Using Stoneskin as a paladin, should you have it?

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yes you should have it

instead of say 300 hp form cure you will be stopping 600 once you hit 6k health


that's not to say I use it a lot or anything but it is helpful to have

It isn't great, but there's no reason not to grab it. Most of the cross-class skills for PLD are awful.

There are a number of occasions where your healer will find themselves moving too, that 600 hp wall can be the diff between dying and not. Couple the SS barrier with sentinel and your healer has a few extra seconds to get re-situated.

Stoneskin is excellent and is usable waaaay more often than people think.

Probably the best cross-class skill available to PLD.

Why not have it? We have 3 cross class skills are don't fall into the "situational at best but really mostly useless" category.

It can be a great boon proving you know when to use it. Here are some scenarios I utilize Stoneskin.

-When Titan/Ifrit Jumps
-When Garuda is traveling to you after warping
-Casting on yourself and the other tank when switching during Turn 2 of Coil
-Off Tank throwing it up on everyone after the wyverns in Turn 5 of Coil, making the first Fireball more sustainable.
-MT/OT throwing it up right before Twintania uses Death Sentence.

I still need to get this on my SCH for when I heal 4mans and feel like being lazy. :/

I hear you

Yes, you should have every sub class ability that is decent for your class. It takes leveling, but it is worth it. (There are few abilities out there like Awareness/Mantra/etc that arent worth the CC spots when compared to other abilities, but they're far and few in between).

yes. makes healers job easier during hard hitting boss fights (really helped with caduceus)

i think recommended for paladin cross class is: foresight, stoneskin, mercy stroke, fracture(?), bloodbath(?). (fracture and bloodbath are interchangeable i recall)

That's a good point!

Awesome point, Wonka! The cross class abilities are limited atm!

I have it, but hardly use it. Most DDs ride their enmity threshhold. If I stop my enmity combo to cast stoneskin, I'll lose hate. Any SCH worth their salt will use Stoneskin and Adlo-whatever to keep me pretty much perma stoneskin'd.

I'm glad I have it, but with a 2s cast time there aren't a lot of situations where I generally use it. Still, its probably our most powerful cross class skill (with how weak foresight is)

stoneskin for paladins = swiftcast for DoM

You need to have it and why not use it when you can easily recover mp from riot blade?

@zdub303; it takes 3 seconds for titan to cast his plumes and in that time he's NOT attacking you. Use that time to get rock hard! ;)

I'm a new paly and have thought about this alot. Stoneskin is a great skill for end game. My FCs ot is a warrior who currently caps around 8-9k hp. We all know warriors have mitigation issues and probably always will else what's the point of being a paladin? During coil the mt and ot have moments where they need to back up / wait for a small period of time. If the mt is a paly then casting stoneskin on a warrior would help a grap ton. Most end game warriors are 8-10k hp it seems to me that casting SK on them helps them mitigate 8-10k dmg. In my book that's huge not only in a oh shit situation, but a helping the healers conserve mana one.

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Originally Posted by SwordCoheir

It can be a great boon proving you know when to use it. Here are some scenarios I utilize Stoneskin.

-When Titan/Ifrit Jumps
-When Garuda is traveling to you after warping
-Casting on yourself and the other tank when switching during Turn 2 of Coil
-Off Tank throwing it up on everyone after the wyverns in Turn 5 of Coil, making the first Fireball more sustainable.
-MT/OT throwing it up right before Twintania uses Death Sentence.

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Pretty much those, and
- If you have a SCH in the Group ,and doesn´t have that Skill (happens often in DF Groups...),for example in AK. Casting that on the Wall on everyone or before big Pulls can help a little.

I currently use it after the tank swap on turn 2 so I don't pull threat off the other tank when he is trying to pick it up. It's also a decent little buff to help healing out a little bit. Not a lot, but it's better than doing nothing.

I help friends garuda farm in pugs and occasionally get terrible healers that panic when the adds come out. I'll generally pop a cd and start spamming stoneskin. It has saved my bacon a few times when one healer was trying to manage two tanks and HG wasn't available.

