Up-to-date Paladin builds

[Waveclaw]

I’m thinking about TRing my character into a paladin for the past life feats. Any suggestions?

I would prefer a build which focuses on longswords or greatswords, and with decent dps and defense. Long descriptions short, a build that can go from 4 to 20 quickly with only f2p conetnts. (Cause I might be doing this after the free content period ends)

Thanks in advance!

[Enkidu]

Most folks use older builds with paladins because they make excellent tanks and the two enchantment trees they use haven't changed in a long time. Your paladin will probably need to use the new Knight of the Chalice line to hack your way to 20. The good news is there's lots to like in the new KotC line, the bad news is you'll use smite a lot and smite has been buggy for a long time. That said, you get two excellent T5 non-smite aoe attacks, avenging cleave and holy retribution that you can get at level 12. They will literally kill everything around you with a good weapon in hand. KotC also gives you knights training as an enhancement at T4 saving you that feat if you want to go sword and board. The other two lines give you plenty of defense, it just depends on how you want to build. Sacred Defense you'll go fairly deep into because it makes you hard to kill and the stance keeps getting better the deeper you go. Vanguard gives you all the shield enhancements, but will be hard to go very deep in because you'll run out of points. Since you're only going to 20, the level 18 enhancements and capstones don't mean much so don't worry about staying pure pally. Taking a barb level early lets you run faster, and fighter levels give you even more weapon damage and defense, but the fighter and pally defensive stances don't stack, that would be cheating! So if it were me building a pally tank for a 1-20 run it's look like this:

Put stat points into Strength, Constitution, and Charisma. You only need 14 wisdom for your spells. Int and dex aren't particularly important because you won't evade much of anything and you only really have two skill lines to train in (Intimidate and Heal). The race you choose should match these priorities, so I'd go Dragonborn, but others make good choices. Read the level 6 feats each deity for the one that you'd use. I like the fire shield because most of the others you gain as feats or spells. You don't need to worry about the favored weapons because the Combatant enhancements in KotC give you longswords, greatswords, and others as favored. So you can build a greatsword angel o' death or more defensive longsword and large shield build with any deity.

Barbarian at level 1 no enhancements just to get everywhere faster.
Pally for the next 12 levels, filling up the KotC and Sacred Defense trees until I had all the T5 KotC enhancements except censure (37 AP) and taking stance and healing enhancements in Sacred Defender (28 AP). This leaves you 15 AP to spend.
I'd take fighter levels for the rest and up my weapon damage with Kensei enhancements and fighter bonus feats. I'd go greatsword all the way, but the build also gives you nice perks with sword and board. You're going to take the T4 Knight's Training in KotC no matter what and it makes that longsword much better and you'll have some AP to spend in Vanguard and fighter bonus feats you could use for shield. Of course, you'll be the guinea pig for testing out how the new KotC and should come back and tell us how it's going over in the paladin thread. I'll be testing out KotC in a radically different way soon and posting my results there.

[gwonbush]

Barbarian at level 1 no enhancements just to get everywhere faster.
Pally for the next 12 levels, filling up the KotC and Sacred Defense trees until I had all the T5 KotC enhancements except censure (37 AP) and taking stance and healing enhancements in Sacred Defender (28 AP). This leaves you 15 AP to spend.

You haven't played Pally in a long time have you?

This is an impossible combination, since Barbarian is non-Lawful and Paladin is Lawful Good.

[unbongwah]

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...=1#post6317063
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...-of-Helm-(U45)

[Matuse]

Barbarian at level 1 no enhancements just to get everywhere faster.

Please do not take a Barbarian level on a character who is going to be a Paladin.

[Waveclaw]

Thanks for the advices!

Please do not take a Barbarian level on a character who is going to be a Paladin.

Okay, noted.


What about heroic gears? Which items should I farm beforehand?

Also, should I choose Elf or Human?

[Enkidu]

You haven't played Pally in a long time have you?

This is an impossible combination, since Barbarian is non-Lawful and Paladin is Lawful Good.

Let's see, I think my last pally life was 2009, but even then I couldn't take barb with it, lol, my bad. I take barb on almost all my 1-20 TR/RR runs so I forget you can't do it on a couple classes, pally and monk I think. Monk gets it anyway, so never an issue, but paladin...

As far as gear goes, look at the items from Ravenloft for most of your level 10 gear and Sharn for your level 15 stuff. You can search "item sets" on DDO wiki to quickly find them. Before level 10 you don't need much more than a good weapon, some heavy armor with invulnerabilty crafted on it (Can be ML 1 crafted) and ship buffs. You can find/buy the rest. Very few monsters under CR12 have magic weapons, so wearing invulnerable armor before you hit those levels gives you a nice five points off every hit and should be worn by all your toons in early leveling. I make one at level 1 and another at 5 to keep AC up and use vitality for the prefix because it never hurts to have a few more HP when you're starting out.

[Waveclaw]

Oka, thanks for the advices!