Incoming PLD Adjustments

If you want to fix pld, remove the enmity cap. done.

It's like ya didn't read any of the thread.

I think people have blinders on. We have a almace paladin in our group who happens to do pretty well for himself on the hate list. It's just his mnk can do better and also contribute to the group. When i leveled paladin people QQ'ed about the same thing at 50 60 75 and so on. I never really had "as much" of a problem as people made it out to be (except in exp parties and i mean.... really?). I never stopped leveling paladin because I felt it didn't have a place, I stopped leveling because it sucked being at 78/80 inventory all the time.

As I said before: Pld has no problems in the area that it's actually useful (mobs with lots of AoE/heavy defense/lvl correction). I have no problems keeping hate on the upper tier NMs where melees aren't doing ***loads of damage and the mobs aren't playing nice. I also don't have a problem surviving those fights either, because Pld is ridiculously overpowered (with Aegis or Ochain depending on the NM).

The only place Pld has a problem is tanking things that are easy enough that you shouldn't be bringing a Pld in the first place, because a melee does it just fine.

The only reason people complain about this fact, is that the amount of content that applies to each situation has become disproportionate. The solution however isn't some major revamp of the system, but rather reintegration of very challenging NMs (in addition to more low man friendly NMs, not as a replacement). I can understand Pld's frustrations when most of the game excludes their use, but it's not a job problem, it's a content problem.

I'm not worried though. It's pretty clear that newer content will bring forth some exceptional challenges and 99 will likely put us all to the test once more. Those crying out for enmity changes and major DD/job redefinitions should look ahead to the things to come and not attempt to simply redefine their job to be useful in less efficient circumstances.

Sorry for derail, but how are the adjustments done to PLD this update looking?

They're looking great, considering they weren't added yet.

Oh >.> I thought they were added this past update. My bad, carry on!

Neosutra,

I guess you're just more optimistic than me. It's been years since SE introduced any NMs that took people more than a day or two to figure out how to defeat.

I'm not asking for a major overhaul, just make damage mitigation useful. Future content may not have atmas, but we're already to the point where outside of abyssea whm's can have 50% cure potency and 14mp/tic refresh with just the assistance of a brd (non-relic). That's not something that I expect to be taken back. Depending on equip swaps and what not that's easily 3600 mp in a 10 minute fight (with a convert in there). That one whm can do about 26,000-28,000 hp worth of curing in 10 minutes. That doesn't even count the brd that now has access to cure IV.

As SE keeps increasing the ability for mages to cure massive amounts of HP there needs to be an increase in damage taken. It doesn't even need to be proportionate, but there needs to be something.

Cure potency in the last year has gone from being 10-20% on most whitemages to 40-50%. Combined with increased refresh and convert, whms can easily cure 2-3x as much as they could before. Yet players are taking the same amount of damage as they always have. This is an imbalance that extends beyond paladin and threatens the likelihood of challenging content in future updates.

I'm guessing you haven't fought a lot of the new Voidwatch NMs or some of the new Dynamis NMs?

Show me a mnk that can tank the ironclad in T4 windurst.

I've done a couple of the voidwatch (up through T4) and I agree that they are more difficult NMs than in abyssea. They definitely pose more of a challenge than most of the current content. But, very soon we'll be 95 and they will be easier.

If SE keeps up with adding in new hard NMs then I have no complaints. In fact that would be my preference. I would love to see a steady stream of very difficult NMs introduced. I simply am skeptical that they will continue doing so on a regular basis. A slight (very small change) in game mechanics would be possibly a more permanent solution not entirely relying so much on SE finding new ways to make NMs annoying (knock back, stripping armor, zombie status etc).

I really am not trying to imply that there is no place in the game where damage mitigation matters. I know that it does. I just think as far as overall game mechanics go damage taken has in general not scaled the way other stats have. Kirin did 1500 damage stonega IV's to my pld 7 years ago. Genbu would hit for 250-300 damage frequently. Byakko would often TP for 600-800 damage. I'm not saying those NMs are difficult, I'm just saying that the amount of damage dealt by mobs has not increased the same way melee damage has, the same way cure potency has, the same way refresh has. This makes me worry about the difficulty of content that we will see in the future.

