it basically boils down to having a shield equipped lets you bash, a twohander (other than epic) does not. it doesn't matter which setup gives you more dps or ac or like 45 more hp, because the differences are going to be marginal. so unless you want to hard swap in a shield to bash every few seconds while rocking your twohander just do sword and board for general grouping.

with that said by all means keep all skills maxed. i played a paladin on red so I always had a high damage twohander bagged for pvp encounters, but they're also useful if you need to solo something via root jousting. assuming you play on a blue/green/teal server I'd put more emphasis on a good onehander/shield combo, unless you fall into something like a https://wiki.project1999.com/Mithril_Two-Handed_Sword when you otherwise don't have any haste on Green/Teal. On blue I'd just lug around a https://wiki.project1999.com/Luminary_Two_Handed_Sword for raising skill and the proc to make your lull crit resist rate more manageable.

t. professional living and breathing Paladin

https://wiki.project1999.com/Great_Spear_of_Dawn

Picked up one of those the other night. It's doubtful I'll ever use sword/board again unless I can score a pair of the ones with 40+ ac each. The dmg output on 2handers is just too sexy to pass on.

Yeah I can say from personal experience it wasn't fun leveling piercing up to 225 from 1 skill. Did that yesterday.

Funny how people can reach different conclusions from similar experience. Since weapon skill can be raised from nothing to cap within a fairly quick period, I see no reason to carry around a bag full of otherwise-unwanted weapons. I'll raise a skill if I need it. In some cases a weapon skill may never be needed at all.

Danth

That spear is 25ac 50hp,sweet,but during scenarios where you just want to tank a hard thing, a 45ac 225hp is just better, even if that tank your dps...

That spear is so damn good. Swapping that in and out with Epic on my SK while hunting undead. Pretty nice when they proc back to back!!

For tanking, I've been using Sledge of Smashing and Orb of the infinite void.

I've seen Paladins offtank raid content and ramp tank with Cek claw and Whitestone shield. Seems to get the job done well.

Sk so that's not fully the same but it relates, when dpsing or tanking easy thing => epic for high dps and lifetap proc, when tanking hard things (hot and more) icecone+flurries shield...

My sword/board combo presently is only 25ac 5stam and 40hp. It has serviced me well enough for any content that is appropriate for a knight to be expected to tank but my previous 2hander was better. This improved ratio only nets a 20ac loss over my previous 2hander (but a minor hp boost). Once your gear is in an appropriate range for functional viability, survival starts and ends with your healing team. If I really need more umph I can swap 2handers for an extra 20ac.

We’ll see.

If I pick up a fat 40+ac shield to pair with a 40+ ac 1hander I will situationally use it, but for content where a knight needs to turtle down that hard you’re almost definitely going to have a warrior tanking it. We generally have warriors outnumbering paladins 4-5:1 on our raids. I really only play the knight when the warrior is parked elsewhere or when warrior numbers are saturated and we could use some off healing support, 200hp pal buffs, or on easier trash content where guaranteed snap aggro is preferable.