Paladin Class Feedback

Dear all,

As we all know, it is fair to say that this class requires a some balancing in regards to skill changes and play style of paladins.

The purpose of this thread is to collect information and feedback from the community and factor them into our decision making process. So, let us know what you think!

All unrelated spams will be deleted to make this thread more manageable.
Please keep this thread constructive.
Thank you.

 

:Introduce element weakness to bosses

 

Reduce the bonus of effective damage (instead of 150% more dmg maybe 130% or 120%) but boost the neutral damage by the same amount.

 

Any one of these I think would make them on par with the other Warrior's

1. Heavily increase charge blow range
2.Make Blast stronger
3.Lower heaven's Hammer cool down

ontop of all that raise their damage cap.

 

Paladins are stronger than other warriors on type effective bosses already, it's just that they fall off very hard on neutral monsters

 

Isn't Krexel already weak to Fire?
Oh, I forgot Krexel isn't a boss, just a DPS test bot.

Jokes aside, I've always believed Zakum had some elemental weakness, since the arms seems to have various elemental strengths. Also, if you beat a huge Toad covered in sweet water, with an electric hammer, won't he feel more pain than if he was dry? Or maybe I've got the physics wrong? (The hammer must not be made of a conductive material though, as it'd probably electrocute the one holding the hammer.)

Isn't the elemental weaknesses at the core of what Paladins are all about?
I maybe got something wrong though...

 

They're stronger 1v1 on element weak, but if another monster comes by then the other Warrior's immediately win. Then there's mobs that are neutral, resist elements and even ones that are immune to it. Relying on elements can be just as inconvenient as it can be beneficial.

 

Yeah, which is why I think paladin neutral dmg should be buffed while effective bonus nerfed. (I.e. instead of neutral damage doing 100 dmg and effective dmg doing 150dmg, tweak it such that neutral dmg does 130 while effective does 150)

I think blast being single hit Vs brandish and crusher is fine. Paladin has total crash which indirectly add massive amounts of dps for certain bosses

 

Effective bonus is one of the main reasons I play the class. Paladin's have a lot of problems, but why should their neutral be stronger if it doesn't further compliment their elemental bonus? A stronger neutral ACB doesn't solve the main issue in which it's an attack that can hit 6 monsters, but usually hits 0-3 and a semi stronger Blast is still weaker than Brandish and Crusher on 1 monster neutral for most bosses (that's not so bad sometimes). Having a Paladin at Zakum is completely inefficient than just getting a Hero or DrK even with Total Crash. I've had DrK's 30 levels lower than me clear arms much faster and they can do their full damage at the body while mob controlling. Paladin's have to chase and swat at mobs that elementally resist us while deciding if they want to use an inferior 1v1 attack or keep using a terrible 1v6. I've seen good Nightlord's in action and it feels like Avenger is even better at mob controlling than acb.

A straight Blast buff would make us a decent 1v1 class and much better on elementally weak the way NL's become so strong on SE. This will make them the mvp on elementally weak rather than just better than average.

ACB range buff can allow us to fulfill the actual Warrior roles and control mobs while grinding faster.

Heaven's Hammer is our most unique attack and with the right cool down and raised damage cap it can still be viable grinding tool at 180+ and compete with the other Warrior's on multi-limb bosses.

I just feel your suggestion is too balanced and Paladin's would still run into the same problems.

 

I believe the server already took a route concerning Paladins: still doing low damage, but useful for boss runs because they can deal with weapon cancels. Reality is that a 4 min cd on their crash (total crash) do not make them essential enough for boss parties due to their low dps, especially at HT where they have to use charged blow (multi-target attack skill) most of the run and which only deals 350% dmg. Lowering crash cd will not help this class in any way since there are little things to fix that would make this class way better than it currently is.

