Paladin Tank Weapons

[apprentice04]

Do the professional living and breathing Paladin all start legends typically carry both 2 hand and 1 hand + shield with them?

I have a decent 2h right now, but wasnt sure if I should be keeping a 1h and shield with me to use. If so, when would I use the 2h verses 1h+shield?

[Legidias]

tank is 1h / shield, you use spells to aggro.

[Benanov]

As Jak, I didn't really break out the 2H until the damage caps got lifted. I definitely had a much easier time not pulling aggro with the 2H.

If you're not MT, pull out the 2H for more damage; if you're tanking you'll want the shield AC. Against casters? Keep the 1h handy for bashes.

[Lartanin63]

I've always carried one even though my 2 handers were always better. If your eating up to much Mana stunning casters, shield is good to have. Doesnt matter if you have epic. I still carry one since I have a jeldorin. Uses are usually if it's largely casters I use sword and board, everything else use the 2 hander.

[Snaggles]

For most casually geared paladins (like me) a shield can be a real help to get your AC up to a respectable level. My own rule is if solo/duo/trio I use my Narandi. A group with a few real DPS’ (especially a charmed pet) my own DPS means very little and I go 1h/shield.

Keeping aggro is easy. Even if the shield ac/hps gives a slight mitigation bump it might keep you alive if the mob gets a few lucky melee rounds.

If you are a NTOV+ raider go ahead and do whatever you want. :)

[Troxx]

It depends on what you have available.

My options:

-27/29 1hander no proc + 25ac shield with 10 fire/cold/magic and some hp
-38/46 2hander 150 stun/dd with 45ac and different stats/resists

Benefits of sword/board for me are really limited to just the ability to bash on demand and the resists.

Benefits of the 2hand? More mitigation, fewer ripostes, a lot more damage, a proc that helps me conserve mana on the aggro front. Yeah shield aggro is more potent but my 2hander has almost double the AC. Average incoming hit is lower and with the slower swing speed there are fewer of them.

The procs that fire and the mana it saves translates to more *other*. Flash of light is cheap and sustainability indefinitely but the savings over time means I have more available to patch heal self/others, lull, buff/rebuff etc.

For me the choice is clear. 2hander is my workhorse and the shield only comes out when I need to bash. After the last patch it runs circles around my sword/shield for dps. Before the patch they were pretty close. I do all my serious tanking with it. Ironically I assist dps on raids with my sword/shield as the lack of proc helps me not accidentally steal aggro (it’s happened a few times in HoT if I get one of those lucky proc streaks at a bad time).

If I had a rockin ToV sword/board with high ac on both I’d probably use that the majority of the time. Then again ... I also have access to ToV 2handers which are significantly better than the 38/46 I presently use.

2handers are in a really great spot these days. Tier for tier they always do a lot more damage so it really boils down to how much a shield is going to help you survive and whether or not you need bash on demand. Unless you are undergeared your healers should have no problems keeping you up on mundane content.

[Snaggles]

Yea this is one topic that race actually may nod you one way or the other. Maybe not influencing the race you pick but rather how you adapt to.

Two exceptionally easy items to acquire depending on your birthright...

https://wiki.project1999.com/Natures_Defender

https://wiki.project1999.com/Shield_of_the_Stalwart_Seas

[elwing]

Flurry shield + cekenar claw or other high hp/resist 1hander?

[Invalid_Bard]

Sword and board until you obtain your epic or natures defender and you never really need to go back. A shield can be a stat filler but isn't really necessary.

[Danth]

You use the best weapons you have access to. That may be a 2-hand weapon or it may be 1-hand weapon plus a shield. Using a shield for its own sake is seldom necessary. This isn't World of Warcraft where shields offer a huge bonus to durability; in this game their impact is modest at best.

My Paladin uses a 1H/shield setup simply because that's the best he has. My Shadow Knight uses mainly a 2H. He keeps a 1H/shield in the bag but I seldom use it except where I'm running through an area expecting to take hits without fighting back such as swimming through Siren's Grotto. If I didn't carry a shield at all I wouldn't likely miss it.

