Ideas to Fix/Help Pallys

[FrozenNova]

Huh? TWF gets the +5 bonus to both hands yes. THF gets a +10. Where does that leave S&B users? +5 to one hand...their DPS is lower compaired to TWF and THF. What CE should be doing is giving those S&B users a +10 to AC just like PA gives a +10 to THF and +5 to both hands for TWF. There would then be a balance between those two feats....PA rewards those who go for DPS with TWF and THF....CE rewarding those who go S&B.

CE does reward those who go S&B, by giving them 5 extra AC. If you're using CE, you have a shield out, and while AC tanking, vice versa - you're just inanely doubling the effect of a feat for no apparent reason, not to mention screwing over the monk splash tanks who've been left out enough as it is. Simply deciding to give all shield users +5 AC solves nothing. You can't say 5 points of damage output is equal to 5 points of AC, claim it's balanced, and call it a day. Combat expertise and power attack are two completely different feats that do practically the opposite, using two entirely seperate systems. Moreover, giving players more sources of stacking AC is only adding to our problem.

[Mithran]

I would support the idea of lower AP costs.

My Paladin's Charisma is 32 (34 w Ship Buff) and that's extraordinarily high. In fact, I have a hard time seeing a Human hitting it. She's Drow w a +3 Tome, +7 Item, +3 Enhancement points and +3 Exceptional. That's frankly quite a lot of emphasis on Charisma and I feel sure it's more than 99% of Paladins at endgame.

[sephiroth1084]

I feel like some of the ideas I listed for upgrading Divine Vengeance and Vengeful Protector would make for reasonable boosts to paladins otherwise, either wrapped into their PrEs or introduced as new options: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=353503

Paladins lose sustained damage in return for burst damage, survivability, and limited support ability.

I think smite should:
-Act as an automatic critical in addition to the damage bonus, using a multiplier dependant on smite rank and
independant of weapon multiplier.
This is because.. non-crit smites are worthless, really. Smite should be a reliable source of burst damage to be useful.

I would rather get more smites (ie regenerating smites). Maybe improve the threat range bonus on Exalted Smite? I don't feel smites should be auto-crits. I'd also prefer smite gain a duration to this, a la the Pathfinder paladin.

I think divine sacrifice should:
- Reduce its cooldown at higher ranks, for higher sustained damage at a hightened cost.
I feel like the only real problem with Divine Sacrifice is that it requires so many ranks of the very expensive and lackluster Extra Smite line. As it stands, DS III amounts to something like an extra 5 damage per swing, which is pretty **** good, and that's before figuring in the crit bonuses.

I think divine might should:
- Scale with THF, either 1.5x or 2x multiplier Agreed.
- Have a more reasonable casting duration. Absolutely!

I think auras should:
Be useful. The save aura is nice, but the others are pointless. Swap the concentration aura to a 4/8/12% healing amplification bonus aura. Swap the courage aura to a +1/2/3 bonus damage versus evil aura. Paladins are supposed to have some limited support abilities, and this is a good way to boost them.
These sound pretty good. Healing amp aura sounds like an excellent change. Extra damage vs. evil sounds good. We already are giving +4 on saves vs. fear as a base ability, and fear immunity becomes prevalent rather swiftly.

Maybe an aura that grants 5% damage mitigation, like Shield Mastery does.

I think the capstone should:
- Be ammended. The combination of cannith +5HBSoGEOB, artificer silver weapons, and boss fortification boosts making eSoS not often the best choice, means the capstone is much, much less useful than it should be.
- Impose a fortification debuff. Paladins can't take improved sunder, let alone land it, and debuffing fort is a big part of dealing more damage for the entire group. A decent fort debuff, similar to the previous implications of their capstone, means paladins excel at fighting bosses, while this also has good synergy with the autocrit smites.
This is thematically appropriate: a capped paladin is a divine paragon, and the intensity of their righteous assault leaves wrongdoers more vulnerable, as a counterpart to the favored soul retrebutive fortification debuff.

While the stock of the capstone has been degraded somewhat, it still is very good. Remember, it allows you to use a wide variety of weapons in places where they would otherwise be sub-par regardless of group composition, and it deals +1d6 damage vs. evil enemies, and another +2d6 vs. many of the major bosses in the game. And the damage gets buffed by the favored soul boost to incoming aligned and light-based damage on enemies.

A fortification debuff would be nice, but I don't think it needs to get wrapped up into the capstone, and similarly, I would not want to see the existing capstone revised as such. Maybe offer a second capstone option? A better idea might be to introduce a new line of smite abilities that make up for paladins' low tactics abilities. Add the ability to reduce fort with a smite?

