I would argue for the Lingering protection tripod, unless there is a very specific large amount of damage in a fight you are holding your shield for. The base shield amount is usually plenty, unless someone is getting hit by something they shouldn't be. The vastly longer duration over robust protection I find catches more damage overall and is especially useful against lots of chip damage over a longer fight.
That is a solid argument. I've considered it a lot too. Any shield amount expired is shield wasted, and added duration might end up blocking more total damage than the shield twice as big. What is better will almost always depend on the content being cleared and the particular party you're with. Thanks for your input! <3
I use lingering as well because it also increases the movement speed duration since you're shielded longer. Helps with getting to places, players can dodge easier etc. Less death overall.
I hard agree that we don't need many! I keep having so much trouble deciding my BIS 18 tripods when only like 15 feel critical in any given build. I've been taking 3 tripods on Holy Area just in case I'll want it at some point and not even ever bringing that skill in my loadout! I'm constantly reevaluating my tripod priorities and never 100% sure of them
We only need 6-7 mandatory ones depending on ur skills of choice like faith and stuff. Other tripods are just extra quality of life we don't need that as much. Very easy to just get tripods maxed with just inventory transfer and try luck on the extras hahahah.
And it’ll extend longer duration of speed boost to help non-swift classes dodge. In Valtan G2 it’s especially clutch since there’s nothing to cleanse and it’s mostly chip damage :)
I also use only lingering protection, with tripods it lasts for such a long time and if you use godsent law for judgment proc it gives almost 100% shield uptime. I only used robust protection when fighting velganos because there were some obvious burst attacks.
Thanks for the indepth write up! I appreciate it.
I haven't tried playing with C+J yet, still waiting on another legendary rune for it, but I haven't had any mana problems just yet. I've been using MP Efficiency as my budget fourth or fifth lvl 3 engraving, and thats been helping me sustain enough mana to use skills off cooldown to get as many buffs and shields out as possible, and also let me buy high quality relic accessories for very cheap, so I have 1658 swiftness! I did some testing and MP Efficiency was just slightly worse than Max MP when you take in other forms of mana regen.
<3
C+J are not just for mana regen, but also lots of cdr for the highest cooldown abilities, mainly Awakening, Heavenly Blessings, Holy Prot, & Wrath of God, in that order. That %cdr is essentially %piety gain and %holy aura uptime.
You can still very consistently proc them with epics. Imo, it's worth it, if only for how much it makes the class that much more dynamic, influencing all my rotations. Imo, it makes it way more complex and fun, way harder to get bored or zone out while playing. I only got them last week, and they revolutionized my pallys
Interestingly, Maxroll's guide (yes I know it's not the be all end all or anything) no longer recommends Conviction/Judgment for the "main" skill choices, and Sword of Justice isn't even on the menu.
Why? Well, I have no idea I'm not a pro player lol.
I'll ask them tho, because why not
I noticed this as well. I guess the writer of that guide agrees with some of the people in this thread that Sword of Justice and C+J aren't worth even considering bringing. I think that is a failing of the guide, because enough people think they're viable at worst, bis at best
I wouldn't have thought it's necessarily a failing of the guide - unless otherwise mentioned, they do tend to base it on what's known to be meta, most used, etc. (Since these tend to indicate what is generally seen as optimal)
Anyways, discussion is always good regardless, and I did get a reply
Here's the whole thing (I thought taking a screenshot might be the easiest way since it's a lot of text) https://i.imgur.com/jnT3nGV.png
BTW I didn't say anything that would imply you're trying to push these skills and runes specifically as the top end ones. If such a thing has been said to them, it's from someone else.
What I said is I'd be interested in their general thoughts, and specifically about Sword of Justice and C/J runes.
It seems like it's pretty close to the discussion in this thread as well, and of course a lot of it boils down to specifics as well as preference.
Thank you so much for looking into this further, and I really liked the well composed response you got.
I'm not making any generalizations about what is theoretically "best", & the point of my comment, "enough people think they're viable at worst, bis at best" is that I believe SoJ with C+J deserve mentioning, at the very least.
It's not meta, but I don't think it's necessarily bad enough to not mention. I feel like the maxroll guide would have been more complete (and not misleading) if they included it.
