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Becoming the Shield Wall - Silverspar's Guide to Bulwark Tanking
championshewolf
Member Posts: 601 Arc User
“A tank should be the first person into combat and the last person out of it.”
--- Tank Motto
Well, after some lengthy discussions, I’ve finally decided to sit down and write up a Bulwark Oathbound Protection Paladin guide. This guide is nothing more than suggestions and highlights, and pointing out issues that I perceive with the class in general. It’s not the end all be all way of playing the class, and it certainly allows for room for modification and adjusting to your specific play style. So take this guide as a string of suggestions, at best.
The following is a list of subjects that I will attempt to cover in detail;
- I. My Personal Race and Ability Scores Preferences.
- II. Stats, Enchantment Preferences, Companions and Suggested Gear.
- III. Powers and Skills to Focus on.
- IV. Heroic and Paragon Feats I Personally Use.
- V. Boons I Personally Use.
- VI. Tips, Strategies and Issues
- VII. Pet Peeves and Advice to the DPS and Team
Note: At no point should any of this be considered gospel as, again, molding a build to your personal play style is always key. These are things that I have found that work for me, and I am sharing them with others so as they can have a base to find what works for them.
Also let it be known that I will probably edit and update these a lot as I experiment with new formats and get more imagery (such as a feat window) to slot in and show off what my ideal set up would be.
Post edited by championshewolf on
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Race choices tend to be a big issue. So as it narrows down, there are four that tend to be the most preferred when picking a paladin; Humans, Half-Elf, Dragonborn and Teiflings.
Human’s tend to be chosen because they get 3 extra Heroic Feat points, which can be useful to alleviate some stress on what to pick and what to sacrifice in the Heroic Feat area.
Half-Elves are capable of choosing between Constitution and Charisma or Constitution and Wisdom. In addition, they gain a natural +1% deflect, so this can actually be useful.
Dragonborn offer probably the best choice, as they have the ability to pick any two ability scores, as well as increased power and critical. The bonus healing is a plus as well. But to get a dragonborn is an expensive proposition, so may not be for everyone, not to mention the Dragonborn aren’t exactly stellar to look at.
Last comes the Teifling. Teiflings naturally have the exact ability scores paladins are looking for. You can choose between Charisma and Constitution or Charisma and Wisdom. In addition to that you deal more damage to enemies below 50% health and also have a chance when being struck have a chance to lower the Power of the attack. Pretty nice perk. Downside, you may not want to look like a devil, though it’s an ironic twist for paladins.
As for the other races, nothing really requires you to pick any of the above races, and I would say it’s left up to your personal taste in the end. Do you prefer having perfect stats, or having bonus feats, or do you prefer having a specific look. The choice is yours in the end.
II. – Ability Scores
As a protection paladin, you have two goals, surviving and helping your team survive. In this case, you want to high roll your Constitution and Charisma as much as possible. Constitution gives you more health and more damage resistance. Charisma gives you more stamina return and more action point recovery. These are key, in my opinion, to the tanks role in dungeons as you will not only want to survive the hits you take, but also help your party survive those hits.
When assigning your racial stats, humans will want to put their +2 points into Constitution, and Half-Elves, Dragonborn and Teiflings will want Constitution and Charisma. Other races will want to get rolls emphasizing their Constitution and Charisma and place the rest where they feel they fit the best.
(This picture will be updated at a later date, once I get the gear I am after.)
This is my character on live. I just returned so don't have the Diamonds, nor tons of alts, or an endless bank account to be decked up so I make due with what I can. So gear is as I can get it, and of course my relics are not ideal. I am trying to work on that but it's going to be a slow process, so I don't need a reminder that something is <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> hehe.
I. – Gear Stats
This one is pretty standard in almost all tanking guides out there. It pretty much runs;
Health is pretty much our biggest stat, as not only does it determine how long we can take a beating, but it also determines how much damage we can do. One of the paladin traits is that we convert damage we take into power, up to 10% of our maximum health. So, the higher your health the more power you have.