I think KoTC should:
- Deal reduced damage to evil enemies, and further reduced to non-good.
E.g.: KoTC III: 4d6 versus evil outsiders, 2d6 versus evil enemies, 1d6 versus all non-good targets. I think it should deal the reduced damage to evil non-outsiders, but don't think the PrE should be dealing extra damage to non-evil enemies. Honestly, I'm okay with paladins "suffering" a little bit there. I put that quotes because they are still getting up to +11 damage a swing, 10% doublestrike and +9d6 light damage every 3 seconds vs. these enemies that are relatively few and far between.

For a damage prestige, the fact that it grants flat out nothing in most epics or the cannith pack does not play in its favor.

I think HoTD should:
- Be the 'healing' prestige.
- 10% stacking devotion per rank I don't think HotD needs to be forced into the self-cast healing roll, and definitely does not need to be encouraged as a support healer. 30% healing amp already does a lot for them.
- Let you expend a turn to cast a cha-scaled divine healing variant with cooldown equal to duration (one target at once), at rank 2. Maybe. Still doubt anyone would take this.
- Let you expend a remove disease and a lay on hands to use lay on hands in an area around you, with a cooldown, at rank 3. I like that a lot better than the above suggestion, but simply have it cost 1 LoH. Just change LoH from single target to a burst as a second option for LoH.
Thematically appropriate, given that positive energy opposes undead, and for a class that controls minor healing abilities, a prestige that focuses in that area would be suitable.
Give them recharging LoH if this is the way you want to go.

Their abilities could really stand to get upgraded in other ways, though. Honestly, I think it is problematic that paladins have 3 rather specialized PrEs, although DoS has become far more generally useful than it had been.

KotC could gain chain smites, that "explode" from their primary target.
HotD could gain...I don't know what. Oh! Give them Fortification reduction, but without specifying undead. Then they become a good debuffer on bosses, while KotC does the most individual damage and DoS is controlling things and generally just not dying.
I think DoS:
- Is fine, it's the enemy to-hits that are the issue.
Actually, DoS could use a small boost. I think granting Shield Mastery for free at rank 2 is the way to go, but maybe Improved Shield Bash instead.

I think extra feats should:
- Not happen.
Being feat-limited is a core part of the class, and part of all divine classes. If you want extra feats, take the tradeoff and splash for them. I disagree. Everyone needs some more feats. The game is more interesting if everyone has more feats, but there are also more worthwhile options to choose from. Pathfinder takes this approach by giving everyone feats at odd levels instead of just at multiples of 3, and introduced more interesting feat chains. Fighters should not definitely have more HP than paladins simply by virtue of their having 2-7 open feats for extra Toughnesses.

I don't think that:
- All of these should happen at once.
These are only ideas with regards to oppotunities to improve on the many different aspects of the paladin class - all of which save one, survivability, is fairly lacking.
Not that I would complain, of course..

Comments.

I would propose paladins gain a bonus to damage based on their Charisma stat, +1 per modifier. This would be minor, since I've never seen any toon with higher than 40 charisma, and these are sorcerers. A paladin would probably have around 30 charisma max(16 base, +2 tome, +7 item, +3 exceptional, +2 ship buff = 30, +3 enhancement, +1 human versatility = 34)
You think that +10 damage per swing is minor? That's a heck of a lot more than fighter's are getting, almost as much as rangers get vs. their favored enemies after spending 10 AP, and almost as much as barbarians get.

The devs had the option of doing this when they introduced Divine Might, which per the rules functions as either a short duration buff of +Cha to damage or a single-attack clicky for the same costing Turn Undead attempts. They instead chose to give us defined bonuses with Cha prerequisites. That's fine.
This would result in paladins doing more damage per hit, but hardly enough to make barbarians or fighters sweat. It'd be more like "Oh hey, here's some extra damage, have fun with it."
That would only be true if we got rid of Divine Favor, Divine Might and Divine Sacrifice.

Kensai gain:
+4 greater weapon specialization
+2 Kensai weapon mastery II (+4 on 2-handers)
+4 Power Surge (+6 on 2-handers)
+1.5 from Str III (+3 on 2-handers, less on TWF)
+2 enhancement
____
13.5 damage before applying Haste Boost and +1 to crit range

Paladins gain:
3 Divine Favor
6 Divine Might (goes up to 8, but I don't see many running around with DM IV)
____
9 damage before applying up to 9d6 every 4-6 swings, 1d6-3d6 every swing and smite evil
You don't think adding 10-15 damage on top of that is a big deal?
Also I like FrozenNova's post. Very good ideas for paladins.

No.

I'd like to see a tanking capstone for Defenders, something along the lines of increased DR %, like the monk's earth stance, or increased threat and damage with a shield bash (like, smacking the boss you're tanking with your shield while turtled up lets you keep aggro a bit better). Or maybe a permanent con-opp effect while shield blocking.

The capstone is a tanking capstone in some ways...it helps characters retain aggro by adding damage.