Danth

[Danger]

it basically boils down to having a shield equipped lets you bash, a twohander (other than epic) does not. it doesn't matter which setup gives you more dps or ac or like 45 more hp, because the differences are going to be marginal. so unless you want to hard swap in a shield to bash every few seconds while rocking your twohander just do sword and board for general grouping.

with that said by all means keep all skills maxed. i played a paladin on red so I always had a high damage twohander bagged for pvp encounters, but they're also useful if you need to solo something via root jousting. assuming you play on a blue/green/teal server I'd put more emphasis on a good onehander/shield combo, unless you fall into something like a https://wiki.project1999.com/Mithril_Two-Handed_Sword when you otherwise don't have any haste on Green/Teal. On blue I'd just lug around a https://wiki.project1999.com/Luminary_Two_Handed_Sword for raising skill and the proc to make your lull crit resist rate more manageable.

t. professional living and breathing Paladin

[Troxx]

https://wiki.project1999.com/Great_Spear_of_Dawn

Picked up one of those the other night. It's doubtful I'll ever use sword/board again unless I can score a pair of the ones with 40+ ac each. The dmg output on 2handers is just too sexy to pass on.

with that said by all means keep all skills maxed.

Yeah I can say from personal experience it wasn't fun leveling piercing up to 225 from 1 skill. Did that yesterday.

[Danth]

Yeah I can say from personal experience it wasn't fun leveling piercing up to 225 from 1 skill. Did that yesterday.

Funny how people can reach different conclusions from similar experience. Since weapon skill can be raised from nothing to cap within a fairly quick period, I see no reason to carry around a bag full of otherwise-unwanted weapons. I'll raise a skill if I need it. In some cases a weapon skill may never be needed at all.

Danth

[elwing]

That spear is 25ac 50hp,sweet,but during scenarios where you just want to tank a hard thing, a 45ac 225hp is just better, even if that tank your dps...

[Chardy]

https://wiki.project1999.com/Great_Spear_of_Dawn

Picked up one of those the other night. It's doubtful I'll ever use sword/board again unless I can score a pair of the ones with 40+ ac each. The dmg output on 2handers is just too sexy to pass on.



Yeah I can say from personal experience it wasn't fun leveling piercing up to 225 from 1 skill. Did that yesterday.

That spear is so damn good. Swapping that in and out with Epic on my SK while hunting undead. Pretty nice when they proc back to back!!

For tanking, I've been using Sledge of Smashing and Orb of the infinite void.

I've seen Paladins offtank raid content and ramp tank with Cek claw and Whitestone shield. Seems to get the job done well.

[elwing]

Sk so that's not fully the same but it relates, when dpsing or tanking easy thing => epic for high dps and lifetap proc, when tanking hard things (hot and more) icecone+flurries shield...

[Troxx]

That spear is 25ac 50hp,sweet,but during scenarios where you just want to tank a hard thing, a 45ac 225hp is just better, even if that tank your dps...

My sword/board combo presently is only 25ac 5stam and 40hp. It has serviced me well enough for any content that is appropriate for a knight to be expected to tank but my previous 2hander was better. This improved ratio only nets a 20ac loss over my previous 2hander (but a minor hp boost). Once your gear is in an appropriate range for functional viability, survival starts and ends with your healing team. If I really need more umph I can swap 2handers for an extra 20ac.

We’ll see.

If I pick up a fat 40+ac shield to pair with a 40+ ac 1hander I will situationally use it, but for content where a knight needs to turtle down that hard you’re almost definitely going to have a warrior tanking it. We generally have warriors outnumbering paladins 4-5:1 on our raids. I really only play the knight when the warrior is parked elsewhere or when warrior numbers are saturated and we could use some off healing support, 200hp pal buffs, or on easier trash content where guaranteed snap aggro is preferable.