Cross class question

[Sapphidia]

Yeah, the popular consensus of Paladins is that you could pretty much run with zero Cross Class skills and be effective enough not to notice, but there's some okay ones:

Foresight, Bloodbath and Mercy Stroke are all free and off GCD. You can happily macro them into your other paladin abilities and get some performance increase without having to think about them.

Mercy Stroke is a little extra threat/damage sub 20%, and maaaaybe a heal on trash packs if you're super lucky to get the last hit in. Macro it to Fast Blade or something similar so it pops whenever possible.
Foresight is a pretty meh cooldown as 20% defense is only about 6% damage reduced but it's a cooldown. It's generally best used paired with another Paladin cooldown like Bulwark or Awareness (which it shares CD with) as this then amounts to a "proper cooldown".
Bloodbath is fairly meh but does help with sustain. As it has a 90 second CD the same as Fight or Flight, most Paladins macro it to FoF so they get popped together, as FoF boosts the heal potential of Bloodbath 30%.

Of those three, Foresight and Bloodbath are the easiest to get, Mercy Stroke is nice but not worth racing to 26 Marauder for until later, or if you plan to have a melee alt (as Mercy Stroke is used as a cross class by Monk/Dragoon). Skull sunder is worthless, and Fracture is generally a waste.

Fracture is rubbish for tanking, and poorish for DPS. It's a 220 Potency attack IF all six ticks of the dot tick. A halone combo is 150+200+260, which is an average of 203 potency each, so Fracture equates to a 17 potency DPS increase every 18 seconds over halone spam IF the dot ticks fully, and a DPS -loss- if it only ticks 5 or less times. It also costs 80 TP compared to 63 TP average for the Halone combo, so long term might even be a DPS loss on long fights. Plus it has no enmity modifier so it's a HUGE threat loss (the average threat potency of a Halone Combo is (150+600+1300)/3, which is 683 average threat per GCD compared to 220 for Fracture, so it's completely worthless for threat generation. Bottom Line : Fracture isnt worth a space on your bar in most cases, and is a tiny dps boost in very situational circumstances where threat is irrelevant. It's good for Monks and Dragoons who have low-potency attacks, but Paladin skills are so high potency the meagre 220 of Fracture makes it worthless. The only real viable use of Fracture is when forced to DPS in Sword Oath and you want to hold back on Halone-spam to not pull threat off the MT, as it's a dps increase if you throw it in between Fast/Riot spam.

As for the Conjurer options...

Protect is useless in a group, semi-okay for soloing. Both healer types will be casting this on people, but the extra defense isnt rubbish outside a group. You can't justify taking this for group content though.
Raise is totally useless outside of helping random people in Fates, as you can't cast it in combat and ressing someone in an instances is often slower than them releasing and running back without the 1 minute debuff.
Cure starts off as nice when levelling but by the time you're 50 it does so little healing that it's incredibly situational heal that needs you to spam it for ages to be noticeable, something you can't do in combat easily. At 50 my cure heals for about 210, and I'm toting close to 6000 health in a group. It's not useless but it wont make a huge difference. You can do things like Hallowed Ground yourself and spam cure to get a health buffer if all your healers die, or use Cure after a stoneskin if you arent topped off during times the boss is casting something.

Stoneskin IS worth it though, as although healers will have it and be casting a better one than yours, Stoneskin isnt all that great to cast in combat and often during the periods of "quiet" where a Paladin could cast it, a Healer will be doing something else, so don't let the argument "i don't take stoneskin because it's the healers job" sway you. There's plenty of situations where you get 3 seconds to fire off a self cast to give yourself that near 600 HP buffer before a boss returns to whacking you. It's not the best cross class in the world, but it can help. Is it worth rushing to 34 Conjurer for? Well... not really, unless you plan to have a White Mage, but it's very nice to have.

So TLDR: Foresight, Bloodbath are definites. Mercy Stroke and Stoneskin are great if you can level the classes to 26/34. Cure is garbage at 50 but still better than the other options. Fracture is mostly useless but can fill a slot when DPS/OTing until you get the other stuff. Raise and Protect are useless outside of solo play and should only ever be viewed as fillers.

[Maelwys]

So TLDR: Foresight, Bloodbath are definites. Mercy Stroke and Stoneskin are great if you can level the classes to 26/34. Cure is garbage at 50 but still better than the other options. Fracture is mostly useless but can fill a slot when DPS/OTing until you get the other stuff. Raise and Protect are useless outside of solo play and should only ever be viewed as fillers.

This.

I *love* Stoneskin, but you don't really need it.
You could get by on PLD without taking any cross class skills.

Stoneskin, Foresight and Bloodbath are the three that never leave my hotbar (Stoneskin taken as the first skill so that it's available for all level synching), and the last two are usually taken up by Cure and Mercy Stroke unless I'm soloing (when Protect gets swapped in once every 30 mins).

Cure is almost never used in group situations, but I've got it macroed in with Convalescence anyway (first button hit triggers Conv, 2nd hit triggers Cure) and it's occasionally handy to top yourself or an NPC up. At lower levels cure is better than Stoneskin but Stoneskin is FAR better mitigation at higher levels. Mercy Stroke is very tricky to time for the Cure unless you're fighting trash, but it's still a little extra damage that's off the GCD.

The big draw about Stoneskin is that once you learn the mechanics of a Boss you can use it as extra damage mitigation any time you have a big lead in enmity and you have a few seconds break in the fight - like when a Boss goes into ability animation lock. It's effectively 10% extra HP, and at High levels that will be an easy 500-600 damage buffer... whilst your group's healer can spam it on you (and the White Mage version is a 18% HP buffer instead of 10%) it's usually less effective use of MP for them than casting Cure. Your MP isn't used for anything except spamming Flash, so as long as hate is already firmly established you can generally cast Stoneskin mid-fight without fear of it being wasted.

[Jaminos]

Thanks Sapphidia for the breakdown. Very informative. I will eventually work on getting SS but leveling CONJ is not really something I was hoping to get back into after 15. But I will take any advantage I can get. I rather be the best tank I can be, rather than just the tank who is ok.