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The Problem with Paladins
tommynocker001
Member Posts: 47 Arc User
My problem is the two bars on either side of the character model.
One is how much stamina you have to hold up your shield, the other is how much power you have to use encounter powers. There is nothing quite like realising that you are toothless on the battlefield! Some monsters can drain the stamina bar in two hits leaving you with no power to parry and your massively limited power pool (four hits) with no power to hit. Both seem to take an age to recharge.
What you going to do? Dodge??? Run?
I'm standing not four feet from a dragon with no actual ability to fight... apart from 'gnat bites' with maces. This needs a rethink.
... and while I'm on the subject... where are all the maces? You... forget to put them in the game? At level 80 I can either have a generic mace, the wooden mace in the PVP building (a wooden mace!!!
buy for astral diamonds, pick a lower level and buy (beat up weak bad guys) or hope that something drops, or get a sword! Come on, find a space for some cool looking maces in professions, please?
One is how much stamina you have to hold up your shield, the other is how much power you have to use encounter powers. There is nothing quite like realising that you are toothless on the battlefield! Some monsters can drain the stamina bar in two hits leaving you with no power to parry and your massively limited power pool (four hits) with no power to hit. Both seem to take an age to recharge.
What you going to do? Dodge??? Run?
I'm standing not four feet from a dragon with no actual ability to fight... apart from 'gnat bites' with maces. This needs a rethink.
... and while I'm on the subject... where are all the maces? You... forget to put them in the game? At level 80 I can either have a generic mace, the wooden mace in the PVP building (a wooden mace!!!
buy for astral diamonds, pick a lower level and buy (beat up weak bad guys) or hope that something drops, or get a sword! Come on, find a space for some cool looking maces in professions, please? 6
Comments
Lots of armour and cloaks but no weapons, if you're thinking of the one I'm thinking of. There are no weapons in the weapon vendor in Neverwinter... very few anywhere else.
You can almost see that discussion;
Paladin; "I'm looking for a short pole with a hammer head on it."
Blacksmith; "Pffft! What are you, a dwarf? Buy a sword!"
The game is built on choice; I get to choose something different for every build... there goes that then! X)
So I'm looking at the slightly generic boons. They all look the same for each character, no matter what.
I'm thinking that I'd like to increase my health bar, that's a must...
I'm looking at that run speed, ooh! Want that...
Extra damage! Who doesn't plug in extra damage?
Critical hits! Useful... out of boons! Out of boons? Really?
Now I'll admit; I've still got a lot of... bits to complete. There are plenty of boons out there still to collect, and I've got a long way to go. But I'm following in the footsteps of my warlock; and many of the harder dungeons are already unlocked... did i mention how 'out of my depth' I feel?
A careful choice of health bonus armour and take a health boon or two and you can stack them together.
Try taking a critical hit and see how quickly you can flatten a mob. It can be a fun class to play!
My problem comes with the charge of my abilities. I cannot increase the charge of encounter powers. What I chose a decade ago is where I have to work from and the charge speed for encounter powers is locked to a stat. There is no way to change it without restarting from scratch. A boon is needed to make sure I'm not standing on the battlefield with no real weapons and a big monster to defeat. Encounter powers already have a charge speed. Why put another clock on top of the clock that charges really... slowly?
I imagine you've got to have one that's really well-equipped and pretty far along already to be of any use to anyone. The only ones I've seen that were at all effective were obviously already all caught up - bis gear and high level enchants.
A paladin still in development just doesn't contribute in any meaningful way - maybe the oathkeeper if you queue with a party that needs shields and healing.
But it's a drag to play not to mention a controller wrecker because of all that left stick pressing. The tab/R1 mechanic just doesn't make any sense to me, and I never use it. I'd rather have it recharge my divinity like the cleric.
With that out of the way, I don't understand why anyone would have such an issue with maintaining divinity on either pally path.
On Justicar, you have feats and powers that restore divinity. You're a tank so you're not meant to run into battle and smite left and right. You grab aggro. You hunker down. You keep aggro. You dodge most hits by....wait for it....repositioning out of the red so you don't waste too much shield. Shield restores pretty quickly. I'm not BiS. I don't have fully ranked out enchants. I only have 400k hp so far. I've tanked everything through to LoMM.
On Oathkeeper, shield doesn't matter since you're not there to tank. Divinity management is even easier on Oath than Justicar. By miles. I can smite multiple times in a row and not even check my divinity because I know it' still good.
You're only toothless on the battlefield if you allow yourself to become toothless. I've run out of divinity on occasion but that was my fault for not paying attention and going smite crazy.
Run speed; I can't get enough of this one. I only get five.
