A lot of people, across the forums, seems to be pointing out the lackluster situation that the paladins find themselves in come relaunch. And with somewhat good reason. Between its inability to deal with CC in RvR and the short range on the end chant, it seems that the modern PvP-environment have shelved the old Paladin in 8v8 RvR.
I myself would never role a Paladin if it was to use it strictly for 8v8. Armsmen simply just rule supreme as a defensive tank with its amazing peel, better damage and superior movability, even tho it means having a serious endpot-addiction to keep the superiority going.

Having said that, I think the impressive amount of paper daoc on forums, seem very narrow-minded in terms of stigmatising the paladin, solely because of it falling short in the 8v8-aspect of the game. DAoC is more nuanced than just 8v8.
Being an Alb who wants to see a strong Albion, I would hate to see no paladins around when the server relaunches, because I think it would severely cripple the realm. Therefore I'm making this thread to point out the usable aspects of the paladin in hopes that more people will weave them into their character-base for use in endgame. My hope is that some of you yet undecisive, newer players on Uthgard out there might not dump your Paladin-dreams, just because the class takes a lot of trash in forum-discussions.

The paladins are:

Ideal pve raid tank which is self-explanatory. Probably the best in the game. Can't imagine running a prince-raid in DF, where you circle around for hours, if you had to rely on other endsources than the end-chant. They are also central to dragon raids with their heat-resist aura. Also; having a 3man dia-group with pala/theurg/reaver(or merc) is the fastest way to make dia-seals.

Great keepraiders with their endurance regen which serves extremely well in zerg-situation, where every1 are clustered up in big, messy fights. The sentence "Paladin looking for more for keepretake" can easily attract a good amount of people, just because of the utility that the paladin brings to such an event.

Good for smallman RvR where many groups are sampled on the go, making paladin, with all its utility, a good extension to almost any group.

A great guild character that is often in demand for a wide range of tasks, making the social aspect of DAoC flow easier. They fit the need of a long range of situations and people will often be in need of your help, which in turn makes ppl owe you favours. I've had 2 chars pl'ed to 50 this way over the years.


I myself will be rolling a pala on live to use it for the above-mentioned aspects of the game. IMO the paladin is a great backbone character for an account, that can be used in a great many ways. Especially when it comes to grinding gold; raids, DM-farming and dia-groups make for a solid base to finance your account. Having a caba or necro is not a necessity to be well-funded, in fact many ppl argue that being raid-active will ensure more gold over time.

Lessgo Uthgard 2.0 and hope to see some fellow Palas twisting chants for the realm!

You forgot to mention solo RvR. With the right spec, charges and RA's pala is still viable. The only downside is not getting into the competitive 8man groups, that's it.

Rin wrote:A lot of people, across the forums, seems to be pointing out the lackluster situation that the paladins find themselves in come relaunch. And with somewhat good reason. Between its inability to deal with CC in RvR and the short range on the end chant, it seems that the modern PvP-environment have shelved the old Paladin in 8v8 RvR.
I myself would never role a Paladin if it was to use it strictly for 8v8. Armsmen simply just rule supreme as a defensive tank with its amazing peel, better damage and superior movability, even tho it means having a serious endpot-addiction to keep the superiority going.

Having said that, I think the impressive amount of paper daoc on forums, seem very narrow-minded in terms of stigmatising the paladin, solely because of it falling short in the 8v8-aspect of the game. DAoC is more nuanced than just 8v8.
Being an Alb who wants to see a strong Albion, I would hate to see no paladins around when the server relaunches, because I think it would severely cripple the realm. Therefore I'm making this thread to point out the usable aspects of the paladin in hopes that more people will weave them into their character-base for use in endgame. My hope is that some of you yet undecisive, newer players on Uthgard out there might not dump your Paladin-dreams, just because the class takes a lot of trash in forum-discussions.

