Clive's Paladin Compiilation

[Galactimus]

Welcome to Clive's Paladin Compilation ♪
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Originally this thread was meant as a quick reply to one of the other topics here on the Tank forums. However, as the post I was typing grew in length (enormous length..) I realized this information may be put to better use as a standalone Thread instead. In general this will be a long post about all of the under-used options a Paladin has in their arsenal. Some abilities are woefully condemned by the masses or removed completely from their hot bars. Blasphemy! You may not agree with how useful I think these skills are but hopefully this topic can shine some light on what some of these tools are actually capable of; including their uses in our various raiding environments. Feel free to chime in with your own thoughts!



Background
~~~~~~~~
I chose Paladin at the launch of 2.0 and have never leveled another main job to either level cap. I've cleared all of my content as a Paladin; including A4S (in 3.0) when the Paladin meta considered us very poor raiders and DPS failures. Currently I'm on the second phase of A8S. After pouring almost three non-stop years into the job here are my thoughts! Enjoy ♪



Sorry for Interrupting ♥
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are only a few mobs you need to stun. Silence is whatever. Pacify doesn't work for the most part.

I think people greatly underestimate a Paladins ability to interrupt. Some of these gallant knights simply use Spirits Within and Shield Swipe as tools to increase their DPS and ignore the great interrupting potential they have. So one thing should be cleared up right away. Any enemy ability that can be interrupted can be interrupted by a Paladin.


Abilities can be Pacified, Magic can be Silenced, all of the above can be Stunned, and groups of abilities can be chain-stunned. If a mob has become Stun resistant you can Silence or Pacify. If you just used your Global Cooldown, and you won't be able to Stun an ability in time, you can Silence or Pacify. The sheer number of interrupts you can perform in 60 seconds is enormous. Not to mention that stunning every enemy in a group (for 6 seconds) is a pretty powerful defensive cool down on its own.


Thus, learning what enemy abilities can be Stunned, Silenced, and Pacified is an important part of playing Paladin. It is one of our great strengths and proper usage can greatly determine the outcome of battles; especially during very large pulls. A healer that doesn't have to stop to heal or esuna all of these silly mechanics is going to be able to dish out far more DPS. Melee DPS that don't have to dodge large point-blank AoE's over and over are going to deal far more DPS.


Heavy hitters like Banish III, Dragon's Voice, Ram's Voice, Baleful Roar, and Furore. All can be interrupted as often as you need. Black Nebula spam, Dragonsong spam, Leviathan Hysteria spam, Final Sting spam, Acidic Spray spam. There are so many enemies that are completely de-fanged by a Paladin simply due to your quantity (and quality) of interrupts. Even two enemies casting at the same time can be stopped with a GCD Stun and an OGCD Silence. Once you master the timing and rotations of every enemy (ie. Black Nebula is always cast right after Iron Swing) even the largest of train pulls can become a piece of cake for you and your healers. End-game raiding aside; what's not to love about the ability to prevent every {stoppable} dangerous mechanic in the game as often as you want?


However, Raiding is where the real pain lies and thankfully a Paladins ability to chain-stun mobs for 10 seconds really stands out. A 6 second stun-spam can be a real game changer when your progression party is just barely meeting DPS checks. And so comes the real test; figuring out where all of your interrupts can be used. This opens up many useful raiding scenarios; especially if your party is going for their first clear:


A3S - 9 second stun on Liquid Gaols prevents raid wipes
A3S - 6 second stuns + Silence on multiple Gear Lubricants prevents raid wipes
A4S - Stunning Manipulator legs.
A5S - 9 second stun on Snakes prevents poison mechanic
A6S - Silencing Mindblast
A6S - 6 second stuns on multiple Power Plasma's prevents raid wipes
A6S - 9 second stun on Gobtank prevents Vuln Up
A7S - 9 second stuns on True Heart prevents raid wipes.
A7S - Stunning the Sturmdolls Kugerblitz
A8S - TBD



Enter the Swordmage
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stoneskin and Clemency are on the verge of very situational use. Almost dead. Protect? Git gud you healers.

Ahhh, the ever controversial spell-casting side of Paladin. "Back in my day we used our MP bars for Flash! What are these newfangled casting bars you kids came up with!?" Clemency, Stoneskin, and Protect really got a bad reputation during 3.0 when Paladins in general were shunned for any reason people could think of. Did you know: 1 in 3 end-game raiders carried an "lolPLD Bible" in their pocket? [-From the book of "lolStatistics"] However, uncontrary to popular disbelief(¿) , these three spells do save lives and should be on every Paladins hotbar. People die in dungeons. People die in raids. And raid recovery is a part of raid life. Most first clears involve multiple deaths and split second wins. So let's look at these spells one at a time!


Protect
~~~~~
The main purpose of Protect on Paladin is to take some of the burden off of Healers in mechanic heavy fights. People die and they lose Protect when they are Raised. It's going to happen; a lot. The last phase of A4S for example has three party members blowing themselves up on purpose on Royal Pentacles, over and over, while Wirbelwind is resetting Healer MP to zero... multiple times. A Paladin can handle re-Protecting these party members to ease the healers work load and take needed strain off of their MP.


