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Malianna
01-12-2014, 11:26 PM
hey guys, just coming back after years of being away. All my toons are very low level, so not really worth crying over if I did reroll :)

Anyways, I did manage to get a HE paladin to 10, but I'm now heavily considering if its worth going forward. I do want to tank/ have a melee roll, but this will obviously be my main on here. currently full banded with some random jewelery etc.

Would a warrior or SK fit the bill better along the road, ranger maybe? (lol)

captnamazing
01-12-2014, 11:54 PM
Paladins are strong and valuable tanks. They are great in small party settings and can even tank raids occasionally.

If you're starting from scratch, paladin will be slower, but I think it'll be easier. Having done a warrior as my main, i found the experience gruelling at best until I could start getting ykesha procs. (level 36). As a paladin, you have a slew of healing spells, stuns, root, and LoH at your disposal to stay alive when a warrior wouldn't.

You'll never be great, or even good, at soloing. However, you'll be an effective tank earlier, and you'll have more abilities... I'd recommend it.

Estu
01-13-2014, 12:34 AM
Do it! Paladins are excellent tanks in standard EXP groups. They have some use though are not great in raids. They are underplayed on this server, so you'll be able to get gear for cheap.

Rhambuk
01-13-2014, 09:39 AM
only read topic name.

Never, paladins are awful. This is my personal opinion I simply hate the paladin class, always have always will.

I never choose a paladin tank, I will never ask a paladin to group with me, I hate them.

Gaffin 3.0
01-13-2014, 11:59 AM
only read topic name.

Never, paladins are awful. This is my personal opinion I simply hate the paladin class, always have always will.

I never choose a paladin tank, I will never ask a paladin to group with me, I hate them.

pretty much 100 % there, while they can tank decent and stuns and free heals from dw helm is nice later on, still not that wanted when looking for a tank, kind of like a last option tank if nothing else to get...

Rhambuk
01-13-2014, 12:09 PM
I'd tank a monk, then a ranger, then a bard over a paladin....

Tuljin
01-13-2014, 01:37 PM
paladin is awesome if you are a good player - they have the strongest cc and mob parking skills of all the tanks. you can root and stun as well as blind for snap agro. if you pull multiple mobs you can root them yourself, and if they're casters you can chain interrupt them and they won't cast a single spell.

i have done some awesome duos/trios that wouldn't be possible with other classes. if you have enough dps in your group you can be your own healer because casters wont rape you every time they come into play. i duoed ghoul am in lguk with 46 pal and 45 epic rogue thanks to stuns, interrupts, and sword and board (and the am not resisting all my spells :P)

paladin is awesome, you just have to be good at eq to get the most out of them - theres a reason so few people on the server play them :)

Danth
01-13-2014, 04:29 PM
Paladin's my favorite class in EQ, no question.

I disagree with Tuljin. I don't think learning curve has much to do with the Paladin's lack of popularity on P1999. The Paladin is no worse than average in terms of finesse required for competent gameplay. I think, rather, the lack of popularity stems from the class's relative lack of diversity: It tanks fairly well for experience groups, but that's about all it shines at. Otherwise, the Paladin's a mediocre soloist, a sub-par duo character for most duos, and has very little raid role. Other classes can tank adequately for standard groups whilst offering more desirability in other areas of the game. If all you care about is tanking for experience groups, then the Paladin will serve adequately. Most folks want more than that.

The Paladin's 40% experience penalty doesn't help matters any, either. All four of the hybrid classes (Paladin, Ranger, Shadow Knight and Bard) tend to run out of gas in the low to mid 50's; most of them never make 60. It also hurts their group desirability. With that in mind, if you're determined to make 60 and raid as a tank, I advise Warrior simply because it takes vastly less experience to get there.

Rhambuk sounds like a Warrior; his posts made me grin. There's some sort of unwritten social rule in EQ that Paladins and Warriors are supposed to hate each other.

My advice to the original poster would be as follows: Make a Paladin if your heart is set on it. If it isn't and you're less particular about what class you play, then pick something else. Most other classes will give you more mileage across a larger portion of the game. The Paladin's a specialist--dedicated to tanking for experience groups and particularly at shutting down spellcasters. It doesn't have the sort of broad, generalist adaptability that (for example) Monks have, hence why Monks are popular and Paladins are not.

