If Paladin is "specialized in defense" shouldn't its defense be better always?

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Fight or Flight is a 20s duration on a 90s cooldown. The DRK can keep DarkSide running the entire time.

It is also 30%. Its also 30 seconds not 20. That means you can use it and do other things like heal and use it for damage when your doing damage. That is why its good for a Paladin because paladins can do other things that other tanks cannot, like cast clemency for healing. So they have their damage when they need it.

Maim can also be up 100% of the time, and its 20%.

Darkside is only 15%, and it has a VERY high cost attached to it.

Sorry. I am suprised you play a Paladin when you didn't even know about its duration.

Have you ever played Dark Knight? Keeping up Darkside 100% of the time is a non-issue.

When your mass pulling and spamming AOEs it is hard to keep it up. However, when your facing a mob one on one you can keep it up forever. You should know this. I mass pull entire rooms however.

I corrected my mistake shortly after. Watch Savage videos from DRK perspective. They don't drop Darkside, the cost isn't as high as you think, it played correctly.

Correct, but that isn't mass pulling. You can't Keep Dark up if your constantly pulling 6-7-9 monsters and moving room to room fast. It is very hard, and you get more damage just spamming your aoes without it since each tick takes 1/3 of an aoe. So its a 33% loss rather then 15%. However, if your one on one doing the former and keeping it up 100% of the time is better.

I agree, I think Clemency should be similar to Equilibrium in that it casts instantly but has a long cooldown.

No, that would kill the flavor of the class. It should be 2.5 second cast like other healing abilities.

[Adrasteia]

Darkside is only 15%, and it has a VERY high cost attached to it.

Have you ever played Dark Knight? Keeping up Darkside 100% of the time is a non-issue.

When your mass pulling and spamming AOEs it is hard to keep it up.

No. Unless I have a WHM chain-casting Holy, I can spam Abyssal Drain for the duration of Blood Price. It's certainly more potency-per-GCD (even if I do run out of mana) than Paladins, who can maintain a whopping 23.333~ AoE potency per GCD at the absolute maximum.

[Anger]

It is also 30%. Its also 30 seconds not 20. That means you can use it and do other things like heal and use it for damage when your doing damage. That is why its good for a Paladin because paladins can do other things that other tanks cannot, like cast clemency for healing. So they have their damage when they need it.

Maim can also be up 100% of the time, and its 20%.

Darkside is only 15%, and it has a VERY high cost attached to it.

Sorry. I am suprised you play a Paladin when you didn't even know about its duration.

I corrected my mistake shortly after. Watch Savage videos from DRK perspective. They don't drop Darkside, the cost isn't as high as you think, it played correctly.

No matter how you look at it, the DRK and WAR - played correctly - will always out do the Paladin in damage.

The Paladin will be beaten in defense as well in some cases too. That's what I'm trying to point out.

[Adrasteia]

I also want to address Clemency while we're here: it is useless outside of a few niche scenarios (mostly leveling dungeons, soloing, and some phase transitions). Unless you are in a highly coordinated group, healers with faster heals are likely going to bring your target to full before you have the opportunity to. Self-casting it as an ersatz defensive cooldown is an incredibly dicey proposition, given how uneven the spellcasting interrupt mechanic is. You may end up wasting several GCDs just to get one Clemency off. Again: give me Equilibrium any day of the week.

[Anger]

I also want to address Clemency while we're here: it is useless outside of a few niche scenarios (mostly leveling dungeons, soloing, and some phase transitions). Unless you are in a highly coordinated group, healers with faster heals are likely going to bring your target to full before you have the opportunity to. Self-casting it as an ersatz defensive cooldown an incredibly dicey proposition, given how uneven the spellcasting interrupt mechanic is. You may end up wasting several GCDs just to get one Clemency off. Again: give me Equilibrium any day of the week.

I agree, I think Clemency should be similar to Equilibrium in that it casts instantly but has a long cooldown.

[Launched]

There's a huge difference, considering the prevalence of Magic-based tankbusters. The difference between healing a DRK MT in A4 and a PLD MT in A4 is pretty well night-and-day, speaking from personal experience. I'd gladly toss Hallowed Ground in the garbage if it meant I could get 30% Magic DR every minute.

I've healed A4 too. There isn't much of a difference. Thanks to diminishing returns on mitigation, Shadow Wall and Dark Mind is 51% mitigation while Sentinel is 40% by itself. That doesn't make any difference to healing, and PLD can use Hallowed to completely mitigate one set of tankbusters.

[Anger]

Correct, but that isn't mass pulling. You can't Keep Dark up if your constantly pulling 6-7-9 monsters and moving room to room fast. It is very hard, and you get more damage just spamming your aoes without it since each tick takes 1/3 of an aoe. So its a 33% loss rather then 15%. However, if your one on one doing the former and keeping it up 100% of the time is better.

You didn't specify mass pulling and I don't think "mass pulling" is something we're really concerned about here. This is more directed towards Savage.

[Adrasteia]

I've healed A4 too. There isn't much of a difference. Thanks to diminishing returns on mitigation, Shadow Wall and Dark Mind is 51% mitigation while Sentinel is 40% by itself. That doesn't make any difference to healing, and PLD can use Hallowed to completely mitigate one set of tankbusters.

10% is a pretty significant extra piece of reduction (see: Storm's Path), especially in a fight with a tankbuster chaining into party-wide damage. The key point is that Dark Mind on its own is still 30%, and can be used every minute, whereas PLD has two consistent options to deal with Magic damage (one of which DRK has a literal clone of). This wouldn't be such a big deal if the majority of tankbusters in the content released thus far weren't Magic-based... but they are, and that leaves the tank with the on-demand Magic DR ahead in defensiveness.

[Anger]

I've healed A4 too. There isn't much of a difference. Thanks to diminishing returns on mitigation, Shadow Wall and Dark Mind is 51% mitigation while Sentinel is 40% by itself. That doesn't make any difference to healing, and PLD can use Hallowed to completely mitigate one set of tankbusters.

I'd still rather take the tank that can shrug off magic damage and annihilate a Paladin in DPS instead.

[Ercapote]

It's amusing that 100% of the time, if played correctly, they can "out damage" us, though.

this is exactly the current problem with Paladins and the reason why we have a threat with 300+ post discussing what's wrong with pally

(PALADIN MIGHTY DEFENSE IS NOT SO MIGHTY, don't tell me we have shield,hollowed ground more "cd" or just better defense) paladin has the same chances of survival than the other tanks, and the other tanks even better chance of survival since they have their defense stronger and on a "ready to use all the time" situation

all this has already been discussed on other threats and it's just clear as water that there's a huge balance issue when it comes paladin.