Worth going Paladin?

[Tuljin]

Originally Posted by Rhambuk [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

haha you're very close! My paladin hatred goes back to my live days as a rogue, knockback stuns pushing mobs behind me, paladin buffs overwriting my atk buffs, paladins that didn't understand agro mechanics and would just stunlock mobs making positioning horrible.

this is precisely why i mention learning curve when talking about why people don't roll paladin. in order to be good at paladin you need to have good tank AND caster skills. you have to properly turn and position mobs (and know when to stunlock and when to use blind) you also need caster skills to know how to lull/break up camps, root park/split mobs properly, how to use stuns (and bash) to knock out casters, and also knowing when to toss out heals, cure poisons/diseases, and when to use LoH (either on yourself or a party member) you have to keep an eye on the casters in your group in case they get agro and you have to stun the mob and root park him safely (or just tank it) to keep your casters safe, which is normally the responsibility of a caster.

most people when rolling a melee class don't even consider this dimension of gameplay. they instantly only think "dps" hence why you get an iksar monk rolled (which also carries a hefty xp penalty btw), a warrior maybe, and sometimes they think sk cause it "out dps-es" paladin, but when you start stacking dots on an sk you quickly see your mana bar drain to nothing and the dps really isn't that exceptional.

in my experience on this server most people who play casters don't really have the best situational awareness. i point my finger at clerics cause most of them on the server don't do a damn thing besides heal, they never throw out a single root or stun. if there isn't an enc in a group to AOE mez every single shitty pull in a very haphazard way, there is no CC and you'll just end up sitting at zoneline LFG. root cc is usually plenty of cc if you are single pulling casters, and if not you make sure you root casters out of LOS. with melee mobs root CC is just fine.

with a pal you can take matters into your own hands. after playing warrior for a while i got sick of relying on others to take care of cc etc. if get a good dps class with you and a third party member (doesn't even have to be a healer necessarily) and you will steadily and quickly move the xp bar without dying. this is another point - all of these hypothetical "best" class situations are assuming a good player behind the toon, which certainly is not always the case. not dying and keeping the bar moving is the key to xp, not getting nuked to 30% on every pull and waiting till that one time the cleric is a little bit late on the CH, the group gets screwed, and you end up waiting a while before the xp bar moves again.

so yes, learning curve/general difficulty of the class is a major reason why nobody rolls a paladin. nobody thinks about what pal is capable of - people either wanna crank out dps and FD to save their own ass without having any other responsibilities (monk and sk), or they just wanna sit on their ass and heal or OHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT aoe mez (cle and enc)

the main point is that a good knight is good because of skill, not because of min/max. a good paladin is extremely powerful in the hardest zones of the game (undeads in hole, hs, and seb) its just that you don't see many of them out there =)