What makes a great Paladin

[maskedmelon]

1. Understand that your role is to become and remain the target of anything your group engages (provided you are the designated tank). If something is pissed at someone other than you, you are not doing your job (unless you are not tanking).
2. Learn effective cc with route. Space mobs to limit the damage you and your group take.
3. Learn the limits of root. Root can make tanking easy, but remember that you have no idea what he mob's aggrieved list looks like. If root breaks, chances are you are not at the top of the mob's hate list if that is all you have casted. Learn when not to root.
4. Help your healer out. You can spot heal casters (as well as others) with comparable efficiency. You should be taking most of the damage anyway, so help save the cleric's mana for those vastly more efficient heals.
5. Communicate. Have trouble with others breaking mez mid fight while you are just building latent aggro? Designate an alternative MA or ask group mates to follow your assist call and just blindly assist. Is someone in your group charming? Discuss their pet and kill order preference. People often prefer to charm casters for dps and it can create confusion/waste time if you start off trying to kill something that is or will in short Oder become a pet.

[Tuljin]

Have a set of CHA gear. You will calm very often, despite what the P99 hivemind says. Between root/calm/stuns/DA (at level 55) Paladin is an excellent puller. I was succesfully calming Seb at level 52 and 53 (weaker frogs of course)

Know when to use Lay on Hands. It will turn the tide of a battle. Much of the time you'll have to use it on someone else.

Great Paladins also stun pets on charm breaks (as Clerics and Wizards should be as well.) You can Flash of Light the mob youre tanking and change target and cast. It gets a little tricky if there's a ton of mobs around but other than that its not an awful inconvenience.

[Ezalor]

Do not listen to the above guy. CHA is not a significant enough modifier in lull success rates to merit having a set of CHA gear. The most important factor for lull success is your level compared to the level of the mob. Regardless, you are a tank first and foremost and your gear should reflect that and swapping a 5/55 ring for CHA or something similar is just colossally stupid.

[maskedmelon]

Originally Posted by Ezalor [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Do not listen to the above guy. CHA is not a significant enough modifier in lull success rates to merit having a set of CHA gear. The most important factor for lull success is your level compared to the level of the mob. Regardless, you are a tank first and foremost and your gear should reflect that and swapping a 5/55 ring for CHA or something similar is just colossally stupid.

No CHA does have a significant impact on lull success. Try it [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Tuljin]

Its easy enough to swap your gear back in after you calm, and much of it doesn't weigh much at all I.e. drake hide leggings. I always swap my gear back in. There's also the dex/cha mask and rings which are great for DEX as well as CHA, which you should have anyways. Not to mention the gear off Ragefire which not only is awesome but also has great CHA.

Of course levels are the biggest modifier, and that's why I get mine. Let me tell you what though I've seen a significant difference in crit resists between my 55 base CHA and my buffed/geared CHA. Its only over the 200 softcap that it matters very little. High Elves will have an even better time. I know level 60 Clerics who carry CHA gear and they calm regularly, and also happen to be very highly respected players on this server, and also happen to traverse the most dangerous dungeons in the game regularly.

Or we can just keep listening to the same old crap from everybody who thinks they know how to play Paladin but have never even grouped with one, let alone played one. When your ass is out there getting levels in dangerous places you learn what works and what doesn't, and CHA has saved my ass more than once.

[Ezalor]

Have tested the effects of CHA on lulls extensively so we'd just be arguing anecdotal vs ancedotal. It might make sense in a specific situation like being an underleveled Paladin trying to lull Seb but to generalize it into a golden rule is just plain stupid when the average Paladin is level 24 pulling Graveyard in MM and in 98% of cases can successfully root the one light blue add that would occur on a hard resist.

[Kender]

what mkes a great paladin?

a player willing to level one to 60

[SamwiseRed]

a good paladin is a twinked to the teeth paladin.

[kaev]

Yes, level is key as you can't get a crit failure if the lull succeeds. But I find it helpful to carry a crude stein (+15cha). It's pretty quick and easy to swap a single item to make critical failures less common. Also Kaev is a half-elf paladin rather than the over-popular dwarf, so his standard gear + the stein has put his cha at/over 120 for much of his career and crit failures have been pretty rare except when I've been lazy about the stein swap in my experience on p99. It's a nice feeling when you stick a lull on the fourth try.

[pharmakos]

yeah crude stein and two 7CHA rings is +29charisma for just two extra items. definitely worth keeping around unless you're lazy.