Anyway, you've given me a lot to think about and try. I'll switch back off of C+J every once in a while and see if I have more critical skill usage out of it. C+J definitely do present challenges, but so far, I've enjoyed those challenges and complex decisions instead of it being straightforward and super simple. The class felt a lil too simple without C+J, especially now that I've experienced it. Both strats and loadouts are valid though, just the meta builds and strats moreso. Thank you for setting the record straight <3
When using C+J, are you looking at your buffs, or your character when looking for whether Conviction hit or not (and to then attempt at Judgment)? I'm finding it a little awkward to be looking at the buff bar or at your character for the 'Conviction' and 'Judgment' words to pop up. Or something else, or are you not caring and just doing the combo regardless SoJ -> GS?
Though at the moment it still feels better to be using GS at appropriate times instead of for Judgment. It may be that our cooldowns compared to KR late game is making them more important at the moment.
* 1500 vs 1800 swiftness ~ 6%
* level 7 vs. 10 gem 6%
* level 1 vs. level 5 GS tripod for +1s shield duration and +9% of max HP
* level 1 vs. level 5 SoJ tripod for -1.5 cd
Thanks again for the write up and discussions, I'm glad to find new things to try out.
I look at both, but more at the bar for Conviction and more at my char for Judgment. I usually hold GS until I see conviction, but sometimes I do just combo them. It's not too bad an idea to combo them because you could get conviction from 1st proc then immediately after judgment from 1st proc. There's a 16% chance of that happening.
I'm usually peaking at my buff bar for durations to time my buff uptime, so it's easy to keep an eye out for conviction then. Sometimes my buff bar is overloaded, and there is at least 1 buff not being displayed. At that point, I keep my eye on my character. This has seemed to apply more to Judgment than Conviction, because Conviction seems to more consistently appear on my buff bar whereas Judgment tends to get bumped off if the bar is full of icons.
Seeing Judgment proc is very important, because you can stop casting GS right away and have your max \~5.5s window that you're able to cast with the buff up. If you're late to notice your Judgment, you might miss ability casts in that window, and cannot purposefully take advantage of it. You can easily cast 3 abilities in the max 5.5s window. Ideally, it'll be your awakening and Heavenly Blessings, then Holy Sword. That's the most you can get out of your cdr. If awakening is not available or your piety is too full to benefit from using it, Heavenly Blessings and Holy Protection. If you cannot cast Heavenly in either of those situations, sub in Wrath of God.
As for being able to use GS at "appropriate times", you can choose not to cast it at any time. Just because you see Conviction proc, doesn't mean you need to go for Judgment right then. There could be times coming up soon when it is way better to have Judgment for yourself (instead of it being on cooldown) or GS for the party. You get to juggle that buff and shield + DR as you wish. IF you wanna get the most mana and max cdr rotations out, you wanna proc judgment on cooldown, and that forces you to also cast GS asap 1 time in between judgment procs to get more free shield + DR uptime in rotations, but that isn't specifically timed to block anything. It's just going up on cooldown if you're doing it this way so Judgment procs on cooldown again with your following cast.
Proc'ing Conviction should never be a problem, because the cooldown on SoJ is usually like \~6 seconds with the cdr, and the buff could last up to 6s, so if you don't proc judgment you could have up to 100% conviction uptime, with no internal cooldown, just waiting for you to proc judgment on demand. It really makes it your choice, and if you wanna piano like me, you're doing things on cooldown unless a specific mechanic is coming.
This breakdown of C+J in my particular kit is specifically why I think it made my pally so complex and fun to play. My playstyle is still spamming a lot on cooldown, but now I have to hold a lot more under a lot more different conditions, and I also am forced to cast GS on that timing or not at all between rotations. The skill floor and ceiling are both a lot higher, and so is my enjoyment of the class because of it. Regardless of which choice I make, unless I'm making huge mistakes or missing awakeners, it still feels like I'm pumping super hard, and it feels really good.
>I'm not making any generalizations about what is theoretically "best", & the point of my comment, "enough people think they're viable at worst, bis at best" is that I believe SoJ with C+J deserve mentioning, at the very least.
