Paladin DPS question (2h vs 1h+Shield)

Discussion in 'Tanks' started by Lenowill, Jan 5, 2013.

  1. Lenowill Augur

    A friend getting into the game is rolling a paladin. He wanted me to ask this question for him:

    At high levels, with all relevant AAs purchased, and using equipment from the same tier of single-group content, which weapon type will allow a paladin to do more damage: a two-hander, or a "knight only" one-hander with a shield in the offhand (taking advantage of Shield Specialist)?

    Assume for the sake of argument that the paladin IS tanking (so that Double Riposte is a factor).

    We're already well aware that his DPS is going to be bad against anything that isn't undead; we're mostly asking this for AA planning purposes. (He might choose to specialize in two-handed stuff at first and go molo farm easy undead mobs for AAs for a while. Otherwise he'll probably max the sword-and-board AAs first, since those do the most for his tanking.)

    Thanks in advance for any feedback!
  2. Sophia Lorekeeper

    Assuming all of this, 2H will markedly outdamage 1H/shield, in no small part due to the Speed of the Knight AA. Shield Specialist is great, but will not make up the gap that 2H gains due to the higher ratio (again, referring to high-end knight two-handers) and the greater rate of triple attacks/flurries.

    A riposte attack is obviously more potent with a two-hander, though if your friend plans on swarming there is generally a certain critical mass of mobs beyond which the survivability of the shield trumps the damage of the two-hander, leading to a better flow of experience over time.

    That all being said, I'd still recommend maxing out sword+board early on. Your friend will tank better, and with Slay Undead and a good shield they'll still do well at swarming the undead for AA. If they focus on 2H and give up a shield, there'll be more reliance on other defensive AAs (healing, etc). Honestly, though, it's pretty easy to keep Shield Block + Shield Specialist + Speed of the Knight all current as you level up, so they're probably best off tailoring their approach to the gear available: if they have a good shield, go S+B, a good two-hander... you get the picture.
  3. Lenowill Augur

    Thanks for the response, that sounds very reasonable. I'll let him know.
  4. Gladare Augur

    There are also knight only 2handers which have higher ratios than normal 2handers. I'm not sure if that limited to the raid game or not.
  5. Sophia Lorekeeper

    Yep, this is true of the group game as well.
  6. shiftie Augur

    2her dps with the RoF cultural 2hers vs 1her last time I parsed it was 1k more dps passive autoattack non burn, with shaman buffs and chanter haste and 0 overhaste, including all self buffs.
    Mykaylla likes this.
  7. Uxtalzon Augur

    To put it in perspective, paladins aren't a DPS class, so unless you start your burns the difference between 1h and shield and 2h (provided a multitude of AAs) doesn't differ all that much. These two weapons which I use are my examples.

    Greatstaff of the Domain (2hb from Beast Domain raid) is 298/36, without augmentation
    Ornate Hunting Spear (1hp from Beast Domain raid) is 221/34, without augmentation

    With Shield Specialist AA, ratios for those two weapons is 8.27 for 2h, and 8.125 for 1h, respectively. This means in autoattack situations, my 2h will should eek out more damage overall.

    However, with Speed of the Knight, Flurry, and other AAs that support two handed weapon damage, the gap increases in favor of my 2h for DPS, and during burn mode it can really lay down more damage. It's really pleasing to see my chat log filled with yellow "you unleash a flurry of attacks" messages. Just keep in mind again, we aren't a DPS class by any means in comparison, so don't expect to see your name register anywhere on top of raid mob parses. Ever. I've tried. lol

    So while I was leveling, I used whatever weapon I could use until I can put points into Shield Specialist, and began transitioning to 1h and shield during my 80's, and stayed that way because two handers just didn't make a difference (and had to dump AAs into defensives during this time). It was only when I had made enough AAs to start turning to DPS stuff that my two hander began to push ahead in damage.

    TL;DR - used two hander until Shield Specialist, then went 1h and shield until I got more 2h AAs and started using two handers again.
  8. Noobieguy Augur

    If he is planning on being able to tank non trivial content and doesn't have access to raid gear, he better use a shield. Shield block will help him live. Doing more dmg with a 2 hander is fine, if you can tank without the shield, some group geared tanks cannot.
  9. zomb54 Lorekeeper

    Check out http://crucible.samanna.net/viewforum.php?f=53 for all the info you need on paladins.

    In my experience, 2h is fine early on. But don't waste any AAs on Speed of the Knight (extra 2h swing), the returns for the AAs is very poor. I was using 2h up to level 72 (swarming in the Hole). After that I pretty much had to resort to 1h+shield. Pally dps is just about the poorest in the game. Even vs. undead it's kinda painful as you limp along. Swarming is only viable for paladins if you have a decent dmg shield, which is easy nowadays. Otherwise you'll be swinging a long time!

    SK's use a 2h because of their Mortal Coil combo technique that leaches HP off of all attacks, including riposte. So higher riposte dmg = more hp's healed. And of course they are dmg shield proponents.

    Pallies should still max riposte AA, as a Slay can execute off of a riposte. Keep in mind key to more slays is simply more swings. More hits connecting. Nothing else to it. Slay = 5% (1 in 20) swings. So get a good atk value so that more hits land and you'll slay for max dmg more often. Get more swings in there with overhaste items, flurry, ferocity, etc.

