Solo dps for casual duo group

Hello everybody,

im writing you this missive to learn what is the better solo dps between a paladin and warrior.

I play with my gf, she is a conjurer we mainly duo about anything from fate to levequest. We sometimes do dungeons trough the story and so far we have tryed some with the glad and some other with marauder.

To say thing straight, we are noob and play casually, so no level 50 uber omniaxe/blade or vanguard armor for us.
I rad paladin got sword oath with is +20% damage, while warrior got a -25% damage buff. So can i assume that paladin do more damage to solo target than war ?

It's not quite that simple! Sword Oath isnt +20% damage, its basically "more powerful auto attacks". It's still good to use solo though. Paladins have a second skill called Shield Oath which reduces their damage by 20% in exchange for damage reduction and threat boosts.

Warriors only get the -20% damage when using Defiance, which is their tanking stance the same as Shield Oath, so in that sense they're similar to paladins - when not tanking Warriors just don't turn Defiance on and thus don't get any damage penalty.

When talking about solo damage, you're comparing a Paladin fighting in Sword Oath with a Warrior fighting without using Defiance. And in this situation the damage of both is fairly similar on single targets, with warrior pushing ahead very very slightly (mostly in part due to Maim, a skill which gives them 20% damage boost at all times if they keep it up, compared to the paladin's more infrequent damage buffs).

The one area where Warriors definitely do shine compared to Paladins is in AOE damage - Paladins get a single AOE DoT on a 30 second cooldown at 50 and otherwise have entirely single target damage. Warriors get Overpower early on and that at least lets them AOE somewhat.

My recommendation for the two of you duoing would probably be Warrior, in all honesty. With defiance turned off they do crank out a bit more dps than Paladins do, but it's not that much more. Currently most players prefer having Paladin tanks at the top end content due to better mitigation, but the developers are buffing Warriors in 2.1 so I wouldn't let that sway you.

Play whichever feels best really! Paladins are lithe and quick and have fast-animated darting attacks with sword and shield, Warriors are slow and heavy in feel but their attacks have a lot of weight and momentum behind them. Neither class does massively more damage than the other, so just go with whatever you prefer thematically.

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Originally Posted by Kraka

Hello everybody,

im writing you this missive to learn what is the better solo dps between a paladin and warrior.

I play with my gf, she is a conjurer we mainly duo about anything from fate to levequest. We sometimes do dungeons trough the story and so far we have tryed some with the glad and some other with marauder.

To say thing straight, we are noob and play casually, so no level 50 uber omniaxe/blade or vanguard armor for us.
I rad paladin got sword oath with is +20% damage, while warrior got a -25% damage buff. So can i assume that paladin do more damage to solo target than war ?

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Warriors do more damage. By a little on single targets, by a lot on multi.

Marauder would probably do a better job for you for anything but dungeons, unless you're really doing leves above your level or fighting though stuff.
Switch to warrior and turn on Defiance for FATE boss.

Your damage is completely irrelevant for leveling process. No quest requires you to farm hard something or kill more than 12 mobs. You can play what you want. You don't need AOE dps in leveling, so warrior have no real advantage over paladin. Plus paladin can spam sash on fates and take gold medal for it.

Depends on your playstyle as a tank really... do you prefer being more reactive and risky (Warrior) or more proactive and secure (Paladin)?

In any sort of content short of HM Titan, both will be able to survive, but Paladin will take damage slowly whereas Warrior will take it more quickly but be able to self-heal a large portion of it. As others have mentioned above, there is little difference between the single-target DPS of Paladin and Warrior. Warrior has the potential to do a lot more AoE damage via spamming Overpower, but doing so will make you run out of TP quite quickly so it's only useful on very short encounters. (Though in all honestly, if you want AoE damage you'd probably be better off making the WHM switch to Cleric Stance and spam "Holy"... both Paladin and Warrior can hold AoE hate quite well!)

One thing to note is that if you're taking Warrior up, you'll likely want to level up quite a bit for cross-class skills (PGL to 42, and GLD to 22 / 34). Whereas Paladin won't need nearly as much investment (MRD to 8 / 26) since all the Conjurer cross-class skills will already be handled by your WHM!

what do you call "Sash" of the paladin ?

As you said if damage is irrelevant i will probably go with more utility, maybe paladin for the raise spell.

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Originally Posted by Kraka

what do you call "Sash" of the paladin ?

As you said if damage is irrelevant i will probably go with more utility, maybe paladin for the raise spell.

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Flash :) Paladin for now is lot more tanky than war. It will come handy in instances.

oki thank you, its the blind spell + aggro.

Ok thank you everybody : )

I find warrior a lot more fun to play, especially with a pocket healer.

However, Defiance does not reduce damage taken. It gives a bonus to HP and decreases damage dealt by the warrior. The trade-off is the ability to gain stacks of Wrath, which increase healing received and crit, and well as the ability to spend those stacks on other abilities.