Paladin vs Gladiator, 30-40

[JarinArenos]

DISCLAIMER: I know that once I pick up Shield Oath these questions go out the window; this applies only to tanking level 30-40.

I just picked up the Paladin soul and I'm wondering... is it really worth it to use it right now? All I'm getting is Sword Oath, while losing Featherfoot, Keen Flurry, and Second Wind from pugilist and lancer. That's a lot of nice toys to trade off for some auto attack and a few stat points. Am I overlooking something here? It almost seems like I should run Paladin solo and continue tanking as Gladiator for a bit.

[Kirinichibon]

I just went through these levels as PLD. Your mitigation will be fine no matter what. I had plenty (often too many) cooldown skills to manage. The challenge was threat. Sword Oath helps that a bit, and you need all that you can get as DPS start getting better damage skills in their 30s and WHM gets Cure2.

[Ooshima]

Those stat points are more worth than 2nd wind/featherfoot/keen flurry

[Delorean]

Well honestly, your job is to survive as a tank. and in low level content, the best stat you can lend to that cause is vitality.

i know, it's lame and stuff, but you're gonna be glad when you got that little bit more hp you might die without. as a healer, it's hard to imagine something more frustrating than having a tank whose health just spikes half back and forth back and forth every time they get healed and it's so bad that you can't even heal someone else because they might die.

I'd recommend just staying PLD

Rampart and Convalesence are very adequate for lower level content.

[Bardo]

Keen Flurry - 40% chance to parry for ~20% damage reduction is only an ~8% damage reduction while it's up. ~20% uptime for an average total of 1.6% damage reduction.
Featherfoot - 15% chance to dodge, but a lot of boss attacks can't be dodged so this is a lot less useful than it appears on the surface.
Second Wind - heals for barely more than casting cure on yourself, but with a 2 minute recast.

The cross class skills really don't do a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.

Main stats are king.
Ditch the cross class, turn on Sword Oath, and get to 40 as fast as you can.

[Sisqi]

Keen Flurry - 40% chance to parry for ~20% damage reduction is only an ~8% damage reduction while it's up. ~20% uptime for an average total of 1.6% damage reduction.
Featherfoot - 15% chance to dodge, but a lot of boss attacks can't be dodged so this is a lot less useful than it appears on the surface.
Second Wind - heals for barely more than casting cure on yourself, but with a 2 minute recast.

Yeah, no kidding. Not only are those skills kinda useless for a sponge tank by design, on the journey to 30 GLA I have hardly suffered from lack of damage mitigation. Parry, evasion, and a terrible cure are really rather pointless. I've been using Straight Shot, Raging Strikes, Fracture, Bloodbath, and Foresight. But often I'm so focused on keeping enmity that its just flash/shield lob/halone combo spam. Like yesterday, totally forgot to use Fracture all freaking day. Whoops. Planning on unlocking PLD today, looking forward it!

[SeraviEdalborez]

"All I'm getting is Sword Oath"

As if Sword Oath sucks?

[JarinArenos]

"All I'm getting is Sword Oath"

As if Sword Oath sucks?

To be fair, Sword Oath is FAR better than it sounds on paper. Having tanked through Longstop a few times now... yeah, it's a massive difference. So while a cursory glance might suggest that there's an unfortunate tradeoff, experience states that Paladin outclasses Gladiator handily, even if it loses access to a few toys.

[Kitru]

To be fair, Sword Oath is FAR better than it sounds on paper.

Sword Oath is actually *amazing* on paper, just like it is in game; it's a DPS increase roughly on par with Maim for WARs (50 extra pot per hit; at 2.2 attack speed, that's 56.8 pot/GCD; a PLD will "normally" put out ~305, so it's just under a 20% bonus). A more apt way to say what you're aiming to here is that it is better than it sounds on the tooltip.

[reckless76]

I dinged 30 on my Gladiator this last weekend and found myself asking the same question. I decided though that those "few stat points" were actually a lot of stat points, (a gain of 5 -12 across the board, when current gear upgrades are a boost of 1 - 2 points over previous) and went paladin. I've run Brayflox several times and haven't felt lacking.