How to further reduce incoming damage? Current Raid Content Offtanking Paladin...

Well, it looks like I am slowly graduating with my Pally to semi regularly offtanking on current content raids. I am not struggling with keeping aggro for the most part, but I kinda feel I take too much damage when compared to the other Tanks. So I am looking at finding ways to eke out a bit more surviveability.

Random information: I am mostly T1 NoS raid gear, with 6 slots left with ToL T2 gear and maybe 4 or so slots of Apparitional. No LS Raid gear yet, but I expect that will come. 13,100 AC Raid Buffed with Shield.

I have enough AAs so I am now buying stuff I do not actually use. I am going full HAgi, but I have not maxxed HAgi yet, I think I still have ca. 4-5 Augments left that I can replace.

Stone of Judgement (10% Dodge - max 45)
Tears (Currently at +8 Defense)
Jann's Veil
Valia's Unyielding Bravery
Spirit Drinker's Coating
Current content mount

I am have unlocked 6 Trophy slots and am working on the last 2, also have 6 Trophys.

What I am working on as soon as Anniversary Quests come around again: Gnoll Totem, Wayfarers Tent.

Is there any other old content stuff I should take try to work on, that improves surviveability? Does it help to do stuff like the Trials of Mura Matam, etc. considering how many AEs we are eating in this expansion? It feels like a lot of them are unresistable.

This is Shadow of my Shadow, one of my better parses to be fair:

Anything I can do to get more passive damage reduction? Getting LS Raid Gear is an obvious step forward, but happy to take any pointers on how to reduce AE damage. I do not have Artisan's Prize, that may be something to check out once I have finished the easier to get stuff... Any advice welcome.

Hmmm... Doesn't let me add a screenshot.

Main change to SK, done.

Or just prepare to struggle through.

sadly, this is the single biggest upgrade

Let's assume for fun and giggles that a Main Change to SK is not in the cards.

I enjoy playing the Paladin. I did struggle quite a bit when I originally hit 120, but that pretty much went away once I got enough Augments and AA under my belt, as well as getting raid gear.

I think you got the more impactful things.

Get your evolving items (Ear, Cloak, Neck) maxed out and aug'd appropriately. People freak-out about AA heroics when often times they are missing about 5x the stat equivalent just in easily obtained gear/augs. (AA heroics are still worth getting ahead of super hard stuff with like Artisan's Prize).

There a few other tiny little things you could consider, but while they help a tiny amount in theory, they often hinder in practice (because of opportunity costs generally, like cast times that slightly delay combat rounds, inappropriate use instead of something more important, maybe stacking issues, buff slot issues, etc.). I think they're generally okay to use pre-engage.

Epic
Diplomatic Papers (50k rune vs combat and AOE - from Anniversary quest)
Silken Trillium (Slightly increases incoming heals by flat 750 - some bixie mission rare)
Dawnseeker's Chestplate of the Defender
Traps (laid ahead of time exactly where mobs spawn or where they will activate for 1st-on-aggro - Vice Trap, Mark of Searing Dawn)

Things like Spirit Drinkers Coating, Valia's Unyielding Bravery (which you already have) absolutely dwarf these things. You are on the right track grabbing the small passive things (final trophies, stone of judgment, gnoll reaver AC) - these typically don't come with opportunity cost and they are always on. Much more benefit is usually obtained via practice, effective spell/ability lineups, and appropriate buffs from other classes.

And, yeah, SK is broken, so try not to compare there!

Edit: Caveat - I don't raid, but i've worked for years on the same problem in group game. So, anyone who does raid, please correct anything i've stated that is not accurate.

From all this, the biggest mistake you made is going heroic agility.
As a group tank, there is no comparison, heroic dex is by far better both offensively and defensively.
Scrap those agi augs right away.
A big part of playing a paladin in the group game is disc uptime, and pulling strategy. If you have someone pulling 1 mob every 30 seconds, that is a struggle for paladins and forces us to push hard to get and maintain agro on the new mob while hoping our previously established agro on the previous mob is enough to keep it. You also lose the chance to get your Blessing of the Faithful proc when the previous mob dies.
Now if you pull 2 or 3 every 90 seconds, all your ae agro stuff is up for the pull and you can focus on killing each mob directly and increase your odds of a BOTF proc.
If you are boxing, you need to plan to do "big" pulls to line up with the ae agro every 90 seconds.
if you are grouping you need to pull, or have the puller pull "big" pulls to line up with the ae agro every 90 seconds.
I promise your quality of life will go up with those tips.

As for the raid angle, still agility is the worst heroic aug choice (of the big 3)you can make as a paladin.
There is no secret thing you need to camp to be more surivable. Those are all fluff. There is no hidden SK epic or SK COA BP that paladins get.
It is absolutely all disc, spell and ability usage.

For group I agree but I tried both recently as a raid pally by swapping out the type 5s and have found that hAgil was doing better for me in a raid situation than hDex when in defensive mode. For the above, poster, in the end, whichever way you go will help as long as you go one way to at least 4k.

Of cause once I got over 4k hAgil on raids this expansion with tribute running I started using more hDex augs (hDex is getting close to 4k now too and will likely exceed once I finish this expansions collectibles and of cause the raid type 5).

For the above use your discs and spells more and if you really need to, use dragon glyphs. They are there and it's easy to get 250 banked prior to a raid

Okay, I specifically went for HAgi because I am not struggling to tank at all in the group game. I do not need outside healing unless I Tank more than 2 mobs with 2hander at the same time. The only time I use Defensives is in FF when the three Goblins spawn in that ambush, until they are slowed. I use Shield for that. For everything in the group game I have encountered, Protective Acceptance was enough so my self heals took care of all my damage when Tanking with 2hander. The Shammy I usually group with slows, dots and often forgets to heal afterwards. ;-)

We used to use a Cleric Merc for the FF Mission for a while, but I usually produced 70% of the healing and massive overheals, with Merc bringing the rest.

