New Pally Alt

[Broomhilda]

<DIV>Hello,</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I recently started a Paladin alt and I am loving her tremendously.  I have a few questions:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>1.  are pally's decent soloers?  As most of the lower levels of the game are deserted I need to know that I can get her to 30 or 40 solo (if need be).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>2.  any tips on utilizing her better?  I plan to upgrade all my taunts first then my heals then damage spells.  Any area I should focus on first though?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>3. I never played a tank before, any special things I should work on with a Paladin?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I think they are such noble knights.  I cant wait to get her to 70 one day!  Im not making her for raiding per se, but more for Off-tanking and helping out the raid when needed.  Thanks!</DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[Midsong]

<P>Gear, gear, and more gear. Gear is your most powerful assest. You will solo fine if you have gear. You will solo very poorly without it. Of course you need gear to tank with anyways if grouping opportunities come up. </P>

[Alir]

<P>Welcome btw!   Not to get critical,  but your order of upgrades is wrong if you dont want to be main tank, which you are if you are a paladin.  In fact, you are the best group tank in the game.  Yeah guardians as they are are preferred in raids in t7 (Paladins can do it all too), but you own Guards and Zerkers in groups.</P> <P>That being said,  if you upgrade taunts first then you should be concentrating on MT.  Then heals, and damage.  If you want to be an off-tank, then go heals, taunts, and then damage.  You are not a damage dealer, and you never will be.  No matter what anyone says,  that is not what you are designed for.  If you want to solo, concentrate on the un-dead, as they recieve twice the damage anything else puts out.  Its, still pitiful, but again thats not what you are for.  </P> <P>As a paladin,  your taunts ,even at master 1 and 2 will be weak compared to every other tank.  However, you will get Amends at level 47 I believe, and when you do, it will be a whole new ballgame.  The Master 1 transfers 40%hate from your highest dps dealer, so get a Warlock and taunt one time and let him go to work  Go get coffe, smoke, take a nap........  He will keep the hate focused on you.  In the high end of the game,  99% of the mobs are group mobs, so a Paladin with a Warlock will not loose agro, and stuff will die 10 times faster cause the warlock can go all out!  Grab a warlock, a healer, and you can do things other tanks need a full grp for.  </P> <P>BTW  you are not a healer either....  Heals are strictly to keep you alive as last ditch.  Your ward rocks, and helps you keep hate.  If you are healing the whole time, then get another healer, cause its a waste of your power....  Ward taunt ward taunt...........  heal everyonce in a while, to help if you only have one healer, but mostly stand there and get beat on, and ressurect those who dont know how to group with a paladin...(Rangers/Wizards)  Just kidding guys.....</P> <P>Upgrade your armour before you upgrade your spells.........  This is what really allows you to stay alive.</P> <P> </P> <P>Good Luck</P> <P>Alir</P> <P>Paladin</P> <P>Crushbone</P>

[OrcSlayer96]

<DIV><BR></DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Broomhilda wrote:<BR> <DIV>Hello,</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I recently started a Paladin alt and I am loving her tremendously.  I have a few questions:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>1.  are pally's decent soloers?  As most of the lower levels of the game are deserted I need to know that I can get her to 30 or 40 solo (if need be).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>2.  any tips on utilizing her better?  I plan to upgrade all my taunts first then my heals then damage spells.  Any area I should focus on first though?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>3. I never played a tank before, any special things I should work on with a Paladin?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I think they are such noble knights.  I cant wait to get her to 70 one day!  Im not making her for raiding per se, but more for Off-tanking and helping out the raid when needed.  Thanks!</DIV> <DIV> </DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV>Paladins, implemented right are one of the safest soloers in the game, if you plan on doing much solo encounters, like my friend Alir has stated, you need to change your priority of the spells.  Your gear needs to enhance your survivability by boosting your str/sta and then deciding how much to wis/agi/int.  The higher your mitigation and avoidance the larger the safety net you have when taking on encounters.  Ward is one of the single most important spells to keep up as it is used in all situations. if you mainly solo, you need all of your stuns and heals updated after that.  The focus on your AOE damage followed up by single taunt and utility spells/other spells.  One thing a soloer should not forget, is to get their group taunt upgraded as soon as they can, it is a debuff to all mobs versus divine, so in essense it increases our DPS and lessens our chance of being resisted.  Make sure you pick up some hex dolls and use those to pull tougher mobs for the debuffs.  Learn the art of positioning your enemies so they are facing your front and try to minimize the mobs that try to flank you.  Use Heroic Oppurtunities and you should have some smooth sailing on your Pally...<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></DIV> <DIV><BR> </DIV>

[Feydakeen]