Simply put, sometimes your healers are just too overworked after a death has occurred, and its during these times when a quick Protect by a Paladin can prevent another raid-wide AoE attack from insta-killing members who just revived. Raid awareness and a quick Protect from a Paladin CAN save a life. Much like being able to Raise on Summoner, there's no reason Protect shouldn't be put to good use to help the healers when they need it.


Opportunity? Paladins have a far easier time re-Protecting people than Healers do. In general, a Paladin is usually main tanking with a clear view of the entire arena as well as a very easy rotation to perform. This provides a Paladin player with an extremely high level of raid awareness compared to a Healer that's trying to keep everyone alive while dancing in the center of the mechanical circus. As far as responsibilities go, a Paladin has all the time in the world to cast a quick Protect once or twice a fight.


Stoneskin
~~~~~~~
This one is more for low-level dungeons and end-game Tank Busters with a long-cast bar. If you have this spell set as your very first cross-class skill, you'll be able to use it in the lowest level dungeons even before a White Mage gets access to it. In the same vein as Clemency, this gives you access to a form of self-preservation at levels where Clemency isn't available. If your healer is killed by a mechanic, which happens far more than we'd like it to, Stoneskin spamming can keep you alive for that one extra minute your DPS need to bring the boss down.


For Tankbusters there are many situations where you have tons of time to either Stoneskin yourself, or Stoneskin your Offtank that is about to take a massive hit (or multiple massive hits.) This requires the Tankbuster to have a long cast bar. However, what's nice about this is that if you cast Stoneskin at the beginning of a long cast bar you then have enough time to cast Clemency right at the end, essentially letting you solo-mitigate and solo-heal yourself without any outside assistance. In some cases you no longer even need to use a cool down. It takes practice and memorization of a bosses exact timings, but these spells have some great uses. Some of the longer Tank Busters include:


Thordan EX - Holiest of Holy followed by Holy Bladedance
Sephiroth EX - Phase one fist mechanic
A1S - Hypercompressed Plasma
A3S - Drainage Tethers (casted during phase change downtime)
A8S - Perpetual Ray
etc etc.


Clemency
~~~~~~~
The most under-rated tool in the Paladin's kit, by far, multiplied by bacon. Clemency is a complete game changer to those utilizing the spell properly. If you aren't using this spell then there are times you could have saved your party from wiping and didn't. Progression parties are not flawless and Clemency prevents deaths during these learning stages. So what exactly is Clemency capable of? Well, at i240, with a best in slot build, your Clemency crits will be landing for roughly 14k HP with Convalescence. That's 50% of an i240 Paladins Health bar. Being able to cast the spell in 1.5 seconds allows for some pretty spectacular burst healing.


Healing yourself can give a dead Healer the time they need to get back up. It can save your Offtank during a Tankbuster or yourself if you didn't get topped off in time before Perpetual Ray. You can save a DPS with a nasty bleed tick, or yourself if you are in a raid jail with an add that isn't dying fast enough. These situations happen an outrageous amount during progression; if you are actually keeping an eye out for them. You can save more raid wipes then you think, especially with a bit of foresight. Plus, the spell also procs Divine Veil whenever you want it to ♪


Now, when you combine this spell with Convalescence and/or Hallowed Ground and then restore all of your mp back with Riot Blade spamming and Shelltron... your survivability becomes nothing short of exceptional. And in some fights, you even gain immortality. I've lost track of the number of times I've solo healed or completely solo'd the last 20% of a bosses health with Clemency. You can solo heal dungeon bosses where the Healer dies in the first 30 seconds. Solo heal the last 15% of the Arachne Eve spider in Weeping City. Your Paladin with 20k hp and no healers suddenly becomes a Paladin with 50k+ Hp. So not only can Clemency save lives in clutch moments it also allows for an extremely powerful "Self Preservation Mode."



I'll pull, you /push.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There is nothing that important for Tempered Will to block.

