Paladin stats & race

[Danth]

You're not hitting 3500 mana on a lower/mid range-geared Paladin without severely ruining yourself as a tank. The wife's Shaman doesn't even have 3500 mana. 2000 mana is generally sufficient for normal functionality. 2500 mana should be fully adequate for any reasonable jobs asked of a Paladin in the level 60 group game. 3000 mana would be nice but I'm not sure a Paladin (outside high-end gear) can achieve that without making unacceptable trade-offs.

My Shadow Knight has been 60 for more than 6 years. This is relevant since Paladin gearing is nearly the same. Depending on the equipment I swap in and out it ranges from about 2000 to 2300 mana. I refuse to wear a Narandi crown (no graphic--I want my human winged helm) so I could gain some there, but regardless of what I did I wouldn't be getting past about the mid 2000's--same as Troxx reports, more or less. It's enough because if something goes wrong, I can't USE mana fast enough to require more than that, anyway. Within the length of time it takes me to run out, either a bad situation has stabilized or it's turned into a wipe. That's not theorycraft, it's multiple years experience doing a great deal of the upper-end nonraid content, often merely as a duo. Main area more mana would be nice would be solo'ing--which isn't such a concern for Paladins. Before the Shadow Knight I spent many years playing the Paladin extensively, and the considerations were always the same. Mana is nice, but only so long as it can be gained without ruining other statistics.

Numerous posters in this thread listed 1200 display AC as a nice value for non-raid content in this game. I agree with that assessment. My Shadow Knight, in its "duo set", reaches 1184 AC with typical self- and shaman-buffs. That's with 285 worn AC. It's on the lower side due to the SK epic having no AC, but acceptable because of the large amount of self-healing generated by the SK epic special effect. For unslowed, hard-hitting monsters (things that hit for 300's, 400's, etc) I'll stick on my 1H/shield till slowed and push the worn AC up to about 320, reaching display AC up into the 1230's.

I'm not saying don't gear for mana, I'm saying you shouldn't gear for mana at the cost of ruining yourself elsewhere. Gear with decent values in all areas (crystal spider eyes, etc) is highly valuable. Hybrids by nature need a lot of different statistics, so it's always a juggling act. With lower or mid-range gear it's unlikely you'll be totally satisfied with any individual statistic, and certainly not with all of them. Got to make do with what's available.

For the record, I haven't been in Karnor for a long time. Most of what the wife and I like to do is stuff like velketor castle-area golems, WW dragons, stuff in dragon necropolis, revamp-chardok, middle levels of skyshrine, the occasional trip to guardian wurms or deeper areas of sebilis, and so forth. I don't much care for raiding, but we're not bottom-feeding either.

Danth