Defense and Deflect are no brainers. You want both because they reduce incoming damage. Deflect is a chance to reduce damage by a flat 50%, while defense is always reducing damage determined by a few factors.
Finally, comes recovery. Why is recovery important? Because recovery speeds up the recharge rate of our encounter powers and increases the rate at which we gain AP. All this is very important, especially when it comes to applying things like Divine Protection which is nearly essential tanking tool for the prospective tanking paladin.
II. – Enchanting
In Offense slots I put Silvery enchants. Recovery is on our priority list due to we want our encounters to recharge faster and our AP to be up faster. It’s pretty basic thing and it’s something I would suggest any prospective tank paladin to focus on.
In our Defense slots, I put Radiant enchants, because again our health is a two pronged ability. It grants us more survivability, and up to 10% of our health is converted into power. So the higher our health the more potential power we can have. But of course, the keyword there is potential, as it all relies on how much damage we are taking.
Finally, in Utility slots, I don’t really go for the special enchantments. I prefer to up my mobility some as there are some situations that you will have to move, despite Bulwark being obviously designed to stand its ground. Here I suggest slotting Dark enchantments to boost your mobility, even if it’s slight. You are not going to be winning any speed races to begin with and every little bit will help in the end.
The above enchantments are relatively easy to get to a decent grade without super investments or any of that non-sense. But, that’s where that would end, as the enchants that you will most likely want and at a decent rating are basically going to be expensive and time consuming to get. Provided you aren’t a wallet warrior or just very lucky and haven’t played since the game launched and had a chance to build up a nest egg, then it’s going to take some time to get these.
For your weapon, Terror tends to be the enchant of choice as it lowers the defense of the critter you are hitting by a certain amount for a time period. The amount depends on the power of the enchant, as they do not stack and you have to wait for a previous one to expire. Plaguefire also tends to be a popular one, for similar reasons, though the defense reduction is not as strong. There is also Feytouched, which a lot of tanks seem to like. In the end the choice is yours and will be based on your play style.
Another enchant to consider, especially if you want to be apart of staple of paladins, is the Holy Avenger enchant. This adds your base weapon damage to attacks, and has a chance to give you and your team more damage resistance and a heal effect. Nothing to sneeze at, and if you want to have that paladin feel probably a good choice.
For your armor enchant, negation is pretty much the best choice you have. Alternative is soulforged, because being able to get up without assistance is useful, however it can also be problematic if it resses you right in the middle of AoE, completely wasting it in the end. The other enchants aren’t much to write home about for tanking. Barkshield would probably have been a distant contender, but currently, is no match for elder game damage.
As far as kits go, well that's pretty straight forward. You want health kits on your armor and AP kits on your jewelry, and then you are pretty much set. Not much else to cover in that department, but the kits will of course take quite a while to get the resources and crafting companions leveled, or the AD to buy them since they are fairly expensive.
III. - Companions
Companion choices are typical here. You want these that give buffs to recovery, AP and health. If all else fails, a bit of defense and deflect never hurt. Of the choices I would recommend if you are not wanting to spend a lot of money here, and are fairly cheap, the Fawn if Shiallia, Flame Sprite, and Rimefrost Golems are all good choices, recovery, AP gain and health respectively.
Another good companion to get is the Blacksmith but you will have to spend money for that one, or build up a large cache of Astral Diamonds. Either way, this companion has a 15% chance to reflect 10% of of the damage you take back to the attacker. Might not sound like much, but as a paladin, every little bit counts.
Neverember Guard is also useful. Everytime you are hit you have a 1% chance to heal 1% of your max HP, and that's at base.
Angel of Protection is also a good one, but unless you are willing to spend some diamonds for it, you will have to wait 360 days before you can get one through celestial coins. But such a healing companion can be invaluable.
