Info from a paladins point of view please

[Centrius]

<DIV>Greetings,</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>    My wife and I are dark elves but have seen the light and are headed to qeynos, She is a fighter with her heart already set on being a Holy warrior for good, I am a scout and can not decide on which path I should take to be of aid to her.  I need to get a Paldins view on what makes a good duo partner, and if you can give the reasons why I would appreciate it.  I could remake into a priest type but enjoy playing a scout.  The choices would be Dirge/troub , ranger, swashbuckler or if you say I am insane and have to be a priest then it would have to be a templar.  Please let me know hehe I am not leveling anymore just incase i have to remake.   thanks in advance</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Wraeth/Centrius</DIV>

[Vidneras]

<P>My girlfriend and I play a templar/pally combo. It works very well.</P> <P>Though, if you really want a play a scout then any of those choices would work, depending on your play style. The bard choices would give great buffs that you could really take advantage of, offense/defense wise. If you chose a ranger or swashy (whichever does more damage, I'm not sure), you'd have a lot of extra damage to speed up the kill.</P> <P>And someone correct me if I'm wrong but, with a ranger/swashy, you'll have a better chance of pulling aggro off the pally or sharing aggro, should that situation ever arise.</P> <P>Personally, I think you'll get more groups as a Pally/Bard combo, more than a Pally/Ranger or Swash combo.</P> <DIV>My 2 cents.</DIV>

[ChuMann]

<P>Troubador and Pally are a good combo.  Eventually, troubs get songs that really jack up a group member's strength.   I enjoy duoing with my Troubador buddy.</P> <P>Ranger wouldn't be bad either, if you want to go for more DPS.</P>

[Platfing]

<P>My GF and I are paladin (me) and ranger (her).  We have been a duo up until our current level (me 37 and her 3<img src="/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />.  The combo works really well - her damage, me taunting, damage, and healing.  We have killed several 37 ^^ (when we were both 37), but it's a little risky.  Ranger track is a godsend as well - can't tell you how much easier that makes doing quests.        </P> <P>I can't speak for other combos, but I'm sure that some of the others listed here work great too.</P> <P> </P> <p>Message Edited by Platfinger on <span class=date_text>04-13-2005</span> <span class=time_text>10:21 AM</span>

[Deltree_c]

<P>I'd have to say you don't need to focus solely on a damage partner; utility works well too.  I duo with a swashbuckler friend quite often, and 75% of our damage comes from chaining the Luck's Bite heroic opportunity, I'd say.  It's fighter start - scout continue - pierce attack and kick attack.  It can do obscene damage in a very short amount of time.  My friend picked a training ability that gave him another "coin flip" in case we don't get Luck's Bite on our first try, so if you find yourself addicted to it too, keep that in mind.</P> <P>With that, welcome to Qeynos.  Soon.</P>

[Platfing]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Deltree_c wrote:<BR> <P>I'd have to say you don't need to focus solely on a damage partner; utility works well too.  I duo with a swashbuckler friend quite often, and 75% of our damage comes from chaining the Luck's Bite heroic opportunity, I'd say.  It's fighter start - scout continue - pierce attack and kick attack.  It can do obscene damage in a very short amount of time.  My friend picked a training ability that gave him another "coin flip" in case we don't get Luck's Bite on our first try, so if you find yourself addicted to it too, keep that in mind.</P> <P>With that, welcome to Qeynos.  Soon.</P><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Is that training ability a swashbuckler only thing, or is it for all scouts?  I have never heard of it before.  </P>

[SunT]

<P>The Ranger is a good call.  Track, evac, and good dps.</P> <P>The lucky strike is for any scout class I believe.</P> <P>The thing about a scout/pally combo would be when you cross the line of mitigation, your wife will start taking heavy damage, she then will have to constantly heal herself and the scout will pull the aggro because his dps is going to out hate the heals.  It is a good combo but not for big long fights.  Pally's are sprinters when it comes to aggro and they need the DPS to keep the aggro.  If they heal they loose it, at least I do.  Normal exp is fine, but you will have to befriend a healer for named etc.</P> <P>If I were you I would do a healer.  Then you and your wife are self sufficient.  the Healer HO's hit in the mid 300 range so they can add nice dps.  Mystic is a good duo since they have an awesome debuf in thier haze line and thier wards rock, best part is they have such great stat buffs for the pally, str sta etc.  I duo with a Mystic and we dont need anyone else to take down big game.  The drawback of the Mystic is they have expensive big heals, but a Pally gets two 1k heals for very cheap.  So if the mob gets out of hand and past the ward, the pally can do a few self heals to catch back up then the wards take back over.  I have yet to die with my Duo partner and we are always chasing yellow ^^.</P> <DIV>If you control the healer and the tank, the rest of getting a group is just adding names for dps and extra buffs.  If not plan on looking for a healer...alot.</DIV>

