Pally Tank... Why Bother?

**glowbug** · 10-01-2011, 05:01 PM

well with U-11 it seems that capable tank characters are in short supply, and the trend will probably continue into U-12.

I actually applaud this move by turbine, but back to the point.. I like many have been running multiple tank builds through the planner, and i have noticed something i never really cared about before... Hard to say if i care about it now...

A SDII or III build is just vastly superior to anything you can put together with DoSII or III

pally 6 for hate gen has its merits, but honestly any build you try where the pally icon shows in the party window would probably be better as a fighter.

In the end its all about feats and 7 (8H) just isnt enough... Zeal could possibly make a well built paladin tank better dps than a similar fighter tank, but at the cost of 4-8 feats over a similar fighter build.

All of us looking at building tanks are looking at multiple toughnesses, full twf or thf lines, IC, up to three shield feats, CE or PA or both.. It just doesnt fit well into a paladin frame...

I dont have a pally... Wont be making one soon unless for the PL.. Just thinking turbine might need to at least glance at what to me seems a pretty obvious imbalance?

Grim

**FrozenNova** · 10-01-2011, 05:08 PM

Yeah, it's true. Pure paladins either skip the 25% shield mitigation and bash proc, or end up with no combat style feats. The former is less important if you can reach the uber AC, where paladins and fighters are about on-par, but given some of the to-hit values for the lord of blades, that's not going to happen any time soon.

I have a pajama paladin tank dated before the shield changes, and he's just no fun to play at this point. The only thing paladins have going for them is their saves, really.

**Jendrak** · 10-01-2011, 05:11 PM

Seriously????

Fighters get 11 bonus feats from a list

Paladins gets smite evil, turn undead, Lay on hands, disease immunity, best saves, cha to all saves, aura to ac and saves, limited divine spell casting, and were given intim (not part of the pally class but a DDO original)

Unless your point is that paladins should be just as specialized as fighters (which they shouldn't) this is balanced.

**oradafu** · 10-01-2011, 05:14 PM

Someone brought up in another thread that maybe giving the Defender of Siberys and Stalwart Defender a free Shield feat at each tier. For the feat starved Paladin, I agree that would be a nice thing to add, but I believe it would be giving too much to the Fighter who has more feat options to build on. I think this would help even out the differences between the two Defender prestige classes.

**Jendrak** · 10-01-2011, 05:25 PM

Originally Posted by oradafu

Someone brought up in another thread that maybe giving the Defender of Siberys and Stalwart Defender a free Shield feat at each tier. For the feat starved Paladin, I agree that would be a nice thing to add, but I believe it would be giving too much to the Fighter who has more feat options to build on. I think this would help even out the differences between the two Defender prestige classes.

Isn't the point of having 2 different class to be......different? If your gonna try and "even them out" you might as well just combine both class into one and call it a day. Fighters are the master tacticians and paladins are the holy warriors they should not be the same at all. I would be equally against giving fighters aura or limited spell casting to even out the class difference it's not just an anti- pally thing.

**Xenostrata** · 10-01-2011, 05:51 PM

Originally Posted by Jendrak

Seriously????

Fighters get 11 bonus feats from a list

Paladins gets smite evil, turn undead, Lay on hands, disease immunity, best saves, cha to all saves, aura to ac and saves, limited divine spell casting, and were given intim (not part of the pally class but a DDO original)

Unless your point is that paladins should be just as specialized as fighters (which they shouldn't) this is balanced.

Lemme show you some numbers.

Full KotC and Exalted Smite paladin gets around +100 damage to each smite. The problem being that in any fight longer than 5 minutes, only 3% of a Paladin's swings are smites, and the longer the battle goes the smaller that percentage gets. Total damage added from a max smite Paladin = ~3 per swing.

Turn Undead is an HD based effect, and therefore useless at endgame.

Lay on Hands is great for soloing, but in the end it's 3-5 casts of the Heal spell, without any poison/stat damage/etc removal. Odds are if your taking damage in a party, someone else is going to be healing you (and these run out really quickly when no one else is helping).

Disease Immunity. Seriously? Is this something you are using to excuse NOT having 11 bonus feats?

Saves are always nice, but it is incredibly easy to get high saves in this game - the difference between a Paladin's +42 fortitude and a Fighter's +34 Fortitude is minimal when Elite Horoth's Disintegrate only has a 34 DC fortitude save.

Spellcasting - these are nice. Deathward and Resistances are nice for soloing and taking a load off the party buffers. Zeal is also nice, but Fighter's get the exact same effect on their capstone. Divine Favor is useful, but +3 to attack/damage is easily out matched by fighter and barbarian bonuses. Angelskin becomes useless past level 15, since everything does evil damage.

Intimidate should have been a Paladin skill from day one. In PnP, intimidate wasn't generally something a Paladin would do, because it was used more or less similarly to bluff - not very thematic for a Lawful Good bastion of hope. In DDO, it's use is very different, and so fits better with the Paladin theme.

Paladins don't need to be as varied as Fighters, they need their current skills to be improved so that they can compete. Smites should be active more than 3% of the time, APs shouldn't be so tight that a DPS paladin has no auras (that example you gave of aura bonuses to AC/Damage? Totally pointless, since most KotC Paladins can't afford any aura enhancements).

**Jendrak** · 10-01-2011, 06:35 PM