The paladins are:

Ideal pve raid tank which is self-explanatory. Probably the best in the game. Can't imagine running a prince-raid in DF, where you circle around for hours, if you had to rely on other endsources than the end-chant. They are also central to dragon raids with their heat-resist aura. Also; having a 3man dia-group with pala/theurg/reaver(or merc) is the fastest way to make dia-seals.

Great keepraiders with their endurance regen which serves extremely well in zerg-situation, where every1 are clustered up in big, messy fights. The sentence "Paladin looking for more for keepretake" can easily attract a good amount of people, just because of the utility that the paladin brings to such an event.

Good for smallman RvR where many groups are sampled on the go, making paladin, with all its utility, a good extension to almost any group.

A great guild character that is often in demand for a wide range of tasks, making the social aspect of DAoC flow easier. They fit the need of a long range of situations and people will often be in need of your help, which in turn makes ppl owe you favours. I've had 2 chars pl'ed to 50 this way over the years.


I myself will be rolling a pala on live to use it for the above-mentioned aspects of the game. IMO the paladin is a great backbone character for an account, that can be used in a great many ways. Especially when it comes to grinding gold; raids, DM-farming and dia-groups make for a solid base to finance your account. Having a caba or necro is not a necessity to be well-funded, in fact many ppl argue that being raid-active will ensure more gold over time.

Lessgo Uthgard 2.0 and hope to see some fellow Palas twisting chants for the realm!

Great post, and I wish to take nothing away from it, but I would like to just add that without knowing what direction the server is heading, it could be a bad choice for a newer player also. Personally I think the server will steer in 1 of 2 ways. The first being a hardcore 8v8 and/or hugely competitive pvp orientated server. The second being very casual and very user friendly where we would see lots of BGs and lots of zergs and plenty of action for everybody new and old. I hope for the latter of course. My point being that if the server does repeat history and steers down the hardcore route, then it would be a huge shame for newer players to have effectively wasted their time on a character that may not be looked at in the same light as some others.

Like I said, I don't wish to take anything away, or put a negative spin on your post because it really is great. I just wouldn't want it to overshadow what may or may not happen with the server.

Again, great post!

barto22 wrote:Great post, and I wish to take nothing away from it, but I would like to just add that without knowing what direction the server is heading, it could be a bad choice for a newer player also. Personally I think the server will steer in 1 of 2 ways. The first being a hardcore 8v8 and/or hugely competitive pvp orientated server. The second being very casual and very user friendly where we would see lots of BGs and lots of zergs and plenty of action for everybody new and old. I hope for the latter of course. My point being that if the server does repeat history and steers down the hardcore route, then it would be a huge shame for newer players to have effectively wasted their time on a character that may not be looked at in the same light as some others.

Remember, you (the players) can heavily influence this by how you behave toward others.

if the server does repeat history and steers down the hardcore route, then it would be a huge shame for newer players to have effectively wasted their time on a character that may not be looked at in the same light as some others.

I agree that people will be looking down upon the paladins in regards to the 8v8-aspect of the game. An aspect which historically is the main selling-point of the game and arguably viewed by the majority of the playerbase as the very core activity in end-game. Also, there is no doubt in my mind that RvR will from time to time be dominated by elite pvp-guilds running 8man-groups. As is tradition..
I would never encourage people to roll a paladin to pursue a spot in the 8man environment, as stated in the original post. I would however encourage people to roll paladins for diferent aspects of the game as stated in the op. Wanna do 8man? Roll one of the classes that fit the meta in patch 1.65 (merc, arms, cleric, sorc, minstrel, caba, theurg) as a char specifically with that focus. This is no different than rolling a stealther, knowing that its purpose is limited to a certain aspect of the game and that the funding for its template will need to come from another char.

My main purpose with this forum-thread was to try and recruit players for the Paladin ranks, to use it for a broad range of activities outside of the 8man-environment. There's something to be said about how people evaluate the usefulness of the class: the general forum-vibe seems to be that every Paladin out there has the word "NOOB" branded into their forehead, and I think this is ridiculous. A lot of people lvl a necro or caba as first char, even though necro has zero purpose in almost any RvR-situations. Neither does (matter) caba and they wont see any invites for grouped pve-content either. In my view the Paladin is both a fun and in terms of its use, a more diverse choice for a backbone-char, than the thoose two aforementioned classes.