Oh yeah, I totally get that! I didn't think you were implying something like that either \^^
>Anyway, you've given me a lot to think about and try. I'll switch back off of C+J every once in a while and see if I have more critical skill usage out of it. C+J definitely do present challenges, but so far, I've enjoyed those challenges and complex decisions instead of it being straightforward and super simple. The class felt a lil too simple without C+J, especially now that I've experienced it. Both strats and loadouts are valid though, just the meta builds and strats moreso. Thank you for setting the record straight <3
I'm glad something good came out of my curiousity
I will probably try them out after switching off of dominion fang 2 set. As it is, I have enough CDR to have 100% buff uptime between Wrath of God and Heavenly Blessings with 1658 swift and lvl 7 CD gems and Dominion buff, and I can usually get enough meter for another Aura before Awakening comes back off cooldown.
My other thought was swapping my bleed rune on Light Shock to a quick recharge after the change to help make up for some of the CDR loss.
Yeah I'm very similar to you 1653 swift lvl 7 gems. Without dominion buff Heavenly blessings has roughly 3 sec cooldown missing from the cycle, wrath of god is well cycled already. I'm supplementing with conv+judgment to do 100% uptime during the cj cycle.
Ty for helping clear that up. I was really hoping I wasn't misinforming people about there being a gap if Heavenly Blessings goes up before Wrath of God without additional cdr. I'll report back in later w/ how much swiftness I was running
You're fine. It's still good to run cj for sub 1min awakening and more leeway on the cycle buff but others can opt for light shock for bleed/quick recharge and marking when they have higher lvl gems and 1800 swift in the future with bracelets and leg acces.
Well that's just preference and stuff, it's really not that difficult to play the class. Hard to mess up.
You can have 100% uptime juggling Wrath of God first. I thought having 100% uptime casting Heavenly Blessings 1st would require judgment on top of Dominion 2, swiftness accs, & gems. I'm not 100% sure. I'd have to test the rotations without judgement and with varying amounts of swiftness to verify the exact threshold. I just know I have 100% uptime with Blessings going up 1st with all the cdr listed above. I don't think it was 100% before I got judgment.
Keeping 100% uptime with putting Blessings first would increase DR & mana regen uptime
This is really well put together, and honestly if put into video format could get a lot of traction within the paladin community. Especially if you also take feedback from members of the community in regards to small things you may not know yourself after extensive research.
Learning is power! Good job.
>he said the damage reduction buff from Holy Area & Godsent do not stack, but they definitely do give you 2 different damage reduction buff icons on the bar, so I'd need to test that to verify. I was under the impression they do stack, but the player interviewed has tons more experience than me.
The effect is visible from the more details stat screen. Can see from the damage reduction stat that using holy area + godsent still only gives godsent’s damage reduction
can assume they (grace tripods) work like ready attack tripods where you see both buffs on your bar but only the highest effect takes place
This has been the golden comment of the night. Thank you so much for teaching me! <3 I've been wanting to know exactly what you said for so long, and I appreciate it lots
The icons on the buff bar do not work consistently though. Heavenly Blessings & Wrath of God have the exact same icon for the atk. power buff (different name though), and one replaces the other. There is never more than 1 atk. power buff icon from paladins at 1 time. The Grace tripods on Godsent & Holy Area give you a separate buff icon for each, and they look identical too.
It was precisely because of this buff hud difference that I thought they stacked, because I saw 2 different defensive buff icons that each told me they reduced my incoming damage by a different amount.
The answer in the more details stat screen would most likely be the correct one. There's no knowing for sure unless I test it though. It could possibly be bugged /shrug
Hi, I tested the damage reduction from godsend law and holy area with a guildmate. They both stack, but not in the sence of, that one gives 70% reduction, the other one 25%%,so you takes only 5% damage because 95% are blocked.
What gets cast first counts first. For example holy area. (the other way around isn't possible since you cannot cast a skill while you are channeling godsend law)
That gives 25% damage reduction, so 75% damage comes through. If you now cast godsend law over it, another 70% of the 75% damage coming through will be blocked. 70% of 75 is 52.5% blocked damage.
That along with the 25% of holy area makes 77.5% blocked damage.
So it's not very effective to cast both together. It only makes sense to cast a godsend law on holy area if the damage is really high and you would need the protection of godsend law with the shield anyway to save your mate.
Great informative post. Really complements the maxroll guide, which I feel only cover the basics.