Charged blow

For bossing, charged blow is used during zakum arm's phase, at HT until wings are down usually and at cwkpq bosses' stage. It is true that charged blow can hit up to 6 mobs at once, but this situation does not happen much when Paladins grind and never occurs when they boss. This is why I think a %dmg increase would not make them too OP on the grinding side and will only make them more viable for bossing. By what %, that I wouldn't know.
The main problem with charged blow is its range, especially for 1h users (weapon + shield). Attack animations are the same ones when you press the "normal attack" key, just like slash blast (1st job warrior multi-target skill). Every attack has different horizontal/vertical range and it is random. For example, if a Paladin is a 2h user, he could be at Hero's spot during zakum arms' phase and might not be able to hit any arm for 2 seconds, because the attack animations that were coming out during that time were only stabbing ones. Even worse, 1h users will not be able to hit anything at all in that spot. Now, how hard it is to code to have those attack range modified and only be applied to charged blow, that I wouldn't know neither.

Blast

When using blast (1v1 attack skill, 580% dmg) however, their dps is not that bad. Just to give everyone an idea and do not quote me on that, I believe a 10k range 2h-sword Hero's dps is similar to a 10.5k 2h-sword Paladin's on 1v1 neutral mobs. The issue with blast is it has only a single line of damage, therefore does not really benefit from SE and the damage numbers are not stable like the other warriors using spear buster and brandish. Because of these reasons, I think a slight damage increase would help Paladins' average damage as I couldn't think of anything else that could help it.

Another thing is the recent's blast vertical change. @Browertime already made a thread about it. It can be useful at times I have to admit, but if its vertical range could be decreased a bit, this would be helpful. Too many situations where I wanted to hit a mob in front of me with blast and ended up hitting the one on the platform below my character. In those situations I was forced to use charged blow and as I have explained above, it only deals 350% dmg and its attack animations is random; I do not want to rely on it in similar situations.

Heaven's hammer

Its current cd when maxed is 20 seconds. For grinding, I think it is at a reasonable value due to most map configurations and it fits well with map rotations in general. For bossing, I only use it when there are 3+ parts to finish off because even with speed infusion, it is still slow not only to cast, but to be able to attack again. An idea could be to lower the waiting time between casting and attacking back or simply reducing its cd, which is far more easier to do.

Skill bugs

Only 2 currently known (I do not include threaten in here since it is doing what it is supposed to do, only thing is it's not working on bosses):

- Guardian is currently not exactly doing what it is supposed to do. I will just link @Anesthetize's bug report here.

- Total crash: I am now 100% sure of this as we have talked about it in guild chat, when total crash is used and too many mobs (do not know the exact number) are in the map, client will crash and an error code window will appear.
I will just link this bug report here.
Edit (15/12/18): Bug fixed in update #58

I did not think of giving new/creative ideas to make the class any better as I know we are stuck to v83 and versions below. I just wanted to explain what it is to be playing a Paladin currently on Royals with his many flaws and hopefully gave reasonable solutions to current problems so the class could be more enjoyable to play in the future.

Sorry for the long text and thank you for reading!

 

ACB stun also overrides freeze, but at other times it stacks. Ice Charge also acts different each server check. At the moment some enemies get frozen 100% with 1 tap, but the monster next to it won't freeze no matter how much I reduce its hp.

 

1. Increase the hut box of ACB
2. Make final attack (FF) an active skill instead of permanent passive, and allow blast and ACB to trigger and stack off final attack's bonus damage. Reason behind making FF active because you don't always want final attack, so you have the option to turn it on and off.
3. Reduce the casting animation of heavens hammer to something similar to casting shadow star or SE, right now itsi slower than arch mage ultimate.
4. Increase damage cap from 200k to 250k/300k. This will be indirectly buffing marksman as well, another class that could use some balancing.
5. Stuff that's already mentioned like give more bosses weakness to elemental.

