Some Thematic Ideas to Shore up Paladins

Discussion in 'Tanks' started by Shakara, May 1, 2022.

  1. Shakara Augur

    When I look at the Paladin Class two things I feel they could really use from a design perspective are:
    1) Better DPS on live targets
    2) Better Damage mitigation through Healing

    My first idea for DPS increase is give Paladins a debuff that flags mobs as undead. Other classes who have mob type specific spells have this ability and it makes sense Paladins should get it as so much of their power is tied behind mobs being undead. My proto type of this debuff looks something like this:

    Forceful Confession
    Mana: (around 1-2% of max)
    Cast Time: 0.5sec
    Range: 50
    Duration: 60 seconds
    Transform Body Type Undead

    Paladins not only smite the undead but also exact divine retribution on unrepentant sinners. This ability would cause the target to forcefully confess to all their sins laying their soul bare and thus vulnerable to the paladin's purifying power.

    My second idea would be to give the Paladins the ability to add bonus damage to their melee swings bases on a percentage of their health healed (Overheal would not count). It synergize well with a lot of the self healing buffs paladins have and hurting the paladin fuels them with righteous vengeance.

    Moving onto Damage mitigation I feel Paladins could really benefit from a powerful short term defensive ability that synergizes with the Paladins healing. For this I would suggest an AA around this design

    Form of Divinity:
    Duration: 60 seconds
    Recast: 10 min
    This ability sets all spell recast times for heals at 0 and reduces rest time for all spells to 0.5

    The thought behind this is it give Paladin's a small period of super power where they can tank or heal in a time of need gated mostly by mana as spamming heals could get quite expensive. If this iteration of the ability was too good it could be tuned with increasing the mana cost of all spells while active by some percent.
  2. FranktheBank Augur

    I would like a blind that makes the target miss the next 3 attacks or something
    Stephen51, Wulfhere and Shakara like this.
  3. Dre. Altoholic

    Would like to see certain autoattack procs also fire defensively. Pious/Nife, Blessing of life, etc.
  4. Tucoh Augur

    Delete blessing of the faithful and buff yaulp tremendously to compensate. Paladins having an anti-grouping buff is crazy.
    Wyre Wintermute likes this.
  5. Wulfhere Augur

    But paladins have been receiving self-centered (even selfish) spells since RoK. Group support is very limited to health, cures, guard/rune. Every other stat is self-only or inconsequential.
  6. Stephen51 Augur

    A spell/AA that reflects melee damage back at the mob. The % of dmg reflection and duration/dmg limit would dictate whether this was a spell or an AA. If it was geared to use in groups then it would be a spell, with a quick re-use (so as an example reflection would be 20% of incoming damage for 1 min with a recast of 5 mins or with a max damage of 500,000) or if it was geared for Raids or named encounter it would be an AA (50% of incoming damage 2,000,000 damage with a recast of 20 mins. The amounts could be rejigged to what ever was within the limits of the class.

    A high cost AA which bestows a favour from your God, but you have to work for it. Activated you would cast an unresistable Magic DD spell, the damage of which would be based on the number of light blue or higher con mobs that you had killed. so no need for a recast.
    If you kill 1 light blue mob before use it would do 1000 damage
    kill 1 dark blue mob it would do 2000 damage etc.
    The more mobs you kill the more damage it would do (say max of 10 million?) but once used the damage done/killscore would be reset and/or you would need to re-purchase the AA.
    I think Paladins need something to passively mitigate damage a little more. As for more burst DPS, I just think they need to update our discs some, and maybe allow some kind of extention to hybrid discs again. Would I be right in saying our latest DPS Disc, Blunted Blade is woefully underpowered and neglected. Upgrades/extentions to Holy/Pureforge. Yes we are defensive tanks, but we still need updates to DPS spells and abilities. SK's are offensive tanks, but they still get upgrades to defensive abilities, for example.
  7. Tucoh Augur

    What group support would you expect paladins to provide that isn't healing, cleansing or runes?

