Intro
Black Mage
Bard
White Mage
Dark Knight
Ninja
Class Quests: 2/10 Fun to play: 8/10 Complexity: 7/10 Depth: 9/10 Levelling: 2/10
TLDR: Paladin is a weird one. I’m willing to say I like the class at this stage, but the levelling experience was once again firmly balanced towards your level 50+ features. I’m starting to notice a running trend with all the base classes, in that they really don’t feel complete until 60. Regardless of that, Paladin is an interesting tank with self healing, useful party defensive with Divine Veil and Cover, high damage, and a very flashy AOE combo. It also has access to Hallowed Ground, which is just broken, frankly, which makes it very fun to use.
Class Quests: Gladiator 1-30: These quests are the only reason this section isn’t a total failure. The gladiator quests are generally alright. Better than the archer quests, with a sort of fun plot about old comrades and being prepared to risk your life. I would’ve preferred if it was about being a Gladiator, with you fighting your way up the ranks to the top against colourful characters, but it wasn’t to be. In the end, these pass enough to hold my interest, and are pretty good in places, but didn’t blow me away or anything.
Paladin 30-50: I will start by saying that the plot of “we are understaffed so I’m giving you a soul Crystal” is the single worst introduction from class to job in the entire game. From there, you light a few candles, your teacher talks for a long time about nothing in particular, he attacks you for no particular reason, and then it’s found out that, obviously, the monetarists were behind it all, and you beat up a book in the frozen tundra. I’m only slightly exaggerating. No one in this plot endeared themselves to me, the monetarists are used as a generic super evil group with both no presence in the plot, you don’t see Lolorito once or anyone representing them in the plot, and no real reason to be messing with the internal politics of the Paladins. The only good thing about the Paladin quests is once they’re over you get Hallowed ground and actually get to play an interesting class.
Paladin 50-60: These are somehow barely any better. At one point near the end, multiple people involved say, out loud, things to the effect of “this was so needlessly confusing, why even bother to go to these lengths”. Once again your noble Paladin friends show basically no honour or chivalry, lying and running you across Ishgard looking for a sword, which the person who was looking for it already had, and then you eat everyone’s souls, beat them up, and then give the sword to someone else for no particular reason. Again, I’m only slightly exaggerating. The Stormblood quests are finally doing what I wanted from the Gladiator quests, so I’m interested in that, but considering what I’ve gone through so far, high hopes, low expectations.
Fun to play: Paladin has a learning curve, and for the wrong reason in my opinion. Their primary AOE feels deeply unreliable, with a weird delay between button press and action which makes pulls feel much harder than they need to be. Getting used to that, and getting access to Circle of Scorn, help smooth out the play, while the unlocks between level 49-60 are all good at defining what Paladin is and why you should play it. Before then the class feels like an inferior version of all the other tanks, as it’s AOE combo is slightly lower potency, and it’s main damage combo doesn’t heal you and does very little damage as well. Once it gets going though, Paladin can do insane pulls unavailable to the other classes due to the strength of clemency and hallowed ground. They are highly self sufficient and don’t require a good healer to make pulls work. Options like cover and divine veil give you some options to think about, and the existence of shield bash is hilarious. All in all, it’s a fantastic and varied tank once it gets going, but definitely feels the most confused about its identity in those early stages.
Complexity: Likely the most complex tank, as you have access to healing, damage, oGCDs, divine veil and cover. All of these tools gives the potential for Paladin to do a wide variety of things in a group, and lend them a protector mantle that is unique to them. Besides that, they don’t have too much to do in terms of dps. They have no uptime based mechanic, they don’t generate offensive resources at all, they simply go through their combo and use circle of scorn and spirits within when available.
Depth: As stated above, Paladin has many tools, but it’s the application of those tools which gives the score seen here. Cover in itself is something no other tank has an equivalent too, but adding in clemency and divine veil gives Paladin a ton of ways to protect themselves and the party without healer intervention. How and when to apply these, whether it’s worth the GCD to heal yourself or whether you trust the healer enough, the use of Hallowed Ground, where it’s most applicable to stop damage. Hallowed Ground transcends the other immunity cooldowns, being something that can be used as a defensive or a panic button based on the way the dungeon is going. Superbolide is the only one that comes close to its power, but with a steep cost and lower duration it’s difficult to compare. All of this with the basics of tanking lead to a deep and interesting play style with some janky pulls on the back of the strange AOE.