Finally an ioun stone. Most will probably say the Black Dragon Ioun Stone, but personally I would say the Ioun Stone of Might, if you can afford it, for the 2% stamina recovery. Otherwise, if you mess with the Foundry, get the Icosahedron Ioun Stone, as the 10% XP increase will actually help you complete the long slog of overflow XP a little bit faster.
IV. - Artifact Choices
When it comes to Artifacts, you have a few choices. Of course you want your shield and mace you get, that's a forgone conclusion. However, there are others you will wish to get as well and slot up. Note, all my suggestions will attempt to aim at artifacts that are within reach of a player who doesn't have a diamond farm ready or have an unlimited wallet, and instead provide items within actual reach of the player.
For your four slots, you will want the Sigil of the Devoted, Sigil of the Oathbound Paladin, Water's of Elah'zad for Recovery, and Sigil of the Great Weapon. Fairly simple and easy sigils for players to collect at the start, as they are all within the scope and abilities and do not require spending money or having a diamond farm to gather.
Now, when it comes to the neck piece, my suggestion is to get the Greater Lathander Cloak. The reason for this is because it provides recovery, as most of your Bulwark abilities will effectively have you covered when it concerns your survival. As far as your belt is concerned, you could also consider the greater lathander belt as well. However, if you feel naked without extra HP, then I suggest picking up the Greater Plated Band of Constitution instead. Both belts are fairly cheap, however the Greater Lathander you might have to wait on, so substitute it with a normal one from the Dread Ring Campaign.
Passives
At-Wills
Daily
Encounters
- Bane – This is a power you reserve using for boss fights. It not only reduces the bosses damage, but also increases the damage done to them. In essence, you are a minor terror enchantment with this. It has three charges and can be stacked up to 3 times on a target. Proper use of this and you can keep a boss with 3 stacks on them throughout an entire fight.
- Burning Light – This is good if you have Aura of Courage equipped and want to do some extra AE damage. It’s also a nice bit of handy control, giving you a few extra seconds of breathing room to avoid any nasty damage.
- Templar’s Wrath – This is your bread and butter encounter. Not only does it give you temporary hit points and deliver damage, it also stuns enemies briefly making it a very good interrupt to use. The bonus, the more damage you deliver the more temp HP you will receive.
- Binding Oath – This power is nice in that you basically become immortal for a few seconds, before exploding and causing damage to enemies around you. The trade off, it also hurts you. With the fix to monster penetration in place this power is even better now than ever before and should be very rare, if ever, you will accidentally kill yourself with it.
- Divine Touch - This power is greatly overlooked and it's a sad shame that it is, because as a tank tool it's invaluable for clusters of mobs. It's great for AE threat generation and on top of that it creates a shield on you that mitigates some of the incoming damage for 8 seconds. Get your recovery up high enough and you can basically keep the shield up indefinitely.
- Vow of Enmity – The ability to do more damage and allow your GWF’s to let loose with their damage buffs as everyone who hits the boss is just building more threat for you. This is a tanks best friend when it comes to boss fights. Basically, if you want your GWF’s cutting loose, then best to be using this power.
- Circle of Power – Do not neglect this power. It not only buffs your damage, it also gives you increased resistance. If you don’t feel like risking yourself with Binding Oath, this is a very good alternative. However, it’s recharge is very long, and thus you will want to get more recovery to get it to a more manageable state.
Heroic Feats
Bulwark Feats
Light Feats
I will start with Sharandar first, since that was the first campaign that was introduced. Pretty simple strategy really, and it's going to be a similar theme with all the campaign boons, pick the things that help you tank better.
I decided on Elven haste for the 3% Action Point gain because getting our dailies back ASAP can be a critical life saver in dungeons. I took Elven Resolve because 10% faster stamina recovery is nice, especially in those fights you find yourself having to holding SHIFT for extended periods of time (such as when intercepting laser eyes of Lostmauth or Syndryth's healing and damage laser attacks).