Paladin AP needs a serious revision. Extra Smite costs way too much, and makes taking stuff like Exalted Smite and Divine Sacrifice prohibitively expensive. The auras are also much to expensive to take on anyone but a DoS, which means that many paladins don't bother with them, so they aren't playing into the minor support role paladins are kind of designed for.

[sephiroth1084]

I would support the idea of lower AP costs.

My Paladin's Charisma is 32 (34 w Ship Buff) and that's extraordinarily high. In fact, I have a hard time seeing a Human hitting it. She's Drow w a +3 Tome, +7 Item, +3 Enhancement points and +3 Exceptional. That's frankly quite a lot of emphasis on Charisma and I feel sure it's more than 99% of Paladins at endgame.

My paladin is at a 28 Cha with no enhancements and no +2 exceptional Cha on a human:
15 starting
+3 tome
+7 item
+1 exceptional
+2 ship
____
28

I could definitely invest more, and honestly wouldn't invest any less than to get a 26 in that situation. And I carry Yugo Cha pots with me. I just forget to use them most of the time.

[Mithran]

My paladin is at a 28 Cha with no enhancements and no +2 exceptional Cha on a human:
15 starting
+3 tome
+7 item
+1 exceptional
+2 ship
____
28

I could definitely invest more, and honestly wouldn't invest any less than to get a 26 in that situation. And I carry Yugo Cha pots with me. I just forget to use them most of the time.

You've illustrated my point exactly. Even 28 is a huge Charisma for most Paladins.

[sephiroth1084]

You've illustrated my point exactly. Even 28 is a huge Charisma for most Paladins.

I'm not actually sure what your point was. But I wouldn't call 28 huge. With slightly more normal gear, I'd be at 24 or 26. I'd say that a 34 is looking like a big number for paladin Cha, and 40 would be pretty extravagant.

[Mithran]

I'm not actually sure what your point was. But I wouldn't call 28 huge. With slightly more normal gear, I'd be at 24 or 26. I'd say that a 34 is looking like a big number for paladin Cha, and 40 would be pretty extravagant.

With you having Epic gear and being at (in round numbers or for the sake of argument) 28, starting with a 16 Charisma seems overall a large investment in stat points.

From the first page:

. . . A paladin would probably have around 30 charisma max(16 base, +2 tome, +7 item, +3 exceptional, +2 ship buff = 30, +3 enhancement, +1 human versatility = 34)

More than 28 Charisma seems more than most have. I said that at 32 I think I have more than 99% of the other builds and don't really see Human builds working to get that high.

Some of the numbers get funky with ship buffs/optional gear. Has your character lost its ship buff in melee combat in a quest? You can't really count the ship buff, then. It's simpler to me to think in terms of 'just after a field death.' It simplifies the equation. Discussion from the first page is looking at a balanced 30 Charisma in the theoretical builds. Mine's higher, but I expect far more to be considerably lower.

[gloopygloop]

Once per day, a paladin can call out to the powers of good to aid her in her struggle against evil. As a swift action, the paladin chooses one target within sight to smite. If this target is evil, the paladin adds her Cha bonus (if any) to her attack rolls and adds her paladin level to all damage rolls made against the target of her smite. If the target of smite evil is an outsider with the evil subtype, an evil-aligned dragon, or an undead creature, the bonus to damage on the first successful attack increases to 2 points of damage per level the paladin possesses. Regardless of the target, smite evil attacks automatically bypass any DR the creature might possess.

In addition, while smite evil is in effect, the paladin gains a deflection bonus equal to her Charisma modifier (if any) to her AC against attacks made by the target of the smite. If the paladin targets a creature that is not evil, the smite is wasted with no effect.

The smite evil effect remains until the target of the smite is dead or the next time the paladin rests and regains her uses of this ability. At 4th level, and at every three levels thereafter, the paladin may smite evil one additional time per day, as indicated on Table: Paladin, to a maximum of seven times per day at 19th level.

That's pretty sexy and it makes the Paladin into a kind of anti-caster. Not so great against trash, but absolutely outstanding and tough as nails in a big boss fight. Exactly the kind of thing that Turbine has been trying to push Paladins toward.

[FrozenNova]

As already alluded to, divine might *is* the implementation of charisma to damage, even if not so direct. 'Be a little odd to grant it twice.

I would rather get more smites (ie regenerating smites). Maybe improve the threat range bonus on Exalted Smite? I don't feel smites should be auto-crits. I'd also prefer smite gain a duration to this, a la the Pathfinder paladin.

The problem being is that the damage bonus to smites is near directly lifted from pnp, where foes don't have nearly that much health, pc's don't do nearly that much damage and even a non-critical smite is a devastating blow. In DDO, where pc's do huge amounts of damage and enemies have mountains of health, a non-crit smite is basically just worth a free attack, shaving perhaps half a second off the survival time of an enemy. For what is practically a cornerstone paladin ability, I feel it a shame that it is so heavy based on luck.