Buffs from your companion; very useful. Give me more power!
Power, critical hit, deflection, defence... I find them all useful. The trouble is you want five in each and at least two taken.
>
> A paladin still in development just doesn't contribute in any meaningful way - maybe the oathkeeper if you queue with a party that needs shields and healing.
>
Not true at all. My Alt pally runs with whatever dropped from me (even bad weapons) has 30 or so boons and i can tank up to raq with no issues. Of course this Is not M15 where you smashed your keyboard and tanked everything. You need to use your Powers wisely
> Boons; Better defence/offence against any mobs is useful. Undead, demons and dinosaurs... forget cultists; so weak they go down easy. I put one point in each.
> Run speed; I can't get enough of this one. I only get five.
> Buffs from your companion; very useful. Give me more power!
> Power, critical hit, deflection, defence... I find them all useful. The trouble is you want five in each and at least two taken.
Unless you go healer you dont need power. Neither arpen crit and ca. Op is not the damage dealer
I think it's a different experience for young paladins. The ones below 11K or so (mine included) have been useless everywhere - even in low-level skirmishes like Dread Legion where they're simply unnecessary/uneffective or Master of the Hunt where they can effectively maintain aggro with the boss but can't inflict meaningful damage, can't keep their stamina up, and can't keep their hp up. Actually there's a good example of a boss who inflicts a lot of damage on <10K characters with basic attacks that don't come with a red zone. A paladin can block what, four or five of those spear thrusts before losing all its stamina? Then it's either run for dear life and hope someone else grabs aggro, or chug healing potions to stay alive and hope everyone can kill the boss before it kills the "tank".
I could take my paladin into Throne or Prophecy, but unless it's a group that needs healing - which most of the time, they don't - it's not fair to everyone else. I know every class has an awkward phase, but the paladin's just seems incredibly long. My youngest character is a wizard who only just started in on Elemental Evil, and is far and above more effective in content that I don't dare queue into with my paladin.
And as for "hunkering" down. That's fine if you're in queued content that benefits from someone hiding behind a shield, but it's a grueling way to solo your way through SKT, CA, Chult, Barovia, etc... I know how slow it is 'cause I've got a cleric and rogue running the same stuff every day as my paladin. I routinely finish up with both of them in less time than it takes the paladin.
I'm glad some people like the new paladin. And I even like the concept, but at the moment, I - that's me personally expressing my personal opinion - I don't enjoy playing it.
As far as boons go, it is a waste to put points into crit, arpen, acc, or their counter stats, as they will be capped out as soon as you get decent bonding stones or armor.
You are going to want to get enough boons to at least get the top tier boon focused retaliation for the passive boost to your damage.
Companions are the single most important investment in performance. Bondings, gear and runes.
Build to cap must have defenses, and then must have offensives. 500-600 hp is a good goal, then go for power.
Shielding strike will restore your stamina much quicker than it regenerates naturally.
Divinity regenerates slower with slower/less mobs so use with caution.
The Tab mechanic, used for the auto shielding as well as Divine Palisade used to lessen in coming hits is a powerful defense.
Things do get better, it takes time.
Sometimes the dps steals the aggro because they rush ahead or get the first hit via range and it takes a while for the tank to generate threat and even when we do it's hard to retake the threat back while we are holding up our shields trying to regain our divinity because our riposte damage is lacklustre.
I'm also curious about whether the vengeance aura when applied to allies, the damage dealt back to the attackers does it generate threat to the paladin or no? Can a dev response to this query? @terramak
It's funny how my cleric guild mate was adamant I should be using tactical enchantments instead of darks because according to him we tanks are not dps when aggro is generated via dealing damage. He was pretty insistent since by us tanks using tacticals we can place less stress on his divinity pool when healing.
That's where most of our damage comes from not to mention it frees us up to use at wills and encounters while mitigating damage so long as divinity is available. Not having to worry about holding up our shields and backing down too.
There is a feat that reduces the cost of maintaining the mechanic also.
It's an interesting, broad spectrum of opinions and experiences.
More interesting dialogue;
Courier; (panting) "My master, he made this mace for you! Had me deliver it forthwith."
Paladin; "... that's a sword."
It was not a walk in the park but was totally doable.
I can't speak for lower pallys. I can say if you're experiencing problems at early levels it gets better later. I also don't run much outside of MEs and LoMM most days. Maybe once a week I'll run queues for variety.
Regarding the comments in the thread about not needing offensive stats, that's untrue. You should be able to chip in some damage and will need to in LoMM if you want to kill mimics.
Tacticals are also most certainly useful on a tank. I only use 1.
Sounds like you could use some of this advice.
- a need that just isn't there in lower level content?