Group geared, playing in pick-up/guild groups in recent or current content: I am constantly spamming... twincast, healing nuke, stuns, aggo spells, Target's target mitigation rune, short-term heal-proc buff (1 minute), short-term aggro buff (4 minutes), short-term HP buff (6 minutes), self-heal spell, a mitigation Disc that I have to hit every 15 seconds, Taunt, whichever Yaulp AA I'm using, Nukes (situational).. just repeated over and over again, as fast as I things refresh or as fast as I can click buttons. I'm mashing keys to the point where I don't participate (or even glance at) group chat if I'm tanking. I also feel like I'm constantly forgetting or failing at something. It's like I can self-heal or mitigate or maintain strong aggro or provide mediocre DPS, but I'm expected to do all of that at once. When I can't, then I feel like I'm letting down my group / not fulfilling my role. I'm also constantly fiddling with macro keys and spell line ups because every mob-type or group make-up needs a different mix. There's a lot of abilities and spells that I just don't have room for so I don't use. I always feel like what I'm not doing isn't efficient and that I'm a *bad paladin*. Is this just how Paladins are supposed to be played? Should I just embrace being a *bad paladin* so that I'm not so overwhelmed (and can enjoy the social aspects of the game while grouped)? What should I cut out of my spam mix? Or just back in time and roll a less demanding class? Sorry this turned into kind of a rant. It sucks to put a lot of work into a class for it to feel so frantic, stressful and not fun. Advice appreciated. EDIT: I feel like I need a lesson on how to Paladin efficiently / effectively without losing my mind or getting carpal tunnel syndrome. Thanks!
Every class played at the highest level requires that much attention. at the easiest level, pick a camp with stunnable mobs, load two stuns, make a hotkey, spam it, watch tv.
In modern EQ, if you aren't constantly mashing something, you're probably leaving something on the table, whether heals, mitigation or dps. That's just the way it is. The days of hitting a button every 10 secs for a fight are long gone. A lot of guilds and groupers have moved to voice chatting because the demands on pressing keys are so great. Also mash keys are your friend … multiple spell slots and abilities tied to one keyboard key can take some of the franticness out of playing. You don't mention your gear, augs, type 5 augs or aa count. All of those matter, particularly for group geared tanks in current content. Definitely don't overlook the type 5 augs, even if you have to start back at TBM level. I can tell you that for the 111-115 healing spells, several of them were changed to heal target of target (like the burst quick heal line) so you don't have to switch back to yourself for heals then back to target. Also, they have broken away from having everything stun immune in an expansion so you can really use them to your advantage to help mitigate damage. I don't think you are doing anything particularly wrong. You're mashing stuff. You're asking questions. It's all good.
You can do all of that at once, with the right spell set. Paladin spell sets can be that quite different between DPS, support healing, CC, and tanking. Most of the time you want a set that balances tanking and DPS. Tanking includes more self healing then pure DPS (not tanking). With very strong healing support, you can afford to lean more towards DPS then self healing. Between AA and spells you always have plenty of aggro tools either way. Read the paladin threads in these forums for plenty of advice on spell sets.
You didn't indicate what level you are or what gear you have, but in any case, if you are tanking your job is to keep aggro and try not to die. Self heals can help with the not dying, but as a paladin you will almost certainly need someone to heal you. It will get easier with practice, but when I am tanking as a paladin I try to ignore most of the group/guild chat and focus on my job. Use stuns, jolt, whatever you can to keep aggro and save the chat for downtimes. I have eight different spell sets as a paladin. I have one for buffing. One for off tanking. One for healing on the rare times when I get to raid and play the healer role. I have another set that focuses on undead. And one that covers most tanking. The others are for special situations and I almost never use them. I change my spell sets fairly frequently as I learn more. And after almost twenty years playing a paladin I am still learning.
Changing spell sets is fairly simple, but having the keybinds associated with them is where the challenge is for me. Ultimately you'd either to need to change the keybinds in each situation or make different keybinds for each spell set.
Thank you for the replies. I do not believe the problem lies in my gear. True, I do not over power the content. But I'm pretty sure that my gear is at least content appropriate. I have type 5's in every slot. I have ToV Tier 1 visabiles. Most of my other armor is either Tradeskilled 106-110 stuff. HP's are somewhere around 200K unbuffed. AC is 5K with a 2-hander. HDex is about 1,000. All regular augs are over 30AC each. 18,000-ish AA. It's not great, but it's not horrible either. Obviously I have room to grow, but I don't think that's the issue I'm struggling with. My issue is that I need help dealing with the spam.. knowing the best spam, and keying up few efficient macros that are applicable to the most situations. Non-raiders who are tanking in current content.. what are you doing on each pull? What's your setup? I liked the idea of having a bunch of stuff tied to one key that you just mash over and over again. I may try that. Oh, and I'm level 111 (in the title, just not the post - somebody missed it). Again, thanks for the advice.
