Considering Betraying, Help please

[Bartus]

<p>Hey everyone,</p><p>As the title says, Im considering Betraying from my lvl 75 Shadow Knight to a Paladin.  As much as I love the whole Siphoning health role/idea of my Shadow knight.  Ive always been a Paladin at Heart.  I enjoy having some melee capabilities with self heals that I can rely on vs the Shadow Knights which are decent, but nothing you can rely on. </p><p>Now in the current state of the game, how are Paladins vs Shadow Knights in Tanking department/Soloing department?  Im still lvling so I will be doing some soloing for quest lines.  Hows the dmg of a Paladin(Im not expecting a lot considering its a tank) if specced for it vs tanking(Currently specced for tanking on my SK).  How's the self heals on the Pally?  I know the group heals on a 8-10sec cooldown but with AA's can that be lowered?  What about Single target heals?  How are they and how many do you guys have?  I know you guys have a dmg absorption shield(which is probably similar to our SK's life siphon upon being hit from mobs)</p><p>Is there any reason why I should NOT betray because of some class issues that are currently in-game?  There any of you out there that would think I'd enjoy the Pally over the SK from what Ive told you about myself and the class?</p><p>Any info is greatly appreciated.</p><p>Thank you!</p>

[Aerfen]

<p>I love playing my Pally, and I also love that I can tank or off-tank/main-assist well with her... I rarely, if ever, have an issue with soloing too - granted I'm 80, in Tier 2 shard gear, but you aren't that far away from that stage if you are 75.  You could even start saving up shards now with the single daily quests...I do pretty decent damage as well, and rarely have aggro issues with the help of Amends, which we are apparently keeping, at least for now.</p><p>I haven't really found the need to use AAs to lower the recast times on my heals - in fact I did a respec to pull points out of there and put them in the Shadow lines.  If you are concerned, and want an emergency back up or two, carry a Signet of Greater Life around with you, just in case, and when you hit 80 getting the Unglued Alchemist Amulet will give you another "oh crap" heal - it's even got decent stats - but you could use both of these if you decide to stay SK as well... Single target heals are Sacrament of Bayle (self), Holy Touch (friend) and Holy Aid (friend) - I forget now how much they heal for and the re-use timers, but you can probably find that on eq2 wikia.</p><p>The absorbtion shield you mention I believe is either Divine Aura that you get at the end of the STA line on the Crusader AA tree (which means that SKs can get it too) or Prayer (which can be used on yourself or a group/raid friend to absorb somewhere around 1500ish points).  I also believe there is one at the end of the Shadows line, but don't remember the name of it...</p><p>I've only been playing for just over a year  - so I'm sure there are more experienced players out there that can give you better advice than I can.  I don't know that I've helped at all, but in the end you should be happy with the class you are playing and enjoy yourself.</p>

[Hikinami]

<p>Don't betray just yet. Things are still up in the air with the fighter revamp with going back to step 1 and it's clear SKs are getting some adjustments soon. Just wait and see, most of us feel like its limbo not knowing what changes are coming again so my advice is to hold on...nothings worse than switching and then getting it changed from why you switched.</p>

[Kordran]

<p>There are AAs which can improve heals, but even with them, the Paladin's heals are not terribly spectacular. I'd second the vote on postponing any betrayal until after the fighter changes go through (whatever they may end up being). Just in a pure tanking capacity right now, SKs are superior to Paladins in most ways that matter; the Paladin only really excels at snap aggro.</p><p>That's not to say that a well-geared Paladin can't hold his own; they can. It's just that it takes a lot more work to get to that point than it does with an SK. There's a number of posts around about legendary geared SKs performing better than other fabled/mythicaled tanks; player skill may factor into some of those posts (I'm sure they do), but there's no question that the massive boost the SKs got with TSO has helped them tremendously. They went from being one of the poorest performing tanks in the game to one of the best in a single shot.</p><p>Paladins, on the other hand, have issues and many of those issues have been ignored or papered over. The justification has been that Amends is so overpowered that that it overshadows any other improvements to the class. It's been the developer's long-running excuse to do little with the core class issues. So, we're back to "wait and see" what the Fighter changes yield. Again.</p>

[NANEEJE]

My thought is don't betray at all. You have a level 75 Sk, and you progressed and learned the character well. I took over a level 80 SK (always played a Pally) and I noticed a bunch of glaring differences. I will never roll an SK for the sake of dps purposes, soloing or whatever. Once you finish all your quest up to 80, every quest you do is group based, requiring you to have a really bad (word of posterior region) group. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Just roll a Paladin, because you really need to learn the spells and heals and how to time everything, neither of these classes can be just newb based and really good. There are soooooo many crappy SK's and Paladins on servers. How can one do 4k damage, while the next does 1.4k? All in the same gear? You guys debuff the crap out of the mob and take health, and do some good damage after you debuff. I really wish we had more divine debuffs, but we don't <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Enjoy your sk, they are a lot of fun. Just play a pally from the start instead of betraying.