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Does anyone else think it'll be MUCH better and easier for newbie Paladin's to have Shield Oath at 30 rather than Sword Oath?
Personally. I have a much easier time as a WAR keeping aggro early levels because I have OP and Flash. [Granted I am 24 MRD/WAR and 23 GLD/PLD]
but switched over to the former because I had a much easier time keeping up with aggro and struggled some as a GLD.
TLDR; Give Shield Oath @ 30.
Edit: This was moved quick lol.
I really don't think getting shield oath at the level you do is much of an issue. It would only affect a few dungeons, none of which I've had any major problems keeping aggro in.
I think the idea for getting sword oath so early was meant for tanks to be able to solo mobs better, and to demonstrate that an increase in damage does improve threat generation so you know you're not limited to shield oath to tank well.
I'm of the opinion that tanks should get their tanking stance at level 10 or lower but that's just me.
It's definitely easier having a warrior tank in Brayflox than a paladin. In brayflox, quarn, and cutter's cry, it is entirely plausible for a good dps to pull off of a mediocre paladin without even trying, especially if there is a gear difference.
But likewise, it's better to be a paladin than a warrior from level 24ish-30, since paladin has a three-hit combo while the warrior still wastes TP with their two-hit combo.
I'm glad that Paladin and Warrior have some differences when leveling, since it would be lame if they had the EXACT same mechanics at each level, but I do have my preferences.
It's really easy to keep agro on brayflox, you only need at least 2x Flash and give enmity skill to each monster.
For example, there's 3 monsters with mark 1,2 and none. Give mark 1 Fast Blade and Savage Blade, after that give mark 2 Rage of Halone, and then Fast Blade and Savage Blade to none mark.
At release shield oaths hate bonus barely kept it equal to sword oath and on single mobs it just didn't, pretty much the original concept was the hate bonus evened out the damage loss.
It was buffed later on to give more hate but if you couldn't keep agro at 30 as a paladin then you likely weren't going to keep it at 40 either.
I'm pretty sure defiance got an agro buff as well because I don't remember dps sitting at 5% of my agro in brayflox when I leveled war on my first toon, but my 2nd one once he hit 30 was untouchable for agro.
I guess what I'm saying is, get over it because it could be worse.
What do you use to gain enmity before lvl 30? Flash.
What do COMPETENT PLD use to gain enmity at lvl 50? Flash.
It's not the mechanics of the game, it's the players.
Learn to spam flash (it's VERY effective and virtually infinite) and you can pretty much keep anything as your agro.
What I don't get is that warriors have access to to THREE AoE enmity skills PLUS flash, while paladin has to go around spamming flash as its main group enmity tool alone until level 50, where it gets DoTFlash....
The only legitimate argument for allowing PLD access to Shield Oath at 30 instead of Sword Oath is for survivability rather than aggro (yes it helps with aggro, but not necessary since Flash remains unchanged between 30 and 40). The -20% damage reduction from Shield Oath balances out with WAR's +25% HP and +20% incoming heal strength with Defiance. Because of this, fundamentally, PLD is squishier than WAR from levels 30-39, and will require more healing overall. Due to this, it is more at risk of losing enmity to the healer during larger pulls (or the healer running out of MP if something goes wrong). The +enmity itself from Shield Oath is negligible since it only applies to attacks.
I'm not saying it's impossible or super unbalanced, plenty of people have gotten through it. I'm just pointing out that due to the current design, the PLD/healer combo will have to work a lot harder than the WAR/healer combo from levels 30-39 to achieve the same result.