Paladin's patch

[Davairus]

you can roll a good align warrior. its not a strength... its a restriction

[Merlandox]

Just throwing ideas. Errantry makes a paladin go solo. On the flip side maybe something with another name that when used allows the paladin to protect their teammate.

Damage taken by groupmates will be redirected to the paladin. Maybe 30% of damage? Taken as bleed damage over time (maybe 5 rounds and maybe the bleed damage component can be further reduced by 20% or something so it's like supporting buff).

The paladin also has to be careful, if someone AOEs everything he's gonna take insane bleed damage and he may just die b4 his entire group. How does this sound? Not anything OP.

[hamsandwich]

I'm not going to agree or disagree with the good align being better idea, but I will throw out this little factoid:

There are undeniably and demonstrably far more evil characters, always.

[Mr. Forgotten]

Here's another little factoid for you about goodies:

In order to request, you have to have reached a level requirement AND you have to leave yourself vulnerable for a long period of time. If that doesn't bother you enough, you ALSO have the chance to lose your item if some asshole decides to come and pick it up or its accidentally picked up or some asshole wants to just sacrifice it.

[Davairus]

So this post is just a little bit of response to the people who are saying paladins should not be allowed to have the defense of warriors or whatever it was (I do not care to scrollback and find it, forgive me).

I was recording all of Conundo's play for 4 months and that has given me at least some stats on what warriors, or well, dwarf warriors, do most of.

hobble : 2719
dirt kick: 1276
overhead: 206
windmill: 194
sideswipe: 169
barrage : 164
disarm: 112
kick: 112
bash: 79
trip: 20
charge: 8

Assuming Conundo is competent, this gives us an insight that paladins definitely do not have the best skills of warriors, and in fact, they have their least used skill, which I'm sure a warrior player would like to argue is useful, but lets not kid ourselves. The data unequivocably supports a view that paladins wrath spell is used for lack of alternative.

[Merlandox]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with the stats. It tells us what a dwarf warrior will use against other people? There's a lack of comparison here. The dwarf warrior has no wrath spell to use. Maybe when given a wrath spell that demolishes through sanc on the first cast, he'll be using it in every fight.


If dodge is given, it'll affect how other mage/cleric classes fight against paladins. It'll be much harder to burn them through their superb defenses now. Something to think about probably.

[Lorne]

Lol, what are you two smoking?

Yes there is way more evil characters, except evil characters kill other evil characters. Goodie characters never kill each other, in fact they usually help each other out. It goes back to what Kalist is saying. You already have 1/3 of the people online you don't need to worry about at all, and most likely you can call for help in PVP/PVE.

While being evil, you have to worry about every single person, even your own cabal-mates. I've killed other legions being in legion by surprise, I've even killed other justices as a justice.

And how can you argue about request not being the easiest things to get high-end armor? You don't need a group, you don't need to die from killing bosses. Yea, the only thing is you're vulnerable for that time, IF there is even anyone around to be vulnerable to and IF they can find you requesting that particular item in that particular timeframe.

Sure, there's a level requirement. Hence why I said end-level gear. I assume we are talking about pinnacle characters here, no point in trying to talk about balancing issues in lower levels.

[hamsandwich]

Well Lorne all I said was there are more evils, which you agreed with. So I'm not smoking anything different than you I guess? Not sure why you got fired up about it.

I was just pointing out that there must be a reason there are always more evil characters. May not be a "evils are stronger" reason. But there must be one

[hamsandwich]

Can't seem to edit my post.

I am surprised by those numbers for Conundo. Are they counting mob fights too? Spamming hobble when trying to kill mobs is definitely par for the course, but having so many more hobbles than dirts and barrage and whatnot seems really strange for pk imo.

[Davairus]

[Davairus]

[Lorne]

It's a very simple reason why there are more evils. Evils can basically do whatever they want, cuz they can just RP murdering silent assholes if need be. Like I said, as an evil character you can pretty much attack anyone at anytime. Sure there's a few instances you may not be able to to this (evil lawful for instance). And evil classes are more offensive based then good classes. Shaman vs healer, dkn vs paladin.

There are also a larger portion of vets, and the majority like to play evil to have this free reign in pk.

[Davairus]

Lets please keep this on topic, there are difficult decisions to make.

[Lorne]

Yea sorry, getting carried away.

I also don't like the dodge thing, I just can't see a heavy armored holy/evil warrior dodging very well. I think it was a good move they removed it.

I love the guardian idea thing. Rescue is pretty much a pve only scenario, and even then very niche. Probably only really needed in the end-game dungeon areas when you make an accident or aura drops on your primary tank or something. It could be utilized more here.

I also think they need a segmented weapon. Flail seems like the right choice here. That will help them better in weapon advantages.

Maybe a shield type spell like invokers. Sets an imaginary mini barrier, and i mean very mini but can soak up a round or so of damage, but used sparingly that can be utilized by themselves or to guard groupmates.

I don't like adding too many more "defensive" buffs to pallys, I think they got enough of that. Like a super tanky pally, cuz then they just become more healerish. It's a hard balance to gauge.

[Faelon]

I do think that Lorne's points are not that far off topic and raise some serious points about the class.

