Does Pally DPS suck or is it just me?

[Cyr]

This.

Silverflame potions break the balance.

Either get rid of silverflame potions or give rangers and paladins a ton more DPS.

IDK, why you guys are worried about SF pots breaking melee balance when melee is gimped now anyways. I certainly am not going to disagree that pali/rangers need more dps, but thinking that class balance is going to be helped largely by a nerf to other melee only makes sense if you forget every non-melee build in the game.

[Lifespawn]

bringing divine favor back to 5/5 for a lvl 20 pally would help.

It used to be over powered so they capped it at 3 i think making it back up to 5 and maybe 6-7 for a capstone would really help.

[sephiroth1084]

bringing divine favor back to 5/5 for a lvl 20 pally would help.

It used to be over powered so they capped it at 3 i think making it back up to 5 and maybe 6-7 for a capstone would really help.

Actually, the order of events was WotC errata'ing DF (nerfing) in 3.5 because they felt that +5/+5 from a level 1 spell was excessive, and Turbine was forced to follow suit since it was more strongly tied to whatever WotC was doing with D&D before 4E came out.

I'd prefer to see a Greater Divine Favor offered as a level 2 or 3 spell for paladins only that removes the cap (+5/+5 at lvl 18, +6/+6 if you can get a +1 caster level booster at level 20). Maybe add some other effect to this to further improve it slightly from the level 1 version?

[CanuckWisdom]

Paladins are super awful and all suggestions that would buff them up should be accepted and implemented fully


/waits

[Irongutz2000]

I agree u shouldn't have to deck a pali out to the max, to come close or lead the kill count, they need help, not a huge amount, beacuase they can heal themself but some for sure

yes paladin dps sucks.


Even if you are KOTC (the ONLY DPS prestige paladins have) and fighting your ideal targets, you are still behind the curve.

Weight it out, simply put-

compare KOTC in it's ideal environment to, for example, Frenzy.

KOTC = 4d6 damage (that ONLY works on evil outsiders)
Frenzy = 6d6 damage (that works on everything) + 3x critical multiplier on 19-20s + 6strength

U missed the tod set which also adds another 3d6 per swing, also they get about 2 more smites........But even with that said i still think palis need some love, an yes my main is a pali.

Here you have an overly specialized build thats actually doing far less damage then a completely general build. Makes perfect sense as long as you dont think about it.



Smites can be some of the most impressive single melee hits in the game, however their actual DPS contribution is not very impressive. The recharge is far to long, and the benefit to TWF over THF is monsterous.


Divine Sacrifice (with rank 1 really being the only rank that can be justified to invest in) offers too little and requires constant spamming just to get any increase of DPS at all.


Divine Might has far to long a cast time, and far too short a duration. I've not done the math but I would debate that if you cast it mid fight you may actually lose, if not completely wash, any dps gain you get.





Even if they "combined HOTD and KOTC" as ive seen suggested many, many times, paladins would still be lackluster.

[EllisDee37]

IDK, why you guys are worried about SF pots breaking melee balance when melee is gimped now anyways.

Heh, it's still annoying but I understand your point. It's like the power scale is:

10 Arcanes
9 Divines
3 Barbs/Fighters
1 Ranger
0.5 Pally

Yes, pallies are way underpowered compared to Barbs/Fighters, but the gulf between them and true casters is vast. But, geez, pallies really are way underpowered compared to Barbs/Fighters.

[eulogy098]

My point in comparing KOTC to Frenzy was not to suggest that paladins should out damage Barbarians in general. They should not. Paladins have drastically superior utility then a barbarian.

However....


If you invest so many Enhancement points into fighting one very specific type of enemy, one that isnt even in the large majority of the game, you should be the top dog in the melee damage department for that one enemy. And currently, if absolutelly equally geared and played- A paladin can not even carry his own weight on his own ideal target.

Somthing is wrong here.


KOTC damage bonus should be doubled to 8d6 and work on all evil enemies. It should also be "light" damage and thus amplified by FVS debuffs. And even then it still wont come close to swinging a stick at frenzys huge bonuses, but at least it's somthing that works on much of the game content.



