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So I'm probably going to hit 50 on my PLD tonight assuming I get to play for at a couple hours. And since I don't have any plans for any festivities this evening, a couple hours of playtime should be easy to achieve. So anyway, I have a few questions about optimizing my paladin in the non gear-related sense. What cross-class skills do you recommend? An FC mate of mine said Fracture, Bloodbath, Foresight, Stoneskin, and Protect are what he recommends. Are there any that work better to replace one of those? What about macros, are there any I need to use to be a more effective tank? Any other tips and tricks are appreciated.
It depends on your group.
For the average party:
Raise/Protect/stoneskin all come in handy but you honestly might not need/use any of them if you have good healers.
Ive had sch's tell me 'not a whm, but your a pld, why dont you cast protect'. Seems silly for a tank to waste a slot on it, but i guess it was the sch preference to be a DD, and not a healer.
For most end game stuff you might not even use any of those 3, again it all depends on what you are doing and if you will need them. Stoneskin is nice for a pld, but protect and raise are a waste for a lot of content.
For the average party:
Raise/Protect/stoneskin all come in handy but you honestly might not need/use any of them if you have good healers.
Ive had sch's tell me 'not a whm, but your a pld, why dont you cast protect'. Seems silly for a tank to waste a slot on it, but i guess it was the sch preference to be a DD, and not a healer.
For most end game stuff you might not even use any of those 3, again it all depends on what you are doing and if you will need them. Stoneskin is nice for a pld, but protect and raise are a waste for a lot of content.
Protect you shouldnt need in a group, you have a mage for that. Never EVER should the paladin be the one who has to buff.
Stoneskin can help you if the mage doesnt have it, or for times where you have some time to kill or can cast it, 10% of HP is more than a cure recovers.
Fracture doesnt combo with anything and 100 base potency is rubbish even with the DoT it gives. Better off using any other move during the 2,5 seconds downtime to do more damage or keep your 3-move rotation going.
Foresight is good for some extra defense
Bloodbath never really did much for me, does very little healing, but it doesnt really hurt i suppose.
Cure, recovers terrible amounts, but if you need it to survive once a healer goes down so the DPS can keep poking it a little longer, why not.
Mercy Stroke I never really used, but i hear it can definitely come in handy sometimes for some self-heals.
Raise we cannot use in battle, so it's instantly useless. But it could be nice to keep people from having to run back after a fight if the running back wont take less than a minute :/
There's simply not an aweful lot of things that are good for a Paladin to set.
If anything, set Stoneskin and Foresight at all times. The other three that you want to pick are optional at best. Wont make or break anything.
Edited, Dec 31st 2013 5:44pm by KojiroSoma
Stoneskin can help you if the mage doesnt have it, or for times where you have some time to kill or can cast it, 10% of HP is more than a cure recovers.
Fracture doesnt combo with anything and 100 base potency is rubbish even with the DoT it gives. Better off using any other move during the 2,5 seconds downtime to do more damage or keep your 3-move rotation going.
Foresight is good for some extra defense
Bloodbath never really did much for me, does very little healing, but it doesnt really hurt i suppose.
Cure, recovers terrible amounts, but if you need it to survive once a healer goes down so the DPS can keep poking it a little longer, why not.
Mercy Stroke I never really used, but i hear it can definitely come in handy sometimes for some self-heals.
Raise we cannot use in battle, so it's instantly useless. But it could be nice to keep people from having to run back after a fight if the running back wont take less than a minute :/
There's simply not an aweful lot of things that are good for a Paladin to set.
If anything, set Stoneskin and Foresight at all times. The other three that you want to pick are optional at best. Wont make or break anything.
Edited, Dec 31st 2013 5:44pm by KojiroSoma
-REDACTED-
Scholar
1,339 posts
Foresight, Raise, Stoneskin, Fracture, and whatever you choose for the 5th (I use Bloodbath just for something else to weave between GCDs).
Fracture's for raising your personal damage contribution over the course of boss fights once you know you're not going to lose hate, and that you can manage the TP. It's not fantastic, but it's something else to do once you're more comfortable in the role.
Foresight's more for stacking with Bulwark, and makes a decent mitigation cooldown.
Raise's for the times a healer derps and you don't feel like waiting on them to run back.
Stoneskin's fairly invaluable. Right before and after Titan Geocrushes, during Garuda's Mistral Shriek, throwing it on your tank partner on ADS when you're waiting on stacks to wear off, putting up during Ifrit rushes, etc. The larger your health pool, the bigger bang for the buck. It's basically HP+10% when your WHM isn't already throwing it on you.
Fracture's for raising your personal damage contribution over the course of boss fights once you know you're not going to lose hate, and that you can manage the TP. It's not fantastic, but it's something else to do once you're more comfortable in the role.
Foresight's more for stacking with Bulwark, and makes a decent mitigation cooldown.
Raise's for the times a healer derps and you don't feel like waiting on them to run back.
Stoneskin's fairly invaluable. Right before and after Titan Geocrushes, during Garuda's Mistral Shriek, throwing it on your tank partner on ADS when you're waiting on stacks to wear off, putting up during Ifrit rushes, etc. The larger your health pool, the bigger bang for the buck. It's basically HP+10% when your WHM isn't already throwing it on you.