[JarredDarque]

<P>I have duoed with,   Dirge, Templar, Ranger, and another Pally</P> <P>The Templar is good to have around for the heals,  BUT you only need the templars heals because of how long the fight lasts.</P> <P>The  Dirge has and array of buffs that make the Pally almost unstopable, and provides DPS so the Pally does not run out of power keeping htemselves healed (they also speed up power regen in fights)</P> <P>The ranger jsut adds a butt-load of DPS, ends the fight quickly, and if they know what they are doing, aggro is not a problem</P> <P>And quite frankly, Pally only groups kick serious butt.  lots of heals    pretty good DPS, and lots of tankage.</P> <P> </P> <P> </P> <P>For you, I recommend going dirge.</P>

[Vaelorn]

<P>If your heart is really set on a scout, then it will come down to what type of scout you really want to play.</P> <P>As a type of Bard, you can buff your group, and dish out some extra damage as well, though this would probably not be my first choice.  One thing to note here, is that Bards are the only Scouts who can not use poisons.  I'm not personally familiar with the Bard classes.</P> <P>As a Ranger, you can do one thing, and one thing only: damage.  Predators get squat for utility.  They have two utility spells, that every scout gets:  Pathfinding, and Evac.  Every other skill that a Ranger gets is either directly or indirectly geared towards killing mobs faster.  If you like doing lots of damage, and especially with Rangers, if you're like me and enjoy seeing the mobs get peppered by pointy wooden sticks all the time, then the Ranger class is for you.  It is simply a blast watching solo mobs turned into a pincussion and drop to the dirt before they get anywhere near you.  :smileywink:</P> <P>As a Swashbuckler, you have a good mix of abilities.  You can do plenty of damage to mobs while the Paladin is concentrating on holding agro and staying alive.  A BIG seller here is the Smuggle line.  As a Rogue, you can put your entire group into stealth mode, and this is immensely useful for navigating areas full of agro mobs, and sneaking into places to click on quest items.  Being able to hide yourself and the Paladin would come in handy just about every single day, I would imagine.  Also, Swashbucklers get a quasi-mesmerize skill, and a couple of agro management skills, so if you find yourself getting an add here or there, you can keep them mezzed most of the time until the first mob is dead, and you can help the Paladin obtain and hold agro with your other skills.</P> <P>As far as Scouts go as an archetype, they are the Kings of the Heroic Opportunity.  Scouts are an integral part of just about every good HO in the game, from duo HOs to 4-man HOs.  Unlike some other combinations, the Fighter/Scout HOs are all very good.  Luck's Bite will chop off huge amounts of health on the target mob.  At level 17, my Rogue grouped with a level 17 Crusader, and we duo'd every single named mob in the Commonlands area for the betrayal quest, half of which were level 18^^, all because of the Fighter/Scout HOs.  Swindler's Gift is a great group buff, that will increase everyone's attack skills; it's simply a group version of Swindler's Luck.  Giving everyone in the group 2 extra levels of attack skill is always useful, especially with lots of melee folks.  The third HO would be (I believe) Ardent Challenge, a single target buff that adds +10 STR and +10 AGI to the person who completes the HO, and since it's not a sequential HO, you can switch between the two of you to make sure you both get the buff.  So, really, no matter which Fighter/Scout duo HO you come up with, you can put all of them to very good use.  You can always try to flip the coin to get Luck's Bite, but if you get one of the buffs instead, you're really not losing out on the deal.</P> <P>In conclusion, disreguarding your personal playstyle and going solely by the usefullness of the skills involved, I would prioritize your choices as Swashbuckler first (good damage, good utility, group sneak), Ranger second (great damage, very slight but crucial utility), and a Bard class third (great utility, decent damage, RUN SPEED BUFFS!!!).  :smileyvery-happy:</P> <p>Message Edited by Vaelorn on <span class=date_text>04-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>05:56 PM</span>

[Centrius]

<P>Thanks all of you,</P> <P> </P> <P>     It looks like I am going to make a warden after all, main reason being it is our "main character"  and we want it to be as efficient as possible.  How ever I took the advice here and my wife is going to make herself a Swash to go with my paladin.  After looking into the bards I probably wont play them.  My EQ1 bard was my absolute favorite, how ever the ones here are just not what i like(no instruments ..uggg).   I thank everyone for their input.  </P> <P> </P> <P>Centrius</P>