Danth

Rhambuk
01-13-2014, 05:28 PM
Rhambuk sounds like a Warrior; his posts made me grin. There's some sort of unwritten social rule in EQ that Paladins and Warriors are supposed to hate each other.

Danth

haha you're very close! My paladin hatred goes back to my live days as a rogue, knockback stuns pushing mobs behind me, paladin buffs overwriting my atk buffs, paladins that didn't understand agro mechanics and would just stunlock mobs making positioning horrible.

A warrior friend and I shared this hatred and a lot of it came from him but it stuck around for nostalgia sake. Down with paladins!

Malianna
01-14-2014, 12:52 PM
thanks for the posts guys, however I might just stop the paladin and go with something else. Just doesn't feel right to me and I'm having a hard time sticking with it overall.
However, I should of added that I have a cleric friend on server, would there be a melee/tank duo that would work great with them?

Tuljin
01-14-2014, 01:06 PM
haha you're very close! My paladin hatred goes back to my live days as a rogue, knockback stuns pushing mobs behind me, paladin buffs overwriting my atk buffs, paladins that didn't understand agro mechanics and would just stunlock mobs making positioning horrible.

this is precisely why i mention learning curve when talking about why people don't roll paladin. in order to be good at paladin you need to have good tank AND caster skills. you have to properly turn and position mobs (and know when to stunlock and when to use blind) you also need caster skills to know how to lull/break up camps, root park/split mobs properly, how to use stuns (and bash) to knock out casters, and also knowing when to toss out heals, cure poisons/diseases, and when to use LoH (either on yourself or a party member) you have to keep an eye on the casters in your group in case they get agro and you have to stun the mob and root park him safely (or just tank it) to keep your casters safe, which is normally the responsibility of a caster.

most people when rolling a melee class don't even consider this dimension of gameplay. they instantly only think "dps" hence why you get an iksar monk rolled (which also carries a hefty xp penalty btw), a warrior maybe, and sometimes they think sk cause it "out dps-es" paladin, but when you start stacking dots on an sk you quickly see your mana bar drain to nothing and the dps really isn't that exceptional.

in my experience on this server most people who play casters don't really have the best situational awareness. i point my finger at clerics cause most of them on the server don't do a damn thing besides heal, they never throw out a single root or stun. if there isn't an enc in a group to AOE mez every single shitty pull in a very haphazard way, there is no CC and you'll just end up sitting at zoneline LFG. root cc is usually plenty of cc if you are single pulling casters, and if not you make sure you root casters out of LOS. with melee mobs root CC is just fine.

with a pal you can take matters into your own hands. after playing warrior for a while i got sick of relying on others to take care of cc etc. if get a good dps class with you and a third party member (doesn't even have to be a healer necessarily) and you will steadily and quickly move the xp bar without dying. this is another point - all of these hypothetical "best" class situations are assuming a good player behind the toon, which certainly is not always the case. not dying and keeping the bar moving is the key to xp, not getting nuked to 30% on every pull and waiting till that one time the cleric is a little bit late on the CH, the group gets screwed, and you end up waiting a while before the xp bar moves again.

so yes, learning curve/general difficulty of the class is a major reason why nobody rolls a paladin. nobody thinks about what pal is capable of - people either wanna crank out dps and FD to save their own ass without having any other responsibilities (monk and sk), or they just wanna sit on their ass and heal or OHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT aoe mez (cle and enc)

the main point is that a good knight is good because of skill, not because of min/max. a good paladin is extremely powerful in the hardest zones of the game (undeads in hole, hs, and seb) its just that you don't see many of them out there =)

Holey
01-14-2014, 02:24 PM
sk imo.

Skittlez
01-14-2014, 05:50 PM
haha you're very close! My paladin hatred goes back to my live days as a rogue, knockback stuns pushing mobs behind me, paladin buffs overwriting my atk buffs, paladins that didn't understand agro mechanics and would just stunlock mobs making positioning horrible.

A warrior friend and I shared this hatred and a lot of it came from him but it stuck around for nostalgia sake. Down with paladins!

Hates paladins.



Doesn't hate the bad player piloting the paladin.