For the Dread Ring it was just picking power, defensiveness, and regeneration as regeneration actually helps healers heal us. While not a great stat, it's much better than life steal, making all those extra heal effects on us just a bit better.
In Icewind Dale, it was a matter of again, what helps me survive better. The fifth row was a toughie, but in the end I decided that Avalanche would be a better choice because, as much Winter's Boon sounds like it will benefit us, one you're a paladin so your death blows are probably going to be limited, and two it's only a chance that it will grant you 10% additional AP. So, over all, not exactly worth it to me, with Avalanche the chance of it being applied is much greater in the end.
And last but not least, Tyranny campaign. Again mostly focused on defense. I chose Dragon's Blood and Dragon's Revival as every little bit to help relieve stress from the healer of your group is a good thing.
This section is designed to present some suggestions for playing as a paladin in the solo game, in dungeons, and some ideas with Tiamat. These are, as everything else in this guide, just suggestions, and my biggest suggestion is always find what works for you. What works for me may not be what works for you after all, so take all these suggestions as just that and not carved in stone.
Solo Game Play
Solo experience is probably going to be where you spend most of your time unless you enjoy back to back dungeon crawling and skirmishes. In these instances, I generally outfit myself with Aura of Courage and Aura of Wisdom, if nothing else for the extra damage. If you don't use a companion, Aura of Solitude is also useful as it will give you some direct damage increase, as long as no one else appears around you, and using a physical companion that can attack.
For the most part, outside of a few instances, I use Smite, Templar's Wrath and Vow of Enmity, since I have decent power recharge rate I get some decent DPS. However, for certain large mob packs, and things like say Redcaps, you may want to consider to use Divine Touch and Burning Light for the AE. Divine Touch has a very fast recharge which makes it quite useful and Burning Light with Aura of Courage turns BL into a DoT effect that is very nice to have. One thing to always remember, always lead in with Radiant Strike. This gives you some extra damage potential.
Finally, if you have decent AP generation, I get pretty liberal with dropping Divine Judgment on mobs. Just sitting on AP until the "right moment" is just wasting potential AP. The only thing you should wait for is the mobs being as bunched up as they can be so you can maximize the AE potential of Divine Judgment.
General Dungeon
This will be up to how comfortable you feel. In general, I have Aura of Courage and Aura of Protection active for the extra defense. If you don't feel you are protected enough replace Courage with Truth. If you feel you have more than enough protection, go with Wisdom over Protection. If you are teamed with a devotion paladin coordinate your auras with them. Most of the time you should have courage unless the devotion paladin has stacked a ton of HP.
For standard mob fighting, I use Binding Oath, Templar's Wrath and Burning Light. Burning Light is a nice bit of control, with Binding Oath giving a bit of added protection from damage as well as being an AE attack that helps generate threat and of course Templar's Wrath for temp HP.
As far as your Dailies go, you should be using pretty much Divine Protection always. Shifting all damage to you is good as it helps keep your party alive. Just be aware of the ones that tunnel vision, and don't know how to be team players. They are the ones that stand in red circles like deer caught in headlights. They aren't hard to miss.
Twin Scorpions
You can basically take the hit of these scorpions. However, if you are not comfortable, I suggest having at least one person kite the other scorpion. Take your pick and you should be fine. Just block the flame and claw attacks and avoid the lava tail attack and stay out of the lava bubble because that will hurt.
As far as powers I use, I use Bane and either Circle of Protection or Vow of Enmity. It typically depends on the party. If I have a GWF with me, I typically like them going all out so I take Vow of Enmity so they can burp at enemies to make themselves feel better. Just be sure to keep the scorpion facing away from the rest of the group, or you may end up seeing a deer in the headlights moment as they just stare at death and end up face planting.
Lostmauth
Bane and Vow of Enmity all the way here again. This boss is just all kinds of annoying. You want to do your level best to stay still but you don't want to be caught in his flame breath and you want to avoid taking a lava bath as the arena gets flooded. Then of course you have the spikes from the ceiling and the invisible fireballs that play ping pong with everyone and this fight can be a nightmare.