While the stock of the capstone has been degraded somewhat, it still is very good. Remember, it allows you to use a wide variety of weapons in places where they would otherwise be sub-par regardless of group composition, and it deals +1d6 damage vs. evil enemies, and another +2d6 vs. many of the major bosses in the game. And the damage gets buffed by the favored soul boost to incoming aligned and light-based damage on enemies.

A fortification debuff would be nice, but I don't think it needs to get wrapped up into the capstone, and similarly, I would not want to see the existing capstone revised as such. Maybe offer a second capstone option? A better idea might be to introduce a new line of smite abilities that make up for paladins' low tactics abilities. Add the ability to reduce fort with a smite?

I just meant adding a fort debuff on hit to the existing capstone - though true, adding a fort debuff to smites would be a nicer implementation. As I was alluding to, however, the 'wide variety of weapons' isn't wide, or varied. Once upon a time that was obscenely powerful, letting you go for horoth with the eSoS. The eSoS was effectively the pinnacle, however, given that this is restricted to weapons that are a) silver, and b) non-good and c) worth using. Now that the eSoS is a poor choice of weapon against the high-fort bosses compared to the variety of new weapons that do not rely on the capstone, that list is effectively non-existant, and that part of the capstone may as well be meaningless.

Also notable is that existing paladins already have -10 spare action points. New enhancement lines will be of only dubious use.

I think it should deal the reduced damage to evil non-outsiders, but don't think the PrE should be dealing extra damage to non-evil enemies. Honestly, I'm okay with paladins "suffering" a little bit there. I put that quotes because they are still getting up to +11 damage a swing, 10% doublestrike and +9d6 light damage every 3 seconds vs. these enemies that are relatively few and far between.

[And other damage comparisons]

Very few paladins reach DM4. Very few paladins can afford DSIII. DM only lasts as many minutes as turns.
These enemies that are 'relatively few and far between' comprise all of endgame besides DA, chronoscope, and Lailat. Watching a paladin trying to compete in all other epics is more often than not laughable.

Also, a few ammendments - Fighters also get doublestrike as capstone.
If you're including divine might, you ought to include haste boost.
Don't forget that paladins have a disadvantage in using madstone rage.

Barbarians get: +18-22 strength*, +3 power attack, 6d6 vicious, 25% damage boost, supreme cleave attack speed boost, +2 crit mult on 19-20, +1 stacking crit mult on everything, and 10% glancing blow damage bonus.

Which, looking at damage alone, is 42 extra on THF, without including 25% damage boost or criticals or glancing blows. Which are considerable considering vicious is also applied to glancing blows which are also applied to main target. Which can be sustained forever. If you think paladins are dealing competitive damage, I'm afraid you're incorrect. They barely meet par even on evil outsiders.

*8 Might rage + 2 capstone + 2 power rage II + 2 frenzy + 4 death frenzy = 18,
8 Mighty rage + 2 capstone + 4 power rage IV +2 frenzy + 4 death frenzy + 2 Horc power rage = 22, and I'm probably forgetting things.

[DRAGONSUPERDRAGON]

Remove the cap on divine favor!

[sephiroth1084]

The problem being is that the damage bonus to smites is near directly lifted from pnp, where foes don't have nearly that much health, pc's don't do nearly that much damage and even a non-critical smite is a devastating blow. In DDO, where pc's do huge amounts of damage and enemies have mountains of health, a non-crit smite is basically just worth a free attack, shaving perhaps half a second off the survival time of an enemy. For what is practically a cornerstone paladin ability, I feel it a shame that it is so heavy based on luck.

I don't disagree with the sentiment, just with smites being auto-crits. Look at how auto-crits affected our weapon choices before the devs changed things. I don't want paladins feeling like they have to be running around with heavy picks or something. Give smite evil a short duration so that it applies to more than a single swing and that problem is largely solved. It's still +67 damage on a pure paladin, which if we got faster regeneration on smites would be more significant, or applied to a few hits becomes pretty significant.

I just meant adding a fort debuff on hit to the existing capstone - though true, adding a fort debuff to smites would be a nicer implementation. As I was alluding to, however, the 'wide variety of weapons' isn't wide, or varied. Once upon a time that was obscenely powerful, letting you go for horoth with the eSoS. The eSoS was effectively the pinnacle, however, given that this is restricted to weapons that are a) silver, and b) non-good and c) worth using. Now that the eSoS is a poor choice of weapon against the high-fort bosses compared to the variety of new weapons that do not rely on the capstone, that list is effectively non-existant, and that part of the capstone may as well be meaningless.

I think wrapping up more power in the capstone is just putting too much weight on it. The difference between 18 or 19 paladin and 20 would be up to 3d6 damage, a Fort debuff and better weapon selection.

