What's amusing? He's right. Way too many paladins fall into the trap of "Dps isn't my job so I'm going full turtle on my gear and spec and as long as I place amends on the right player and don't die, I've done good!" Gear and spec as offensively as the zone you are tanking allows.
Well, what he's laughing about is that, for a Paladin, unless you're in full Green gemmed gear or raid gear, you are going to have to sacrifice way too much in other important stats to get to both of those numbers at that level. I've reforged/adorned for DPS before, to reach that 600 number, and it simply wasn't worth it. Everything else important to a Paladin/tank suffered because of it. And in trying it out on real combat in real groups, I didn't like it. I actually struggled more with hate, and I was more squishy. Now, casting speed isn't hard to get to 100 thanks to AoM gear. But to get DPS to 600, for a Paladin, means reforging a lot of other stats into DPS. Or, you're equipping DPS gear instead of HP/Mitigation. Either way, you're losing valuable stats elsewhere. And for what? A linear damage increase. I'm no expert, but my opinion is that survivability, for the tank, is more important than the 600 DPS number.
There's no question, if you have one DPS who is much better than everyone else in the group, Amends is more than adequate. But if, like you say, you have multiple high DPS, Amends isn't enough, and various people will be stripping hate. In those situations, I find it is paramount to have Sigil/Holy Ground down, use spam your AE's if you're in a zone where you can do that, and get the hate proc rings. With the gear it's not too bad. Hate will never be perfect across all groups all the time. As for me, I'm just glad it's a lot better. The suggestions and gear have gone a long way toward improving the situation. For a while there.. I was wondering what the heck happened. I leave the game for 8 years and the Paladin suddenly couldn't hold aggro. But it was just me and my toon.
Enough MA to guarantee an extra attack. 100% Reuse Enough haste to have 100% all the time As much Strikethrough as you can get + a bit of Accuracy And 500+ DPS Is what I reforge for, CB and Pot take care of themselves and AE Auto is on enough AoM pieces that you should be close to 40% or over it.
Lol, I'm no expert either. No question it's about finding the right balance and that's what I meant by going "as offensively as the zone you are tanking allows." If you are spiking or dying constantly, then you've swung too far the other way. I think the thing from Ecugia88 that bothered me a bit was that, to me, his response implied a lack of even willingness try to achieve those figures or even acknowledge that they are, in fact, correct. In the short term, whether you get them or not is less the issue than knowing that they are a goal to move towards as time goes by and gear allows. I tend to spec my fighters very defensively for tanking early in expansions too so it's a struggle I'm familiar with. I just know that I always want to make the numbers go up when and where I can. One way that has helped me is that other than the chest and shoulder purple (block and mit) adornments,I've leaned towards more offensive purples to help with stat balancing.
Here's my 95 Paladin from TOV. I play an Assassin now on AB server. I sacrificed alot stuff on my paladin and did perfectly fine with holding agro and staying alive. Paladins are healing tanks. Hold agro and sit there. You want dps from a tank, group with an SK or Zerker. Or Guardian i suppose. My parses on Paladin were as low as 200k and i dont even care. http://u.eq2wire.com/soe/character_detail/442383839554
I found the reason why you are not holding agro on your Paladin. Your Armorer is only level 98... yep.. you need to be 100 crafting to hold agro. so kidding! From reading one of your replies, may I suggest that you use Righteousness and Ancient Wrath together and always when up. Also, know your taunts, if it's positional, or if it's just 200k threat increase. That agro meter is your best friend by far. If the mob you are on is on you, Do not use positional hate gains, just threat increasers. if the mob is on another class, that's when you use a 1 positional. My rule I use is 50%, if I am below 50% pop the 2 positional, if I am over 50% I will use the 1 positionals. I think a good pally also knows how to intercede players as well. I personally use a custom UI that allows me to use the #5 slot as the intercede button, allowing me to just simply click it, then if I use it while they have agro, try clicking "Faith" on that person, that can mean some awesome dps numbers for you. Good luck and have fun!
No question. I know my positional taunts and when to use them. I believe the term others use for the positional taunts is "snap". They're all cocked and ready to go, and I only use snaps to pull aggro back if a DPS has pulled one off me. The exception is Holy Ground, which, in some cases is used as a pre-cast pull. All my taunts are grouped together on a bar. Positional, then threat, lined up. Holy Ground is usually a first positional choice I reach for because it's AE, unless, of course, I'm on a named/single target. If one of those turns, then it's Provocation/Rescue. Provocation is a 2-position snap, and then Rescue is 3 positions. Both handy snaps. My other positional is the +1 ring, and it procs when it procs.
yep, no way to control that. May I suggest a little tip I used to build some dps and also protect who has agro, and.. this may sound like a cop out to some, but I tell people it's ok to pull because I will interced them, and then pop Faith. When it hits... it hits really well, big dps boost and you protect the guy stealing agro, it's not much, but just another tool in the shed of the Paladin.
