Pally cross class

So I'm a 50 Pally looking to (hardcore) my tank!What's the best cross class skills to get!! Im having a blast lvling up marauder to see how the other half lives! So please let me know best for dungeons and PVP!! Thanks!

Stoneskin should be part of every pld toolkit for sure. It's saved me more times than I can count. Since it's based on a percentage of your max hp it only gets better as you get more gear.

I run stoneskin foresight bloodbath mercy stroke and the last I w/e u want. The 1st 4 are best for class and idk any other pld that don't have them

Stoneskin, Foresight, Mercy Stroke, Bloodbath

After that it doesn't really matter: Protect, Raise

1. Stoneskin - Far and away the absolutely most useful PLD cross class hands down. You can help healers when DPS are taking damage, you can drain your entire mana pool to give yourself a CD-like ability to mitigate damage by self casting, you can assist in recovery, you can cast it on your WAR friends for huge amounts of mitigation while OTing, etc. It is amazing and adds a nice little layer of depth to PLD.
2. Foresight - Another defensive CD, no matter how crappy it is, I usually pop with along with Awareness/Bulwark to combine those 3 into a passable CD (I know Bulwark is OK by itself, but those 3 together make using them a little more impactful)
3. Bloodbath - I use this on CD hooked into my FoF/Flast Blade macro. Nice to start a fight with some self-overhealing and a miniscule amount of mitigation.
4. Cure - I like having cure in my pocket for silly things like if I am standing somewhere I shouldn't be and take DoT dmg, or something like CT when I am doing a tower and taking damage from the AE.
5. Mercy Stroke/Protect - We're getting to the bottom of the barrel here. Mercy stroke OK for extra DPS, and when you actually get the last hit in and get a 1k+ heal it feel pretty good! Protect I have used rarely, in using protect on the party when we have more than 1 member who has died and been raised during a tough fight.

There are all my personal opinions, been through T4 in coil with my PLD.

So stoneskin even though it wont be nearly as effective as the mage casting it..... will it??

its good for when the mage cant keep it up all the time
say titan he turns to landslide, u can ss self to take the rock buster then CD for mountain buster

if im pld ot at ultima i can throw it on the mt as well, help the healers out

more places to use it just some ex. :D

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Originally Posted by jyates1007

So stoneskin even though it wont be nearly as effective as the mage casting it..... will it??

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It'll be the same effectiveness as a SCH casting it. The value of Stoneskin is based upon your max hp, and WHM only gets a stronger Stoneskin because of a trait that beefs it up to 18%. What's important to remember is that most healers aren't going to bother casting Stoneskin on you while you're in combat. It's just not cost or cast time effective. For a PLD, on the other hand, because Cure is so terrible, Stoneskin ends up being the most efficient spell for cast time and cost purposes.

As such, PLD has 2 reasons to use Stoneskin: it's just as effective as a SCH using it *and* it's more efficient for them to combat cast it than it is for a healer.

^^^^ That, succinct and correct.

Stoneskin is also great if you're OT and the MT is in danger or healers need to patch up other people. You can help prop the MT up with a Stoneskin (and yourself if needed) and ease a little pressure off the healers.

foresight, bloodbath, mercy stroke,Fracture, StoneSkin

These are 100% the best cross class for paladin

Speaking from the Warrior side, I agree with foresight bloodbath and Mercy Stroke. if you absolutely had to make room for another cross skill, id either take out Bloodbath or Mercy Stroke

Bloodbath- because this is based off damage (hence why its for Warriors). Any healing is good, but Paladins wouldnt benefit from it nearly as much as a Warrior would

Mercy Stroke- Kind of the same reason for Bloodbath. Mercy Stroke is good that it recovers 20% of max HP if it is the killing blow. Which means it needs to be critically timed, and do enough damage. Great for solo play, so-so in dungeons, and kinda garbage in raids. Still does decent instant damage, so its nice to have. But again, this is IN CASE you need to make room for another Cross Skill

I always have Stoneskin, Foresight, Bloodbath, Protect and Raise as my Cross Skills. I've never really seen a need to have Mercy Stroke and/or Fracture as the chances of me landing Mercy Stroke at the right time are slim to none and if you have either a MNK or DRG in your party they'll more than likely be using Fracture in their rotation.