As for the ESoS, what weapons are you referring to as being better against the high-Fort bosses? There are some, yes, but the ESoS is pretty far from not being relevant in those situations, and as more players bring Fort-lowering abilities to bear, the stock of that goes up again, but I was thinking more of stuff like the Epic Chaosblade and Brigan'ds Cutlass, alchemical weapons that don't have to take Fire at tier II and that aren't epic yet, and several other worthwhile endgame weapons. The benefits are still there, even if they are less significant than they were.

Also notable is that existing paladins already have -10 spare action points. New enhancement lines will be of only dubious use.

And as I mentioned, one of the necessary changes is to lower the AP cost on a lot of enhancements. Lower the AP cost and give paladins some more options for their AP and we'll end up with both more party friendly paladins, probably, and more variety in what paladins are carrying.

[/quote]
Very few paladins reach DM4. Very few paladins can afford DSIII. DM only lasts as many minutes as turns.[/quote] See above and my other comments regarding DS. As for lasting for only as many minutes as turns, there are very few fights in the game for which you cannot sustain Divine Might for their duration, and of those, that you can't, few require you to do so. Plus, fighters suffer from the same problems with Haste Boost, and Power Surge if they are Kenseis.

These enemies that are 'relatively few and far between' comprise all of endgame besides DA, chronoscope, and Lailat. Watching a paladin trying to compete in all other epics is more often than not laughable.

What enemies comprise all of endgame? Non-evil? What non-evil monsters are we fighting in any great numbers? The golems in the Cannith stuff? All of the WF in the Cannith quests are evil, so I don't know what you're referring to, and most of what we fight in epics is evil aligned as well.

Also, a few ammendments - Fighters also get doublestrike as capstone.
If you're including divine might, you ought to include haste boost.
Don't forget that paladins have a disadvantage in using madstone rage.

I guess you feel like ignoring bits and pieces of what I did and did not right in order to make your point, such as the fact that I didn't list double-strike for paladins or fighters, because they cancel out in such a comparison, and I mentioned Haste Boost, but its benefits are more difficult to calculate. Also, DM lasts longer than Haste Boost does, even if it adds less overall DPS in medium-length fights.

True, paladins have problems with Madstone, but I know plenty who use it nonetheless, so, again, I left out a factoid that is difficult to assess.

Barbarians get: +18-22 strength*, +3 power attack, 6d6 vicious, 25% damage boost, supreme cleave attack speed boost, +2 crit mult on 19-20, +1 stacking crit mult on everything, and 10% glancing blow damage bonus.

Which, looking at damage alone, is 42 extra on THF, without including 25% damage boost or criticals or glancing blows. Which are considerable considering vicious is also applied to glancing blows which are also applied to main target. Which can be sustained forever. If you think paladins are dealing competitive damage, I'm afraid you're incorrect. They barely meet par even on evil outsiders.

*8 Might rage + 2 capstone + 2 power rage II + 2 frenzy + 4 death frenzy = 18,
8 Mighty rage + 2 capstone + 4 power rage IV +2 frenzy + 4 death frenzy + 2 Horc power rage = 22, and I'm probably forgetting things.

Including Horc Power Rage in barbarian figures is misleading. Yes, only barbarians can benefit from it, but so too do only half-orc barbarians benefit from it. Other races of barbarians don't, so that's on the racial side of things. I could just as easily claim that paladins also gain Damage Boost IV, which evens things out there, since many go human or half-elf, and barbarians can't use them at the same time anyway.

Yes, barbarians are well ahead of paladins...as they should be. Paladins gain a lot more in other areas, which while somewhat marginalized due to the focus of the game on DPS at endgame is not to be simply ignored for the sake of making class comparisons.

Again, I'm not saying that paladins don't need a boost in several areas, but that, in that case, that adding +10 or more damage per swing was excessive, not to mention uninteresting. The last time I saw a DPS chart that did a good job of comparing everyone, (KotC) paladins weren't that far behind barbarians and fighters (against Evil Outsiders). My feeling is that they need a boost vs. very evil enemies (Outsiders and Undead) so that they are some of the best DPS against those foes, and a boost against other evil enemies so that they aren't quite so far behind as they are, but I don't think they should have as much DPS as a fighter or a barbarian.

[FrozenNova]

I don't disagree with the sentiment, just with smites being auto-crits. Look at how auto-crits affected our weapon choices before the devs changed things. I don't want paladins feeling like they have to be running around with heavy picks or something. Give smite evil a short duration so that it applies to more than a single swing and that problem is largely solved. It's still +67 damage on a pure paladin, which if we got faster regeneration on smites would be more significant, or applied to a few hits becomes pretty significant.

Hence the suggested multiplier relying only on exaulted smite rank and being independant from weapon.

See above and my other comments regarding DS. As for lasting for only as many minutes as turns, there are very few fights in the game for which you cannot sustain Divine Might for their duration, and of those, that you can't, few require you to do so. Plus, fighters suffer from the same problems with Haste Boost, and Power Surge if they are Kenseis.