Paladin is fucking awesome. This nonsense about not being able to solo is a sham too. 70% of mine has been solo and I rock that shit yo. Far better soloing than the other melee classes

Estu
01-14-2014, 07:35 PM
This nonsense about not being able to solo is a sham too. 70% of mine has been solo and I rock that shit yo. Far better soloing than the other melee classes

I like paladins but I don't buy this. Shadowknights and monks can fear-kite; that alone would make soloing with them a lot more efficient than with a paladin. You can cast weak undead nukes and heal yourself all you want, but you're going to spend a lot of mana on that. Monks get superior DPS and free self-heal; SKs get a pet and snares.

Rhambuk
01-14-2014, 07:52 PM
my war was a beast solo, at least until 40 when i sold my account long before they banned it people don't get excited!

his dps was monstrous though, living under 20% for crips wasn't really fair for classic mobs though.

Grommel
01-15-2014, 12:15 AM
I like paladins but I don't buy this. Shadowknights and monks can fear-kite; that alone would make soloing with them a lot more efficient than with a paladin. You can cast weak undead nukes and heal yourself all you want, but you're going to spend a lot of mana on that. Monks get superior DPS and free self-heal; SKs get a pet and snares.

I'm level 52 and it's been 99.95 solo. Not much of it was undead either, tbh, I found it more challenging to not stick with undead. I've shelved him for now until the xp nerf goes away come Velious, unless I get the itch again!

Estu
01-15-2014, 09:29 AM
I'm level 52 and it's been 99.95 solo. Not much of it was undead either, tbh, I found it more challenging to not stick with undead. I've shelved him for now until the xp nerf goes away come Velious, unless I get the itch again!

I'm not saying you CAN'T solo as a paladin, just that it'll be slower than soloing with almost any other class.

Grommel
01-15-2014, 02:49 PM
Oh that's definitely true, you don't solo as a paladin for the fast track to 60...it's more of a "enjoy the journey instead of the destination" kind of thing!!

Erati
01-15-2014, 04:01 PM
Paladins are an ideal raid off tank, the problem is, there will not be that many times to shine in this aspect ( except for spite golems in Hate)

Tuljin above put it brilliantly, good paladins have to be good at tanking AND good at casting. I can't tell you how many times I have had to CC and heal for my group on my paly. Splitting camps with lull and root are things that can't be learned unless you play caster classes first. Without clarity you are not going to be killing much and it won't be fast but it gets the job done nicely.

You can also stun lock things with ease, and once you get above lvl 55 you can really start to dominate places like Seb and HS. Paladin is the thinking mans tank in groups, you always have to be on your toes, however if your group is beefcake being a paladin also turns into easy mode as after you drop 2 stuns the mob you are fighting isn't coming off you letting you tab out to forumquest

I would not recommend making a paladin if this is your first time playing EQ, for a main character or even untwinked ( it isn't expensive at all to twink them)

Being lvl 20 Paly with a Ghoulbane in Unrest might be some of the most fun times ever!

I lvled my paly to 60 without any easy mode Plvling, so it took forever but was a fun journey!

Wulvgeng
01-15-2014, 04:17 PM
paladin is awesome if you are a good player - they have the strongest cc and mob parking skills of all the tanks. you can root and stun as well as blind for snap agro. if you pull multiple mobs you can root them yourself, and if they're casters you can chain interrupt them and they won't cast a single spell.

i have done some awesome duos/trios that wouldn't be possible with other classes. if you have enough dps in your group you can be your own healer because casters wont rape you every time they come into play. i duoed ghoul am in lguk with 46 pal and 45 epic rogue thanks to stuns, interrupts, and sword and board (and the am not resisting all my spells :P)

paladin is awesome, you just have to be good at eq to get the most out of them - theres a reason so few people on the server play them :)

I think another reason not many people play Pallys is that they have a 40% exp deficiency. I wouldnt ever play one because I have other things I want to do than kill 40% more mobs just to keep up with my buddies.

JayN
01-15-2014, 04:19 PM
Once velious comes out they become very much a needed class; they tank pretty much any fearing dragon due to fearless and they get brells a much needed raid buff.

At the moment though they leave much to be desired

Raavak
01-15-2014, 04:35 PM
Hybrids in general become more useful in Velious. Bard is the only good one in Kunark just because of resists. SKs can be okay. Min-maxers will make your life hard here.