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Originally Posted by Makendu

foresight, bloodbath, mercy stroke,Fracture, StoneSkin

These are 100% the best cross class for paladin

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These are the trufacts. Best of the worst.

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Originally Posted by Tyrial

I always have Stoneskin, Foresight, Bloodbath, Protect and Raise as my Cross Skills. I've never really seen a need to have Mercy Stroke and/or Fracture as the chances of me landing Mercy Stroke at the right time are slim to none and if you have either a MNK or DRG in your party they'll more than likely be using Fracture in their rotation.

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It's quite easy to land a Mercy stroke kill on an add in some fights, like the Magitek bits in Ultima. Free heal and if you miss the kill, free off GCD damage. Also your target can have multiple Fracture DoTs on it, someone else in the party using the ability won't impact you using it.

+ Stoneskin is by far the best PLD Cross Class Skill for reasons already stated above. You can increase your own survivability drastically with it, especially when casts are properly timed.
+ Foresight - the only other cross-class mitigation tool you can get. Pretty weak by itself versus one big hit, but adds up over time. I pop it alongside Awareness and Convalescence.
+ Bloodbath - can be effective at higher levels, even for PLD. Extra Undebuffable Healing.
+ Mercy Stroke - serves two purposes. (i) Allows you to tell when an enemy crosses a certain HP threshold (ii) Extra Spike damage, useful on Conflags and Gaols. Never rely on the heal when teamed.

For the 5th? Usually Cure or Protect.
Stoneskin beats Cure in nearly all possible endgame situations.... but there's a few points in tough fights where a Healer or SMN has enough time to raise someone but not to protect them.
I'd take Raise if you could cast it in-combat, but you can just skillswap outside combat anyway when needed.

You can also use stoneskin to save a recently raised party member (see titan). Healers have much better options than stoneskin most of the time but they can't always focus on the low HP member in the group.

Foresight, stoneskin and bloodbath. Stoneskin is great, foresight and bloodbath are ok... everything else is meh. Fracture is a TP eater and can cause issues on tank swap fights. Mercy stroke can't be used much but there are some fights where it gets lots of use (titan jails). Cure is /lol. Raise is only useful out of combat.

Not much for options really.

What kind of fights are people using Fracture in? Any prolonged fight I'm already short on TP after a few minutes. It seems very TP dependant in relation to its added DPS. I currently use Protect in my 5th slot but would love to change it to Fracture if it really makes sense.

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Originally Posted by SirTaint

What kind of fights are people using Fracture in? Any prolonged fight I'm already short on TP after a few minutes. It seems very TP dependant in relation to its added DPS. I currently use Protect in my 5th slot but would love to change it to Fracture if it really makes sense.

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It really doesn't grant much additional DPS and it's a considerable loss in both TP and enmity generation. I've never really found the tradeoff to be worth it... particularly since it interrupts your combos, is on the GCD and PLD already has a DoT.

If I'm pulling ahead in hate so much that I decide to interrupt my enmity combo, I'll either use Shield Swipe (to generate a bit more DPS and recover some TP) or spam Stoneskin (to mitigate a bit more incoming damage and recover some TP)!

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Originally Posted by Makendu

foresight, bloodbath, mercy stroke,Fracture, StoneSkin

These are 100% the best cross class for paladin

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This is what you want if you are going to be tanking coil.

Foresight - Not as good as Rampart but better than nothing. I use this together with Rampart in WPSRs
Bloodbath - always use this with Fight or Flight
Mercy stroke - macro it in with your Fast Blade
Fracture - I only use this in Coil or Titan X that requires a tank swap and I dont want to pull aggro from the other tank. Or even on T4 when I dont want to pull aggro off the dreadnaughts.
StoneSkin - I use this in Coil A LOT - On T1 Caduceus, I use this on myself while tanking the split snake when he has a lot of stacks and dps is on the other snake, it helps the healer. On T2, I use this on the other tank that is tanking ADS. Then he uses it on me when its my turn to tank. I also cast this on myself when tanking the tonberry king in WP right as hes casting Everybodys Grudge. Basically, if you want to Pally the right way, youre gonna have to level your cnj/whm to 34.