Tempered Will. Every patch brings a brand new round of experimentation! "Which abilities will it work on.. which abilities SHOULD it work on!" Constantly we are let down by many a mobs ability to knock us around while this skill is active. Nevertheless, there have been some fantastic uses to prevent yourself from being one-shot due to a mistake. It's definitely had its time to shine in a few difficult raids. Though it hasn't seen too much action in 3.3. Here's some uses you may not have known of:


In General - Tempered Will removes Slow and Bind. Removes Heavy from Beastmen.
Dungeons - Nothing major. Mostly just for fun. (Toads, Neverreap final boss, etc.)
Shiva EX - Prevents Arrow and Sword arena knockouts
Titan EX - Prevents Landslide arena knockouts
Leviathan EX - Prevents Slam arena knockouts
T5 - Prevents Divebomb knock back
T9 - Prevents Divebomb knock back
T9 - Prevents Heavensfall knock back
T10 - Prevents Wild Charge knock back
T13 - Prevents Divebomb knock back
A3S - Prevents Wash Away knock back (one less headless chicken for Digititis)
A6S - Prevents Ballistic Missile pinball chain reactions (mostly pre-nerf)

Note: Hallowed Ground also prevents many of these knock backs / knockouts as well



The Mother of Tethers, The Maker of Chains
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cover sucks. Period, don't even need talk about it.

A wise man once said... "Cover is amazing." -Clive Hawkins

Since the dawn of time man dreamt of being able to make their healer immune to most damage, for 10 seconds, at a distance of 10 yalms. They were simple folk with an odd measurement system, but you have to admire their determination in making their dreams a reality. Enemies that ignored the enmity table had free reign to stabflop and bashclank whomever they wishdesired. And were oftentimes accompanied by an unbreakable tether or target marker over a poor healers head. However, times have changed. All of these attacks can now be completely mitigated by tossing Cover on our battered Medica Mage. Allowing us to completely skip mechanics and even save party members who fail to do a mechanic correctly. Let us explore it's various uses while giving silent thanks to these unsung heroes of old!


Snowcloak - Fenrir. Healer doesn't hide behind the glacier in time. Fenrir freezes them, bites them, and the glacier explodes and kills them. Cover prevents all of this.

Hullbreaker Hard - Mistbeard. Healer fails to esuna their slow, gets blown up by the following AoE. Cover prevents this.


It's also useful when you don't realize an inexperienced healer had tossed regen on you in the middle of a large pull and mobs are now bee-lining straight for them. Cover also works when combined with Tempered Will to save the lives of those whom are... not salvageable. Absorbing their arena knockout for them without them even realizing you saved their life. Also, in rare cases where a healer accidentally let's you die, or fails to heal you properly, you may find yourself being raised by swiftcast to rejoin the fight. However, because your enmity was reset upon death, all of these hungry critters are now omnomming your squishy frienemy without mercy! Allow me to introduce "Cover". As a Paladin you have all the tools you need to completely turn this situation around. A quick Cover gives you 10 seconds to Provoke, Flash, Stunlock, and Hallowed your way to a close victory! Of course these things are all situational so let us apply Cover to the more hardcore raiding environment:


T13 - Earthshakers. Allows you to Cover melee DPS to completely ignore the mechanic
T13 - Holmgang absorbs Ahk Mourn. Cover prevents the auto attacks from killing him
A2S - Wave 8. Prevents Snipers from pounding away on your White Mage.
A5S - Hummelfaust beelines to White Mage as soon as he spawns. Cover.
A8S - Perpetual Ray. Holmgang absorbs the magic. Cover absorbs the physicals after.


There are other progression based situations where you need to Tank swap but Provoke won't be ready for another 5-10 seconds; Cover can buy you the time you need. Or if your Offtank dies during an add phase you can quickly take over by Covering the Healer that's next on the hate list until you acquire hate yourself. Though in most situations, Cover is just plain ol' awesome at saving a tragic Healer that decided to Medica spam right before a spawning group of adds.



Conclusion Sauce
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You crawled through the depths of Paladin despair and emerged upon this thread. Doubt turned into hope as your mind filled with the new and wondrous possibilities presented before you. "There is a use for my Paladin spells after all" the words filled your heart like the whispers of an angelic orchestra. You hear a knock on your pixelated door. it's Clive Hawkins; A Fortress of Knowledge delivering an extra large package of awesome sauce.


Or so the legend goes...

[Kitfox]

I would like to ask additional questions, mostly from raid perspective:

-How do you best utilize RoH debuff?
-How do you stance dance on PLD? When is it worth it?
-How do you tank in DPS stance as PLD? (What kind of rotation do you have to use? What do you have the OT do? Opener?)
-How do you get around PLDs high TP costs related to their stuns and ranged attacks?

[Galactimus]

I'll answer according to my personal experiences. Different parties use different strategies. And all healer's prefer mechanics be dealt in different ways.