I agree with Rin. And i am, and have always, been planning on making my first char a paly.

Too bad they left auto-training in. I would be ****** if I rolled a paladin then found out later that I would be not as good as other paladins simply because they decided to leave a mechanic in that punishes people for interacting while leveling.

Kaudo wrote:Too bad they left auto-training in. I would be ****** if I rolled a paladin then found out later that I would be not as good as other paladins simply because they decided to leave a mechanic in that punishes people for interacting while leveling.

Im unaware for how long autotraining chants is doable without it becoming too masochistic to be honest. But from the beta, my experience was that with grey end chant (comes at lvl 8 ) you are ok set for quite a while. Alb melee classes (save stealth classes) should all be using crush styles and crush styles are actually rly easy on the endurance in comparison to other lines. In my view AT'ing is tougher on a minstrel, who'll often fill the powerregen slot.

Let's say that you manage to AT chants to 40 using grey end chant. You'd have 54 pts ekstra. In this case I dont think you're gimped going either of the two basic specs, one being better for PvE, one making you more viable in RvR, should you want to be somewhat useful in this aspect:

Pve-friendly:
Chants: 48
Slash: 39 (leaving slash alone till lvl 48 and respec at a later time)
Shield: 42
Parry: 22 (19 if you didn't AT chants at all)

More RvR-friendly
Chants: 46
Thrust: 44
Shield: 42
Parry: 10 (3 if you didn't AT chants at all)

Ok noob question,how much AT would i need forthis spec :
Shield 50
Slash 39
Chants 48

Ajvar wrote:Ok noob question,how much AT would i need forthis spec :
Shield 50
Slash 39
Chants 48

Not possible even with full AT. That spec requires 249 extra points and you can only get 154 if you fully AT both slash and chants.

Dang it ,thanks.
What do you guys think what would be better spec for a casual player both in rvr and pve:
Not sure what race to pick yet also hehe :
more defensive one:
29 slash
50 shield
48 chants
14 parry

or

more "standard" s/s one (if i remember correctly from my live toon)
39 slash
42 shield
48 chants
15 parry

Help a noob out

Will you AT or not? Do you have friends to RvR with? Planning to solo or join pugs? What kind of PvE, solo farming or raids?

42 shield minimum, 45 chant minimum. The rest is up to you. 50 shield is good only for raids imo (dragon/legion etc). For RvR it's overkill and you need to sacrifice better chants or melee styles/weapon skill for 4% more block chance. 44 thrust is the best option for pvp but it sucks for pve. If you wanna go for slash you need the back snare from 2H aswell. For solo RvR or PvE grinding, high parry is great. You can try something like 42 shield, 45-46 chant, 29-39 slash, rest parry.

AT is kinda fotm phrase and everyone is saying they gonna go for it but i don't think people remember how slow and hard is to xp like that.

I didn't plan to AT because i don't think pally without his chants would be very popular for grouping.
As i said i am a casual player,not aiming for hardcore 8v8 (i wouldn't be playing a pally if i did) ,pvp will be mostly small scale skirmishes and occasionally soloing.
And i would like to participate in raids and be able to farm diamonds and stuff like that .

Im thinking between Higlander/Briton with the 39/48/42 spec i mentioned few posts earlier.

Cheers for the input.

With full AT in slash and no AT in chants you could spec 34 slash 50 shield 48 chants 4 parry (or 32 crush and 2 parry until you can afford a respec stone). Should be ok. Main job of pala never was and never will be damage but getting aggro, guarding and running chants and 30+ weapon is good enough for that.

Even for full PvE, 50 shield is waste of points unless you will be the guardbot for another pala 7/24. You can have %7,5 more dmg avoidance with the same amount of points.

50 shield, 4 parry => +25% block, +2% parry (27 total)
42 shield, 27 parry => +21% block, +13,5% parry (34,5 total)