Stat Allocation for Solo Paladin

[Armatyr]

Hail, everybody.

I'm a human Paladin and I want to be capable of high survivability while working alone, even at the expense of things like damage. I'm not opposed to working in groups, and I do want to provide health and buffing aid to new players as I grow in strength, but I'm most interested in high personal survivability in combat.

However, before I came to Freeport I placed 20 points in stamina giving me a total of 100. I wanted to ask those more experienced if this has irreversibly impacted my ability to be effective, and whether it's more likely that I'll need to recreate myself with more of other attributes like agility and dexterity.

Stay strong,

Armatyr

[Snaggles]

All the survivability comes with the class.

My eru I stupidly went strength. My biggest annoyances soloing the whole way were lack of str with tank gear on (still is, but I carry a ton of junk and few good weight reducing bags) and lack of charisma for lull pulls. The latter can be fixed with a few charisma items.

If you want to be the most effective tank at the end and won’t be raiding definitely go stamina. Even raiding you will need a number of great items to cap stamina.

[Shodo]

First and foremost: you're very unlikely to ever notice a difference no matter where you spend your ability points. It's a laughably tiny contribution to your total capabilities.

Second: if you really want to try to min max it, I'd recommend wisdom over stamina (followed by charisma or strength, don't bother with dex or agi as long as you have >75 agi). 20 wis at max level gives you enough mana for a few extra roots or an extra heal, which is lot more added survivability than the extra 100ish HP that 20 stamina gives you. But it's still not worth rerolling over it.

[mattydef]

Str sta and wis are all good for a Paladin, as long as you put your points in all/any of those you’ll be fine.

[hekk99]

I think, as others have noted, that starting stats won't make or break your character, so a lot of this becomes value judgments about what is marginally more desirable for you. Of course, it would be useless to put all your points into intelligence, so they do have some value.

There is a huge thread somewhere on the forums in which a long debate took place on paladin starting stats. Most people were arguing for combat stats (strength and/or stamina), but one guy came in and repeatedly argued for casting stats (wisdom). It was quite the controversy in the thread, but after reading through the whole thread, I realized that most of the people arguing for the combat stats were coming at it from a min-maxing or grouping perspective, whereas the wisdom guy was arguing from a soloing perspective.

Having played a paladin up to level 36 so far on the Green server, I have noticed that a lot of my soloing is limited by my mana. If a paladin is going to solo a lot, he'll be using a lot of mana to heal and buff between mobs, as well as mana to manage fights by using Root, Stun, etc at later levels. When you're in a group, you probably won't need to heal and buff nearly as much, so you won't be using as much mana and therefore won't feel a need for more.

I play a Half Elf paladin, so he is already on the low side when it comes to wisdom (at start I put 5 into strength and stamina and 10 into wisdom). I solo a fair amount, and there have been times when I've had trouble keeping a camp on a good split because I use all my mana to heal myself and then have to med back up to get ready to fight.

Now, would I be mowing down mobs if I had put 5 or 10 more into wisdom at start? I don't know. Probably not--at least, those extra points probably would have made a difference, but not a game-changing difference. Similarly, I've only played up to mid-30s, so if I get to level 60 will the nature of what I do as a paladin change to the point where I wish I had more wisdom or more strength or more stamina? I don't know. Maybe, but I don't have the experience to know that.

TL;DR: You probably didn't hurt yourself by going all stamina. Strength and stamina are always useful, but consider adding more to wisdom if you're going to solo a lot. A bigger mana pool can help you kill more before you have to pause to med and can save yourself with spells between or during fights (though Lay Hands is the ultimate "survivability" ability).

[Snaggles]

Hekk brought forward great points along with the others. Thanks for the reminder of that thread, it was fun one lol [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] .

The problem with the wisdom pally build is the same as the intel sk build. It’s more staggering in the sk case as depending on race pick it can be 50 or so points where as the paladin races are all very close. Having a larger mana pool is really nice but rarely noticeable soloing unless when you run into a named mob or a couple adds which prolongs the experience. Even with afk breaks one doesn’t typically burn up all their mana and sit for 10 minutes. Most soloing past 45 will be DW armor clicking anyways and prioritizing mana for roots. Even a couple clicks of a DW helm per root break is extremely efficient; it is like 220hp for 30mana (over 7hp/mana). I remember with a max Enstill getting over 10 clicks. In a group situation a lot has to go wrong to be glad you had two more heals left to donate. In raids with AOE fights you will be casting a lot but your gear has less to do with philosophy and more personal availability.

The primary paladin creation strategy for me is aesthetic. A solo paladin is a fun but arduous process past the mid 50’s. Liking how you look is very important. Knowing end-game fashion is too. You will have a DW helm on a LOT of the time so you gotta like that yellow bucket...at 59 you will rarely use it. Erudite’s look cool with it but otherwise their helmquest game is annoying. Broken Velious custom vs purple hood are most of your quality options. In comparison the human dragon helm looks great.

The secondary are racial gear perks. The Tunare paladins gets a great midrange non-bash epic substitute (high end fashion). Erudite get a really nice shield. Humans and dwarven raiders most notably can only use the Frostreaver which is a dang good tanking 2h with a stun/aggro proc. I’ve spent time at one point jealous of all the paladin races so I guess it’s fairly balanced, perhaps less for the erudites unless you have a penchant for being odd.

Even these though aren’t game makers or breakers though so really just play the game however you want. It’s a long road but a 60 paladin is a lot of fun and very useful for small team content.

[Jimjam]

+cha so you have a better chance of rallying adventurers to you cause so you don’t need to solo.

[DMN]

Any joking aside, I would actually do max cha myself if I was able to twink the character out in any significant manner(so STR for carrying stuff is not going to be an issue). If you do die and need to retrieve your corpse, there is a good chance you might have to rely heavily on your lulls to get your corpse back. Since you will be naked it doesn't matter if you have a charisma set of gear.

Even when you do have your gear, you will ideally want to hit 200ish cha for lulling, so you can maximimally reduce your chances of crit lull fails. 200 cha isn't hard to get but it's not easy either if you want to maintain a good amount of HP/mana/Ac in addition to the 200 cha, and those are stats you really also want to have as high as possible at the same time for the chance of a crit lull pulling multiple mobs on you. At the end of the day the reality is there not many good items that provide +cha and high amounts of ac/hp/rests/mana.

IMO, anyone who wants to solo primarily with a lulling class should always max cha at creation.

[Sweeper41]

I have soloed my paladin over the years and he is now 55. half elf Tunare for that sweet Nature's Defender. Figured that would be a lot easier to get then the Fiery Defender for a solo/casual player to achieve. When I made him I used what the wiki said was optimal.(the paladins wiki could use a update/clean up) All Stam. So I did that. I can say the only time I have ever used lull was when I was camping Ogguk guards. Then I was using deepwater vambraces. So unless your getting into some deep heavy camp solo I wouldn't worry about Charisma.
However I have found some out of the way camps and quest to do to level that most normal players would skip on. When you hit 46 get a deepwater helm and it cuts your downtime. So youll have all your mana for stuns/roots. Gear is also a key factor.

[Gustoo]

On a developed server like red or blue or green, I would go full charisma on a high elf.

On a new server I would go full wisdom and 5 agi on a dwarf

For a human I would still go full charisma

The charisma is more of a min max thing. Wisdom is second best choice I believe, and stamina is third.

Its not terribly significant, strength is best when you are a noob and want to hit harder and carry more but its the worst when you're high level and its maxxed easier.