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Paladins and RaidsFollow

#1 Apr 01 2004 at 8:34 AM Rating: Good
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This is a post I made on our guild boards to help get our new Paladin's up to speed with the roles we have for Paladin's on our raids. It is not necessarily complete, and I would welcome additions and corrections. I thought this might be interesting for some of the up and coming Paladin's on the board. Primarily this guide assumes a level 60 plus Paladin raiding high-end Luclin and mid-end PoP (i.e. as far as my experience takes me). To an extent this applies to SKs also.

Tanking

Paladins may occasionally tank boss mobs where holding aggro is very difficult for a Warrior (mem blur, shadowstepping, knockback). Example Tallon Zek. Chain stun spells to hold aggro. Paladins may also tank when clearing trash due to being able to get fast aggro to speed up the clearing process.

Offtanking

This is a common role during a raid, especially in places like VT. It is important to offtank without using damage - so stuns with /attack off. Two reasons:

1) If the mob is mezzable, you will not break mez when the chanter gets around to it.

2) If you are not getting heals, and need to root and back off you will not get summoned. Shackles of Tunare is one of the best ghetto CC spells in the game. Use it and love it, but if you root make sure it is out of melee range of the raid force. I always offtank in a corner somewhere if I can.

When a pull has multiples, stand back and watch the battle unfold. Watch for mobs that go for casters rather than grab the first mob you see. This can avoid a common occurrance on raids: Two knights on the same mob having an aggro competiton.

On some raids - VT especially, offtanks may be assigned mobs (assisting a SoS rogue), which makes target aquiring easy. If you do not have an assigned target, be aware that unexpected adds can and do happen and be observant until it is obvious that the pull doesn't have additional adds. Assisting the chanter and throwing a stun on their mobs can help them with mezzing also.

Remember, no damage offtanking! Chanters gets all grumpy when their mezzes are broken

Rampage Tanking

If you are assigned as a Rampage tank, throw a low aggro spell like Cancel Magic, just before the Main Tank engages (or earlier if the mob is perma-rooted). This should put you on the rampage list. Also make sure you have a hotkey with /rsay <<< YOUR NAME >>> has RAMPAGE, or something similar.

Group Healing

Paladins have Wave of Marr, and Healing Wave of Prexus, plus the AA Hand of Peity, which makes us awsome for healing AoE. It is a good idea to group us with DPS melee classes who shouldn't be taking melee damage but will take steady AoE damage. For our group heals to be most efficient, a full group is ideal.

LoH/Soulfire

Occasionally, a Paladin may start a Complete Heal Chain with LoH. Always be ready to use it to save a life. I often target the Main Tank until the mob is slowed so that I can throw in a patch if it looks like she will drop. Otherwise, if I have a cleric in my group, I tend to save it for them.

Can I urge all Paladins to complete the Soulfire quest and keep a charged Soulfire on them at all times (or as often as possible). The quest is easy to solo for a 65 Paladin, and only the first time takes a long time because of faction work. I can now solo Soulfire in 4-7 hours depending on how lucky I am on spawns. You can also have a second Soulfire in your shared bank, and another ready by having turn in items in case you burn your charges. Do not use your Soulfire in exp groups, save it for raids emergencies.

I can't emphasise enough how useful having 3 or 4 paladins with 5 charges of INSTA-click Complete Heal can be in saving raids.

Buffing

From a raid perspective, for a player to maximise their hitpoints, Brells Steadfast Shield is a must have buff. It does not stack with Strength of Tunare (Ranger) or Spiritual Vigor (Beastlord) - Inform the raid prior to casting BSS to click off these two buffs if they want to maximise their hitpoints with BSS. If there is more than one Pally with BSS share the groups, or even better Mass Group Buff(MGB).

Many guilds standard MGBs are Pot9 and Symbol. As this is the best set-up for everyone except us Paladins and Clerics. Make sure to ask your local friendly Cleric for Virtue using a /tell, and get Aura of the Crusader up. If you do not have Aura of the Crusader, then you are better off with Pot9 and Symbol.

Stunning

Stuns are effectively a ghetto slow. Even if you are not tanking, if the mob is effected by Force of Akilae, once the main tank has FIRM aggro, you may as well stun the mob as they are available. When I am not feeling lazy, I FoA trash mobs as soon as they reach the Main Tank, which gives her a few seconds grace while the mob is unslowed to build aggro.

We can also use our knockback stuns (QWoS and Divine Stun) to help position mobs.

