Hi everybody, I am seriously considering moving from an SK to a paladin as my main tank. The reason for this is that I do not like boxing a healer and missions and nameds seem to make mercs go stupid for me. The paladin can off-heal and I can be focus on him while healing (if necessary) the other members of the team. From everything I have read here, I will lose pulling, pet, DPS (unless undead) and hard-to-kill epic click, but I will gain stuns (useless vs named), heals and cures (even group!). Am I missing anything? My group consists of SK/Bard/Monk, necro or even another SK. Would the Paladin work in this group? Should I replace any of the other classes? Would a paladin work with an SK+bard and mercs? I have been thinking that maybe I can play SK as tank, pal as healer for normal content, switch to pal tank, sk dps for undead. Also, does anybody have a decent, up to date paladin guide? I have looked and all of them look quite old.
There's nothing wrong with Paladin that I can see. An actual Paladin player would need to tell you about their healing
Yes, a pal would work. Biggest thing you didn't mention is AE aggro. When you get a goofy pull and three mobs come tearing in and your bard gets song aggro you're going to have to really try get aggro before they eat your bard on the paladin. The sk can just lazily throw out one of the 10 different AE aggro tools they have. Maybe look at replacing the monk, mages are so hot right now. With brd/sha/mag auras the swarm pets might out DPS your monk!! (only half kidding). Yes, a pal would work as a healer for sk/bard. I ran with war + brd + sha + pal + bst + ber last year, the paladin worked out great. They would proc the shaman's synergy, offer group armor of the inquisitor to the group and dump healing into the warrior. I'd recommend considering running with: sk + brd + sha + mag Which is basically what I'm using now!
Thanks for the replies. 3 boxing is my limit. I can box 2 OK, 3 badly and more is just a chore! I do have a mage. Maybe I should try mage + pal + bard.
My paladin does everything when I 2-box and without a problem. Each knight class has only a few tools that the other doesn't. Relative strength aside they can both do their jobs holding aggro on multiple targets using similar (if not equal) tools. An SK needs cure support while a paladin doesn't strictly need any help other then dps support.
I've ran a Paladin main with a bard box since Underfoot. You will be fine with that combo. I still use a clr merc for primary healer and rog merc has been my preferred since they started. My Paladin is raid geared and as a 21 year main, he has all the small bonuses gained from previous expansions completed. You will need to use the paladin as a spot healer when content gets hard. The cures are nice, but rarely do I ever cast a splash for the purpose of cures during the group game. The merc usually provides the cures as long as I'm actively playing which keeps various heals / other benefits rolling in. Stuns are not really a big part of my game. I used to play with 3 spell gems for stuns, but that ended about 15 years ago. To many mobs were stun resistant and before, most undead couldn't be stunned. They have made some changes to our spells recently to change this. I made the change because the stuns have a longer casting time and would cause your dps to drop considerably if you ran a good stun chain. Not to mention, the pure 'XP trash grind' is nearly pointless these days when there is much better ways to get AAs. Expect your DPS to be very limited, especially on current content named mobs. When ToL was new (first month), It would be normal for a T2 named fight to last 8-9mins. I could run all of my defensive discs and still have 20-30% hps left on the named. You can improve the paladin's dps if you proc Blessing of the Faithful and are active enough to keep it up. There are some tricks like flipping rog merc dps off during the last 5% and stopping bard dps on trash. Repeating this until you get the 4min proc and then pulling/splitting out a named will help your dps for a few minutes. Oh, and Paladin Focus tab AAs suck for dps help, don't expect to gain dps here. Expect the DPS gap between pal & SK to continue to increase (or tank vs dps class) with every expansion. Then when they do a primary expansion with undead every 4 to 5 years, then paladin comes back in favor for a year. Bard dps is helpful, but you do have to be a bit more active then what people think. Focus on your DoT damage and then with other things which can boost the dps of your group. Bard melee dps is non-existent, but keep them swinging because a lot of their dps comes from procs. If I were to add a 3rd box to my team. I think it would be a necro. You can set up hotkeys with casting macros which can get your dots on with minimal attention. And because your fights last longer, the dots are more useful/mana friendly. Not to mention, necros have some nice synergies with undead mobs if your bard dies on incoming from a bad pull.
I like pallies but it would be hard to give up the SK's pulling their numerous lifetaps, ae agro and harm touch on named/boss mobs. Necro or mage are good pairings with SK, along with your bard, which lets you run 2 dps mercs/healer or vice versa in extreme encounters but you need to make sure all your toons have appropriate heal spells blocked to keep the healer merc from casting useless heals. I also make sure they don't have levitate as occasionally that glitches out healer mercs.