Just take your time, and be sure to use Divine Protection. While you might be fine, a lot of the times the rest of your team is probably being bounced around like a pinball and grumbling loudly.
One last thing, you can intercept the eye beams. Just be sure to place yourself underneath his head and keep your sanctuary up while he's targeting. If you do this right you will get hit by the eye laser instead of the team mate who's probably dashing around the arena like a chicken with it's head cut off at that moment.
Syndryth
Bane and Vow of Enmity again, it's quite a pattern since that's typically what I use on most bosses. This fight is going to take time. The main thing you have to watch for is the mace attack, as that will knock you on your butt, and the time it takes you to recover can kill you.
The big thing with this fight is intercepting the lasers. There is a green one that comes from the right side and a red one that comes from the left. The green beam heals Syndryth and you or a team member needs to intercept it. usually it's the healer if you are not comfortable with trying to do both as moving a lot can be costly and cause you to be out of position for some things or miss others.
The red beam is very much like Lostmauth's eye laser. It just hurts whoever it hits. All you have to be is in the beam path to intercept it. Of course, in my experience, a majority of the time the chicken with its head cut off situation applies completely here, as a person getting targeted by said beam will try to run around to avoid it making your ability to intercept it that much harder. I've even had a control wizard claimed I was trying to avoid it as they kept teleporting around moving the beam and I kept trying to move into its path. Needless to say I don't team with them anymore.
Syndryth is going to be a fight that will take a while with most teams, as the mob density needs to be controlled a lot. Making this clear as people tunnel vision can be infuriating a lot of the times, but just stay focused and it should be taken care of in no time.
Ethraniev Marrowslake
The final boss of Grey Wolf Den. It's a challenge but doable. Be sure people have their companions put up otherwise you will get over whelmed by shadow wolves. When she transforms the team should be taking care of the two Stormcallers immediately, because if they aren't every time she transforms two new ones appear. You, as the tank, should be pulling Ethraniev away from the Stormcallers to make it easier for the team and keep yourself out of the constant AE. This will also make it easy to keep her away from the spirit wolf and accidentally being changed back.The spirit wolf (orange wolf) should never be killed near her until those Stormcallers are taken care of. Your healer should be focused on the party during the clearing part of the phase, just keeping an eye on you. Ethraniev's damage does constantly keep going up.
Now onto the main point. The boss, when transformed, is immune to damage. You want to be able to keep her close to the spirit wolf when you are ready to transform her back and your DPS can focus on her, but only after the Stormcallers have been defeated. Slow DPS will make this a long fight. It should be noted that at 2/3rds and 1/3rd health regular werewolves will come out again Ethraniev needs to be pulled away from these so the rest of the team can handle them.
The big thing is to block the shadow hand attacks otherwise it will be a quick battle as you will get overwhelmed by shadow wolves. This fight is one of patience, and requires that the team keep their focus, because any moment of tunnel visioning will result in a wipe quickly. Also remember the longer the fight goes on the more Ethraniev's damage goes up. So being coordinated is also a primary.
There are a lot of suggestions for this fight but all the ones I have tried have led to abysmal AE death and being overwhelmed. Divine Protector is good here but if it doesn't recharge fast use it when she transforms to give people added defense from the Stormcallers that come out. If your party is paying attention you really won't need Divine Protection though they will feel safer with it going up from time to time.
Tiamat
I use Smite, Templar's Wrath and Relentless Avenger here. The big thing to remember in the Tiamat fight is, you are a tank. Get those demons, keep them away from the priestess, and getting through the phases should be no problem at all. If you want to speed up damage on Tiamat herself, maybe replace smite with Bane so you can improve the damage of everyone on her by at least 30%.
Just be sure to only get the heads down to about 10% and not try to kill them until all the heads are at 10% for the final push. Otherwise you will just heal the head the next time it pops up.
