As a Paladin: Speedrunning and Enmity

[SavageWolf]

Hello!

Recently, I've geared up to the point where tanking a speedrun is cheese on both my Paladin and Warrior (mitigation wise).

I main a Paladin (or I used to until recently) because I love the look, I'd much rather main him because of that. I leveled up Warrior recently to begin working on the Bear mount, and have found that I enjoy Warrior more simply because the insane amount of agro generation they have.

Let's take Brayflox HM for example. I can pull everything on the first big pull, and maintain agro over any Black Mage spamming Flare on my Warrior. Steel Cyclone and Overpower paired with Bloodbath healing agro just win the day.

On my Paladin, I find that losing agro in the same situation is far too easy. I can just barely keep the mobs on me! Flash only seems to do so much, and what I've found works best is to rotate each move of my Halone combo on monster after monster (Fast Blade + Savage Blade mob A, Halone Mob B, Fast/Savage Mob C, Halone Mob D and so on).

Is that really the only way? Or am I completely missing something huge here? Is my Warrior just that much better at maintaining group agro?

I want to play my Paladin more, but he just pales in comparison I hate it.

How do you other Paladins do it?

PS! I should add that I am using Circle of Scorn either before or after the first Flash, and am using it on cooldown during a pull.

[Xystic]

You should try the tanking forums. You may get some better answers there. There are quite a handful of knowledgeable tanks who hover in that thread.

[Remn]

I speed run bray HM all the time with my PLD. I never have problem holding hate against i110 Weapon BLM and all I do is spam flash. (just have to make sure that every time you flash it hit all the mob, not just partial of the group)
when you holding 10+mob it useless to rotate you RoH combo, only thing you can count on is flash (Riot combo).

[SavageWolf]

I speed run bray HM all the time with my PLD. I never have problem holding hate against i110 Weapon BLM and all I do is spam flash. (just have to make sure that every time you flash it hit all the mob, not just partial of the group)
when you holding 5+mob it useless to rotate you RoH combo, only thing you can count on is flash (Riot combo).

Have you tried playing a similarly geared Warrior though? The difference in agro (looking at the party window agro bars) is just crazy... That's basically what I'm getting at. I am just trying to find out if I'm missing something stupidly obvious on my Paladin.

[Remn]

BB combo has more potency than RoH therefore, Create more Hate. the only thing that RoH has over BB is the Str debuff.

[Vactus]

BB combo has more potency than RoH therefore, Create more Hate. the only thing that RoH has over BB is the Str debuff.

More potency but WAR are hit with a higher damage down with Defiance up. Gear being equal, a PLD will out threat a WAR on a ST. We have less damage on our combo and we SHOULD be using our SE/SP combos as well. The math has been done on the tank forums if you want to check. Pretty much anything by Kitru will have the math for it.

[JayCommon]

I'm not very knowledgable with tanking in this game. I'm only level 40 on my PLD and my MRD was only leveled to get a DRG, but I thought this was done purposely to add disparity between the two tanking options so both are viable in end-game? (Could be totally wrong here...)

I thought WAR was supposed to be superior in group agro and PLD was superior in single-target agro?

All I know it is a total b*tch trying to keep group agro on more than 2 mobs in low-level dungeons when the DPS are level synced. I don't have a problem tabbing through monsters, but like you said Flash only works so well (not well at all). What I end up doing is very similar to what you do. Use the different hate generation moves on different mobs so they don't just decide to mosey off towards the healer or the BLM or the BRD.

[Souljacker]

I thought this was done purposely to add disparity between the two tanking options so both are viable in end-game? (Could be totally wrong here...)

I thought WAR was supposed to be superior in group agro and PLD was superior in single-target agro?

Tanks should be interchangeable with the only differences being abilities and playstyle - but one should absolutely never be better than another at single target versus multiple target tanking. I don't see how they would even make that possible, since the tank that is good at multiple target threat won't be any worse at single target threat... but the single target tank will have a LOT of trouble when leveling, gearing, etc. when they are the only tank in the party.

People who play tanks should learn to play them well and with skill, but SE could facilitate the process a little better by making both tank classes a little more equal. It *does* seem like warriors have a much easier time of it than paladins with multiple targets.

[SavageWolf]

snip

Yeah, I agree that they should be just a little bit more equal. I generally have been queuing up as my WAR just because I have a much easier time during a speedrun than I do on my Paladin. I guess it really DOES just boil down to WAR vs PLD AoE agro... I hope that there are a couple of tiny changes in the future for the people who love playing as BOTH tanks.

[Ryans]

Tanks should be interchangeable with the only differences being abilities and playstyle - but one should absolutely never be better than another at single target versus multiple target tanking. I don't see how they would even make that possible, since the tank that is good at multiple target threat won't be any worse at single target threat... but the single target tank will have a LOT of trouble when leveling, gearing, etc. when they are the only tank in the party.

People who play tanks should learn to play them well and with skill, but SE could facilitate the process a little better by making both tank classes a little more equal. It *does* seem like warriors have a much easier time of it than paladins with multiple targets.

I think you seem to be missing the points that actually matters.
1) This is a PvE-centric game
2) Tanks' threat only matters compared to Healer and DD threat
3) Threat generation isn't the only factor in determining the worth of a tank

Warrior has better AOE threat generation, period. Even a warrior using flash gets more threat than a paladin using flash since it's based on attack power and warrior has berserk.

Paladin has a shit-ton of defensive cooldowns making them a lot more predictable in the damage taken category. They can go for over an entire minute with at least one defense buff up at all times. Warrior has more sporadic defense buffs which can be very effective if the player knows the perfect times to use them, but lets face it, not many actually count auto-attacks to know when things like double attacks are coming.

To wrap it up, they are balanced to point where you want both of them. Luckily there are two tank spots in content where skill matters.