Ok, what about macros?
Foresight is really the only cross class skill worth having equipped. Truth be told when it all boils down pld is kind of a boring job skill wise anything you add is just wasting space. I would much rather use mp for flash then cure. Anything you are thanking where you are in desperate need of healing your cure is not going to help you just a waste. Someone mentioned ss the offtank during ads, or group has plds on silence rotation so not smart to cast ss then try to pop sw to stop high voltage.
Only skills I use are
Provoke, you can make a macro of this if not using vent
Spirits within make a macro of this if you are on rotation
Rampart
Foresight
Bulwark
Sentinel
Shield lob
Circle of scorn
Fight or flight
RoH rotation never make a macro of this
Hollowed ground
Then depending on what you are fighting shield bash our tempered will if you find the knock back annoying like in ulitma.
With that as a pld you can tank anything, anything else just gets in the way
Edited, Dec 31st 2013 1:57pm by domice
Only skills I use are
Provoke, you can make a macro of this if not using vent
Spirits within make a macro of this if you are on rotation
Rampart
Foresight
Bulwark
Sentinel
Shield lob
Circle of scorn
Fight or flight
RoH rotation never make a macro of this
Hollowed ground
Then depending on what you are fighting shield bash our tempered will if you find the knock back annoying like in ulitma.
With that as a pld you can tank anything, anything else just gets in the way
Edited, Dec 31st 2013 1:57pm by domice
Fracture, Bloodbath, Foresight, Mercy Stroke and Stoneskin are ideal.
Fracture is good dps, and it's nice to toss up at the beginning and near the end of FoF, since the +%dmg adds to Fracture even after the buff wears off.
Foresight, as noted above, combo's great with Bulwark for a solid tankiness boost.
Bloodbath isn't much, but it'll heal about 1200-1500 life or so over the course of it's duration. This is especially nice if you're in a DPS role at the time, since you can basically shrug off most unavoidable aoe damage, giving your healers more time to take care of others.
Mercy Stroke is basically free off-GCD damage. Use it with Bloodbath and FoF for a 260 potency attack that heals you for up to 100 life.
Stoneskin gives you a use for your mana besides Flash. Throwing it on the other tank in multi-tank fights is a great way to take stress off of healers and can save lives. It makes stuff like Ultima Weapon hard mode a lot easier, since 10% of a tanks life at that point is anywhere from 550 to 800 life, depending on gear and job.
Part of the issue is, the CNJ skills really don't do much. If you have a healer in your party, and let's be honest, if you're doing anything besides a FATE party then you do, they're better off doing this. WHM protect is flat out better, and a SCH is better off taking and using Protect than you are. Cure does diddly at 50; Stoneskin is a much better use of mana and time. Raise is only out of combat, and it's likely that if you need it after a fight is over then your allies are better releasing and running back. You can't use Cleric Stance, so Stoneskin is really the only choice you have. Luckily it's a good one.
Meanwhile, on the MRD side, everything but Skull Sunder has a use, so your options there are obvious.
Fracture is good dps, and it's nice to toss up at the beginning and near the end of FoF, since the +%dmg adds to Fracture even after the buff wears off.
Foresight, as noted above, combo's great with Bulwark for a solid tankiness boost.
Bloodbath isn't much, but it'll heal about 1200-1500 life or so over the course of it's duration. This is especially nice if you're in a DPS role at the time, since you can basically shrug off most unavoidable aoe damage, giving your healers more time to take care of others.
Mercy Stroke is basically free off-GCD damage. Use it with Bloodbath and FoF for a 260 potency attack that heals you for up to 100 life.
Stoneskin gives you a use for your mana besides Flash. Throwing it on the other tank in multi-tank fights is a great way to take stress off of healers and can save lives. It makes stuff like Ultima Weapon hard mode a lot easier, since 10% of a tanks life at that point is anywhere from 550 to 800 life, depending on gear and job.
Part of the issue is, the CNJ skills really don't do much. If you have a healer in your party, and let's be honest, if you're doing anything besides a FATE party then you do, they're better off doing this. WHM protect is flat out better, and a SCH is better off taking and using Protect than you are. Cure does diddly at 50; Stoneskin is a much better use of mana and time. Raise is only out of combat, and it's likely that if you need it after a fight is over then your allies are better releasing and running back. You can't use Cleric Stance, so Stoneskin is really the only choice you have. Luckily it's a good one.
Meanwhile, on the MRD side, everything but Skull Sunder has a use, so your options there are obvious.
-REDACTED-
Scholar
1,339 posts
Bigdaddyjug wrote:
Ok, what about macros?
Honestly? I don't use them (not on Paladin at least). The delay between GCDs as well as the virtually anything important being off the GCD and needing to be used on at certain times of the fights doesn't lend Paladin well to comboing.
Some people use a Shield Lob + marking macro, I just use keybinds on a shared hotbar that's hidden. Some macro Spirits Within, but having used it to interrupt since I got it (and for free threat/damage obviously) I just manually hit it. Same with CoScorn.
You may find some use in macros but personally with the nature of the job being just using the Rage combo and interweaving O-GCD cooldowns there's not really much *to* macro.
Sweet, I seem to have a karma troll. Wonder who has a burr up their butt....
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