PLD abilities.

[Yorumi]

Alright, first Sword Oath, it might be augmented by some stats, still it has a potency of 50 and as the skill says "Increases the potency of auto-attacks by 50". And on top of that, it doesnt effect anything else at all while Darkside increases ALL dmg by 15%.

I don't know specifically for pld, but for dps classes auto attack generally accounts for around 15-20% of their total dps. I assume it's similar for pld. That means sword oath is basically a 15-20% dps boost. Remember pld has a fast auto attack so it adds up really quick.

Clemency, as i said before, while you're MT this skill cant be casted most oh the times since you get interrupted, and even if you're OT its your job most of the times to keep some people save from adds or something, not standing around healing. if a situation gets dangerous your ability to tank is of much more use than to heal.

you can generally get clemency off while being attacked. However it also shines when a boss goes to cast something. I use it to just help out the healers a bit most of the time. Boss does an aoe, cast clemency on either the target that needs it the most or the least likely to receive the first heal. Dps misses a dodge cast it, phase changes top people off. It doesn't make us a healer but it is pretty amazing having a heal that powerful that you can cast on anyone any time.

[Ronzeru]

Sounds more like Paladin is the only one that's the actual daddy of the tank. A solid tank, who doesn't try to be a dps, which in turn seems to be tempting players to try and sacrifice defensive capibilities for 'larger numbahz'. It's an actual tank's tank.

[Carstien]

Massive underestimation of sword oath made me judge this post before I had read it.

I was correct to have done that.

[Duelle]

Right now PLD feels just like he is the black sheep of tanks.

You won't hear me saying it often, but PLD is actually the perfect job. It's solidly designed and does what it needs to do in a straightforward fashion. So yeah, it's not even on the same planet as a black sheep job.

First: Sword oath: 50 + dmg to auto attacks? DRK get a 15% dmg buff. Drains MP? doesnt matter. blood price and syphon strike.

We have a good number of auto attacks + sword oath procs seeing that our swords have a higher swing speed than G-Axe and G-Sword.

AoE enmity: Flash spam is not very useful, makes monsters immune to blind + 0 DPS while DRK and WAR contribute to that too. Circle of Scorn might be okay but has a high cd with 25 sec.

This would be a problem if raids required a lot of AoE damage (read: lots of fights had a ton of adds).

Shieltron: Shouldnt only block physical. MP regen is pretty much useless since we have riot blade in our rotation.

Not a big deal since everything has auto attacks. The MP recovery means you regain MP faster and need to spam Riot Blade less.

Goring Blade: I dont even. a DoT with such low potency. Nothing else?

This is extra damage and is very easy to fit into our rotation.

Clemency: not a single situation where i should/could use this. way too high cast time, low heal amount.

That's because you're not a healer. You're a tank. This is for the offchance where you'll find someone near death and want to help out the healer, but it's not obligatory by any stretch of the imagination.

Royal Authority: Spices up rotation a bit. good when not MT/you shouldnt use halones.

Open with Halone to get aggro, then use this unless a) DPS go balls to the wall with cooldowns or b) STR Down effect from Halone is about to wear off.

[Khalithar]

They are well balanced. Never should you hear a paladin asking for goad.

Disagree. Doing my full rotation (i.e. keeping up my goring blade DoT and fracture and using RA while maintaining my RoH debuff) and maintaining it for a while on a single target with no breaks, I will eventually start to bottom out.

[Leon_Aerhart]

Disagree. Doing my full rotation (i.e. keeping up my goring blade DoT and fracture and using RA while maintaining my RoH debuff) and maintaining it for a while on a single target with no breaks, I will eventually start to bottom out.

Don't use Fracture and you'll do a lot better with TP. Pretty sure it's a DPS loss to try and work that into our rotation at level 60 anyway.

[Edewen]

Disagree. Doing my full rotation (i.e. keeping up my goring blade DoT and fracture and using RA while maintaining my RoH debuff) and maintaining it for a while on a single target with no breaks, I will eventually start to bottom out.

Yes. You can bottom out especially when using fracture ( pretty well known as a no no) . But you shouldn't. You have tools such as stoneskin and clemency you can rotate in to regenerate a bit of tp. And with that extra bit of healing you are preventing, a healer may be able to do a bit more dps and goad may be used on a class who can make more dps out of the extra tp. It is not about MY dps, it is about OUR dps. Just because paladins have heals in their toolbelt doesn't mean they aren't going to be a dps increase. You will definitely make your healers happy if you start giving them more time to dps.

[Yorumi]

Don't use Fracture and you'll do a lot better with TP. Pretty sure it's a DPS loss to try and work that into our rotation at level 60 anyway.

I don't have dps parses but people say shield swipe is a dps loss and it's 10 less potency than fracture. So i'm pretty confident fracture is too. Even if somehow it's not, 80 tp for 220 potency isn't worth it at all. So yeah you're right about it eating tp. Even though there's not much else I don't even keep it cross classed.

[Starbirth]

PLD is the Grand Daddy of tanks for 3.0 and every skill they got was a welcomed addition to their arsenal. Their rotation is far more interesting instead of being 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> repeat like it was in 2.0

PLD rotation is as follows

FoF/BB -> Enimty skill of your choice* -> Spirits Within -> Fast Blade -> CoS* -> Riot Blade -> Sheltron** -> Goring Blade -> Fast Blade -> Savage Blade -> RoH -> Fast Blade -> Savage Blade -> Royal Authority -> Repeat while using CoS/SW and Defensive CDs off GCD.

*If you used CoS as an opener your doing it wrong.
** If your still having trouble solidifying agro at this point throw out the Shield Swipe you get from Sheltron after Goring Blade and do this only at the start of the rotation. If thats still not enough then do RoH combo first instead of Goring.

[Icepick823]

I did a small test comparing my damage with sword oath and without it. Using nothing but RAx2 and GB combo, I was getting around 615 dps with sword oath, and around 515 dps without. That's around a 20% dps increase. SWord oath may not seem like much, but it's not something you can ignore.