How will Paladin perform tank swaps?

After reading through Paladin abilities again I realized they have no way of tank swapping like Warrior can with their horn.

While it didn’t matter in Orbus for the WAR horn to be used that way until raids, it’s something that is very important to incorporate for the future of PLD in Reborn and I’d like to know if there are any ideas currently for how PLD could perform this.

I notice lightning strike is worded as if it could, “also acts as an AoE taunt to all nearby enemies forcing them to attack you”, but I don’t recall if it instantly put you at least one over top aggro in the group. Even if it does, how would you not accidentally tank swap back if you were off tanking and just trying to get orbs?

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I think that one of the Librams they have taunts? But i might be mistaken

Theoretically, the ground slam should be an area taunt. It wasn’t implemented in the last beta

None of the libtrams are taunts, one is a self heal,one makes ur next action worth double(dont think this applies to the hammer raise, since it doesnt take away the buff), and a party wide dps boost

the ground slam could work as a good aoe taunt, but as of now isnt, its just aoe dps

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Doesn’t only boss 1 on the raid use a warrior swap strategy? Boss 4 needs 2 tanks but they don’t swap any. I’ve only done normal and hard raid though, so I may be missing something from expert if there are different strats there.

It’s possible the devs could just build the bosses so that tank swapping isn’t a necessary strategy for any boss.

Anything that limits the ways we can design fights would be a huge misstep, in my opinion. I hope that isn’t the idea.

Furthermore, I feel that limiting content to only be beaten by a specific party composition would also be a disservice to the game (in this case needing 2 WAR to do a specific raid boss fight because they can tank swap).

Ideally, we should design jobs of the same role to be complimentary to each other in ways that your optimal party comp would be to have one of each in situations that require more than one player of any single role. Still beatable by having more than one of the same, but giving an edge to job diversity within the same role type in a party comp.

One way to implement PLD tank swap could be to use your self buffing libram to empower lightning strike to not only build enmity, but to also put you on top of the aggro table regardless of the gap in enmity. Essentially this would turn your lightning strike into how the WAR horn currently works, if you were to use the self buff libram right before.

The one problem with this is that currently the cleanest way to do tank swaps in Orbus is to stun, then blow the horn. As a PLD you would have to throw your hammer, use your self buff libram after it hits, then lightning strike. In theory I like the level of coordination that would require, but I’m guessing it would get pretty messy in practice since the librams aren’t instant cast when you grab them.

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Remember that in OrbusVR, a major component of the game was having access to all classes, meaning every player has the ability to fill any role required in the team. I can understand the devs persevering this with Reborn, to an extent. The issue comes when one class is not fun to a player compared to another, or when only one class has a mechanic required for the fight where another doesn’t, and there’s no desire to play the class wanted/needed for that role. Thus, I agree that for every role in the party, any diverse class composition, should be able to complete the mechanical requirements of a fight. I recall when Mages were much preferred to nerfed rangers because they had an advantage in both DPS and utility.

Class balance is hard for game designers, but as long as attention is paid to it, I don’t think it will become an issue.

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Right. For the sake of simply being able to complete a battle, it shouldn’t matter if your group has 2 WAR, 2 PLD, or one of each.

I’m suggesting as we design the toolkits for each, we take a look at how we can make them compliment each other and the group as a whole, and strive for that. This applies to all roles, not just tanks.

Anything that falls under the broad category of “game” will always have some kind of META, and it would be a shame if the META was based around a bunch of the same role as you had described above.

Raid boss 1 and 5 (expert mode) require tank swapping. Boss 3 expert can be done with only one, but I’ve only seen one person do it. Every other time I’ve been in there it’s been 2 WAR swapping.

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Also boss 1 can also be done solo :grimacing:
And you can also just swap the tanks on expert 5 after the main tank gets send to hell, so basically no boss in this game requires tank swapping through the horn taunt.

I think you’re missing the point of this thread, and just because those fights can be done that way (pretty sure that you’re the only one that does them that way?) doesn’t mean that the point he us bringing up is any less valid than before, I’m pretty sure they will have something for paladins to get back on top of the threat before release though

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There has been many a time that I have over aggro’d arguably the best tanks in the game which basically means I have to slow down my DPS for the tank to retain threat. A temporary threat gainer move is important for periods where aggro is pulled. I can imagine a similar issue will still be in effect in Reborn.

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I was not making a point to the thread as a whole. Just that what can be done with and without tank-swapping. And also not on a serious note :smile:

I understand the paladin concerns, but as pointed out it is very situational to a few raid bosses in the normal game now. I am guessing they won’t make such type of bosses in reborn. That seems more likely to me. They just make other tank swapping mechanics. (good point about the aggro loss thing J, I think the Lighting strike should be sufficient to get aggro back, but idk)

But there is sooo much more then just the taunt that will be a problem with making both paladin and warrior equal. I already gave up giving feedback just thinking about the possibilities. I think the devs know what they are doing and hope they balance it as good as they can.

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The lightning strike (raise hammer up) is a forced taunt in the same way the warrior horn is right now. It has a cooldown of I think 10 seconds (which is longer than the strike cooldown itself) right now which we want to indicate better at some point.

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Pulling agro from the main tank feels so good lol. Slow down dps? Pshhh lol

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@Mathieu_D Thank you for the information. I’m glad to know PLD has a taunt to jump the threat gap with, but that sounded as if it auto procs off cooldown. If that’s the case I have a few more questions and suggestions, if you don’t mind. Can you confirm if it’s passive use off CD or active use to taunt?

I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking, but basically if you’re going in fresh to a fight for example, and you raise your hammer, it charges up your globes and taunts, but then 3 seconds later you use that again it won’t taunt because it’s a separate cooldown (which is hidden right now just because we had to add it in last minute.)

I would possibly argue that the paladins instant heal is unnecessary in a actual group battle where healers are present. The damage reduction and a healer should be made to be enough.

Would be more fun to have a secondary group protection sisten that won’t require a taunt, or full agro

maybe a group buff that moves att damage taken to the Palladin?

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I think the concern is that if you’re using the lightning strike to get globes built up then you are going to be using your taunt when you don’t want, meaning you could be taunting a boss or mobs when you are just dpsing or you could need to taunt but you used it 3 seconds ago while getting some globes and now you can’t get agro back for another 7 seconds

I think the taunt should be something separate from the lightning strike, like how the warriors horn is separate, maybe a libram to grab and put yourself on the top of the agro table when needed

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The way I understand this, the lightning strike works in 2 ways: a small AoE threat builder (essentially their equivalent to Warrior provoke), and as a taunt akin to the Warrior horn (every ten seconds or so). Correct?

So lightning strike works in two ways, but there’s only one way to use the ability, by raising your hammer. Does the player get to actively choose when to use it as the taunt?

The description you gave sounds as if it automatically happens once the taunt cooldown is up.