Paladin players are often mislead into thinking they are doing competitive damage because they see that they can get aggro or get last-hits. Paladins excel at initial burst damage and last hitting due to Smite and DS. If you smite a target thats low hp, you'll get the kill credit. Don't fool your self. You didn't do the most damage, you just got the last hit. And getting aggro easily is a no brainer too. If you pop 10 smites in a row while alternating DS you will do the most damage for all of 20 seconds. And then you are spent. Another 20 seconds later and you are so far behind that you are probably being out damage by the Barbarians glancing blows alone.



--- Player of a 36 Point paladin
--- Player of two different 36 point Barbarians


My paladin is better geared and im better at playing it. Yet there is no doubt in my mind that I could go semi-afk and still double his end-raid damage contribution with even my little back-water TWF Dwarf Barb. let alone my stacked HO.

[Dartwick]

Maxed smite isnt all that much damage even if you crit every time - which you dont.

The smite number can look impressive which tricks people into thinking its more signifigant than it is.

A good place start on improving a paly would be to double the length of "Divine Might" so it was actually worth putting up with the long animation(or more feasible to cast it being engaging."

[elraido]

When the cap was 10 or even 16, smite evil was a good ability (with the only drawback being that it didn't regen and bad guys had a tendency to move when you smited). But with how HP has been inflated over the years, it has become less and less relevent. Say the average paladin has 9 smites, exhaulted smite II (anything over that is expensive and a waste for what you get), and is using either khopesh or efang. The attack will do between 350-450 points of damage if it is a crit. You will crit roughly one in every 5 swings. So, basically you might get two crits out of those 9 smites. The rest of those smite will do a marginal amount more damage vs a normal swing.

For it being a main class feature, smite evil has been relegated to not doing much at all....maybe 1200 points of damage if you spam it on a boss. Then you have to wait the 90 seconds before one comes back. On my fvs, I can almost hit that much with a DP critting on one tick. And remember, this is supposed to be a main DPS feature of the class. It could take around 30 seconds to spam those smites in what a fvs can do in 6 seconds. Smite evil needs another rework, plain and simple. Exhaulted smite is too expensive, doesn't provide enough dps, is very "clicky", bad guys still move around to where you can miss, it doesn't effect non evil creatures etc.

[sephiroth1084]

Changing smite to a short-duration buff might be the way to go, having it affect all of your attacks over something like 6 seconds per use.

Not sure how that stacks up against other DPS classes, though... at level 20 a smite would deal +67 damage. If it lasted for 6 seconds, and you had, say, 9 smites, that would be almost 1 minute of +67 damage multipliable on crits added to your attacks. That seems like a bit too much compared to what other melees are doing, but maybe not. If you're normally at around, say, +65 damage per swing (kind of high for a paladin), this puts you ahead of a barbarian and likely a rogue for a short period of time. The extra crit power from the Exalted line and Divine Sacrifice pushes you up a bit more, but still not way ahead of anyone else, and then you're out of these for about a minute.

That at least makes smite evil strong enough to be a factor.

[countfitz]

Maxed smite isnt all that much damage even if you crit every time - which you dont.

The smite number can look impressive which tricks people into thinking its more signifigant than it is.

A good place start on improving a paly would be to double the length of "Divine Might" so it was actually worth putting up with the long animation(or more feasible to cast it being engaging."

Double for tier II, triple for III and quadruple for IV would be fair.

Then make AC count (that's game changing, not just class balancing).

Then give them a "mount," either animal companion or walking bank space or speed boost to represent the uses of a mount in PnP.

Rangers got TWF AND Range to represent their loss of an Animal Companion (and are, IMO, still even worse off than Paladins) and yet Paladins got nothing to replace their mounts!

[countfitz]

Changing smite to a short-duration buff might be the way to go, having it affect all of your attacks over something like 6 seconds per use.