<DIV>Paladins rock !!!</DIV> <DIV>Don't listen to the doomsayers and whiners.</DIV> <DIV>We can solo very well, but just very slowly.</DIV> <DIV>Get good gear, invest in spells and learn to time your interrupts, wards and you'll have a nice time...</DIV>

[holypaladin28]

<DIV>okay here it goes  pallys are a grant MT and OT</DIV> <DIV> first gear and good gear lots of resists and mit.  after that get your taunts mastered.  if you cant  get taunts mastered no big deal tell your group to not attack for about 10 seconds so you can build some hate.  </DIV> <DIV>pallys and healing very importent learn to use them they can be life or death for your group our group heals will often allow the healer to catch up.  </DIV> <DIV>always cast your wards every 24 seconds will allow you to take more damage and builds hate.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>if you are in pvp you will most likely struggle for the first 30 lvls at lvl 40 the pallys start to really rock.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>dont listen to people say pallys suck because those people are just going to roll a buttonmasher toon IE scout.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>just learn a pattern.  my pvp pattern is ward attack stun attack heal stun                 ward attack stun attack heal stun </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>on my server there are alot of toons that are yellow to me that will run because they have played against me before and understand not to [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] with me.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[Midsong]

<DIV>Solo speed fine, faster than the defiler that appears to be your main. At least in the level range you are talking about.</DIV><p>Message Edited by Midsong on <span class=date_text>08-09-2006</span> <span class=time_text>04:37 PM</span>

[hawsecav19d]

<DIV>As far as damage goes get masters of your aoe and your damage swing heal and ward and  solo will go alot faster. I made it to 49 in two months about 85% solo do to time of day I play. </DIV>

[Broomhilda]

<P>Thank you all for the great tips.  I will probably be back to bother you all some more as my character levels!  Starting at 20 I am going to master all her spells (shes a twink after all :p ) in the order you all suggested.</P> <P><BR>You guys are a great community here.  Thanks again!</P> <P>:smileyhappy:</P>

[So]

<P>My pally is now level 37 (sort of speed-leveled, alt to lvl 51 warden) and I'm going to disagree with certain things that were said above.</P> <P>Maybe people are looking at things too much from lvl 70ish and raiding perspective, I dunno.</P> <P>My suggestion for soloing and grouping is to Master your heals. Our heals in my experience are the weakest point we have and they most need help if you, e.g. need to solo that green ^^^. I suffered until I got my first heal <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Then it went much easier, but they are still often times are too weak. But when they are at Master level, they get in the category where they are worthwhile to cast when e.g. soloing the aforementioned green ^^^.</P> <P>Also others have suggested to focus on Ward heal first. I disagree strongly. Thing is -- it might be the best power-to-health efficiency in our heals, BUT it has 16 seconds (or thereabouts) recast timer. It is -not- going to save you when needed. Single target direct heal, on the other hand, heals for approximately the same amount (more or less depending on your level and which spell was upgraded last) and it is on 5 seconds recast timer. Thus it is a better investement (imo) for Master upgrade. Our group heal has 7.5 seconds recast and while power-inefficient (for healing a single target) it still is way better for Healing-per-Second than our Ward heal.</P> <P>I also found out that with single target/group heals mastered you can act as DPS/only healer for a good group. For single target encounters it is very easy actually -- between your and other people knockbacks and stuns the target will have little time to do damage (I did the math once and I came with about 26.5 seconds of knockback/stun per minute from a paladin -- using all abilities I have at this level including shield bash and AOE with stun -- this, by the way, makes caster mobs significantly easier). For multiple target encounters it is going to be much harder, but with a quality group you should be able to heal through by spamming single target and group heals (and ward when it is up). </P> <P>On the aggro transfer buff -- I think we get first version at level 21 or thereabouts. My current one is lvl 35 Master 1 and it transfers 36% of aggro from the target. This is definitely very-very valuable. The Master was very cheap too <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <P> </P> <P>Upgrades to the equipment are extremely important as others pointed out. But that heavily depends on how you are going to play. Personally I dislike buying equipment from the broker (it spoils the fun for me), so for a very low level char (right past newbie island) I can suggest buying full compliment of Iron (I think) plate armour from the vendor in town. It is very cheap and was way better than what I had at that point.</P> <P>For DPS weapon you might want to look into that heritage halberd quest (lvl 28 weapon with 38 rating). It also works well with Swiftaxe AA (I believe that STR line is the best line to at least start your AA with -- with as little as 6 points you already get a 30 seconds attack that does some damage and gives you noticeable haste for 20 seconds -- but you need axe for that).</P> <P> </P> <P>P.S. After thinking it through, it may very well be that my suggestion to focus on heal is fueled by my aversion to buying equipment on the broker. If you have the very best gear, you might not care about healing. I don't know, my equipment isn't bad for my level I think (some Legendaries and Fableds included), but you probably can get better if you are willing to spend money on the broker. </P>