HAgi is at 3451 atm and I am at 13 Stately Seals of Takish plus all the other LS pure Agi Augments. I thought I would only need 3-4 more until I am a close to max HAgi as I could get. Sounds like I need to take a closer look at my S7 Augments, as I am wondering why I have not hit 4K yet.Or is that all just the semi old raid gear? Normal Agi on page 1 of my inventory page shows 4551. On the stats folder it shows as 2085/1100 +3451. If people have enough HAgi to reach 4K with slots left over to dedicate to Dex, I am beginning to wonder what I am doing wrong.

I do have Epic 2.0, too.

Before I forget, I had a discussion with a few of the Raid Tanks from Shadows of Doom on AB, and I was told that all of them are using either HAgi or HSta for their raid Tanks. That is why I switched from HDex to HAgi when I started being called upon to Tank stuff on Raids.

I go hdex and hagi, but am over 4k hdex so I started swapping over to hagi. I did some parsing and did have a 2% higher avoidance when I went from 3400 to 3800 hagi when tanking raid trash.

Things that might help (in no particular order):
1. ventral defense type 19 aug (1.1% adds up)
2. petition for honor should be up as much as possible (10% mitigation adds up)
3. Protective Acceptance should be up as much as possible (heals + 15% mitigation)
4. spam gird when it pops
5. timing your discs (if possible, start with fervent and rotate based on shortest refresh)
6. night of shadows 4% melee back as HP is pretty dang powerful, which shows just how OP the SK 2.0 is.
7. armor of inquis and epic 2.0 can help, especially when paired with innate heal buffs/clicks (preservation of the fern, BP clicky)

Unfortunately, SK are ridiculously OP and comparing yourself to them is just pointless. I don't see us getting re-balanced, either, considering that we just got a nerf to preservation in the upcoming patch while SK got off pretty much unscathed

Use your tribute as well. You get so much that using it on raids is a must

Who (if I may ask) are you raiding with and what classes are you grouped up with? based on where you say your gear is at you shouldn't be struggling in LS raids if some basic conditions these days are being met. We have an aggressive style pally who tanks 2-3 raid adds at a time regularly. As he is one of my friends and I can tell you he runs a 50/50 mix of hsta/hagi. I would worry less about those heroic choices though at this point and concentrate more on what you're doing to mitigate and look at raid healing. War here so yes it's a bit different but I run full hdex in raids these days because LS is extremely easy for us and my gear (but most importantly raidforce's dps and healing) allows for that without it negatively affecting my tanking.

Maybe some of the other tanks are getting some direct heals and you're not ? or your raid may not have enough splash healing always going off. How many sham and other pally's are in your raids? spirit-drinkers always when you're doing multiples

I am raiding with Legion Rising. Halfling Paladin by the name of Bellyrumble. I originally started Tanking with the Pally on Open Raids and found that I needed to take care of a good part of my own healing, because the healing was not reliable at the time. I tend to mostly Tank when we are low of numbers, because we have a good number of Warriors and SKs, but Pally wise I have been the only one for about half our recent raids.Not sure on Shammies, I think 3 regular most of the times?

We have completed the two LS T1 Raids and 2 of the T2 Raids. We had some bad luck with attendance since T2 came out and have not had the numbers for the last T2 one. A number of our people find the game to be almost unplayable since the lag issues started with the Direct X Patch.

Group Setup is usually a mix of Warriors, SKs, Clerics and Shammy.

I feel like I am struggling a bit because of less AC from gear (which will come eventually). I want to make sure there are not any more hidden treasures I can get (like the Stone of Judgement) that make my life or that of my healers a bit easier. Potions, clickies, whatever.

I am missing a good amount of gear still. I have 4 pieces of Apparitional, which is the best gear I have as of now. The rest is NoS T1 and 6 pieces of ToL T2.

Doesn't matter how many healers are on any raid, both knights will always be their own top healers if they're competent. Don't expect that to change. Toughening up will mean you can take more punishment while still doing your own healing, so it will become safer to use good agro tools Hallowed/Leap/Beacon & Valiant

The OP didn't compare himself to SK. It's someone else that brought SK into the discussion right on the the first post answer, trolling the OP thread. Fortunately, it didn't derail any further.

/agree about the bit of them being their own best healers that has to be the case.

I think you being the only pally with only 3 shams is a little light overall for some of these raids and may be a factor or something you're going to have to overcompensate for. We generally have 3 (rarely 4) pal and 3 shams and the amount of consistent healing that generates is enough to keep the majority of the raid topped off 95% of the time. On the rare occasion we only have 1 or no pally's for raids its noticeably harder on the tanks and healers ya'll bring alot of value to raids it's like bards it mostly goes unnoticed until you really start to break down the numbers.

Learn the best spell lineup for survival, dps and aggro, as well as your disc stacking.

Seed of Hatred in 165s, 5.13B Damage @31.08M, 1. Aallayna = 750.63M@4.61M in 163s {7D}
Seed of Hatred in 165s, 121.28M Heals @735.06K, 1. Aallayna = 21.78M
Seed of Hatred in 161s, 37.98M Tanked @235.91K, 1. Aallayna = 13.25M

This is my favorite dance in EQ, trying to triple top a parse.

I think I may have to make myself MT for Seed next time

2hander tank it Lubi!