How do you best utilize RoH debuff?
During progression (ie. haven't cleared the fight yet) Halone should be applied to every boss that has physical attacks by using a Halone -> Goring Blade -> Royal Authority rotation. However, you should always prioritize maximizing Goring Blade up-time after invulnerability transitions. Once you begin to over-gear a fight you can open with a single Halone to grab hate and then ignore that combo completely. It really depends on the fight as bosses like A4S and some robots in A6S use only magical attacks. Then there's bosses like A7S where the Uplander Doom tank buster is extremely easy to plan for and you can simply apply Halone just before or even during the beginning of the mechanic. In short, it really depends how hard you are being hit and how good your healers are.


How do you stance dance on PLD? When is it worth it?
3.2 really changed the amount of time a Paladin stance dances. In 3.0 a Paladin tanked A3S in Sword Oath for 95% of the fight while wearing zero Vitality accessories. However, DPS checks are much easier to hit now while incoming damage to Tanks is much higher. Shield Oath has become much more desirable, especially with the damage increase it received.


Depending on your parties personal preference, Tank swaps in 3.2 can be incredibly short affairs. In A5S, A7S, and A8S (from what I've cleared thus far) a Paladin can hold onto these bosses for 95% of the fight where a Warrior simply Provokes for 5-10 seconds until your stacks wear off. It's not uncommon for a Paladin to be in full-time Shield Oath and the Warrior to be in full-time Deliverance (or vice-versa depending on taste.) In A6S you tend to spend an equal amount of time Tanking so Sword Oath finds a lot more use.


How do you tank in DPS stance as PLD? What kind of rotation do you have to use?
In 'current' dungeons, with an equal ilevel to that of a DPS, you can Tank just about any boss in Sword Oath from the start using your basic Halone (Fight or Flighted) -> Goring -> Royal combo. I say most bosses though as if you have to run around a lot you are going to quickly lose hate. In such fights it doesn't hurt to do your opening in Shield Oath and switch to Sword Oath when you are about to apply Goring Blade. There really is no set rotation, it's really about reacting to the enmity list to see if another Halone is needed to give you breathing room again. Or if you really need to get back into Shield Oath. Some DPS will greatly surprise you.


Raiding really depends on a few things. If you have a Ninja in your party you can get away with a lot more DPS rotations. Then it depends on how healing intensive the beginning of that fight is. A White Mage tossing Medica's can be a very fearsome adversary in Sword Oath. So it depends on your party composition and the amount of healing involved. Eventually you'll pound your face into the fight enough times to figure out the exact number of rotations you can pull off in each stance without losing hate.


What do you have the OT do? Opener?
You should never have any trouble keeping hate from the OT assuming you start the pull in Shield Oath (which you should; DPS burst damage is frightening.) Though make sure you get used to timing your tank swaps so that you always land a Savage Blade combo right after provoking to grab snap hate. (Never use Halone to grab snap hate; it takes too long.) From there you finish with a Halone to make sure he doesn't pull it back off of you. It also helps you (and your Bard) if a Warrior calls out when he's popping Berserk.



How do you get around PLDs high TP costs related to their stuns and ranged attacks?
3.2 raiding has been a pleasant surprise as there have been no fights where I have completely zero'd out on TP yet. There is a lot of running around in A5S, small breaks between bosses in A6S, and a bit of running around / invulnerability phases where you regain TP in A7S. However, this does directly scale with your skillspeed and with some gear set ups TP can become an issue in A7S; especially if the parties dps is too low to kill True Hearts with a single 6 second stun. If you get under 200 TP ask for Goad, Ballad, or Promotion. Chances are, if you have a Monk, he'll be begging for TP at roughly the same time as you.


If TP regeneration is not available I temporarily start working in a few Stoneskins or Clemencies at the end of a rotation while keeping Goring Blade up full time. If TP becomes a consistent problem you can usually convince a DPS to take over one of the less important stuns, such as A7S Kugerblitz's. A4S however is an absolute nightmare. Our TP only lasts for about 3 minutes with constant aggro and there is almost zero downtime in that fight.

[Ampheni]

Can't agree with you more on protect, stone skin and clemency. I actually use it quite frequently in my progression. Might I ask you any tips on generating burst amount of enmity? Because one thing that currently annoys me is that I find myself unable to compete for aggro on a newly spawned add against a i240 MCH (I am i230), even when I tried to do you snap hate method (use fast blade on boss before add spawn, then provoke + savage blade the add immediately, combo'd with RoH next). Is there other methods to generate a lot of enmity in a short burst other than this that I may not be aware of?