    I wouldn't mind seeing paladins get some "holy damage" adps thing that was inferior and conflicting with adps classes.
  8. Ozon Augur


    Maybe some sort of group Slay buff? Although at a lower proc rate than their own slay (raise the proc rate on Pally slay, give the group buff a lower proc rate). Although this might come off as too specialized.
  9. Tucoh Augur

    I'd rather they heavily nerf Slay Undead and increase base paladin DPS to compensate.

    Paladin DPS is more situationally dependent than any other class, even necromancers, and it's a huge problem for the class, in my opinion. Their base-level of DPS without burns, Blessing of the Faithful or slay undead is worse than a bard, but when they pop burns, get Faithful and are fighting Undead they are really great. Every class has burns and situations they excel in, but the disparity for Paladins is MASSIVE. I'd love to see this disparity decreased by targeting Blessing of the Faithful and Slay Undead.
  10. Qimble Augur



    Completely agree. I'd also like to see us get some secondary burns so that we can do half decent damage more often, with the obvious trade off that they're focused on disc's so that we can't run them simultaneously with tanking abilities.
  11. Wulfhere Augur

    This is a dead EQ topic and the arguments died 20 years ago. By lore, a paladin is supposed to inspire their group to greatness and the EQ paladin does not.

    How about spells that effect the group stat lines for? AC, STR, ATK, accuracy, weapon proc, endurance regen, mana regen, damage shield, run speed (mount), squire (pet).

    If you spreadsheet the character stats in EQ, and look at which classes can influence each one, it's a biased mess.
  12. Tucoh Augur

    My group is inspired to greatness with Group Armor of the Inquisitor and Spire of Chivalry, the rest of what paladin gives to the group, not so much.

    I wouldn't mind seeing DPG move away from procs and conflicting atk/accuracy/damagebonus buffs and more toward adding lore-based "bane damage" that is calculated based on the stats of the caster. A paladin spell that added a "Holy Bane Damage" to the groups hits/casts based on the paladin's wisdom, spell damage, AAs etc would be interesting.
  13. Wulfhere Augur

    Aye and neither of those are spells and certainly not available to a classic or TLP paladin.
    and GAotI starts at level 96.
    and Spires start at level 85.
    and ... exactly.
  14. Shakara Augur

    I think a lot of this is solved by letting Paladins change mobs bodytype to undead. Not only does it give synergy with themselves but it also provides synergy to other undead specialized classes.
    Allayna likes this.
  15. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I don't think Changing the body type to undead fits Paladin lore in any way shape or form, they are all about removing undead not creating them, even temporarily, in order to punish a sinner. I could see Necro getting a spell like that maybe, though they may already have one.

    The group slay idea was interesting.
  16. Warpeace Augur

    Paladin's being able to turn a mob undead does not fit anywhere as far as I am concerned. That's a Necromancers job.

    Necro's have the ability to turn mobs undead, Smoldering Bones - duration 1 tick. Guess they need an upgrade so it lasts 5 ticks and does not conflict with the Druid debuff that changes body type:D
    Skuz likes this.
  17. Qimble Augur


    Absolutely correct, which is why it's better for them to shift our damage to be less reliant on slays. Otherwise we are entirely at the mercy of dev's to give us camps to be able to grind out AAs without it being extremely painful.
  18. Wulfhere Augur

    Aye just say "no" to turn undead body type.

    Best spell upgrade we've gotten of late has been Mark of the Jade Cohort and that line has finally earned a spell gem 15 years after it's introduction. It's group and raid friendly and can be given more flavor (like -ATK, -ACC, -AC, +mana, +end). I'd also like a TGAE or PBAE version of it since it takes too long to apply to many mobs in a wave.
  19. Szilent Augur

    what? how in the world is a 6k dps debuff raid friendly?
  20. Warpeace Augur


    Still a spell I wish they would convert to being one of our self buffs so when we are hit it procs a reactive heal with a 1+ hour duration.

    I cant say it will never find a debuff slot on raids just because guilds are different. However, DPS is king and those extra 103 debuff slots will go quick from classes with a lot more to offer.