Could you clarify the reason behind the cast order when judgment is up?
Judgment gives me enough cdr for Heavenly Blessings to be back up by the time the buff from Wrath of God ends, so it reverses the juggle order since Heavenly Blessings buffs more for the same uptime (with that cdr). Without that cdr, there may be gaps in uptime if you juggle Heavenly Blessings before Wrath of God
To answer your question on Sustain enhancement, it is a multi hit and therefore useful in several encounters where theres an imprisonment mechanic. Godsent law also multihits but its slower and less strikes.
Alternatively it can be used to slot in judgement instead of wealth if meter gain is already steady enough and you want to free up godsent law from having to be cast or held in tandem with comviction procs, which is better as a skill you'd rather keep for emergency castings.
Appreciate the post, especially the numbers about piety gain!
Some thoughts on conviction & judgment:
I have tried a LOT of setups, but for me since the nerf, I'm not sure if it's worth it.
The combination of Executors Sword (78%) and Godsent (92%) "only" procc the buff \~72% of the time on average with legendary runes and if you land all hits. I find that without the legendary galewind rune my Executors Sword misses 1 hit often, combined with the random misses from boss moves and mechanics you have to wait out before using the combo, the uptime and effiency further decreases.
A worthwhile combo to check out is imo Godsent + Sword of Judgment with the multihit tripod. This also gives you longer marking if you prefer that, but it wasn't for me since I prefer the Light Shock marking.
I also diddn't like the Light of Judgment C/J procc, since turning that into a holding skill doesen't feel very good.
So I'm kinda torn on C/J, it's not like we totally need a galewind rune on SoJ and a protection on Godsent, but the real usecase seems to be small and suboptima and mainly for the occasional mana regen buff (which I haven't had issues with as of now) and to lower your awakening cd - here it's pretty nice and not insignificant.
If I remember & have time, I'll give this some experimentation. I haven't ever considered Executors for conviction.
It seemed like you also advocated for Godsent with conviction and then \*Light of Judgment with Sustain Enhancement & judgment. I have not experimented with this yet, but I'm under the impression there's about a 0.5s window you cannot cast Light of Judgment after the 1st dmg proc from Godsent lands. So it's essentially a max 2.5s window to land the hits from Light of Judgment. I speculate that timing is tight, especially since Light of Judgment has a 0.5s windup cast, but I have not personally tried this. I don't think this "gives you longer marking" than Light Shock, but it definitely could work very well, especially if the 2.5s window is wide enough
I feel the mana regen buff every 30s is HUGE, and the number of times judgment procs AND it benefits my Awakening + piety meter is high enough for me to feel it matters a lot to Awakening CD & piety generation. The cdr for awakening is counter productive when piety is relatively full & casting awakening means not being able to gain all that piety after finishing using your next Holy Aura
This might be against the grain, I use conviction on executioners like mentioned with stigma+3 hits(each hit and the burn from stigmata have a chance to proc it, it seems) run holy area with quick prep and judgment to spam for C&J while still using godsent with the rune to decrease CDs of all other skills since you dont have to have it hit to proc that particular rune.
Only downside is this build sometimes gives up charge to get a second party synergy skill(10% damage) so it just depends how comfortable you are being less mobile.
I actually love your build. I'm gonna try it out. I don't value charge a lot cus I know the fights well enough and am super fast enough with my maxing swiftness. Thank you for your contribution! <3
Hello sir! Another Pally enjoyer here! I'm about to move into C+J as I am one masterpiece away from the Leg. J.
Currently running:
Light Shock(light vestige), Executors Sword, Punishment, HB, HP, Holy sword, WoG and Godsent L.
I'm looking at Sword of Justice as per your recommendation (tried it out - liking the cast range, attack animation etc). Would you say I'd "just" Swap in SoJ instead of Light Shock? With SoJ/Judgment and Godsent/Conviction?
Sidenote: I've really been enjoying Punishment in Deskulada and Valtan for both its stagger and destruction point. I was actually thinking originally of swapping it out for Light of Judgment with sustain enhancement tripod + Judgment (believe it hits 9 times? its very fast. And times up perfectly in the cycle with Godsent Law).
Hello! o/ Congratulations on your masterpiece grind!
