Paladin
From EQ2-Daily.com EQ2 Wiki
| The Paladin class is part of the Fighter archetype. Crusaders (paladins and shadowknights) are fighters dedicated to their gods. |
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The Paladin is one of the more rewarding and versatile classes in the game. They aren't the best in any one area but they seem to do a lot of things well.
The best advice for a new Paladin is to upgrade your spells and equipment whenever possible. An Adept I taunt is a big improvement over the same Apprentice II level taunt.
The Paladin's Role
Main Tank
The Paladin's main role in most groups and situations is as a tank. The tank is responsible for maintaining aggro (keeping the mob's attention) while others focus on dealing damage, healing, etc.
The Pally uses several techniques for keeping the mob's attention:
- Taunts
- Increase the mob's hate toward the Pally
- Wards
- Protect you from a certain amount of dmg
- Heals
- The Pally has four different lines of heals
- A small direct heal (it doesn't heal for a lot but even in a group it is enough to keep you alive when you need it).
- Is what i like to call the shard heal (there are certain spells you have that when you get hit it will place a shard in your bags, with this shard you can cast a pretty good heal but it has a long cast time and about a 5 min refresh before you can cast it again). This is the only heal that paladins have that is a self only heal and can't be cast on others.
- Lay Hands: this spell (and it's successors) comes in handy for those times when stuff goes wrong, but it is your biggest heal and also as a long recast time of 15 mins. Paladins tend to use this heal only in rare cases due to the recast time,
- Group heals: paladins have a group heal that is used mostly when you are fighting group mobs or multi-group mobs. All the heals have a side effect of increasing the amount of the mobs hate on you and the same goes for any ward and dmg spell too.
When tanking, you should consider using the defensive stance; this increases your defense, raises your mitigation, wis, resist vs divine and magic spells but lowers your weapon skills. This will make you in most situations take less damage each time the mob hits you. When tanking you should also have a 1 handed weapon and a shield, this will help you survive alot of battles as a tank with a 1h/shield due to the fact that when you equip a shield it will raise your mitigation, parry skills, and avoidance (which is the percentage of the time a mobs will miss attacks on you). Also when you have a shield equipped you have the added benefit of being able to use your shield to bash the mob, which adds hate and most cases will stun the mob. Tanking is the one thing you will do that takes 5 seconds to learn and a lifetime to master, but never be afraid to try something new when you are tanking, sometimes you will be shocked with what you can do with a good group.
Secondary Tank/Healer
The second role you may find yourself in is as a back-up healer and damage dealer. This is a role that you will find yourself in from time to time with pick-up groups and in guild groups. Dealing damage in itself is the easy part it is mostly pounding on your different damage spells, but you need to watch out that in this role that you don't go overboard and do too much damage so that the mob is attacking you instead of the tank. Paladins get quite a few different damage spells and they each will help you defeat the mob and for you and your group to reach there goal. First when you are in the damage dealer mode, i would suggest to go into your Offensive Stance what this does is it raises your str (more power and causes your melee attacks to do more damage, and on your skill spells it will increase the amount of damage they do) and your int (which causes your magic spells to do more damage, these are many your Area of Effect spells and your nukes), also raises your weapon skills but lowers your defence skill. When you are in your offensive stance it would be good advice to equip a good 2h weapon, because 2h weapon will do more damage but at a slower rate then 1h weapon and with 2h weapons you don't have the added advantage of having a shield so you tend to take more damage and tend to avoid less attacks than when you have a 1h and shield equipped.
Paladins have quite a few of different attacks they can be broken down in 2 different groups: Single mob attacks and Area of Effect spells. You have quite a few different lines of single mob attack spells.