Levelling: I will open by saying that this was my least favourite class to level, but I am awarding a higher than 1 score for a couple of reasons. This was my final class to level, and I was somewhat burnt out on the process by this stage. The parties I got through duty finder were spectacularly awful, to the point I had to abandon one dungeon due to the healer repeatedly dying to the final boss despite everyone’s best efforts. I had multiple sub 50 dps Black Mages, as well as two different bards who used quick nock even on single targets, a scholar who never used adloqium in a level 57 dungeon, and an astrologian who only used AOE with the shield sect. This was a run of bad luck worthy of a gypsy curse, and hasn’t been representative of my experience tanking as a whole.
However, none of this explains away Paladin’s extremely low base potency values, clunky delayed AOE, and locking a ton of useful and fun features behind level 50+. Add to that the above mentioned queue woes, poor class quests, and burnout, and I’m genuinely surprised that at the end I still rather enjoy the class. It speaks to the power level and fun factor of those post 50 skills that despite everything I would still recommend the class, though see if you can find yourself a group first perhaps.
Conclusion: After an abysmal run of bad luck and worse AOE targeting, I find myself warmed up to Paladin and prepared to recommend. I wouldn’t level this class as your last tank, as having gotten used to the responsiveness of the other tanks AOE will leave you wanting. It’s a decent place to start, as once you have Hallowed Ground you have the best get out of jail free card you could ever ask for. It’s the getting to that stage that was difficult for me however, and I still think Dark Knight or Gunbreaker have better skill distribution and easier to learn and understand skills. Still though, if you have interest in tank this one is certainly more worthy of your time than Warrior, and might grow to be my favourite tank in time.
submitted by /u/SealMeetsClub
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Continue reading...
Black Mage
Bard
White Mage
Dark Knight
Ninja
Class Quests: 2/10 Fun to play: 8/10 Complexity: 7/10 Depth: 9/10 Levelling: 2/10
TLDR: Paladin is a weird one. I’m willing to say I like the class at this stage, but the levelling experience was once again firmly balanced towards your level 50+ features. I’m starting to notice a running trend with all the base classes, in that they really don’t feel complete until 60. Regardless of that, Paladin is an interesting tank with self healing, useful party defensive with Divine Veil and Cover, high damage, and a very flashy AOE combo. It also has access to Hallowed Ground, which is just broken, frankly, which makes it very fun to use.
Class Quests: Gladiator 1-30: These quests are the only reason this section isn’t a total failure. The gladiator quests are generally alright. Better than the archer quests, with a sort of fun plot about old comrades and being prepared to risk your life. I would’ve preferred if it was about being a Gladiator, with you fighting your way up the ranks to the top against colourful characters, but it wasn’t to be. In the end, these pass enough to hold my interest, and are pretty good in places, but didn’t blow me away or anything.
Paladin 30-50: I will start by saying that the plot of “we are understaffed so I’m giving you a soul Crystal” is the single worst introduction from class to job in the entire game. From there, you light a few candles, your teacher talks for a long time about nothing in particular, he attacks you for no particular reason, and then it’s found out that, obviously, the monetarists were behind it all, and you beat up a book in the frozen tundra. I’m only slightly exaggerating. No one in this plot endeared themselves to me, the monetarists are used as a generic super evil group with both no presence in the plot, you don’t see Lolorito once or anyone representing them in the plot, and no real reason to be messing with the internal politics of the Paladins. The only good thing about the Paladin quests is once they’re over you get Hallowed ground and actually get to play an interesting class.