A few points to make here;

First; Yes, the classes have had a tendency over the years to be swayed for damage to evils. You state that like it was intentional. Was it? And if it was, does it matter? What I mean by that is, should we continue as a game along that status quo? As a good aligned character player, do you know what I saw? A group of imms who like playing evils and gave all the toys to them. (Obviously, that's a jaded opinion from someone who started playing this game at 14, that opinion has since evolved lol). From an RP standpoint, healers make sense to have more curative/protection based spells, but Paladins? Nah. They are supposed to be, in the truest sense, the "You are scared of me if you are evil because I will fuck your world up, but literally zero ability to do much of anything to neutrals." class. They are not currently that way, except for the latter half of that statement.

Second; I am noticing that the people who play evils (or that I suspect primarily play other then good aligned characters) are advocating for a status quo attempt, or at minimum a "I'd very much like it if you didn't give paladins any more real pk ability please, k thnx". Seems self serving. If you don't think I wasn't on the same page when DKN's got a power spike, you are out of your mind. But DKN's got their power spike and now can nuke people. We can list out their utility, if you'd like, but that's not really the topic of conversation.

Third; Paladins are supposed to be the antithesis of Dkn's, but where Dkn's are kind of everyone's bane, Paladin's are kind of supposed to be just evils bane. They aren't. Paladin's get one set of targets; are you keeper? Paladin's not only don't care, but can't do shit against you. Halfling thief intent to steal paladin's shit? Don't matter, paladin's can't do shit against you. The two classes that are almost the entire reason why Paladin's exist, Shaman and Dark Knight, are their two single biggest threats and they are only marginally a threat to them. That makes zero sense. Literally Zero sense.

Paladins are underwhelming, and under served by their utility.

On a final note about request: Stop with the request is a boon shit. It is, and it isn't. And a lot of points were raised, but let me give you another one against it; DerpShit McPaladin Pants who never logs in, doesn't get in fights and only groups with other goodies to dick around has level 50 polearms X3. If he was evil? Kill his ass and take that shit, because fuck him and his you can't be bothered to actually put yourself in harms way attitude. Paladin? "Sure, I'll help you stay alive against this evil, because not doing so would 100 be against roleplay. Fml, I hope you die, but then I can't loot your shit, because you are a goody and that'd get me fucking outcasted. So I have to let them loot it, then kill them later (because if I try right then, you'd be in a hard position to explain that shit).

[Dogran]

Faelons last point is one I was going to raise. Request is not a boon, because of the several people who hoard rares and never fight. Nothing we can do about it as lighties. As an evil I would just try to kill them, but you gotta remember, they never fight so they collect the gear and then run away at the first sign of a threat... Then you have the couple of lighties who are always gearing up and then getting killed/looted over and over again. It messes with the availability of rares. So yeah, goodies don't have as many enemies, but it also usually means they have less gear.

[jaran]

How about Paladin only gambled eq? That would take away the worry about other goodies just hoarding stuff and never fighting.

[jaran]

I'd also like to add that generally I totally agree with most of the points Dav is making. To me Paladins should be the one class that evil's fear the most because their entire purpose is to protect the weak and to purify/destroy evil.

They should be complete badasses when fighting evil but they just are underwhelming at the moment in actually trying to do this.

How we change this I'm not sure but I'm 100% behind the plan to do something.

[Kalist19]

Faelon I’m not sure if anybody said “please don’t buff paladins, they are fine”...

Have any of the top pkers made a paladin lately and really struggled? I bet Davairus could mop the floor with one. (I am not suggesting leaving them alone, it’s just a question). Are people not using maximum divine sacrifice? Free 10 damroll, yes please!

I could definitely see the difficulty of fighting a neutral warrior but isn’t that kind of by design? Yes they should be vicious to fight as an evil but neutrals are kind of an equalizing factor. This usually wouldn’t be a problem since it’s a bit of a rp stretch for neutrals to go hunting paladins (until the advent of keepers at least).

I just think the iron will thing that prevents bash/combat skills would be too strong but I won’t complain if they get it. This is all just discussion, which is much more than happened before they got/lost trance, etc. Discussion is good!

[Faelon]

Kalist my point is that the suggestions are either "Here, take a throw away skill that doesn't actually do much in combat" or "No, don't give them that! Because then pwn." Both of which, in my opinion, seem a bit self serving of the people stating it.

We are saying the same thing with the balancing factor with neutrals and I wasn't saying that neutrals should be on the list of who should be afraid of Paladins. The point is they aren't on that list, but really, neither are shamans or DKN's. So we have the balance point of "Neutrals don't really have much to worry about here" without having the "but evils sure do" in that the two most evil classes in the game, simply view them as another class.

I think Ironwill for paladins would not make them strong at all and I don't even really like it for them. The only class/race I was worried about for lag as a half-elf or human paladin, was vampire. Fire giant zerkers, stone giant warriors, whatever, I had zero worry that they would chain bash me to death. Specifically because of the bash changes.

That last point is contingent upon my understanding of Ironwill. Ironwill just makes bash/trip affects non-useful, right? Any other utility I'm not aware of?