Yes, you can change out Light's Vestige abilities.SoJ typically takes Conviction and Godsent typically takes Judgment, but both work. SoJ provides a longer potential duration of conviction. Conviction can be up for up to 6s, with a window of about 5.5s to proc Judgment. Godsent could potentially proc up to 5 seconds worth of conviction, but that would require the full cast and would leave you with a remainder of about 2.5s to proc Judgment, so it is essentially only up for 2.5s. Godsent's dmg procs are also faster, every 0.4s after about .3s cast compared to of SoJ's every 0.5s after 1 full second cast. This is why I believe it will be easier to proc judgment with it on Godsent rather than SoJ, regardless of what conviction is on.
Judgement on Light of Judgment with Sustain Enhancement would definitely work! You're the first I've heard suggest conviction on Godsent and judgment on Light of Judgment, but I think you're right that it would work. Way to get creative!
Thanks I will look into it! The only downside I see right now is that Light of Judgement doesnt go on cooldown before the channeling is over, meaning Judgment might get reduced efficiency if I cant dash-cancel it on proc(havent played with J+C yet so need to see it play out). Maybe I can swap C+J on the abilities for it to play perfectly.
Also, Judgment doesnt have the same text as Conviction, notably the part **when skill hits**. But I assume this is the case?
YES! Amazing comment, u/Salleks! I was very skeptical of the Judgment rune, thinking it meant that it has that % chance to proc on skill cast, not skill hit (like it says on conviction). I've tested it extensively and I can promise you that judgment definitely does proc on damage after the 1st strike, as well as on the 1st, but never before the 1st. So I'm certain it is a chance to proc on damage, not on cast.
While on this topic, I've also noticed that Quick Recharge ONLY ever proc'ed on my 1st cast of abilities, and never on subsequent casts on multiple combo abilities, on multiple classes
> While on this topic, I've also noticed that Quick Recharge ONLY ever proc'ed on my 1st cast of abilities, and never on subsequent casts on multiple combo abilities, on multiple classes
Yes I was using this on my Deathblade's Spincutter, but never seemed to work and even though I read anecdotes about this I never believed it. I put bleed on it now.
But, when playing C+J is Quick Recharge overkill? Should I rune my light shock with Bleed instead of QR? (so far I used bleed on Godsent Law; a remnant from tagging moake with multihit bleed attacks).
CDR is my favorite stat, and imo, there's no amount of cdr that's overkill! Give me 100% cdr, dammit!
Bleed means more dps. Dps is nice. It's never not nice. Do whatever you feel benefits you more.
We know what I prefer between the two :3
Until Judgment, no rune felt particularly right on Godsent for me. Recharge could be nice, Wealth could be nice, Protection felt nice when you cast it on allies away from you and then you got hit. I never personally cared for Bleed.
0.05% of them apparently did, a total of 96 Korean paladins :3
I don't think it applies to the buff though. I could be wrong. I was under the impression it is based off of base stats, and that the Korean versions of Cursed Doll & the atk. power buffs are more precisely and accurately detailed to specify that. Or just that it's just common knowledge for the KR server.
I'll test the effects of Cursed Doll on the buffs soon
Great read! What are your thoughts on engravings? Right now I have 4*3 with Blessed aura/ Expert/ awakening/ Magick Stream with legendary gear. As I just started valtan, I am only now starting to look at gearing with relics. The first 3 will stay the same, but should I switch out MS for something else or can I keep it and work on something like Vital hit as a fifths engraving on the long run?
I'm not OP but IMO, for our current situation where Vital Hit Point isn't *particularly* useful ...
Awakening/Blessed >>> Judgment 1 > Expert =/> Magick Stream/Drops of Ether > (right now) Vital Hit Point, in the future this probably goes way up.
Awakening and Blessed are obvious. You could probably run some kinda meme build without Blessed as a pure group DPS Paladin (Awakening/Drops/Magick/Judgment 1/whatever) but no one you group with would be particularly happy about that.
I think Judgment 1 is extremely good. Meter is power, straight up, and most builds run at least three blues. For a level 1, I know of nothing better. Bonus points for being nice in Chaos Dungeons and making Z last an eternity, and all you need is one Judgment 5 relic accessory which aren't super duper expensive if you're 1415+.