Not sure how that stacks up against other DPS classes, though... at level 20 a smite would deal +67 damage. If it lasted for 6 seconds, and you had, say, 9 smites, that would be almost 1 minute of +67 damage multipliable on crits added to your attacks. That seems like a bit too much compared to what other melees are doing, but maybe not. If you're normally at around, say, +65 damage per swing (kind of high for a paladin), this puts you ahead of a barbarian and likely a rogue for a short period of time. The extra crit power from the Exalted line and Divine Sacrifice pushes you up a bit more, but still not way ahead of anyone else, and then you're out of these for about a minute.

That at least makes smite evil strong enough to be a factor.

Make it last for an attack chain. Balanced over levels, 4 hits at cap, and then make it NOT affect animation (or make the animation faster instead of slower).

[Raiderone]

Make more spells increased by 6 Pally levels and increase all durations

Like the DR spell, 4 DR + 2DR every 6 levels and increased duration.
Make the Valor Spell similar to DOS health effect but temporary with increased percentage based on every 6 Pally levels.

Divine Favor: 3 + 1 per 6 Pally levels...

Divine Might increase Str instead of damage (base Cha Score) with duration based on 6lvls of Pally (and increased durations for every 6 lvls).

[Dartwick]

1 Increasing spell length would be a big help.
Most paladins spend a feat on extend simply to make Divine Favor and Zeal last 4 minutes instead of 2. That feat could be used for DPS.

2 Increasing the length of Divine Might to 2 minutes would greatly help DPS.

3 Cutting the regen time for smite to 30 seconds would help a great deal and not be over powered.

[countfitz]

So, just an update.

My paladin hit 18, and WOW is he uber.

In Norm quest, his DPS is still far below anyone else.

In Hard though, his DPS is equal.

In Elite, he is by far the highest in kill counts.

Why?

Terror.

Seriously, that weapon rocks. Inta kills means that all he has to do is hit an average of 5 times for an insta kill. Now, in normal, 5 hits is 3 too many compared to other melees. Hard is equal. But on Elite, that's when other melee classes are taking 10 hits to bring down a mob, and Terror is killing them in half the time.

[whomhead]

In Norm quest, his DPS is still far below anyone else.

In Hard though, his DPS is equal.

In Elite, he is by far the highest in kill counts.

Kill counts != DPS. I think you know this, but it is worth pointing out.

On elite your DPS is still way below "everyone else," you've just found a way to get around it. Of course that just means that a barb/fighter/bard/rogue/ranger/cleric/FVS swinging a Terror (or, incidentally a monk with Tharaak wraps) will be just as likely as you to proc an instakill, but they'll also do more DPS during those first 5 swings as well. And then there's that pesky little problem of killing stuff that is immune to PK, like bosses.

[EllisDee37]

Kill counts != DPS. I think you know this, but it is worth pointing out.

On elite your DPS is still way below "everyone else," you've just found a way to get around it. Of course that just means that a barb/fighter/bard/rogue/ranger/cleric/FVS swinging a Terror (or, incidentally a monk with Tharaak wraps) will be just as likely as you to proc an instakill, but they'll also do more DPS during those first 5 swings as well. And then there's that pesky little problem of killing stuff that is immune to PK, like bosses.

He's aware. The post wasn't exactly sarcasm, but it was drenched in dry irony.

[whomhead]

He's aware. The post wasn't exactly sarcasm, but it was drenched in dry irony.

Well, then I guess I failed my roll against dry irony.

Sidenote: how does one get drenched in something dry?

[ban5hee13]

The answer is quite simple really. A paladin is NOT a primary DPS class, is a SUPPORT class. The beauty of the paladin is not in its ability to out DPS other melee's, but in its versatility. It can be played in a DPS or Tank role, self-heal, and has high saves. The important thing to note is self sufficiency = MANA. In many EPIC quests and higher level raids mana conservation is a critical factor in whether you get a completion or your party wipes, and the less a healer has to babysit your a** the better.

[McFlay]

The best paladin build right now would just be to be a cleric or fvs and just pretend you are a paladin. If you wanted you could take a paladin splash just to get the cool aura icon all the time.