Yes, very soon we'll be at 95 and the current 90 content will be easier.. And we'll also then be given 95+ content. The future patches even show that the next "expansion" to the game is just Voidwatch 2 (and further dynamis/etc changes).

It's very clear from this patch and from their published road map, that we'll be getting more difficult fights added as we progress to 99. It's not even worth debating.

I do *** hate zombie/armor stripping NMs though, I agree.

As for damage output versus damage taken over time: It hasn't really changed either if you think about it. Sure people do ***tons of damage now, but the enemies have a ***ton more HP. We take about the same damage now as we did then (on harder stuff), but we have about the same amount of HP as we did back then. It's all proportional.

However, the base damage of alot of the new TP moves ARE higher (and higher level spells with higher base damage), while our HP has seen rather small upgrades, so we are seeing some progression into more difficult fights. Thundaja *** hurts.

I think I agree with you for the most part. I just hope SE does a good job keeping up with new challenging content. I don't want to get to 99 and get another Abyssea.

I also would rather see harder hitting nms than gimmicky tricks from nms. Endoom doesn't make fights harder, it just means you blow more gil on holy waters, etc. Nobody is going to die from amnesia, it just adds another minute to the fight.

Yeah, sorry I took so long to get back to this.

Also, -fyre. Pet peeve :x

Anyway, comparing the two setups further I found that there's an intersection for melee damage at a cRatio value of 0.9623 given no critdmg or critrate gear. Above this value Sanguine Scythe is superior, below it Gnarled Horn wins. CDC's cRatio value is different though, as it has an innate critrate bonus. I'm reasonably certain it's no lower than 10% but need to test further to get an exact value. With a 10% bonus, cRatio = 0.4429. Using a 15% critrate bonus, cRatio = 0.2222. If using a TP bonus earring, I believe these values would be slightly lower.

Thus the questions that need to be answered now are 1) what's your TP/WS split vs NMs where your cRatio will be low? and 2) what is CDC's exact critrate bonus? A basic simulation shows TP phase damage to be the greater portion of your damage but that doesn't tell the whole story with shield blocks, potentially if you also have Ochain.

Regardless, your cRatio needs to be pretty low for GH to overtake SS. I'm open to the possibility of it being superior for high-level Heroes NMs, but even then it would be very close.

I guess I'm not seeing where your cRatio graphs are aligning, can you be more specific?

Relative to DPS I mean. Since the "actual damage increase via crits" was calculated to be higher from GH/RR than SS/RR in this thread a few times.

Herp -.- Wasn't an error in my old calculations, it was me being an idiot on the new ones. Let's try that again.

cRatio=0.9623

fMax(cRatio)=1.2*0.9623
fMin(cRatio)=1.2*0.9623-0.5

pDIFa=0.90476

(0.90476*0.45+(0.90476+1)*0.55*1.6)*1.025=2.13541
(0.90476*0.25+(0.90476+1)*0.75*1.3)*1.025=2.13541

There we go.

You're using the min cRatio formula for a crit
(0 ≤ cRatio < 1.25): fMin(cRatio) = -0.5 + 1.2 x cRatio

but the non crit max formumla:

(5/6 < cRatio ≤ 1.99): fMax(cRatio) = 1.2 x cRatio.

a Critical Hit adds 1.0 to intermediate pDIFa value (which you did for the min, but not the max).

But maybe I'm not reading your math correctly.

But basically you're doing:

pdif average = {non crit melee split * non crit pdif +(crit melee split * crit dmg bonus * (crit pdif+1))}

My DPS sheet just has:

(non crit melee split * non crit pdif) + (crit melee split * crit pdif * crit damage multiplier).

Why are you doing the (crit pdif + 1)?

Just trying to rectify the differences in our calculations so I can fix my spreadsheet if need be.

Also not sure how to accurately capture avg WS damage in DPS, since my values are just:

(D + Modifier*ModifierValue*.83)*ftp*pdif.

And that doesn't accurately capture crit WS damage based on your spread.

I did like read everything everyone posted and I agree - simply just removing that cap doesnt do much because other jobs can attack faster and do more damage and if the cap is increased, then they can simply build enmity up too..