I use splash mainly to cure because I block Word cure. Without that spell the 120 merc does not cure or cast a pure curing spell like Sanctified Blood. Merc healer's cure logic has been broken for several years at different level ranges. At many level ranges the merc never cures. I believe the AI to check for cure counters has been removed and their spell book is reduced (possibly to reduce server lag).
Thanks for the post. If you ever do add a necro (or a mage!) I'd love to hear your experience with it.
Unfortunately I only play 2 accounts. But I do have both necro and mage alts. I do tend to play the mag/necro together for a different feel from the game. My necro alt is on my paladin's account so I have never played them together. I'm more of a brute-force button pusher instead of a finesse macro / hotkey player. For me, I always had a very hard time getting dps out of my mage compared to my necro as group geared characters. Certainly how mag & necro get dps is different, but I found it easier to create & use casting hotkeys a lot easier for a necro vs a mage. The dot timers allowed me more flexibility for my focus to move to the other character and still get the dps. And the recent dot revamp also reduces the amount of different dot spells needed. For me, the mage always seemed to need my attention to get the dps; which I felt was a bit depressing without support classes.
I completely agree with this. I boxed mage + necro and I could get way more DPS from the necro with half the work. Also, necros provide a lot more flexibility than mages.
I did the same thing, then ended up going back to an sk, pallie is fun, but pal could use some dev help with increased passive heals or something
Can a paladin survive on missions without a healer? Conventional wisdom would say, sure, great paladins can with extreme effort on current content missions. You might be surprised I guess to find out that SKs require even less outside healing support and easily outheal themselves compared to a paladin. As far as having a paladin in place of a healer, you would be far far FAR better served keeping the SK bard and adding a shammy. Shammy is stupid efficient healing plus adps and dots. Your last line is confusing as heck. Paladins dps undead far better than SKs, but on everything else Sks blow paladins away for dps. The only way a paladin can be dps on live is if you get really good at allowing the paladin to get kill shots for their Blessing of the Faithful buff. SK/Bard/Monk/shammy is a pretty potent group.
You do loose a few small self buffs (utility really) going from SK to Pally, but the opposite is also true in tha you gain some also. Invis, Levi, FD go away, gain Brells, HP buff so tradeoffs and what not. As far as a SK, Pally, Bard box groupit can work, I run that exact setup. Add in 2 rog mercs and 1 cleric merc. To start off with I alt-tab box, SK is ful raid gear, Pally is 90% raid gear, bard is 25% old (CoV) raid gear. I focus on the SK, the other two are backup/dps. Usually I stick to ToV/CoV/early ToL, anything marked undead. Pull a few, SK, Bard start on most, the Pally gets a single mob. Yes Pally is essentially soloing, but with all the benefits of a group, if that makes sense. If Pally gets in trouble, SK epic, swap over deal, go on. In short it's an odd group, but fun and can definitely work out. But Tank, Bard, Shammy would be far more efficient.
If you're having issues with keeping a box alive that is not a melee, and have no desire to box a healer, then yes, Paladin is the superior option. As an SK, the inability to consistently heal people directly is one of the definite drawbacks when boxing/grouping. Yes, you'll lose some DPS from your tank, but the difference isn't quite as large as some try to make it seem. And, frankly, being able to keep your DPS box alive will more than make up for that difference.
Is your SK well geared and aa'd? Personally I find tanks the most needy classes in game for both of those. At 45k AA on my SK there are still tons of AA that I need; starting at auto-grant only on a new Paladin seems like a big step backward in tanking ability, let alone the time and effort of gearing up. You didn't answer before, but do you have the proper merc healing spells blocked on all your toons? Not much in the group game can not be done with one merc healer although there are some missions where two makes it much easier. Instead of casting aside your presumably geared and aa'd SK tank, replace one of your other toons with a Shaman. You can run one with a couple hotkeys to cast dots and throw out some ae heal over times.
What I am understanding is, that your main problem is the merc-healers insufficiency. Your plan is to fix it swapping one Tank with another. My feeling would be, you could have more success adding a priest instead of a second tank. You may would be able to swap sk's shield and board for a 2h for content not challenging enough for a full priest for additional dps, if you feel a second tank may add more dps than a priest on this spot. Or maybe try 3 dps-mercs instead of 2 + an unrealibly healer merc.
