General Strategies Paladins, end gameFollow

Couple points I'd add. Mostly about soloing.

In conjunction with making sure you get the kill shot when soloing because of the Blessing of the Faithful AA, you should also *always* have the level 75 buff "Remorse for the Fallen" up and running. It's something that an heroic character will almost certainly miss, but is huge. The buff gives you a short duration buff when you kill something (lasts a few minutes). It provides two counters of double healing. So the next two direct heals you cast will heal for double their base values. Massively valuable if you're soloing and self-healing. You usually wont need to use more than the two counters in each fight, and you get them again if you get the kill shot on the current mob (which you should, right?). This in turn synergises with the vindication line of spells (which twincast your heals), allowing for a *ton* of healing.

I'm not sure I agree with keeping either the wave or stance line in the spell list when soloing. Wave actually makes zero sense if soloing, so ditch it for something else IMO. It's a group spell. If you need to heal your merc, just target and heal. More important, take agro and leave him be. Stance is questionable. I've personally not found the line that useful. It's additional hps, but the very long recast time (2.5 minutes), and relatively short duration (4 minutes?) means you must basically commit a spell gem to this *forever*, or abandon it entirely. I've personally found that using up a spell gem just to give myself a relatively small percentage more total HPs just isn't worth it. As you said, a well played paladin can do a lot of different things. I find myself struggling to balance them with the limits of spell gems. Wasting a slot for this just isn't practical. I can't remember the last time I went below 50% HPs while soloing. So adding more HPs to the total isn't helping me. Adding another spell, even a situational one, might.

And speaking of spells I'd rather have loaded. You mentioned one spell that has a "target's target" effect (vindication line), but I tend to try to have them all loaded if possible. And IMO, you missed the two that I actually use the most. The Admonish and Protective Proclamation lines are *huge* both soloing and grouping, and I'm not sure why you'd leave them out. Protective Proclamation hits the target with a nuke and the target's target with both a heal *and* a smallish melee guard effect. I use this when soloing and I'm taking damage a bit faster than I'd like in favor of healing first. Do this first *then* heal as needed. You'll find you need less healing and you don't lose any melee damage switching targets to heal yourself. Same deal with the Admonish line. These are straight up nukes on your target with a heal on the target's target. I use this spell whenever GoM pops up, since it's literally the highest mana cost spell you have and is pretty much always going to be useful. Both of these spells are useful soloing, grouping, and raiding.


Oh. I've also never found the "adjusts healing based on how damaged you are" (grief in the 101-105 range) line to be super valuable to me. Even at the best mana/heal ratio, it's only marginally better than Burst, and I'd rather not use a spell slot on a heal that is only better than one I already have loaded if I wait until my target is below 25% health to use it (actually have no clue where the top heal level kicks in). As mentioned above, I tend to like to keep my health in the top 50%, just to avoid potential calamity if you get a damage spike right in the midst of a fizzle run or get stunned, or whatever. Paladin's get so many different sources of healing, it just seems silly to treat our own hp bars like a yo-yo just to get the most use out of a very situational spell. Doubly so if we're using up a valuable spell gem for the privilege of doing that in the first place. Seems self defeating.


Also, if you're using a wizard merc, why not actually make use of it and not try to compete with it for damage? Ditch using holyforge for damage. Ditch using once every 4 hour AAs for damage or other means of upping your damage (use as needed, but don't rely on them because they aren't going to be steady, which is what you need for soloing). Use the "Armor" line of combat abilities whenever up. They last for about 2 minutes and recast every four. They're basically an "I win" button for Paladin tanking, yet you didn't mention it at all. When up, you probably don't have to heal yourself at all. Depends on what you are fighting, of course. When not up, use other damage mitigation effects and self heals judiciously. You should never even come close to dying. Just focus on keeping the mob(s) on you, and yourself alive.

Paladins get like 4 different lines of defensive combat abilities. They all cycle at pretty decent rates. Used correctly, you can almost always have one in use, and another one or two "on deck" for when that named mob pops and you need a bit more protection and healing. I find this to be a much better strategy than trying to increase damage. Don't get me wrong, we do fantastic damage against undead, and not terrible damage against everything else. But our abilities really shine with regard to defensive stuff. I choose what kind of merc to use based on the conditions of the mobs I'm fighting. Against some undead, I ditch the wizard merc because he's not going to increase my kill rate enough to make up for the exp he's sucking up. If I'm fighting really tough mobs (which means I'm drop hunting and not exp grinding), I'll actually use a healer merc sometimes (cause I'll take it down eventually as long as it can't kill me). Then I'll use the more offensive stuff. I just don't find that our offensive abilities add much in the long run. When you consider the downtime periods, and assume we're hunting for any length of time, they're really a quite small total increase (maybe 2% or so overall).