The short-term heal proc buff I presume you mean Renewing Steel? That's not good you can drop that. Much of the second-to-second job of staying active can be subsumed by a multi-bind. Adopting one might transform how you get to enjoy EQ: (ignore the terrible SK things infiltrating the screenshot. replace them with nice powerful Pal things) use whatever unoccupied button you like, doesn't have to be Q. For pure tanking, can line up spells: Valiant Diversion Protective Consecration Protest for Honor and put on the social /disc Thwart /alt activate 3826 (Force of Disruption) you can also split up the multibind hot bar to be two different multibinds, if you like, to have nuking stuff lined up on the other. Tap that one instead of the tanking one when agro is locked down & you're not dying, like: Requiem Remembrance Remonstrate Censure with a social that swaps DP for FoD (but keeps Thwart going) You do still have to monitor your own Preservation of the Grotto, and Concordant Blessing, but GINA can help with those if you want to make triggers for ^The holy preservation fades away\.$ ^The blessings fade\.$ then you don't have to stare down your buff bar constantly. The "burden" of keeping those active kinda goes hand-in-hand with rotating AotI, Group AotI, Spire, Epic, Armor of Righteous … all three tanks have their cool downs like these to chain for being tougher than pets. Keeping those and agro AAs (Beacon, Lode, Call) greyed out aggressively-but-appropriately is largely a matter of UI arrangement and, like, muscle memory. And you do still have to watch for right times to do things like Dissident & Propitiation, and deploying stuns as appropriate is a real active play thing. But moment-to-moment spamming can be just a mash key.
Macros for Paladins are mostly bad in practice. There are a few circumstances were a macro helps follow a scripted action sequence. For the most part we can't afford to be locked up because the situation can change instantly. Paladins are all about situational awareness and being able to act with urgency. Do learn to multi-bind though.
Some knights have told me they macro "/bando activate shield" with "/alt activate 1112 (Shield Flash)", and also, separately, with "/disc Deflection". no /pauses, obviously, since /pauses on socials are da debil. I'm not a professional, I can't prescriptively recommend that over just keeping bandolier open to click on? But it makes some sense since those abilities aren't usable for knights in their dps setup. Warriors are more flexible in that way.
I have my bando on a key bind for each dominate right hand m o p k and shield flash on a separate key left hand near my spell keybinds. Choose to do it this way so I can choose for certain that I want to flash. I may hit that bando and a heal lands and flash is wasted etc. mouse clicking is terrible for quick reactions I only use it for purposed clicks like activating my burn key.
Multibinding is key. Once you have that setup, it's not so bad. A basic setup would be a multibind for aggro, ToT healing (which with modern heals, is all of them), and non-spell spam (Thwart line and Force of Disruption or Divine Persecution). I don't personally like putting abilities with cooldowns of more than 30s in my multibinds, I'd rather use those separately, but some do. Once you have that setup, most of the minor decision making is done for you. Working on aggro? Spam the aggro multibind and it will cast whatever spell is off cooldown based on the way you ordered them on the hotbar. Need to heal? Spam your heal multibind and it'll use whatever is up. And the non-spell spam key is used in between every cast. As an example, let's say your aggro multibind is bound to 1, your heal multibind to 2, and your non-spell spam to 3. Your basic activity just consists of spamming 1 and then spamming 3 during spell lockout. If you need to heal yourself, you spam 2. This allows you to efficiently use all the fast refresh spells you have without actually having to think about specific spells. Instead, you're simply thinking "do I need aggro or healing?" and hitting the button accordingly. Now that your basic abilities are handled by spamming 3 key presses, most of your attention can be on the big picture situation. Which mobs still need a tank? How many mobs are on me? Should I use a defensive ability? Which defensive abilities are coming up soon? Etc, etc. As you get more used to it, you can breakdown your multibinds into even more specific groups if you're looking to min/max even harder.
This psycological let down is due to bad game design, whether the veterans that have mastered the current game will admit it or not. If you hang in there and multibind some more keys you can manage. Don't worry about being perfect, only the forum warriors play perfectly. Just have fun in there, find a playstyle that works for you, and chat with friends. My 2cents.
Hey all, thanks again for responding. Multi-binding is going well.. although I still mess with the order of my multibinded spells and abilities quite a lot. I have a followup question. How do you all hande the rotation of big tanking discs / AA abilities? I feel like I have a lot of them and I'm not always sure when to use them. I feel like I'm under-utilizing them quite a bit as I'm always saving them for a "just in case" situation (and then I just mash them all). Does anybody have a good rule of thumb as to when/how you use these abilities? -Armor of Mercy -Blessed Guardian -Kar'Zok Mantle -Armor of Inquisitor -Group Armor of Inquisitor -Armor of Experience -Shield Flash -Deflection Disc Also, am I missing any that should be in the rotation?
Spire of Chivalry Flames of the Valiant (Nightbane, Sword of the Valiant click) Rousing Zeal (BP click) (self)Armor of the Inquisitor & Spire & epic form a relatively tidy rotation to keep a healing multiplier on you full time. One of those should always be up. Armor of Mercy is short cool down, too, so I'd use that pretty much willy-nilly for a general tanking & agro boost. It's short enough cool down that if you anticipate some special need for it, you can just wait on it to reset again. Maybe mentally associate it with the spire & epic part of the heal boost rotation, since AotI is stronger than those.
Ooo! Good points! Spire and BP clicks are sitting on my "Burn Hotbar" so I don't really think of them for general tanking. Also, drat.. It looks like I have to go get my epic now >.<
Right. Much of the paladin tanking story centers on healing multipliers as we have the fewest actual mitigation discs vs. warriors and even shadow knights (Reaver's Bargain). We have to fill that gap with stuns where possible, and more often, active focused healing and spamming Honor and Protective. Another pseudo-defensive disc is Blunted Blade as it has a stun proc that triggers Healing Light AA. So while it adds moderate dps, it effectively has a 20% chance to group heal on every proc. Healing Light is not focused by gear (level caps), but is focused by the SPA 120 buffs that we have. So max out HL AA to gain this option. It's especially helpful in AE dmg situations. [52021/16139] Healing Light XXVI Classes: PAL/254 Skill: Melee Target: Caster Group AE Range: 200' Resist: Beneficial, Blockable: Yes Focusable: Yes Casting: 0s Hate: -1 1: Increase Current HP by 15000 Text: Your wounds heal.