My paladin has ten turns, which is a pretty standard number for a kotc, give or take with cha gear. This means I can only count on divine might for ten minutes of combat between shrines. Many quests, largely epics, arn't so lenient. Fighters get eight hastes and surges, and can reasonably boost that by 1 with AP and by another 1 if a half orc. Anyway, the point being that the 20% attack speed (average over duration and cooldown) for 8-10 increments of 30 seconds is arguably the strongest part of fighter, so comparing damage bonuses in that sense can be misleading.

What enemies comprise all of endgame? Non-evil? What non-evil monsters are we fighting in any great numbers? The golems in the Cannith stuff? All of the WF in the Cannith quests are evil, so I don't know what you're referring to, and most of what we fight in epics is evil aligned as well.

I was referring to evil outsiders. A paladin's most significant damage boost, the 6d6 or 9d6 with set versus evil outsiders, only applies versus evil outsiders. A paladin gets only the 1d6 versus evil enemies.

I guess you feel like ignoring bits and pieces of what I did and did not right in order to make your point, such as the fact that I didn't list double-strike for paladins or fighters.

I quoted the part where you referenced double strike for paladins, but I note now that it's not in the breakdown, true - apologies.

Including Horc Power Rage in barbarian figures is misleading. Yes, only barbarians can benefit from it, but so too do only half-orc barbarians benefit from it. Other races of barbarians don't, so that's on the racial side of things. I could just as easily claim that paladins also gain Damage Boost IV, which evens things out there, since many go human or half-elf, and barbarians can't use them at the same time anyway.

I severely doubt you'll find more than a handful of human or helf paladins with enough AP for the damage boost without some significant sacrifices. Meanwhile, there are tons of horc barbarians. On the other hand, granted, not all barbarians have horc power rage or take the expensive second two tiers of power rage, so I listed a lower potential str value as well and used the average to find the damage.

Yes, barbarians are well ahead of paladins...as they should be. Paladins gain a lot more in other areas, which while somewhat marginalized due to the focus of the game on DPS at endgame is not to be simply ignored for the sake of making class comparisons. Again, I'm not saying that paladins don't need a boost in several areas, but that, in that case, that adding +10 or more damage per swing was excessive, not to mention uninteresting. The last time I saw a DPS chart that did a good job of comparing everyone, (KotC) paladins weren't that far behind barbarians and fighters (against Evil Outsiders).

This is the problem. Most things in epic are not evil outsiders, and against those foes, they are miles behind in any functional sense. The survivability granted by their excellent saves is good, but unless you live in permenant DoS stance, is not tremendous compared to barbarian hitpoints. My point is that they really do 'suffer', to such a degree that they become a poor choice of slot, against anything that's not an evil outsider, and need some significant boosts in their enemy-independant damage.

[qc_sebyos]

Make paladins better and you will make me overpowered.

It's seriously sad to see how little people know about Paladins.

I'v been dominating kills in almost every single quest from elvel 8 to 17 and was doing pretty good at 20 in my last life, I've beated MinII barbarians, LitII Fighters, legend zerging Sorcs trying to beat me by grouping mobs and using AOE BUT I've also been beat by some people from all of these classes.

What I'm saying here is that the best dps is always the class played by the payer who knows it's class the better and yes Paladins are the hardest melee to play, but the reward for performing with that underated class especially when you beat ''real dps class'' with a 3 kill to 1 ratio is just awesome.

If you want to dps read Junt's guide over and over until you get it but **** we don't need to complain about dps just use your class like it should be and show people were not a sub-par dps class.

[WTFFowler]

Make paladins better and you will make me overpowered.

It's seriously sad to see how little people know about Paladins.

I'v been dominating kills in almost every single quest from elvel 8 to 17 and was doing pretty good at 20 in my last life, I've beated MinII barbarians, LitII Fighters, legend zerging Sorcs trying to beat me by grouping mobs and using AOE BUT I've also been beat by some people from all of these classes.

What I'm saying here is that the best dps is always the class played by the payer who knows it's class the better and yes Paladins are the hardest melee to play, but the reward for performing with that underated class especially when you beat ''real dps class'' with a 3 kill to 1 ratio is just awesome.

If you want to dps read Junt's guide over and over until you get it but **** we don't need to complain about dps just use your class like it should be and show people were not a sub-par dps class.

Kill counts arn't a measure of how much damage you do, but rather how many last hits you score. I can also say that on my monk I've lead kill counts in epic raids/endgame content and i'm a dps machine, eat it kensai fighters and barbs. It doesn't make it true. The fact is, they arn't just debating about dps(although as it always seems to boil down to it).

I don't play pallys, just seems like a too starved class for me to want to get into. Doesn't mean I haven't rolled a couple, it just seems like a lot more effort I don't want to commit to. I'm looking at some of the suggestions and if half of them get implemented I might be taking a 2nd look at the creation screen

[sephiroth1084]

Hence the suggested multiplier relying only on exaulted smite rank and being independant from weapon.

