Paladin classFollow

LOL raid gear? The only raid gear I have is so outta date it aint funny. Not time geared either. I do have my 1.5 tho

Yes a casual player can get his 1.5. Takes a LONG time but the raid mobs are fairly easy with 2 groups of lvl 75 toons.
Why is it so hard for you to believe that a casual player, and I mean I play a couple of hours 3 - 4 times a week, can generate a 75 toon with a 1.5? I dont have a bunch of toons. I have 2. A 75 pally and a 55 Wiz. Been playing 5 years.
The Guild I am in is lucky to have 3 groups on raid day.
Maybe I just play my toon to it's max.
'Course thats what brought up my original complaint about not being able to really do damage to a mob. I am normally the one in the group that is supposed to kill the mob. My normal group is me a 75 drood and a 75 cleric. We came up together

Pallys are still a perfectly capable class. The trick is that your role does sorta change as you level. This is *not* a function of expansion, but level. Unless you're talking about pre-PoP that is (when the 55 level restriction on paci actually started to be a major problem).

What we got in trade was AE heals. We go from being pullers to being essential for *raids*. For those of us who remember the days of raiding back then, this is incredibly welcome. It meant that we were a critical piece to dealing with those encounters with AE damage (which back in the day was pretty much all raid targets). As SOE made raid targets/events more complex, our role defined even more. The offtank became a necessary component to handling those events, and paladins are arguably the best by far at this job. Low dps means we don't cost much in terms of damage to main target. Snap agro means we can pick up those spawns during raid scripts that will wipe groups fast if not handled. Self healing (and potential for reduced damage to raid spawns via stuns) means we can survive longer with less help then any other class (which is the whole point of an offtank). Oh... And we can still use our AE heals to help keep our group alive during the conflict (assuming decent proximity).


As to grouping? We're still a well liked tank. Heck. For awhile there, warriors complained about paladins being too powerful for group tanking (and there's still some argument there since this *is* an expansion related issue). SOE's general method for upping content difficulty over the years has been to increase the dps of mobs. In some cases to a ridiculous degree. I remember when PoP first came out and people were practically crying about the damage rates. Very fast damage. Suddenly, the difference in total damage based on how quickly you could apply slow mattered far more then the difference in AC/HPs that your tank had. And how quickly your tank could generate agro determined how quickly your slower could slow/debuff the mob.

That factor is still in effect today. Put me and an identically leveled/AAd warrior side by side and I'll be able to perform group tanking duties just as well (and it's not like I have super gear atm). I've never had a group complain that I couldn't do my job. And at the end of the day, that's all that matters...


As to soloing? Find undead. Work your SUs up. There is appropriate leveled undead camps at every point along your progression. While the rest function has removed one of the bigger soloing advantages paladins had (compared to SKs and warriors at least), we're still pretty decent in that regard. While I certainly would like a few bumps in power, I have no *complaints* about the state of paladins right now.

Yeah, my hubby got his 1.5 and he couldn't be more casual (maybe 7-8 hours of playtime a week on average). He and I did about 85% of the quest, had guild groups for 2 more encounters and when he was ready he just hounded everyone in every chat channel he could find until we had enough to kill DDA (did this 3 times til we succeeded).

1.5 raids are pretty easy to pull together if you're persistant and prepared - lots of peeps willing to help.

Necro post warning: I've been away from my computer and EQ for several weeks, rate me down if you must for the necro post.

Casual player, play about 10 hours a month anymore - single grouped all but 3 fights in 5 epic 1.5s. They are not hard if two people splitting their attention between six characters can manage them. Cleric epic needed help on 2 fights (damn those fake wayfarers) and mage air elemental was insane hard. The fights I got help on really only needed one other healer and one outside tank.

personally i found that pally 1.5 was HARDER than the 2.0