Cure Curse/Disease/Poison

Crusaders Touch and Remove Greater Curse have their situational uses. We are not the best at curing though, I tend to leave this to clerics.

Taking Death Touches

What do you think Rangers are for?

Please feel free to add more! These are just a few of my own thoughts.
#2 Apr 01 2004 at 7:31 PM Rating: Excellent
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Very nice. Good, solid information. A few "tricks" I use on raids:


Pallys have LoH (and Soulfire, which is great as Pat has said). But lots of pallys don't really know when/how to use it. In an exp group, LoH is usually used to save someone who grabbed agro, or yourself (if tanking) in case someone biffs a heal and stuns fail, or any of a number of reasons.

On a raid, individual lives are not always worth using LoH (or a charge of SF). There are, however, some specific classes that really matter, and some specific phases of a raid battle where they are in the most danger.

Learn the raid target. Learn the pattern of engagment. There are some mobs where you just want to get everyone patching the MT from the get go and then things are fine. Feel free to be part of the patching crowd if that's what's needed. However, what I often do during the engagement phase of a fight is target the slower, or first cleric in the CH rotation, or anyone else in the pattern of debuffing/healing that starts off a big fight. As a paladin, your dps wont be missed too badly if you take the first 15 seconds of a big fight to stand back and look at who's taking damage and helping out. Target the chanter when he's about to toss his tash. Then target the shaman while he's dropping slow. Then target the cleric who dropped the first CH on the MT. Those are the folks that if they die right off the bat, can cause a raid to wipe.


This concept applies doubly to trash clearing and whatnot. Pat touched on this already, but I'll reiterate. Your first job when an add comes along is to make sure it's not whacking on someone "critical" to the raid. Guess what? A ranger is not critical. A rogue is not critical. A mage or wizard or necro is not critical. Chanters, Shamans, and clerics are the people you need to be protecting first.

Don't be afraid to drop an AEheal (if you've got one loaded at the time) purely to draw agro when adds come in. They are great for grabbing otherwise unhit trash mobs who might otherwise pick on that wimpy looking dresswearer.


I'll also go a step farther with the stuns. Your reaction to any mob that you want to grab/stop/tank should be to drop a stun on it. Not a damage stun though! Mob appeared in camp? Drop a stun on it. Mob running off in a random direction? Drop a stun on it. Mob beating on chanter? Drop a stun on it. Mob just pissing you off? Drop a stun on it. There are very few situations where using a stun on a mob will be the wrong choice, and generally the absolute worse thing that can happen as a result is that you get agro when you shouldn't and *you* die (which isn't that bad in the grand scheme of things).


One more thing about buffs. And this one's not just for the paladins out there. I always run into lots of confusion about whether people want SoT or BSS. It's really simple:

If you are a purely melee damage dealer (ie: a melee who will not tank like a rogue or ranger), then take a SoT. It's a nice atk buff.

If you are *anything else* take BSS. It's a nice HP buff. Tanks will need HPs more then more dps. Casters don't do damage with their melee, so SoT is totally wasted on them, but the extra HPs from BSS will allow them to survive that much longer against AEs, or in the event a mob starts hitting them.

The BL line is kind of a mix. SV has some HP and some ATK, but not as much as either the pally or ranger buff. Honestly, you're better off picking either more atk or more HP and going with that.
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#3 Apr 02 2004 at 11:37 AM Rating: Decent
For those of us who do not have BSS yet (I hate the rune system!!) The 62 BL buff gives the same number of HP as the lvl 60 brell's AND it gives + atk. In that situation only clerics need brell's since the BL buff blocks Yaulp 5.
#4 Apr 02 2004 at 12:11 PM Rating: Decent
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Quote:
(I hate the rune system!!)


Yeah I ended up paying 30k for BSS, only time I saw it on sale.
#5 Apr 02 2004 at 12:45 PM Rating: Good
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2,514 posts
Remind me to give you 100 plat to change the colour of your armor, you cheap punk. You look like an iron banana these days.
#6 Apr 03 2004 at 5:48 PM Rating: Decent
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181 posts
Good guide. Will help a lot of guys who may be new to raiding.

Couple of other things that knight classes (I play SK personally) may end up doing:

Trash tanking: ie tanking non-named mobs, on the way to boss mobs. Some guilds use warriors, some use knights. We use knights for snap aggro generation. Bearing in mind the sole purpose of the tank here is to hold aggro, its recommended to spam aggro spells

Positioning: on occasion a knight class with DA / HS up will be used to position a high DPS boss before a warrior takes over. This also has the handy effect of dropping said knight on the rampage list

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