What? How does anything change the fact that the ability to gain automatic critical hits, even infrequently, necessarily pushes toward weapons with higher multipliers?

My paladin has ten turns, which is a pretty standard number for a kotc, give or take with cha gear. This means I can only count on divine might for ten minutes of combat between shrines. Many quests, largely epics, arn't so lenient. Fighters get eight hastes and surges, and can reasonably boost that by 1 with AP and by another 1 if a half orc. Anyway, the point being that the 20% attack speed (average over duration and cooldown) for 8-10 increments of 30 seconds is arguably the strongest part of fighter, so comparing damage bonuses in that sense can be misleading.

And you can get more turns with AP as well. Our AP is tighter, but again, see my stance on paladin AP.

Haste Boost is a big deal, but is hard to assess as its benefits are largely dependent upon build, gear and buffs. Yeah, it puts them ahead of paladins, but I'm not sure how far ahead they would be if paladins were gaining an additional +10 damage per swing.

I was referring to evil outsiders. A paladin's most significant damage boost, the 6d6 or 9d6 with set versus evil outsiders, only applies versus evil outsiders. A paladin gets only the 1d6 versus evil enemies.

And I agreed that the Evil Outsider damage should be applied, by half, against non-outsider evil creatures, which would be a big step in the right direction for KotC. In any case, I wasn't thrilled with KotC and HotD when they came out anyway, because I recognized the pitfall inherent in having a PrE (or two) tied to specific foes.

Both need improvements.

I severely doubt you'll find more than a handful of human or helf paladins with enough AP for the damage boost without some significant sacrifices. Meanwhile, there are tons of horc barbarians. On the other hand, granted, not all barbarians have horc power rage or take the expensive second two tiers of power rage, so I listed a lower potential str value as well and used the average to find the damage.

Again, we can't discuss both improvements to the class and still count things against the AP difficulties of the paladin at the same time--they're AP needs fixing as the first order of business.

Half-orc barbarians aren't exactly rolling in AP either.

This is the problem. Most things in epic are not evil outsiders, and against those foes, they are miles behind in any functional sense. The survivability granted by their excellent saves is good, but unless you live in permenant DoS stance, is not tremendous compared to barbarian hitpoints. My point is that they really do 'suffer', to such a degree that they become a poor choice of slot, against anything that's not an evil outsider, and need some significant boosts in their enemy-independant damage.

And I didn't argue with that point, but 10 damage looks excessive, and rather boring; there are other avenues for improving paladins in those situations. I think you're discounting saves and self-healing too much, though.

Make paladins better and you will make me overpowered.

It's seriously sad to see how little people know about Paladins.

Reading comprehension fail.

I'v been dominating kills in almost every single quest from elvel 8 to 17 and was doing pretty good at 20 in my last life, I've beated MinII barbarians, LitII Fighters, legend zerging Sorcs trying to beat me by grouping mobs and using AOE BUT I've also been beat by some people from all of these classes.

Kill count does not equal DPS.

[FrozenNova]

What? How does anything change the fact that the ability to gain automatic critical hits, even infrequently, necessarily pushes toward weapons with higher multipliers?

Specifically, in the implementation I suggest, your current weapon's multiplier makes no difference - the smite multiplier would be objective depending on smite tier, as in: 5x at tier 4, regardless of whether you held a pick or a scimitar. Besides, the current implementation necessarily pushes toward weapons with wider ranges. I think that's actually kinda neat, how one class' favored weapon need not necessarily be the same as another class. It's not true, of course, because falchions also happen to have the best crit profile anyway, but even so.

The idea here is just to give the paladins the powerful on-command burst damage that smite ought represent as one of the most distinctive differences between the way a paladin swings a stick and the way a barbarian does the same. The barbarian with his x6 multiplier is doing the damage of a crit smite every 19-20 roll - the difference should be that the paladin can decide precisely when to unload it.

I'm not trying to argue for charisma to damage here; that'd just be a rehash of divine might. I'm in favour of damage boosts, but nothing quite so bland ideally.

I adore my paladin, I know what he's good at. Paladins can do things few other melees can do; my own revels in clearing the way alone through sub to vod or hox with no consumables if the group is sitting around, then tank suulo without a healer when he gets there.* I took a splash to get the feats for that level of self healing, though a pure human THF can do it too. Moreover I respect that such a degree of unstoppability does involve tradeoffs (even if said unstoppability involved a hell of a lot of farming). However, the current tradeoffs of dealing abysmal damage to anything beside an evil outsider are simply too great considering that, for a class that ought to excel in group environments, paladins are rarely called upon to use any of its specific advantages in a group setting. We either need to actually give them things to bring to a group that few else can, or make them competant as melee dps.

