44 thrust, 42, shield, 46 chants, 3 parry. non AT.

What am i missing? why do people put so much emphasis on auto training a paladin?

if you go 44 thrust. there isnt much reason to AT. all you are missing is the last heal chant (maybe) and some parry.

if you go slash, you have a little more to gain out of it because you can potentially make use of 154 AT pts instead of only 77.

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hybrid specs benefit a lot from AT.
without AT, you cant get to 42 sheild/39 twohanded/29 slash/44 chants. you can get close, but you need to give up something.
however, the 39 twohanded style is borked, so that spec is butt on uthgard anyways.

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here is my argument FOR AT:
to AT a class takes a limited (albeit painful) investment of time. this pays off in a permanant benefit to your character. work 100% harder for a limited time, to gain a 2% improvement for infinite time = good choice. if you plan on keeping the toon for a long while, AT is worth it.

counter argument AGAINST AT:
level faster without AT, gain realm ranks sooner. you make up the 1-2% difference in overall potency in realm abilities (e.g. an extra level of mastery of parry makes up for those AT pts gained in parry).

closing argument for AT:
at some point, at much higher rrs, the time invested to gain an extra 1-2 rsp will balance out to the time it would have taken to AT. so in the end, at high rr, ATing is the best choice.

closign argument against AT:
by that point you are rr11, so who gives a little bunny that likes flowers.

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I ATed for a specific spec, then got burned when that spec sucked. I like having the extra pts in spend though. personally I end up tanking a lot in pve as a raid leader, so having extra parry helps.
for strict 8v8 play, parry is mostly a waste other than to parry a slam every now and then when someone gets annoyed with your guard. if you are comfortable with your spec and feel you dont need to AT, then dont AT. you will enjoy the benefits of gettign out into pvp a lot sooner.

excellent reply thank you very much! I have been fine tooth combing over my spec and all kind of implications that may arrise.

The pally will be rvr spec but regardless of that they still do exceptionally well as any kind of pve tank anyway. I am going thrust and the TA benefits me from 44/42/46/3 parry to 44/42/46/11. Were talking about a very very small parry chance that is aruably made redundant that it warrents 48 painfull levels of crap damage and down time. But thats just me.

ty againf r the excellent insight,

I'll be going saracen ofc to maximise on the op shield line.

when you respec you if not at in slash you ll have 12! points in slash 12!=12+11+10+9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1=78 points minus from what ever you calculated so you will not be able to make that spec . so you need at atleast at slash.
if you where talking on chants at its ok whatever you wrote above are correct. just makeing a notification.

Read this and you shouldnt have any questions about paladins thereafter:

viewtopic.php?f=60&t=24729