Malianna
01-19-2014, 12:44 PM
So should I even bother to stick with Pal or SK? just wondering cuss I'd rather not deal with eliteist bullcrap, I got enough of that when I was raiding hardcore on live.

Rhambuk
01-19-2014, 01:09 PM
So should I even bother to stick with Pal or SK? just wondering cuss I'd rather not deal with eliteist bullcrap, I got enough of that when I was raiding hardcore on live.

If you're worried about mix maxxers then no it probably wouldn't be worth gonig SK.

otherwise go Sk and have a blast!

Tuljin
01-19-2014, 01:29 PM
play what you want to play! a huge benefit of knights is that the gear is really cheap. at high levels nobody really cares what type of tank they can scrounge up as long as you can take some hits =)

most people who play melees just want to press auto-attack and wait for that AOE mez and CH to come in. if you want to do a bit more than that play a knight. if you're fine without having any magical powers whatsoever (and really expensive gear on a gear-dependent class) roll a war.

on p99 very few people have nice, useful, and intelligent things to say, so if you roll a warrior, monk, or rogue without gear you're gonna get griefed. if you roll a knight you're gonna get griefed because you "should have" rolled an ogre warrior with x gear y gear and z gear, which would need to be funded by h.g. pennypacker. its a catch-22 really!

Malianna
01-19-2014, 08:23 PM
updating thread, so far ive went through to 11 on this paladin. Feels like what gear i could gather doesnt matter much in lower levels until ovious plate items/ better spells etc?
Not to mention plat seems hard to come by for some reason, anything i could farm or look out for?

Skittlez
01-19-2014, 10:35 PM
I would try to camp the sisters in Lfay that drop the bronze weapons for plat. You can kill them till 18 then move to unrest to maximize you potential. Once you hit 20-22 you can start soloing there. There is easy to get loot all over unrest so you shouldn't have many plat issues. If you need anything shoot me a message. Always willing to help a fellow pally.

Gustoo
01-20-2014, 01:10 AM
EZ to solo pally to 40ish in unrest. Pally is a fun class. Only play classes you like. You have to RP a little bit to enjoy it, minmaxnot so fun.

Bazia
01-20-2014, 07:40 AM
Pally easiest tank to level solo by far, in my opinion the lack of needing a group makes up for the exp penalty you have over a warrior.

Fun class too I think it's worth the trouble.

Skittlez
01-20-2014, 09:27 AM
Pally easiest tank to level solo by far, in my opinion the lack of needing a group makes up for the exp penalty you have over a warrior.

Fun class too I think it's worth the trouble.

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Xelris
01-29-2014, 08:50 AM
Pals and SKs are the best-case-scenario for xp tanking. For raids you've got wars taking the mantle for the most part, but that's their big niche.

Both the Pal and SK fulfill multiple needs of an xp group.

In the Pal's case, root CC works wonders and you don't need any extra help to shut down a caster mob, which on p99 is far, far more important than it was on live (with the notable exception of gate mobs and cleric mobs specifically). While an enc or bard is ideal, you can get the job done with lulls and roots, and in a high-power group you can save a crowd controller/healer's ass. You can even res for xp at the top end (and trust me, if my rogue dies in the middle of sebilis... I'm taking the 90% without complaint). All of this is huge in skilled hands.

In the SK's case, their main duality role is as a snarer and puller. While SK splitting is slower than a monk's, it's also easier in some respects (FD + snare is quite powerful. FD + disease cloud is potentially amazing). A skilled SK can be a huge part of making a tough camp break stupid-easy. No, they can't rez, but again at the top end they can make sure you get your corpse back, because SKs are better than monks at infiltration due to having access to both invises, and in a worst case scenario can summon your dead ass anyway.

All that and the wonderful aggro-on-demand spells that cost near nothing. Really when push comes to shove a group is compromised by NOT having a hybrid tank, as an overlapped role is simply more assurance that the issue is covered and covered well.

People who think the penalty spread out over 6 members means a damn thing compared to what hybrids bring to the table are dumb. The problem is compounded by people who don't play the classes well (playing a paladin like a warrior, SK dotting mez targets or lacking pet control, for example) and give those dumb people ammunition.