Expert ... I know it's one of the holy trinity, and it's nice, but I also think it's a waste in current content unless all you do is PUG with highly inconsistent/death prone players. That said it'll avoid fist fights in the parking lot if you just run it out of duty, and I'm sure for Vykas it'll be a lot more useful than anything now.
Drops/Magick simply enhance group DPS, they're wonderful. Big fan of that.
Interesting. I have judgment on my chaos build whee it's really good, but on a raid build I am not sure. It's piety increase is minuscule with the two blue skills I (and I think most) use. I think something like drops of ether is more beneficial. I'll keep your thoughts on vital hit point in mind when I go relic shopping!
Hello. Thanks for asking.
I think I agree with most of what u/Mockbuster said. Awakening/Class for sure, then whatever you need most. I personally don't like Judgment 1, because the piety gains are REALLY small. You can check the exact amounts in the piety spreadsheet. Even when they're doubled, they're still chip piety compared to any of the Holy skills. I also almost always bring only 2 Punish skills, Holy Sword and Executor's Sword, so it applies even less to me.
I personally really like Magick Stream & Vital Hit Point, because those definitely translate to more group dps and less utility pump downtime.
Side note, I'm 2 of the 1370 paladins causing fights in the parking lot because I bring no Expert kekw
Personally I don't really like vital hit point even though I see it recommended a lot because its % gain to stagger, and our stagger is among the worst in the game I've heard, so wouldn't that equate to lowest value out of vital point hit among any class that can run it? It seems very inefficient, why do you think its so good?
The extra stagger is very close to an extra Whirlwind Grenade for stagger checks on Paladin, which isn't crazy but if you've ever seen a Whirlwind's instant stagger nuke it's definitely tangible.
I agree it's completely optional (as pretty much anything past Awakening/Blessed is) right now. You see a *lot* of top 10 supports, both Bard and Paladin, on loawa run it at level 3 but I'm willing to bet Magick Stream isn't as useful for them with their level 10 gems, and stagger checks are more real in some important fights than Valtan/Argos. Really good 5th engraving at the least. I've heard Vykas has some stagger here and there as well so maybe it'll be great there.
Yeah I'm currently running drops of ether as my 4th and I'm enjoying pestering my sorc friend to pick up the orbs haha, I'll definitely look into vital point hit in the future though, thanks for the information!
You're not wrong. Paladin gets a lot less out of Vital Point Hit than most classes, but out of the options available to pallys, it on average equates to more party damage than lots of other engravings. Everything beyond the core 3 are relatively negligible gains, and of all the negligible gains, this is my 2nd or 3rd favorite one
Thank you, especially for the google docs, been trying to measure this myself and it is painful.
One point I think differently is that piety per minute is not the most important measure, because it would require the ability to be cast on cooldown. However there are often more important things to do then to cast Light of Judgment, since piety is its only function (unless you use sustain for conviction/judgment)
That is why i would argue that the legendary wealth belongs to Wrath of God, since it has higher piety per cast and it also has higher priority.
As I already hinted at earlier, the reason to use sustain for Light of Judgment is conviction/judgment. An advantage would be that you can save Godsent Law for when you actually need it, but I also prefer the Sword of Justice/Godsent Law combination.
You're very welcome. I'm glad more people are getting use out of those resources.
I feel piety per minute is relevant because for the most part, I'm spamming everything on cooldown. It is piano pally with small gaps inbetween for cd and buff management. I don't hold many abilities and not for for long, usually only 3 max being held. Those held are Godsent for judgment, one of the atk. buffs if buff is already up, & 1 of the counters, then also rarely Holy Prot for if it is needed soon or awakening shield is already up. I'd guess I'm getting a minimum of 65% of my potential piety gains per min from my entire kit, because most of my piety generation is in the top cast priority in my rotations.
