Thread: Paladin AoE in 4.0

Originally Posted by Warlyx

Holy spirit 430 potency 1440 mp is casted ....but still....with the divine magic master trait u cant be interrupted

Holy Spirit is for single targets. And cast is actually a good thing. Now we don't have to worry about TP running out since we spend 12 seconds every minute letting our TP regenerate while spamming Holy Spirit.


Back to AoE... I'm not sure what the big covfefe is about Total Eclipse. At the moment it takes two Flashes and a Circle of Scorn to hold hate on a pack of mobs at i270. Once you've used Flash once (or twice), using Total Eclipse 3-4 times will easily make up for any additional Flashes you may have needed later on; you are in Shield Oath after all. Direct Damage counts as Emnity, the same reason why STR accessories used to be king (the extra enmity from pure damage allowed you to MT in Sword Oath without losing hate.)


It should also be noted that every single DPS can now reduce their own enmity, Off Tanks can use a variant of Shadewalker on the MT if you want to keep them in in Sword Oath, and every single DPS can now use Goad. I don't see the issue. Flash to Blind and get an Enmity lead -> Total Eclipse spam to DPS and maintain your Enmity lead.

You are going to be forced to be in shield oath full time with all the sams running around, if you think otherwise you are delusional. Tanks that can't hold agro will be auto kicked, this isn't the old days of full time sword oath, stuff changed.

In 4mans, it not having threat will make u ride the line in threat vs DPS.
But for endgame its perfect, as a WAR and DRK need enemies to hit them to do more DPS. (More so WAR than DRK now that blood price is grit onry)
So you dont want to pull off of your other tank when u need to quickly dispatch trash mobs mid savage raid.

In A12S, I would rely on blood price to spam abyssal drain on the adds, but my WAR OT would pull some of the adds off me with overpower, leaving me with less MP generation. (overpower is waaaay more threat than abyssal drain) So i had to use more unleashes before abyssal drain.

My point, this is balanced for endgame as far as I can tell.

Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

In 4mans, it not having threat will make u ride the line in threat vs DPS.
But for endgame its perfect, as a WAR and DRK need enemies to hit them to do more DPS. (More so WAR than DRK now that blood price is grit onry)
So you dont want to pull off of your other tank when u need to quickly dispatch trash mobs mid savage raid.

In A12S, I would rely on blood price to spam abyssal drain on the adds, but my WAR OT would pull some of the adds off me with overpower, leaving me with less MP generation. (overpower is waaaay more threat than abyssal drain) So i had to use more unleashes before abyssal drain.

My point, this is balanced for endgame as far as I can tell.

You come across to me as someone who knows their classes so I will make an effort of correcting you here. ^^

WAR doesn't really do more damage when they get hit, that is actually one of the main reasons they OT'd most of HW. The only time you deal extra damage is during the 15 seconds of Vengeance (2min CD). And that depends ENTIRELY on how many PHYSICAL hits you received. This would be noticeable if the bosses dealt multiple hits in 1 buster (Like the first boss in The Fractal Continuum or A10S for example) otherwise it doesn't even matter.

EDIT: Realized it was an AoE discussion. Vengeance does add a bit of damage specially when coupled with berserk in an AoE situation. But it is not so big to matter THAT much if you're staying in Defiance. But I will remain corrected regarding its utility of AoE tanking.

PLD with Shield Swipe and more so DRK with Blood Price, and to a lesser extent Reprisal and Lower Blows resets are the tanks that dealt more (much more if you're DRK) DPS by getting hit.

Also note: Overpower is 120 potency x 5 enmity multiplier, which is exactly the same as DRK's AD. Unleash is 100 potency with a x6 enmity multiplier.

While DRK may be capable of dealing roughly the same DPS as WAR, there's a difference as to where the DPS comes from. Though most base potencies on DRK are higher than WAR and it has a huge portion of its damage coming from oGCDs, WAR has stronger buffs (Maim, Zerk, IR, Unchained, etc). So the reason WAR spamming Overpower generates more than DRK spamming Abyssal Drain is that Maim is 20% while Darkside is 15% AND Overpower being Physical and hence affected by SKILL speed.

Originally Posted by GDFletcher

Opening rotation for PLD will be something like this

Single Target :-
Fight or Flight --> Shield Lob --> Spirits Within --> Circle of Scorn --> Requiescat --> Holy Spirit --> Fast Blade --> Riot Blade --> Royal Authority

Multi Target :-
Fight or Flight --> Shield Lob --> Circle of Scorn --> Flash x2 --> Total Eclipse x2 --> Flash x2

That would be my take on the current changes

We can actually attempt to match flash duration to when we use flash, so id have to check out the AoE rotation in practice.

And for single target, We don't really need to start with shield lob, since we can reach 10 more yalms with Holy Spirit. So I'd do Holy Spirit, then the rest of that, to keep Fight or Flights DPS active for all the physical dmg going out, and not wasted on magical.

If it's raid DPS you are going for then you should never open with Fight or Flight or Holy Spirit. After one Tank pulls the entire rotation is essentially:

1. Goring (or Halone if MT)
2. Requiescat -> Holy Spirit x5
3. Goring -> Royal -> Royal -> Goring -> Royal -> Royal
4. Repeat from #1

Note: Riot Blade x7 (the above rotation) + natural mp regen recovers exactly enough MP to Holy Spirit x5 every 60 seconds. However, due to boss mechanics you may need to restore MP via Sheltron to top yourself off before Requiescat is ready again.


Fight or Flight buffs 13 GCD's thus popping Fight or Flight at the start of the battle is a waste (it doesn't buff Holy Spirit spam.) Ideally you want to use it right after your second Royal Authority which will buff Goring, Royal, Royal, Goring, Requiscat. You also want to try and buff two Circle of Scorns since they are on a 25s CD. It's situational though due to boss mechanics so using FoF right after Holy Spirit spam is fine as well (since the boss may jump away before you have a chance to buff Requiescat.) Using Holy Spirit to pull is a DPS loss. You won't recover enough MP to cast Holy Spirit x5 if you use an unbuffed one at the start. It's better to save your MP for when its buffed by Requiscat 10 seconds into the fight.

Originally Posted by Raim

One last observation to make. What Yoshi said in a recent interview about not making Total Eclipse have bonus enmity make absolutely no sense in the context of 8 man content. He said it would be better if the OT didn't have bonus enmity so they didn't steal threat from the MT. How many raids have the MT picking up both the boss and the adds together? Usually the OT needs that bonus enmity to pick up adds easier, and this means PLD has to awkwardly open with flash to do it. Plus OTs have been using enmity generating AoE for years to pick up adds (Overpower, Unleash). Why should PLD be any different?

WAR wants to counter attack as many hits as possible.
DRK wants to be hit for blood price, to then spam AoEs as much as possible.

PLD wants to be hit to mitigate the dmg.

In hard content, usually adds need to die asap, hitting the PLD lowers damage done to them.
(I was super relieved when i saw it didnt have threat, for this very reason.)