I do feel, however, that some type of collaborator for pld along with removing the cap, or increasing it for pld is the way to go. So what if pld has 10100 enmity cap and every else has 10000; that should be a job trait or something.. why else have such high defense but not get hit so what's the point?

on second note - i have ochain and almace, so to be honest, even in abyssea, i'm holding decent hate because i'm losing enmity slower and can spike it quite frequently. break out /dnc with your almace/ochain combo and give it a try.. its pretty effective.

So you're reading it, you just don't understand it. 100 enmity higher than other jobs would be a joke. 60VE/second decay rate, pretty useless, any higher and it's imbalanced. More JAs doesn't fix it.

Pld in Abyssea lol.

This thread makes me lol - I always love it when someone says something like "you don't understand." The imbalance is what would give pld the edge for what it was meant to do. If PLD is getting hit more it would lose enmity faster, and if w're talking enmity in percentages, then pld with 110% enmity over other jobs @ 100% would be effective, as if a pld getting hit and loses its enmity below 100% then the mnk or w/e will grab hate back - the trick for pld would be to maintain higher enmity and keep "hate."

What we have right now is an imbalance - if you want pld to be effective then make it do as much damage as a mnk or war or sam then - i dont know what to tell you; increasing the cap on enmity for this 1 job would fix it over the others - otherwise, defense is pld's only real benefit, but as you pointed out - who needs that anymore?

The new voidwalkers are harder but when we hit 99, will a mnk be able to tank them again? we'll see i guess.

No.... you really DONT understand. In a long-term fight a paladin can hold hate relatively well. More enmity isn't going to change the fact that, even if your paladin holds hate flawlessly, they contribute absolutely nothing to the party outside of holding hate. I can "hold hate" for days on war just by being the top DD in the party. With a decent whm and a couple situational gearsets, i also have the ability to survive the fight, hold hate AND still be top damage.

If you only have 4-5 people for a low man set, why pick the situational job, over the multi-task job? No matter how loud you scream while you stick your fingers in your ears, youre still wrong. Sorry.

*edit* also, if you have ochain and almace with full EAF and still struggle to have hate THAT BAD on paladin, you should re-evaluate your job choice. I understand that if your only 2 empyreans are pld related youre going to be a fanboy, but if you think changing enmity is going to make people care about your paladin..... you'd be sorely dissapointed.

No, fMin isn't for crits. It's the minimum value for your pDIFa value, which is calculated before accounting for crits. I then took the average of fMin and fMax for my pDIFa value.


No, I did:

pDIFb = (pDIFa * non crit split + (pDIFa + 1) * crit split * critdmg bonus) * average value of pDIFb randomizer


So I'm actually doing pDIFa + 1 to obtain crit pDIF.

Alpha is 0.85 now. That would accurately capture average WS damage assuming you're calculating all factors properly. You just have to account for the critrate bonus in your pDIF calculation.

Ah I see what ya did now, you just did pDif average then added the +1 later, rather than adding then taking average lol.

I'll take more of a look at it later and see if my DPS changes. Thanx for the clarification.

Looking closer at the data:



You do see the intersection of damage at pDifa = .904, though as you can see the two combination are -very- close even before that and are pretty close after that as well.

Considering you're likely not bringing Pld to things you're likely having a high pDifa on (use Pld for things with high lvl difference, defense, etc), I'd say that the typical CDC Pld would be operating in the range that makes GH/RR the preferred atma combination, unless you're needing more HP from SS. GH/RR should net you higher WS average as well. Not that I'm advocating Pld in Abyssea Q.Q.

Regardless, the two atma combinations are close enough that you're not going to gimp yourself by choosing one of them over the other.

all this QQ about pld, there nothing wrong with it, i get hate, i keep hate and i also absorb damage, pretty fun absorbing a mobs most damaging TP move. Like someone said earlier if you are having hate problems level a different job. Even before i had Almace i was keeping hate well.

You're such a liar! i had hate all the time you douche NIN FTW!

Hey look, another person who thinks holding hate is the perceived problem with PLD.

The major selling point would then be whether you would prefer more HP or more effective Subtle Blow.