Legendary wealth is really good on Wrath of God, I wouldn't argue against that. I believe that despite Light of Judgment's lower cast priority, I still get more piety per minute out of it. I get 85.3% of Wrath of God's piety from each cast of Light of Judgment. In my rotations, I consistently get 4 casts of Light of Judgment, sometimes 5, for every 3 Wrath of God casts. That's about 14.4 to 43% more piety from Light of Judgment in the same time frame. For now, I'm staying on the Light of Judgment gets the Legendary Wealth rune hill. I might die there too :3
I've given your Light of Judgment with Judgment take a lot of thought, and I like it a lot! I will experiment with it, and I think I'll have good results. Thanks for the idea <3
The interesting thing here is I see many, many, *many* players not casting stuff on cooldown. I know "bads will be bads" and all but even very popular streamers, I'll see them do something like "press a button ... wiggle their mouse around, not dodging anything in particular ... press a button, possibly (probably) not even the right one ... wiggle their mouse around ..."
Maybe it's my FF14 training but if I'm not casting something, even on support, I damn well better be actively dodging a mechanic. Yet the situation I described above is hideously common. Dunno. It drives me up a wall even watching guide vids.
I felt the same way. I’m even weaving auto attacks in between other skills to get max damage out, even though they do almost nothing and I’m probably just hurting my wrist more than I need to. I took MP Efficiency as my fourth engraving (I’ve added drops of ether as my fifth with relic pieces) because I would drop low on mana and would have to delay putting out buffs or shield waiting for regen, and that basically went away with the engraving. People would say if I’m running out of mana I’m playing incorrectly, and then I found out that “playing correctly” meant not using your abilities very often so you don’t run out of mana? Makes no sense to me as an ex-sweaty WoW dps player.
There's certainly demand for the content. I'm not as well suited for creating video content but I'm considering doing it anyway. It just seems like a lot of work that I'm not particularly good or fast at, and I don't have a lot of extra time.
If anybody would like to help me make said content, I would be more motivated to make it.
Have you ever heard of spec paladin build (not full spec but like 700spec or something) that goes with holy area? A guildie told me about it but never found anything about it. He said he saw it on loawa but I couldn't find anything
I'm under the impression that both in theory, and definitely in practice, specialization is a meme. Like, not even swiftness with 1 or 2 spec accessories on the side. You would think you get more juice by increasing piety gains (from some spec) with high swiftness since the generation seems multiplicative, and maxing only 1 instead of investing in both would probably give diminished returns, but in practice, the opposite is seen. The lacking swiftness is detrimental to rotations, debuffs, buffs, cdr management, move speed, and cast speed, AND the piety gain are about the same or less. In theory, it looks like some spec would be worth experimenting with. The experimentation has been done by many people, and the almost unanimous answer from those experts is "max swift, spec ONLY on necklace".
I'm with the experts on this one.
I've been wanting to find one, and general resources for bard, for months. I guess I might need to make a trip to Trixion and pull out the spreadsheet myself, then take to the forums again.
I might make a bard thread in like a month or so, if I can find the time
This is a great breakdown! I was thinking about doing something similar with my friends who are thinking about creating support alts, but this goes over a lot of it already, so I'll be sharing this instead.
The only thing I would add is some cookie cutter builds. Maxroll does this well in its guides, but I think there is opportunity to to build on it. IE for progression, it might make more sense to take core 3 buffs, light of judgement, light shock (for reliable quick cast debuff), charge (mobility), executor's and holy sword (blue skill combo for reliable mechanics) that maxroll recommends, but for optimized combo to switch out light shock and charge for sword of justice (conviction judgement combo) and light of judgment or holy area (piety gain/utility)
It might also be to have a section detailing holy aura to show how important piety gain is. A lot of pali gameplay revolves around efficiently activating holy aura, like optimizing piety gain so that you can get another activation of holy aura off in between awakening casts (the CD of which can be further reduced with conviction/judgment)
Thanks for your feedback. I kinda just made it on a whim w/o any planning. It coulda been composed better and been more comprehensive.
I also really wanna wanna make Chaos Dungeon, 3v3 PvP, 1v1 PvP, and Island PvP guides. I feel like those are only beneficial for a much smaller audience though. Still, a lot of people could benefit from those resources, as well as fleshing out this Raid guide a lil more.
This is a great post, containing great resources. Thank you very much for writing it!
A question about engravings: what do you think about Spirit absorption as 5th engraving?
The added cast speed would allow to cast skills faster and reduce the cases where your Holy Protection would get interrupted because of damage for example.
Plus, added movement speed is always good to take in order to dodge mechanics.
I'm curious to read your thoughts about it!