Just going to chime in on Amends and other classes. If all other players in the group are about equal (and usually, they aren't) certain classes just pay off better to amends. Assassin and Swashbuckler both have agro transfers. If your group can throw around a few agro reducing abilities stack amends on the assassin or swash. That way deagro can be concentrated on the players that aren't giving you agro. If nobody has an agro reduction ability in group you might want to throw amends on whoever your problem child is. Warlocks: always good to throw amends on, or you get to watch them die often. Great AoE comes with great sacrifice. Hopefully your warlock knows the meaning of the words "restraint" and "patience" if he didn't get amends. Conjurors (and sometimes necros) can be a pain. What I usually find is the conjuror himself is usually less of a problem than their pet. I've actually had success putting amends on the pet because the player can throttle down his agro but the pet won't. Other Tanks: They know how to avoid pulling agro. If your fighting with another tank for agro its because they have some sort of positional ability from a buff or gear, or because they are messing with you. Talk to them if it bothers you. In the situation you had (Dirge, Ranger and Beastlord who all way out gear you or this wouldn't be a problem) its more or less a no-win situation. The three classes here don't really help you at all. The only good thing about the situation is your two biggest agro problems are mostly single target DPS so you don't have to worry as much about pulling groups. My personal opinion would be to amends the Ranger and tell him to start DPSing on the pull so your getting his agro before the other two join in. Tell the other two to wait till you have the mob(s) positioned. That should be enough of an agro buffer that you won't loose agro on the mob till the BL hits his primals. Hopefully your BL is smart enough to have his 1 and only positional deagro ready or you have a snap ready to take it back. And if the BL just dies a lot, well, there is a dirge to bring him back. FYI out of all the scouts BL probably have the worst agro management tools. I think most BL take it in stride that they are going to get themselves killed. Oh, and tell the dirge to help you out with agro. If the group is having problems with agro management the group can loose a little DPS to give you an agro buff. The funny thing is paladin is probably the only tank class in game that has a hope of holding agro in a group where the tank is massively outgeared and the DPS is dumb enough to push their abilities to the limit despite the obvious difference in gear. Amends can be amazing, and we have a few more tools to manage DPS. Unfortunately we don't have the snaps of most other tanks.
First of all there have been some excellent suggestions so far. I had a pally as my main on The Bazaar (now Freeport) for years (you can look him up and other players on eq2wire, although, he's all ashambles at the moment) and was a main tank/off tank in raid for one of the best guilds on the server. I took a sabbatical from EQ for a while and spent last night learning a few hard (re: spendy....over 1000p and 400 ferrin spendy) lessons on my SK (whom I am now playing as my main and off tank in a raid guild again) I shouldn't have forgotten in the first place. Offense Strike through - It's MASSIVELY important. What good are ANY melee based stats if you're not even hitting the mob? 70-80% DPS Mod - Great, now you're hitting the mob, let's hit it REALLY hard because that sounds fun right? shoot for a min of 400 Multi-Attack - Swing once, hit twice? I'll take two please. The guaranteed 2nd hit is somewhere around 117 MA Haste - That 6 second weapon delay for that impressive hit with a one hander?? lets make it 3. 120 haste seems to be the biz AE auto attack - Why hit one mob for 100k (every 3 seconds) when you can hit 4 mobs for 100k (every 3 seconds) ....amiright? Accuracy - I'm hearing words, haven't tested it much yet. I'm currently at 17% Defense Mit/Block - find the caps and go just a LITTLE more...otherwise you're gonna be suffering (see above) Parry/Def - adorn that ****. More is probably better (+60 parry/defense on both fingers at a minimum) Robbing Peter to pay Paul (aka reforging) cast speed - As a pally I recommend staying at or above 50% (100% if you can get it, but end gear cuz bad) Re-use - DO NOT ******* STEAL FROM RE-USE.....nuff said Recovery - Damn near pointless because you will NEVER notice the .25 seconds (max) you recover faster due to server lag AE auto - you can nibble at this one a bit, but the closer to 100% the better Ability Mod - >10k on a tank is probably a waste, can probably get away with much less Reaching these number can be a bit tricky, but it's most definitely doable. I'm currently only about 45-50% of the way to end game gear and I was able to hit these numbers between AA spec, Reforging, and adorning. It's a bit tight in some places, but it's there (for example my dps mod is only at 375 right now and my AE Auto is only about 82% i think. I still have a few kinks to iron out. look at aggrivated on eq2wire for a general idea what I mean). Some things take a little creativity to get them there, but it can be done. After that, it is /facepalm easy. Slap amends on the highest hate generator (usually the top dps in group, but not always. ACT for the win!!) and walk away. Casting order. Pay attention to what the little extra bits in your spells say. (Holy Ground for example) Some of them I prefer to use as a dps booster instead of a snap (works amazingly well for that as well though. ROFL miss the days of a 24 position hate increase /sigh). Heretics, Sigil, Ground, and Faith are WONDERFUL tools for that oh **** moment when you came back to keyboard after /bio. There are loads more pointers I can give, but this has gotten.....lengthy. Let me know if you want some more, and have good paladinning.
I think it's about time for SOE to install a gigantic spotlight with an M symbol on it that automatically shines onto the skies over my busy head anytime the word "Paladin" is used in a forum post. I am sorry I missed your request for help. I've been very busy and the past 2 months I have neglected my Paladin brethren. If you haven't read my post, there are a lot of useful things there. Some of it is dated, but ALL of the philosophy still applies. https://forums.station.sony.com/eq2...dins-guide-to-success-updated-for-tov.546716/ If you have any questions, PM me on the forums here. I will always be on top of that. - #1 Paladin-in-retirement WW
I just thought I'd mention coercers for helping the tank hold aggro. Coercers have several skills that either reset everyone's hate based on whether they're a fighter or not, or act as a taunt for the tank, there is even a buff called "Enraging Demeanor" that increases the hate of whoever it is applied to. They can also sacrifice all their mana to death-save you, then replenish 40% of their (and everyone's) mana as their next action. Also they can "peaceful link" (hate reduction) more than one player. If the coercer can tell when the dps is about to "fire off" something nasty (maybe a group callout "Toxic aura is 180" or something like that), they can wait a few seconds for casting and then reset everyone's hate. Or cast coercive shout... or... you get the picture.
Just wanted to say thank you to everyone in this post for the abundantly helpful advice. Just returned to EQ2, rolled a Heroic Pally and dove into the info here and in Maergoth's thread. In a game with so many choices and not enough open discussion, it helps to have some accurate guidance laying around. Thanks again.