Damage resistance bug in epic instances (fixed)
This is a big one. It drives me insane and it's not felt just by tanks, but by all classes. It's frustrating to be doing all you can as a tank to improve your survivability, getting as much defense and health as you can afford and the first mob you walk up to, before you even have gotten a power off, and you have been face planted in one hit. This bug is nasty and it's very prevalent in epic dungeons. I've offered up my theories as to why in the bug thread, but suffice to say there will be moments you will probably want to scream because you face planted for no reason at all. Edit: Thankfully this is being fixed now as of 25 August, 2015 on the PTR.
Sanctuary delay to engage time
When tanking there are going to be a lot of things you have to try and block. Unfortunately, you have to develop an almost precognitive mindset with some things because the attack you want to block happens so fast that you have a very minute window of time to actually react to it. And Sanctuary has a noticeable delay on when you push SHIFT to when it actually engages.
Certain enemy attacks that are now ignoring Sanctuary
I say now, because this just started recently since a few patches back. In this instance Powerie Red Caps, Fomorian Witches, and Valindra's Drain attacks, as of what I've found, completely ignore Sanctuary. The AP drain of the Poweries will still connect, the same with Valindra's attack, and the Fomorian Witches polymorph will still hit. These are effects that use to be blocked by Sanctuary, and supposedly GF's are also being affected by it as well. It's especially frustrating with Fomorian Witches polymorph because getting out of the circle in time to avoid it is near impossible now for a tank without a good speed boost.
Multi-Function powers that return errors because stipulation not met
Due to how paladins have a dual nature, either you are a tank or a healer, unlike other classes that are a tank or DPS, paladins have a major issue in that with their dual nature powers, trying to use a power when certain situations arise can be maddening. For instance, Bane or Relentless Avenger are these dual nature powers, they have different functions for devotion paladins. However, because of the programming, as a tank, and because friendlies love getting in the way (companion, NPCs or other players) you often are presented with an issue where the power constantly returns an error that X is not a valid target. Where as other classes do not have this problem, this added level of micromanagement is just annoying and needs to be fixed, along with the other issues.
Team members who can't wait
This one has existed since the dawn of time. Usually I will drop altars to remove death penalties or change out powers (specifically before bosses) but before I even get my powers window open to do this, they've already charged ahead or enabled a cut scene. Usually you want to be the most efficient you can be for an encounter but these players often drive you insane because of it.
People whom spam the Help Me! button all the time
We see you dropped, someone will get to you as soon as they can. Spamming this button doesn't speed this fact up and spamming it when they are indeed helping you is rude and inconsiderate. In fact the more you spam it, the less inclined I am about helping you and letting you walk back. I've stopped picking people up who were so inconsiderate and rude to spam it while I was picking them up before. So, be considerate and stop spamming the Help Me! button thinking it's going to make us drop everything we are trying to do to survive to just pick you up immediately, especially when you decided to take a bath in the lava.
Scrapperlocking/Tunnel Visioning people
People who focus on one thing and ignore the other 90% of dangerous things that need to be taken care of first. Generally the people that just focus on the Drider in ToS while ignoring the spider's and assassins that are delivering one shots to the entire team, or the person that decides fighting the boss directly and ignoring the adds is better for some reason. Scrapperlock is bad for your team, and its bad for you. Trying to be the lone hero because you think you are going to solo that mob that has umpteen million health while the big hitting stuff is eating people up is the fastest way to a wipe.
I don't understand what you mean by fast running? You mean speedhacking? Or do you mean the ability to just move fast? Paladins do have an a Feat in their Justice tree that gives them increased speed, naturally and another that gives them a speed boost when attacked. Otherwise I am at a loss and need clarification.
I will most likely be updating my build in a few weeks as well as add in the new campaign for the path I've chosen.
