Paladin needs an enmity/potency buff.

[Giantbane]

The last few levels of 40-50 as PLD (remember those?) when you're out soloing the world really demonstrate that they don't deal quite enough damage on their own, imho.

is it really much worse than a WAR?

Maim doesn't provide a much bigger boost than sword oath does, but sword oath is up all the time, and maim must be maintained (not nearly as useful if there's 10s or so between enemies).
If you're going to use maim before 50, at *best* you're using the SP>BB combo. This has the exact same average potency as the halone combo. You also need to be grinding with very little down time to do this, otherwise you need to do only the SP combo to maintain maim, which is weaker than halone. Or worse there's 20s between enemies and you don't start the next fight with maim active.
After 45, spirits is available as a 300 pot strike every 30s. The War has brutal swing @ 100 potency every 20s and mercy swing @ 200 pot every 40s. Those seem pretty similar.
And berserk isn't much stronger than FoF, but it has that annoying pacification at the end which may or may not be active while fighting.

I don't see where the WAR would do much better at killing stuff @ the 40-50 range unless you're moving around a lot and not facing the target very well (possibly delaying auto attacks and sword oath damage).


I think PLD tends to feel really slow to level because they don't get most of their DPS boosts till much later (sword oath + spirits within), whereas the WAR gets a lot of their DPS much earlier (maim, brutal swing, mercy stroke).