 

Here is some ideas of what I think can improve paladin gameplay
1. Increase % damage of AcB
2. Combine sword+bw charges together
3. Stackable charges (Holy/Divine charge stacks with elemental charges)
4. Make more elemental weakness on bosses

For example
Toad - weak to lighting due to water base

Horntail
Prehead 1 - weak to fire (since ice strikes)
Prehead 2 - neutral (since lighting atks)
Legs- neutral
Tail-neutral
Wings- neutral
Head A - weak to fire (since ice strikes)
Head B - weak to ice (since breath fires)
Head C - neutral (since lighting atks)
Left arm- neutral
Right arm - weak to holy (curse arm)

Zakum- Not sure yet

 

Make Zak weak to ice

 

add Combat Orders to White Knights to make them more sought out in bossing expeditions

 

I'm quite content with the work that's already been done.

One thing I would personally fix though is: Heaven's Hammer has a really unnecessarily long period of time before the player can move/perform actions again. Like after the hammer's animation is over, the character stands there for a solid 2 seconds longer before their weapon magically appears back into their hand, and they can move/attack again.
It would be great if this could be adjusted. Say, the player can receive inputs as soon as the skills animation itself ends. Or if we're a little more generous, a few frames before it ends... Unless that ends up ugly and you can see the skill animation move with you, then just once the skill animation ends~

 

Quoting myself from February.

I kept the archmage part in there because it explained my reasoning for each head's specific weakness even though it's a bit outdated now. Please ignore that part if you wish to quote and reply to me.

The general idea is to add an elemental weakness to a significant part of each boss that has multiple phases/bodyparts but not every single part as to not shift the balance between classes.

Some other rough ideas:

Zakum bodies being weak to ice - Paladins will still noodle at Zakum's arms but be on par with the other warrior classes during the bodies minus the mob control, something that an ice weak Zakum would actually slightly complicate because a Paladin would have to switch charges to be able to hit the blue summons at all. This would give them what they'd need to be considered competitive while not taking away from what makes the other warriors great

Castellan being weak to lightning(Other charges work too) - I'm specifically talking about Castellan and not the Castellan Toad form. Paladins would be on par with most classes through what would be over 50% of the battle but fizzle out a bit during the toad form when their mob control skills and lack of elemental advantage hurt them again in comparison to their fellow warriors since the toad form summons extra monsters. The toad form gives a bit more exp than the first form while having less HP so having the class be on par with the other warriors during the majority of the fight. This would give players more incentive to bring Paladins along even if it's just because they know they'll "White" the body that gives higher exp over the Paladin that they've brought along.

Increased initial range of (Advanced) Charge Blow - Not much to say here. It would just be nice if the initial hit didn't share the same small hitbox as a regular attack.


Grinding comparison:

Paladins are often mistaken for being the superior grinding class amongst the warriors and here I'll showcase the reality.

I used an Onyx Apple because I'm comparing it to my higher level Hero and Dark Knight. The Onyx Apple actually makes my Paladin stronger than both of them in terms of range/funding. You can see here that the small range of the initial hit of ACB can be annoying sometimes. I used HH early into the video to show that it's clunky and only serves to slow down the grind.



I'm comparing my Hero to my Paladin in terms of training at O4. I'm not using any attack potions in this video to show that the Hero class is very comparable if not actually better even considering the 4k gap in damage range.



In this second video comparing my Hero to my Paladin I used Heartstoppers which actually still puts me at a lower damage range than my Paladin. Heartstoppers have always been my potion of choice when grinding since they're relatively cheap and provide a max speed boost if you happen to not have haste.



My Dark Knight comparison


It's clear to see that Paladins struggle the most even when not in a bossing situation and I hope that something can be done to better balance the class. I've tried my best to find ways to buff what the class can do using its already existing tools rather than editing the skills themselves.

 

I agree with introducing elemental weakness to certain parts of bosses because it just makes sense for this class's skills to be played the right way.

 

blast has a built in disadvantage of being single target while brandish and crusher can hit more body parts at horntail. I would give blast a significant buff to put paladin's single target damage above hero/drk while keeping their multi target skill in acb relatively worse.

 

Problem is when you put too much into single target, they gimped by the damage cap, something that can happen with a half decent geared pally on strong buff potions at certain bosses with crits. I don't think a hero or drk can ever hit cap with any individual strike of one of their attacks, thus they never lose out on that extra damage.