Paladin 50-60: These are somehow barely any better. At one point near the end, multiple people involved say, out loud, things to the effect of “this was so needlessly confusing, why even bother to go to these lengths”. Once again your noble Paladin friends show basically no honour or chivalry, lying and running you across Ishgard looking for a sword, which the person who was looking for it already had, and then you eat everyone’s souls, beat them up, and then give the sword to someone else for no particular reason. Again, I’m only slightly exaggerating. The Stormblood quests are finally doing what I wanted from the Gladiator quests, so I’m interested in that, but considering what I’ve gone through so far, high hopes, low expectations.
Fun to play: Paladin has a learning curve, and for the wrong reason in my opinion. Their primary AOE feels deeply unreliable, with a weird delay between button press and action which makes pulls feel much harder than they need to be. Getting used to that, and getting access to Circle of Scorn, help smooth out the play, while the unlocks between level 49-60 are all good at defining what Paladin is and why you should play it. Before then the class feels like an inferior version of all the other tanks, as it’s AOE combo is slightly lower potency, and it’s main damage combo doesn’t heal you and does very little damage as well. Once it gets going though, Paladin can do insane pulls unavailable to the other classes due to the strength of clemency and hallowed ground. They are highly self sufficient and don’t require a good healer to make pulls work. Options like cover and divine veil give you some options to think about, and the existence of shield bash is hilarious. All in all, it’s a fantastic and varied tank once it gets going, but definitely feels the most confused about its identity in those early stages.
Complexity: Likely the most complex tank, as you have access to healing, damage, oGCDs, divine veil and cover. All of these tools gives the potential for Paladin to do a wide variety of things in a group, and lend them a protector mantle that is unique to them. Besides that, they don’t have too much to do in terms of dps. They have no uptime based mechanic, they don’t generate offensive resources at all, they simply go through their combo and use circle of scorn and spirits within when available.
Depth: As stated above, Paladin has many tools, but it’s the application of those tools which gives the score seen here. Cover in itself is something no other tank has an equivalent too, but adding in clemency and divine veil gives Paladin a ton of ways to protect themselves and the party without healer intervention. How and when to apply these, whether it’s worth the GCD to heal yourself or whether you trust the healer enough, the use of Hallowed Ground, where it’s most applicable to stop damage. Hallowed Ground transcends the other immunity cooldowns, being something that can be used as a defensive or a panic button based on the way the dungeon is going. Superbolide is the only one that comes close to its power, but with a steep cost and lower duration it’s difficult to compare. All of this with the basics of tanking lead to a deep and interesting play style with some janky pulls on the back of the strange AOE.
Levelling: I will open by saying that this was my least favourite class to level, but I am awarding a higher than 1 score for a couple of reasons. This was my final class to level, and I was somewhat burnt out on the process by this stage. The parties I got through duty finder were spectacularly awful, to the point I had to abandon one dungeon due to the healer repeatedly dying to the final boss despite everyone’s best efforts. I had multiple sub 50 dps Black Mages, as well as two different bards who used quick nock even on single targets, a scholar who never used adloqium in a level 57 dungeon, and an astrologian who only used AOE with the shield sect. This was a run of bad luck worthy of a gypsy curse, and hasn’t been representative of my experience tanking as a whole.
However, none of this explains away Paladin’s extremely low base potency values, clunky delayed AOE, and locking a ton of useful and fun features behind level 50+. Add to that the above mentioned queue woes, poor class quests, and burnout, and I’m genuinely surprised that at the end I still rather enjoy the class. It speaks to the power level and fun factor of those post 50 skills that despite everything I would still recommend the class, though see if you can find yourself a group first perhaps.
Conclusion: After an abysmal run of bad luck and worse AOE targeting, I find myself warmed up to Paladin and prepared to recommend. I wouldn’t level this class as your last tank, as having gotten used to the responsiveness of the other tanks AOE will leave you wanting. It’s a decent place to start, as once you have Hallowed Ground you have the best get out of jail free card you could ever ask for. It’s the getting to that stage that was difficult for me however, and I still think Dark Knight or Gunbreaker have better skill distribution and easier to learn and understand skills. Still though, if you have interest in tank this one is certainly more worthy of your time than Warrior, and might grow to be my favourite tank in time.
submitted by /u/SealMeetsClub
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...