But yeah, pld's cross class selection is pretty awful but stoneskin is probably the second most important ability you can equip (after foresight) so even if PLD had a better selection, stoneskin is staying for a while.

I'd disagree that all of PLDs cross-class skills are a waste. I've done well without Stoneskin so far but would take WHM up 3 more levels to get it. Fracture seems to be a good complement to Circle of Scorn for DoT purposes and Mercy Stroke is really good when there isn't much time for Curing oneself.

They're not a waste, they just suck.

Tbh, I barely use fracture on WAR, let alone having ever considered it on PLD.

Logging in is hard, but I think the cross class I have sat is FS, BB, MS, SS, Raise. Having raise is just a courtesy, but the selection is that awful.

PLD cross skills are really bad, which might be to balance its already very good cooldowns it posseses natively.
The only true good one is stone skin, which is very useful due to the glut of MP Paladins tend to possess.

Stoneskin is awesome - I think people that think PLD is boring don't really see the broad spectrum of things you can do with Stone Skinning. People think that Stone Skin and Riot Blade are useless, then they are bored off-tanking in sword oath while taking aggro from the MT, while healer MP is drained from AoE damage to DPS chars . . . sigh.

My favorite Xclasses are Stone Skin, Cure, Foresight, Mercy Stroke, and Bloodbath. I just hook FoF into Fast Blade and BB into Savage, I have MStroke on my 2nd XHotBar (which has my AE stuff, namely Riot/Mercy), and Cure and Stone swap places between by 2 Xhotbars. Cure is by far my least used Xclass, as its hard to justify a 290pt cure over a 370-800 stoneskin...I mostly use it to troll my friends, just like our LB!

i've done fine without stoneskin, but as everyone else has said - it's useful in certain situations definitely. i don't think it's particularly needed though just because it i see it as situational. it's definitely better than most of the cross-class abilities for PLD, though

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Originally Posted by Vactus

I still need to get this on my SCH for when I heal 4mans and feel like being lazy. :/

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Best, Signature, Ever.

I always wondered how someone could manage to hit themselves while splitting wood, now I know, you have to be a complete moron with spaghetti arms.

The Warrior thing is just icing on the cake.

Just got Stoneskin last night, and actually used it in Coil too!

Helps to block some damage off the rather powerful Hood Swipe from Caduceus, and I try to time a Stoneskin on the Main Tank when trying Twintania (right before Death Sentence - eases a fair bit of pressure from the healer). I will probably try it against Titan HM some time soon too.

If the damage you are taking isn't above a certain % of your MaxHP you will not be cast interrupted. Hence, Stoneskin is particularly a very strong mitigation skill if used under the right circumstances, be it as the MT or the OT. And when you manage to cast a Stoneskin your next Stoneskin is almost guaranteed to cast as the barrier break and the insufficient damage to cause a chance in cast cancel.

Only problem people seem to have with Stoneskin is chain casting it while their threat generation suffers. This is why I and many other tanks have already suggested using Gryphonskin Accessories so you will pull ahead in threat and able to hardcast stoneskin when your group is in a bind. Double self cast Stoneskin before Rock Buster to Mountain Buster will almost always let you survive without self or external CD.

One thing people also fail to notice is that Stoneskin negates any application of debuff should the attack which cause the debuff fails to pierce the barrier.

So long as you have a lead in threat stone skin is an amazing tool for mitigation and it should be used to assist healers in tough situations.

You should be perfectly fine on threat to cast a single stone skin up every now and then.

Ran a DF AK when I was bored and the healer was pretty new and died on the last boss at 50%.

With the use of Stoneskin and cool downs you're pretty much self sufficient. (Might help that I'm fairly overgeared) but you keep that Stoneskin up and spam cure with convalescence during Catastrophe and you're golden.

Also on Turn 2 if you're not on silencing duty while tank switching it's always good to cast Stoneskin on the other tank when they've got hate. This will really help the healers and if timed right you can negate a stack debuff :)

I packed it with Death Sentence macro like :

5s to Death Sentence !!! <se.1><se.7><se.8>
/wait 2
/ac "Stoneskin" <me>

Need to warn the healers way before DS so they'll know when to top me up right after DS hit me :D