse time 3 minutes, while DA is 5 minutes and the efficiency is much lower. Reflexes by the way last much longer too. I have to use DA at the same time with hp charm from Genra and CF to restore hp between each hit or I`ll die. I have about 2.1k hp in the raid, during the combat I have about 2.4k. This means that DA will absorb hits up to 1.2k. Is it really a lot when mobs hits an overhp? I dont think so. For example, Jardine who kills you with every hit. Will DA work on it? Obviously not. I'd really like to be able to change the mechanics of DA in the new AAs from < 50% hp to > 50% hp. Or at least, reduce the base reuse time from 5 minutes to 3. Reflexes and DA have always been abilities with its negative sides. Tanks often lost aggro while under the reflexes, but with improved taunts the only negative side of reflexes has been removed. Aura absorbs damage up to 50% of your max hp, but it didnt interfere to keep the mob on you. Many years have passed, the mechanics of tanking has changed (I mean one shots) and DA isnt so reliable, especially when you dont have good gear. When I had a bad gear, it never saved me in Vulak`s Dominion. Never. What about the holy avenger, now as always its useless. Why not transform it into a useful buff or a temporary anti-spike ability for us?
I'm in complete agreement with you on this point. There would be nothing wrong with doing either of these things. Working on Pally-Heals as you said is touchy, good players are already using them to good effectiveness so it would be easy to overpower something.
Here is my proposal for DA, above 1/2 your HP you take 1,5 damage per point of damage. So inc damage is Min(Damage, max(0, 3/2(Damage - HP/2) ) ) so if you get hit for your full HPs you take only 3/4 of your HPs, when Damage reaches 3/2 HP you get no damage reduction at all. The current mecanics is really insane since it has a discontinuity. If you have 1,5m hps, a hit of 750 000 is zero, a hit of 750 001 is 750 001.
I tanked Dominion as soon as the zone came out. There was a little luck involved, but Reflect made it possible. Jardin is also notorious for one-shotting any tank, not just Paladins. Controller/Pyrelord is the other big offender encounter. Beyond that, we're in good shape. Divine Aura has its purposes. I don't think it will get changed, as much as I'd like it to. A stoneskin is more powerful than a block or parry, in quite a few situations. In the past, notably, the "On avoid" procs. Now, it works great with things like the Bertox charm, and some of the fast hitting multi-part death touches. Divine Aura ALSO doesn't disable our ability to attack or whatever Reflexes does. Each ability has pros and cons. As long as content shifts away from one-shots and 2 shots, Divine Aura is powerful. If it continues, it will be worthless. That's just the way it goes. The content is what needs to be adjusted, not the ability. There's no reason mobs have to hit once every 3 seconds for 1.5 mil damage. They could easily hit once every second for 500k and open up a broader tank base. The one concerning thing I heard at SOELive was "Yes, that type of thing would be better for paladins, but not for other tanks." That is a mostly false statement. While bigger, slower hits are WORSE for Paladins, smaller, faster hits are NOT inherently worse for other classes. A tank, without any abilities, is by far more capable of dealing with faster, lesser hits. Predictability and consistency is NOT A BAD THING. I would kill for mobs to swing twice or three times a second for 200k-500k and save the big hits for cast-bar visible combat arts, spells or death touch type things. That was the philosophy we were told was going to be implemented this expansion. Predictable big hits, steady medium hits, and a reduction in luck-based one or two shots. It just never happened that way, unfortunately. Tanking in this expansion is just as much of a save rotation as ever. Because never in the history of EQ2 has a useless pet been turned into a powerful, class defining ability. Except that one time when they turned the SK skeleton pet into the best AOE / Aggro Tool in the game. But lets pretend that never happened.
Yeah, Jardin is a pain to any tank, but how many abilities we have against his one shots? LoH (1 stoneskin), faith (4 seconds), stonewall (12 seconds) and thats all. How many abilities have guardian to completely (!) absorb any damage? I'll try to remember only those abilities that I remember. ToS (4 attacks), last man standing (5 attacks), dragoon`s reflexes (~20 seconds), defensive minded (~22 seconds), perfect counter (3 attacks), block (1 attack). As has been said by devs, paladin/guardian/monk - a tanks that should have the highest surviveability against a raid bosses. And the result is somehow funny. Guardian without problems has almost 100% avoidance on every raid boss and its almost impossible to kill a guard if he does things right. Guardian has a great buffs for the group: sentry watch, guardian sphere, hp buff, champion`s stand, etc. I have no problem with the fact that a guardian has the highest surviveability among all tanks. But I have a problem with the fact that guardian also has the best buffs. And its very strange honestly. I believe that if our surviveability is worse, we have to have the better buffs, its pretty obvious. I agree, Maer. I would also like to see quick, but weaker hits, but Im sure that we will not see it. What about DA, Im sure that reuse time should be reduced from 5 to 3 minutes to be in line with reflexes. Or they may slightly change the ability, leave the threshold the same, but add a line in the description: reduce all damage done to caster by 30% IF the amount of damage is > than 50% of the target`s max hp. This would completely solve the problem of DA, regardless of content (one shots or quick shots). And I still dont understand why our death save doesnt stack with healers death saves. Bloodletter stacks (although it has 2 triggers), the same story with a berserkers. But in general, my list looks like: 1. DoF. 2. Manawall. 3. Scaling of some abilities (extra hp which we get from our heals, regenerating ward on blessing of the paladin, heretic`s destruction). 4. DA. 5. LoH with 5 minutes base reuse time should have at least 2 stoneskin triggers, honestly.
Normally I'd say "Don't worry, bros.They're aware of the issues and they will balance accordingly with the upcoming expansion!" but since I am not privy to any information this time, I'm as curious as everyone else is. I don't think our class is in dire straits right now, but honestly, the only class who underperforms us in most situations is Shadowknight. Stat creep has pushed guardians and zerkers up to insane levels and Combat Mastery is the single most powerful ability in the game, pretty sure. We just don't have the consistency or the utility to be the preference. And there is a very obvious difference between "Can do it" and "Is the best for it" It's just frustrating. Give me 10 minutes to tweak some numbers and I feel like I could satisfy our needs. I guess we'll see what the expansion prestige things look like. Who knows. Game changers, probably!
That's how I felt about Guardian's for expansions before the stat creep finally naturally buffed us. I really think every class deserves it's own Focused Offensive. By that I mean class-unique stance or buff. Sadly I also thinks a Stat-Crunch would be in order. A number of systems broke for balancing by letting stats reach their caps, for one Itemization became much harder. I don't know how they plan on fixing the Practiced Debacle with items.
I would vote for a "delayed LOH" that heal you 100% if you die in the next 2-3seconds. Timing LOH is very hard when inc dps is huge. Not sure about manawall since Crusader + stonewall + DA + LOH + favor of marr can already be rotated quite long. It all depend on content. Note anyway that none of Crusader faith, DA, LOH protect you against 1 shot and very heavy hits. Crusader faith is very high hps, but is perfectly useless if you get 1 shot.