Stuns I totally agree with. Use them early. Use them often. I've often written that when it comes to paladins, when in doubt, hit something with a stun. The great thing about stuns is that they will generate agro for the paladin, but not actually do damage to the mob. In groups/raids, they are totally safe to use (no fear of breaking mez for example). Now doing this whilst someone else is in the middle of a pull and you're not the person being pulled to might not be a good time to use one, but just about any other time is. The one negative to stuns is that they don't trigger GoM. So you need to make sure you've got some kind of relatively cheap direct damage spell in there. There are a couple options, of course. The Crush line basically exists solely for this purpose IMO. I also will often load up the anti-undead line that does limited damage to regular mobs (and yet some other damage to summoned ones). It's a lot more mana than crush or stuns, but still far cheaper than our more expensive spells and it actually does a decent amount of damage (unlike crush which has basically meaningless damage). Oh. And it doesn't take up a stun timer. Not that you'll usually load up the knockback stuns, but if you do, you have to remember that they're on the same timer.

I think I didn't explain the spell well. It's a long term buff. It lasts 5+ hours. There's no reason not to have it up and running all the time unless you're worried about buff slots running out (which shouldn't be an issue soloing). What the buff does is that whenever you kill a mob, it creates a short term buff that lasts like 2-3 minutes and grants two counters of increased healing (it's not actually double healing, more like +80% or so, but still massively beneficial). The long term buff is not used up or anything by this. It stays there waiting for you to kill another mob and grant you another super powerful short term buff.

You should always have this spell running. Doubly so if you are soloing and self healing.




Yeah. I get the Holyforge thing. There were actually a lot of complaints when Pureforge came out that it wasn't much of an improvement over Holyforge *and* it has a shorter duration. Honestly though, the shorter duration is what makes it better because of the Armor line of discs. As I mentioned earlier the Armor line is more or less an "I Win" button for Paladins. You can run it for 2 minutes out of every four (so 50% of the time). It has just a 20% damage reduction, but also procs heals on you and stuns on those who hit you (and procs off hits). It fires a lot. It's basically what the ward line of spells should have been.

The armor line of discs is so powerful an that you'd never want to not use it in favor of running Holyforge. So even if you use Holyforge, you're going to want to kill it to run armor after two minutes anyway. May as well just use pureforge and be done with it.

Use the mantle line when tanking really tough named mobs, and deflection as an "OH ****!" button. For everything else, just use Armor every 4 minutes. Squeeze pureforge in when it's up. I suppose you can use holyforge as well, but you're basically just getting a less powerful pureforge that doesn't refresh as fast unless you use the full duration of holyforge, and IMO you're not likely to want to use holyforge for its full duration due to it blocking Armor. To make holyforge more useful you have to spend more AAs to decrease the reuse time. Honestly, I'm just not sure it's worth it.




No. I'm referring to the "Armor of XXX" line (starts with Armor of Courage ends with Armor of Ardency). What makes it great for most situations is the proc effect. There are a few "big" defensive abilities that you should really only use when tanking something "tough". Guardian has good mitigation, grants healing when using a shield, but decreases offensive capability. The Mantle line grants similar mitigation, and a heal on fade, but no other effects. There's also a group heal line in there somewhere that I can never remember the name of. Point being that these are all abilities you trigger when tanking a big nasty mob. The Armor line is just a generally awesome ability to use all the time. It's primary benefit is the defensive proc, so it's best when soloing or if you are the tank in a group. And in that role, it's amazing. Anything that I don't absolutely need those higher mitigation abilities against, I'll use this. And when swarming? It's ridiculously powerful. And it can be up and running for 50% of the entire time you are hunting. Given that while using it, you often do not need to heal yourself, this ability by itself will cut your healing requirements in half, freeing that mana for other things (like offensive spells).



Again, the reason why holyforge isn't that valuable isn't because it's not a good ability, but because the Armor line is so much better that you can't really justify delaying activation of Armor just to keep Holyforge running. The only time I'd use holyforge (past two minutes anyway, which just makes it a weak version of pureforge) is if I'm in a group and I'm not the tank. No reason not to increase my damage a bit in that situation. In a soloing situation where I'm self healing? Not even remotely a choice.

Oh. And you should never be thinking in terms of Armor *or* other defensive abilities (like Guardian or Mantle). Those other abilities have much longer recast times (15+ minutes IIRC). They are situational. You hold them until you need them. The Armor line has a 4 minute recast. Use it whenever it comes up. Period. If you find yourself in a bad situation (big named pops on top of you say), just let it expire (it's damage based, so it'll drop pretty fast if you're getting beat on heavily), then drop one of those other bigger defensive abilities. Oh. And Armor of the Inquisitor isn't a discipline (it's an AA), so you can stack it on top regardless of what other disc you are using.

Edited, Mar 26th 2015 3:04pm by gbaji

...Speaking of two people who should just kiss, already...




CROSS THREAD SHENANIGANS!!!

Thanks for the feedback..Lets just leave it alone, we can go back and forth all night, to compare individual styles, is pointless, when its done for EGO. I prefer my steak well done, wanna argue that I burned it. Preference and individual style is subjective, Swarm pulling, of course will require different tactics, as will soloing undead, or soloing a Mission. To one player, soloing a mission is completely wasteful when you can do it in a group and finish quicker, I see it as challenging to complete.Spell line-ups change, Of course I use Armor Disc, I just dont use it when I solo. Swarm pulling I see pointless. But im not gonna knock a nother Paladin who specifically prefers it. Swarm pulling, while entertaining, just hasnt produced a big return on experience or loot, obviously Defensive disciplines would come into play. My post serves not as a guide, but rather as a means of opening up dialogue in attempts to share with others and in the process learn as well. It seems you feel some need to be vastly intellectually superior to others, perhaps to compensate in some way for
what might be lacking in real life. A little annoying, but looking past your arrogance, I see a well developed paladin. Go ahead ill leave you the final word.