*Footnote, I'm aware that my particular paladin is very unsuited to epics - I'm making no judgements based on him.

Make paladins better and you will make me overpowered.

In pre-epic content, there are lots of terrible players with terrible gear. Tell us how you achieved the same in an epic group of players with suitable gear, and.. I'll request your build.

[justagame]

IMO, the biggest limiting factors in Paladins are:

1. Both AP and feat-starved. Most other classes (with their PREs) leave you tight on either feats or AP's, but not both.

2. Many offensive abilities scale poorly at endgame. Specifically they scale poorly as attack speeds increase, and/or as fights last longer, making less and less of a contribution to dps (percentage-wise).

3. The PRE's are a bit dated/limited in utility: KOTC has become more and more of a one-trick pony, HOTD is weak except while levelling, and DOS, while much improved, still suffers from what the game suffers from: an all-or-nothing approach to AC, in which it is near-impossible to get a relevant endgame AC, and most "AC builds" are still hit on a 2.

I'm not an expert, and any fix would have to be moderate in nature, so as not to trample on the advantages of other classes. (For example, a fighter's big advantage is in the bonus feats, so you wouldn't want to add too many, and keep those available limited in scope). But anything that addressed some or all of the above would be useful.

[qc_sebyos]

The odds of having the best dps with the highest kill counts are considerably high and it's up to the player to make the right conclusions with the right amount of data and I can tell those kills are proportional to my dps while I agree that top kill doesn't always mean top dps.

Let's watch things from another perspective and try to find out why we think that Paladin dps sucks instead of trying to find why it sucks. Those are the main reasons why I think people believe that Paladins suck.

Skill : First very important thing is you very rarely see a white sword, a white shield or a hand in the air from paladins which are DF, Zeal and DM, the base of the dps and then you rarely see the sp pool of a Paladin depleted for from the heavy use of DS, another good dps source. In fact I can count on one hand the amount of paladins using those abilities on my server.

Difficulty of the class for new players : Paladin is a hard class to build and play right. For example, you have to know the class really well to figure out that STR is not as important to Paladin as CHA, it takes time to know that.Wwhen I started my Pally I used many lesser reincarnations to rebuild my pally as I was leveling and learning the class. Also, you can't just press a boost or a rage button and auto-attack it requires more clicking than fighters and barbarians which is part of why new players perform poorly with the class.

Dedication : There's also the fact that the bad reputation of paladins compared to barbarians greatly lowers the amount of players dedicating gear to their paladins so we never get a fair comparaison between classes in terms of gear. How fair is it to compare the average Barb with MinII to the average Paladin with nothing because nobody gears their Paladins.

[Ralmeth]

Difficulty of the class for new players : Paladin is a hard class to build and play right. For example, you have to know the class really well to figure out that STR is not as important to Paladin as CHA, it takes time to know that.Wwhen I started my Pally I used many lesser reincarnations to rebuild my pally as I was leveling and learning the class. Also, you can't just press a boost or a rage button and auto-attack it requires more clicking than fighters and barbarians which is part of why new players perform poorly with the class.

I do agree that the majority of Paladins I come across do not use their buffs or clickies terribly well. In chatting with other Paladins in game I usually find they have horrible builds as they are tricky to get right.

However as I mentioned earlier, my current Paladin has decent gear (3 tier 3 dual shard greensteel items, a handful of epic stuff, etc), I use divine might, divine favor, zeal, spam divine sacrifice, exhalted smites when appropriate, etc. I have a ton of experience and I don't think I could play any better. In non-epics I do very well, but as soon as I step into an epic I feel like I'm piking compared to the monster DPS builds, arcanes, assassins, etc. Paladins are definitely behind where they should be. Oh, and Strength is the #1 attribute for a Paladin, not Charisma.

[justagame]

I do agree that the majority of Paladins I come across do not use their buffs or clickies terribly well. In chatting with other Paladins in game I usually find they have horrible builds as they are tricky to get right.

However as I mentioned earlier, my current Paladin has decent gear (3 tier 3 dual shard greensteel items, a handful of epic stuff, etc), I use divine might, divine favor, zeal, spam divine sacrifice, exhalted smites when appropriate, etc. I have a ton of experience and I don't think I could play any better. In non-epics I do very well, but as soon as I step into an epic I feel like I'm piking compared to the monster DPS builds, arcanes, assassins, etc. Paladins are definitely behind where they should be. Oh, and Strength is the #1 attribute for a Paladin, not Charisma.

I totally agree with this, and that's part of my point about the lack of scalability of Paladin abilities. You grind to equip well, run with DF, DM, spamming smites, DS, etc, and that's enough to be solid in non-endgame content. But in epic content, most of those things (a) run out relatively quickly, and (b) account for only a miniscule proportion of dps. KOTC is useless in many epics, and the AC attainable by even a well-geared DOS is irrelevant as well.