    Anyhow lots of players do the pally swarm thing differently. There's no "my method is the greatest" as each player has a style preference. Tbh he'd be better off rolling a SK, there's a reason paladin population is so low and SK population is so high. Paladins in their current state, sadly, are the of Norrath. I only dust mine off when I want to see big Slay crits.

    To Uxtalzon: at what point [read what did you have to do] to finally see flurry spam in your chat box? What level of triple attack and flurry did you have to achieve?
  10. zomb54 Lorekeeper

    really? g.#.m.p.s is censored out?
  11. Abazzagorath Augur

    Of course, paladin dps isn't even bad though once you get higher levels =P
    Elricvonclief likes this.
  12. Kurayami Augur

    2her is better dps for knights, always has been. This includes nowadays being sure to use only PAL/SHD weapons of course be it group/raid. With the recent addition of 2her damage AAs being added, FINALLY, the boost is even higher.

    Is three reasons why 2hers do more damage:

    1. They do more base damage.
    2. They swing more often, Speed of the Knight actually enables you to perform an additional attack, not counting flurries/triple attack AA.
    3. They riposte harder due to doing more base damage.

    You will however always be stuck keeping sword and board up as well as 2her abilities though if you want the best of both worlds. 2her to mow through trash, do burns (yes SHD/PAL can do them, they do make the top 10 list rarely too on raids). Sword and board for named, multiple mobs, raid trash, etceteras. Situations where we are counted on more to survive than do dps. Is something we tanks are supposed to do you know :)

    If you just want a good tank though, is safe to be sword and board at all times, seen lots of knights do that and they do just fine. You'll tend to do better dps while alive too....
  13. Nightops Augur

    If your friend is just starting a paladin, I would suggest focusing only on AAs for 1h, defensives, and dps (slay, VR, IJ). I love healing as a paladin, but I would even pass over most of the healing AAs until I was close to being filled on the first 3 areas. You can get a few of the first ranks because they give more of a benefit per AA then the recent lvls (think 3-6-9 days instead of the 14-16-18 today). You could even skip the slay line as its more of a -fun- factor then useful for a new toon.

    Dont get me wrong, Slay AAs are great.. and many people get tons of AA by swarming light blue undead in old content... but remember bad gear + low AA = dead tank on swarm pulls.

    Unless you plan on PLing him for his first ~4k AA, he will be very hard pressed to catch up to be useful as a tank in ROF content. This goes for any tank, not just paladin imo. Being a paladin with stuns will at least help in the xp tanking area.
  14. Maedhros High King

    assuming max aa and the proper group a paladin can be far better dps than most people would expect. i did 88k dps on a herald of oratory raid pre-rof with pride 2hs, from t4 voa. im guessing i could crack 100k in a similar group set up at level 100 with the 2hs from valley of king xorbb. assuming we ever did a herald of oratory burn again haha.
    anyone telling you not to get speed of the knight maxxed has apparently never played a high end paladin. 1hander plus all the aa in the world is only a fraction of the dps of a 2hander.
  15. Turayalon Lorekeeper

    ^ This guy is just too good. Was this parse also before the aria and VR nerf ? /facepalm
  16. Uxtalzon Augur

    Sorry didn't realize your post until now!

    I started seeing flurry spams as soon as I started putting AAs into Flurry and Valorous Rage. I think it was 6/9 flurry and 3/9 Valorous Rage before I noticed that nice juicy yellow text invading my dialogue chat. They still aren't maxed as of today but coupling Valorous Rage, Pureforge, Righteous Umbrage, and second spire (if you care) can sometime land crippling blows over 30k.
  17. zomb54 Lorekeeper

    Good to know! I currently have 3/9 Flurry and 5/whatever BoP. I guess my expectation is for my pally to flurry like my zerker (10/18 flurry) so expectations is probably too high. I'm not a great paladin ;), never claimed to be - hehe.

    A little update for OP from my experiences, swarming definitely gets more fun as a paladin when you pass level 80 and can equip much bigger dmg weapons. With 1200aa's my paladin had fun in RoI. When I duoed with a bard I could handle much bigger trains due to the bard's AE slow which seems to cancel out the mobs' Bolster spell. Imo swarming is only fun when you tag more than you can safely handle and you have to use every trick in the book to stay alive. For this a paladin definitely needs to equip a shield. (If he's not using a shield, the train's not big enough!)

    But when it comes to the higher levels, 95+, I can't give you a proper opinion on the paladin experience as I'm not there yet.
  18. Abazzagorath Augur

    We could hit that high on valley burns. I passed 60k on valley burns in tank groups many many times. 100k burns on valdoon on that anniversary raid was also easily done if put in a dps group. You'd have seen more parses like that if paladins were ever put in those groups on those short duration events.

    Double the duration of the event and watch our dps plummet.
  19. Branyn New Member

    If you really want to see pally dps, get a blessing of the faithful and then start your burns. the increased damage from blessing is ridiculous and with max buff aas it lasts about 1min. you will literally be hitting for over double your damage with blessing. Good way to get blessing is from pets, get a pet class to duel you and summon pets until you get a blessing then pop those burns and engage. watching skill attack procs crit for 60-70k+ is easily possible on non undead, especially with a 1h in as the procs get the benifit of shield specialist.
  20. Lanthor Elder

    /Facepalm