How To Improve As Paladin — Dawntrail 7.1

This is the single most important point to understand while aiming to improve on any job. The majority of your damage comes from abilities on the global cooldown (GCDs). Since the GCD is so short, even a small loss in uptime can result in entire GCDs lost over the course of a fight, which in turn is a significant damage loss. Ensure that you make the most of ability queueing by spamming your next GCD before it becomes available. Additionally, there is only time for two oGCD abilities between GCDs. Attempting to triple weave will result in the third oGCD clipping into your next GCD, losing GCD uptime.

Uptime is so important that it deserves another section. As a primarily melee job, many mechanics will encourage you to move away from the boss and out of melee range, forcing you to sit and wait until it is safe to re-engage. Get in the habit of dodging out of AoEs as late as possible and running back in as soon as it is safe. Often it is possible to time your disengage so that you hit one GCD, move out of the AoE for the snapshot, and then back in again in time for your next GCD without losing any uptime.

It is important to keep in mind that FFXIV snapshots almost always happen at the end of the castbar (if there is one) or when the orange AoE indicator disappears. Very rarely does the attack animation have any bearing on when it deals damage. As a result, by dodging into an AoE the moment it is safe, you will take no damage despite it looking like you are getting hit. By the same token, being in an AoE during the snapshot means that even if you dodge out before the animation plays, you will still take damage.

Offensive oGCDs should be used when available, as delays can cost lost usages over the course of a fight. By using Circle of Scorn and Expiacion on cooldown, every other use will naturally line up with Fight or Flight.

Advanced Combat Tracker is a third-party parsing tool that records all combat events that happen in game. FFLogs is a website where players can upload and view logs from ACT. It provides many functions and allows players to view exact damage values, buff timings, etc.

XIVAnalysis is a tool for self-evaluating your own performance. Paste in the FFLogs link to the log you want to analyze, and it will give you some common suggestions and areas for improvement. In particular, the timeline widget is very useful and can show you where you lost GCD uptime and where you drifted oGCDs.