Also, the Fomorian Witches don't actually ignore sanctuary, it just looks like they do. If you have it up when the polymorph hits, you will look like a pig (or wolf, or bear) and your attacks will sound like they aren't connecting. But, you can still see yellow and orange numbers floating up. I "extra" verified it with circle of power too (since circle of power has an obvious visual effect), and that went off just fine. Another way you can tell the difference is that your abilities do not get the "you are stunned" chains covering the buttons if you timed sanctuary correctly.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
I know I see a difference with and without it so I don't know what tests he performed and in what situations but to each their own. I definitely notice it if I happen to die the speed at which I can get a divine call back. But 6% is a small amount so its hard to notice, of course.
Also I finished this ages ago, I am updating it now as I get more stuff from the new campaign and such, but that is slow going.
Copy a char over to preview
Remove all armour and companions except for 1 active companion that is wearing no gear and remove enchants from weapon.
Perform full respec
Spec into all the powers, but remove passive powers from your bar like courage and vengeance.
Spec enough feats to get impassioned pleas and no more.
Spam all 3 charges of divine call and start bashing dummies in dread ring, the dummies are fine for this testing because you not testing damage, you testing impassioned pleas.
It took 123 swings of an at will regardless of with or without impassioned pleas to regenerate divine call 3/3 pips. I performed this test numerous times
Now, for the testing of encounters I used RA, bl and templars wrath (seperately for 3 different results). The point of the active companion was to keep me in combat whilst I was standing around waiting for the cooldown regen as the companion would keep bashing the dummy. In all 3 cases the results were exactly the same regardless of whether I had impassioned pleas or not. I spent roughly an hour testing it and I guarentee you, as much as you might "feel" its making a difference, the feat does nothing. If you want a real difference, play justice and see what judge does.
It would be nice if it did do something, I ran it in my build during mod 6 and you can still see it in my now closed old thread. With the mod 8 update though, I felt I needed to rigorously test everything and the results of my testing says it does nothing. You can repeat my testing if you like, its not like you will get a different result. The nice thing about paladin is even if you run suboptimal paths like light and bulwark it makes no difference as the class is so overpowered, that may change when pally is eventually nerfed though.
I suspect it is more complicated, but its also possible that the 6% increase from Impassioned is just not significant for a Protector build. It may need to be increased to a 15% or 20% effectiveness for Protectors to actually produce a noticeable result. Another possible problem is that Divine Call recovery may be tied to damage taken, not just powers used, and thus not be easily testable as thefabricant has done.
It bears consideration and investigating.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
The majority of OP features in the OP are not feats, they are, guess what, encounter powers and daily powers.
Protection:
Divine Protector
Binding Oath
^^^^^^^^
your build uses these and if anything gets nerfed, these will.
Devotion:
Shield of Faith
Bond of Virtue
Burning guidance
^^^^^
My dev pally build uses those and if anything gets nerfed, those will.
Prism has had itself been put somewhat into check
So, if you truly want to use no "brokenly overpowered" features then no DP and no BO, oh wait, thats not going to happen because then your build which is sub optimal already would no longer be viable.
The last power which I predict being changed entirely is sacred weapon, ill let you try and figure out why.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Tanked Demogoroth with no trouble in this build, and been able to solo tank certain boss mobs fairly easily including the GWD one.
Think you forgot the feats that increase paladin speed, instant recharge on chance that goes off quite frequently, and a few others. If people really think Prism is the only thing that makes Justice OP, they are really ignoring the forest for the trees.
I completely ignored it because while interesting won't make a huge difference in the matter. Trying to say paladin buidl X is sub optimal because of Justice and people think it is only prism that is the reason why, obviously shows willful ignorance at those levels.
Firstly, in the original post that I made listing my testing methods, I had not said anything about justice at all except that it was superior to bulwark and rather, you just ignored my testing and quoted the bit about your build being suboptimal, which it is. To take your own quote and use it against you here....Trying to ignore 90% of my post makes no difference only to comment on the 10% that is my opinion rather then factual evidence which will actually improve your build only shows willful ignorance at those levels.