Edited, Mar 27th 2015 12:09am by RatheLinden

Oooh. Yeah. I honestly found the 80-90 level range to be the most fun for my pally. Seems like that's where you get a bunch of the really cool abilities and where itemization really takes off. Sadly, Hill of Shade is currently a hotzone, so you run the risk of zone disruption, but I leveled most of that range killing blackwaters and fishermen there. Ridiculously fast exp rate, and enough random spell/defiant drops to keep your trader nicely stocked. Look for Grounds groups to join up (or any HoT stuff really), since that's where you can pick up some teir2 armor upgrades, but other than that you can pretty much just grind and sell and buy bazaar stuff to keep your gear in line.

Fun times!

Yes, I cant wait to get my Paladin into HOT content, and then to a high enough level to contribute with my highest characters.

As he has hardly played and has not tanked since level 80-just the odd p/lvl with my Necro main for the last 4 or 5 levels gained. So when I log him in now to actually look to tank, I've forgotten what half of my hot keyed AA abilities were, then taking the AA grant on the character amplified the situation more. The other day I was scanning the internet, looking for up to date Paladin information on the abilities, discs, spells and latest strategies and it was few and far apart for anything recent.

For me, levelling is not an issue as he can get plenty support from my higher characters. But my faded memory of the Paladin classes abilities, the lack of info and my lack of playtime (I have plenty alts competing for limited time) has created a need to relearn it. Nice to know at level 95+ there are useful improvements to its abilities also.

Thanks again for this information, it will help me a lot when I start to work on my Paladin again.. I even printed it out for future reference..no kidding.


Edited, Mar 29th 2015 2:50am by hexeez

Self heal. It's going to be more mana over time than stunning mobs to nothingness, but it's still quite doable. As I mentioned above, there are three lines of "target's target" spells. One of them (protective proclamation at highest level) heals the target's target (that's you when soloing) and places a small melee guard on the same. I'll usually try to drop this early in a fight so as to gain the most effect from the guard. Another one (admonish at highest level) hits the target with some damage (scales depending on whether live, summoned, or undead), and drops a heal on the target's target (you). The third (brilliant vindication at highest level), hits the target with some damage (which also scales based on type), and drops a healing twincast on the caster (you). The latter two are both expensive (well, for paladin spells anyway), so I usually wait until I get a GoM and then pop one or the other depending on need. If I'm ok health wise, I'll use the first one since it's damage with healing to me. If I'm hurting health wise, I'll use the second one. It's similar damage, but the twincast then allows me to cast a burst heal and get a lot of healing. Takes an extra spell cast though, so YMMV. Of course, to get those GoMs, you have to drop nukes. The crush line is great for this. And I'll tend to drop the direct damage (scaling to type) spells (consecration at highest level) as well since it's a .5 second cast time and easy to squeeze in. Stuns do not trigger GoM, so keep that in mind when planning how to set up your spells.

As mentioned before, always keep Remorse for the Fallen running, and you'll get two counters of increased healing for every mob. This allows your heal spells to be more effective. Remember that on top of that paladins get a ton of auto heal stuff. Can't remember the names right off the top of my head, but there's one that basically just procs a self heal while we attack. All the time. Another procs a group heal when we land stuns. So just by attacking and stunning (even if the mob is stun immune I think), we're getting health back. Probably not a bad idea to have a vampire proc in your weapon as well. Depends on what you want to do really. Given that we get the full set of healing increasing AAs, a seemingly small heal can actually do quite a bit. Stacking a bunch of minor effects really does add up.

And I'll repeat my love for the Armor line of combat abilities. When soloing you should just have this up all the time it's available. It's a massive decrease to damage taken. Pop that every 4 minutes and you likely wont have to heal at all for the next 2. Use that to either switch mana to more nukes, or to regain mana so you have it to cast heals during the two minutes it's not up. If a named or tougher mob pops up, use one of the bigger defensive AAs instead (ones with like 30%+ mitigation). That's usually plenty to make up the damage intake difference. Plus you'll usually find you just aren't desperately healing or anything. Unless you're really stretching what you can kill, even against unstunnable mobs, you're probably going to be healing at a nice easy pace that's easily sustainable. In the right hunting spot, the only thing that should make you have to stop killing is endurance.

Oh. And I forgot. You can also use the Ward line of spells for additional healing (plus HOT). It's a counter based defensive proc (so a chance to go off when you are attacked). This is up to you though, since it's replaced (and blocked) by a particularly useful offensive ability that you may want to use instead. Obviously also, the choice between using a 1h+shield or 2h weapon can have a significant effect on your relative damage dealing versus damage taking. That's gear dependent though.

Edited, Mar 31st 2015 5:59pm by gbaji