[Cipher_Zaabiz]

Liked your answers. So the life link protects my comrades from being pushed back? Glad to hear it.

When I take damage due to life link and have debuffs for increased damage, do I still take more damage or is it raw?

Can the freedom of movement be used against the sand trap of Mhach spider?

[Nerael]

Can the freedom of movement be used against the sand trap of Mhach spider?

As "Newbie" PLD i can answer this one as I've tried this.
Yes it can.

To make it even more fun; Popping cover + Tempered will and you can negate the pull effects for a second person as well as yourself.

[Galactimus]

Can't agree with you more on protect, stone skin and clemency. I actually use it quite frequently in my progression. Might I ask you any tips on generating burst amount of enmity? Because one thing that currently annoys me is that I find myself unable to compete for aggro on a newly spawned add against a i240 MCH (I am i230), even when I tried to do you snap hate method (use fast blade on boss before add spawn, then provoke + savage blade the add immediately, combo'd with RoH next). Is there other methods to generate a lot of enmity in a short burst other than this that I may not be aware of?

The only other option that sometimes provides better results is Flash. Sometimes it can be faster to Flash a mob as soon as you see the name plate appear since you don't have to actually target the mob first. Keep it mind some mob spawns can be really odd. As even if you grab snap aggro sometimes they still like to run halfway across to room to hit the person who aggro'd them first. I think it has to do with the three second server tick this game runs on.


As far as burst aggro is concerned there's simply nothing better than opening with a prepared Savage blade combo. If the exact same part in the fight gives you difficulty you could try a Vitality potion for increased DPS or saving Fight or Flight for that moment. With ilevels being equal I've really never had a problem with Savage blade in Shield Oath. It sounds like it's just the 10 ilevel difference; an i240 weapon, and possibly better melds if he has access to a lot more Crit V's and Det V's.

[ArdorGrey]

I feel a mixture of mild disgust and genuine, deep sadness that this thread not only doesn't touch upon what fantastic OT's pld's can be, but very specifically caters to the "PLD=MT" mob mentality.


Cover works best when used as an OT mechanic to manipulate things that normally target the MT. The ways it allows your party to manipulate game mechanics is freaking incredible, on par or better than using perfect dodge/mitigation effects back in 2.x, which lead to their nerfing in 3.x, and puts to shame any bland situational "cover the healers or squishy dps if the healers are bad" situation.

Shield oath may be "more desirable" now than in 3.0, but that does not change that the dps margin between pld and the other tanks is at its lowest when in dps stance, and a pld OT with War or Drk MT is better raid dps tan a pld MT.

Also sad that ninja synergy isn't touched on at all. Then again, that would probably further underscore the benefits of a different MT or heavens forbid both tanks swap to maximize CD's rather than only swapping when forced to do so.

[Kitfox]

I feel a mixture of mild disgust and genuine, deep sadness that this thread not only doesn't touch upon what fantastic OT's pld's can be, but very specifically caters to the "PLD=MT" mob mentality.

I don't think this thread caters specifically towards MTing, but I find OTing quite simple. It doesn't really require an in-depth discussion imho. Pop Sword Oath and and go town. Uses of Cover were mentioned.

I find the questions of tanking dynamics more interesting. Eg. If fight requires no tank stance, who tanks, using what kind of rotation, and what does the OT do? Take a PLD+WAR combi, which one should tank? If PLD tanks, should WAR OT use Butcher's forcing more hate combos from PLD, or just debuffs, losing potency but giving more DPS room for PLD? Or the other way around, if WAR tanks, should they rotate Path or Eye, what if there's a NIN in party? How and when does mitigation rotation (RoH, Path) increase healer DPS. What kind of mitigation combinations can you use in tank stance or out of it? What is the maximum amount of long term mitigation you can have? CDs that are best stacked? Maximizing mitigation and damage benefits through tank swaps? Is it worth it to use tank stance for tank swaps in favor of less hate combos afterwards?

What if the fight does require tank stance? How does all of the above change? I wish people talked more about these kind of things.

[Malicewolf]

T13 - Holmgang absorbs Ahk Mourn. Cover prevents the auto attacks from killing him

I didn't even think about this since I've always just thought about how HG can't stop magic. This is a fantastic idea ^^ Do you know if it will work for Final Steps Ahk Mourn as well? I assume yes, but confirmation is always nice

You can also save people from physical wipe mechanics using cover and HG. Be sure to use HG though... I made that mistake on Seph during the handswipe when my healer didn't make the wind circle... Was all proud of myself for saving him until I died in mid air and realized my HG never went off.

Good overall coverage on some of the more situational move sets that many people ignore for PLDs though =)