Secondly, here is why justice is not overpowered, but why it is better for both devotion and protection, the real key here, you will notice, is because of how overpowered paladin encounter powers are:
Protection:
Firstly, wearing blue gear with around 2k ilvl you can have 40% dr on paladin, im not going to even bother looking at bis because whilst I can prove this at low ilvs, I can also prove it at high ilvls by just extending the argument by the way of gear.
By farming throne of the dwarvern god, you can get a hold of ring of sieging +5, this takes your dr up to 70%.
Lets say this player can only afford a lesser negation, this puts them at 80% dr with the stacks of negation up, I.E, they capped.
Lets now look at paladin encounters, binding oath and templars wrath and the daily divine protector. Divine protector, whilst active, reduces incoming damage by 80%, its a seperate layer, just like binding oath so it effectively allows you to push your way beyond the dr cap. With only divine protector and their base 80% dr, without binding oath or sanctuary, they taking 4% of incoming damage. For the sake of easy maths, I am going to say this theory paladin has 100k hp (realistically more, but it makes my life easy) and that templars wrath gives him 200k, for 300k effective. He would need to take a hit for 75× his life total, in this situation, for him to be 1 shot. Obviously monsters have arp etc to complicate this, but I didn't even include binding oath in the calculation, or sanctuary.
Now, what does bulwark give you? It gives you extra tankyness and survivability, one of the feats you have taken for example, sanctity, is entirely for this. Isn the above scenario is it even remotely useful? No, you don't need to be more tanky. You are taking feats you actually don't need and that a paladin with the correct mod 8 gear, is actually gaining 0 (yes, thats right, 0) utility from.
Devotion:
For a devotion light spec, ill not make it as complex but basically with 0 investment in healing, bond of virtue and vow will keep allies at full life and out heal any dc, whilst ive had over 1M burst heals from divine call, once again, you don't need the feats in light unless you somehow found a way to side with tiamat, because when testing light, I legitimately managed a heal for over 100 million and nobody in this game has anywhere remotely near that hp.
This leaves justice...what is it about OP's that make them so strong...its their daily and encounter powers. What does justice do, it boosts damage and reduces their cooldowns. Can all 3 paragons maintain perma dailies? Yes, not just justice, justice can do it with less investment though. Would justice appear as OP if those encounter and daily powers were brought in line? No, it wouldn't, the only reason it appears so OP is because you are legitimately getting close to 0 return on investment for the other paragon paths atm and justice is actually providing some benefit.
But go on, once again, quote like once sentance and reply to that, rather then reading and actually learning something.
on my tankadin there are 2 skills that let me tank pretty much everything healerless. binding oath and templars wrath. 200k+ temp hp is obviously not working as intended. that alone lets me ignore pretty much everything and just facetank the world without a healer.
now binding oath and the ability to chain/perma it due to justice's cooldowns and im completely invulnerable.
those 2 encounters are the base of the problem. yes perma bubble is bad. but i can sit there and take 15M hits from dragons with binding oath up. and even with 40% dr ( i traded my g negation for an axebeak before the chant costs tanked, havent really missed it) in my normal tanking gear it takes chain knockdowns and a couple of million damage to get past templars wrath and bubble.
i almost always take a healer with me when i run stuff. its probably "sub optimal" since i really dont need one. but i like healers ( i have 2 myself). and it allows me to relax knowing if i actually need a heal i can get one, of if i slip up and drop bubble the rest of the team will survive for 2 seconds. but its a minigame for me to see if i can keep total healing done to less than 1M by myself. and its all due to templars and binding. which is completely enabled by justice. and i have enough recovery/ap gear that i can permabubble with any tree.
i run with @obsidiancran3 all the time. she tanks fine. and helped me figure out tons of things when i was a fledgling pali. she does amazing things with bulwark.
and this is why im leveling a gf. its too damn easy on my tankadin.