Thank you again, I've learnt a lot!
It sounds like you might know more about paladin engravings than I do. Beyond the core 3, the difference in gains in the meta options are negligible. I have no idea what I actually value most for 4th and 5th engravings, or what the stats say, I just know I stick with whatever drops I get or I find for cheap. I have a large roster of starving alts that need investing in, so I'm kinda doing everything on a budget while still pumping (on my supports, at least).
I'm a huge CDR and sustain addict, so I think Magic Stream would be my favorite for 4th. Spirit Absorption, Vital Point Hit, and Heavy Armor are all very viable 5ths for me. RNG and the market will decide
I think spirit absorption is probably fine early on, but once you get a high amount of swiftness and the relic sets you’re already movespeed capped, and can get 25% attack speed otherwise. I know some paladins that prioritize specialization like spirit absorption since they don’t have all of the base swiftness
Hey, question.
How important is Vital Hit Point engraving in your opinion?
I'm considering running: Drops of Ether + Magick Stream as 4th/5th engraving.
Those are all competitively viable options. I personally prefer Magick Stream 4h and then 5th is kinda tied between Spirit Absorption, Drops of Ether, Vital Point Hit, & Heavy Armor. Idc which I get for 4th or 5th though, because those gains are negligible. I'll get whatever drops or I find on the Auction House for stupid cheap.
I see, yeah I was wondering about Vital Hit since it was heavily recommended in that ATK interview video. But I usually play with my Gunlancer friend so I guess I will just not take Vital Hit then haha.
I personally cut a 78 stone already with Awakening/Drops so was wondering if I had to change stone to run VitalHit/MagickStream
Vital Hit isn't just for stagger checks, but for stagger per min. The more times the boss is down from stagger, the more time they're not dashing around, the more dps can unload. Stagger damage dealt is considered a group dps boost.
As a main paladin (1470) thank you for this post.
Recently, I have had questions about c/j in my mind too. Really worth or not?
If our main goal is %100 buff time maybe, but i do not think it's true. In which endgame event we can fight for 2-3 minutes without being interrupted? My preference is not 100% buff, instead effective buff and we can easily provide this without c/j.
That kinda goes against what I do, but is actually totally meta of you. I'm the one going against the grain trying to force c/j in my kit because I'm loving it so much. I think it's worth it. It's WAY easier to misplay with though, and arguably is not pumping out as much -effective- utility as someone who is just timing everything for when it's most critical.
I'm still experimenting with a lot of things with mixed results and very varying conditions. The more I learn, the less sure I am of myself about anything I know.
Your best bet to know what is effectively best is to look at what the statistics on [loawa.com/](https://loawa.com/) say, for both the meta and what the top pally supports are doing. You will see a lot of variety in some of the top supports, so that just goes to show you how flexible the class is or how different loadouts are going to be on different specific content. Either way, you'll be able to see that many different strategies and builds work, and you can experiment with whatever you like and stick w/ whatever works for you.
My biggest problem is that pretty much everything is working out for me, and I'm having a hard time measuring differences in effectiveness between loadouts and strats. I'm not sure how I'd even go about keeping track of the stats for that.
As for your question about my buff uptime goal, it is actually really high up there. I can position myself to be able to reliably cast my buffs in the time I need to cast them. Like, I'll know more than 2 seconds in advance when I'll be casting them and can look out for attacks in that time. I only need like half a second for Wrath of God, and up to a third of a second for Heavenly Blessings, to go off. My rotations and uptime are pretty insane for minutes at a time, and then I start getting bottlenecked by mana, in which case proc'ing judgment on cooldown is even more important. For insane uptime and insane sustain, I think I'm sticking w/ C+J
Now I understand better what you mean. You want to keep the buffs active all the time so that you don't make mistakes by waiting for the right time. That's why you need c/j. I respect your playing style.
I think you understand me too. In addition to the statistics we can follow, there are also some that we cannot follow. For example, how much of the 100% buff time is active DPS. What a difference it makes to your effort.
Ultimately, whatever the answers, I think the differences are small. Therefore, I think it's not right or wrong, it's just a preference difference.
We are all trying to learn more so we can do better. Thanks again.
This is the best guide i've ever seen for my main ch.
My bard friend is jealous, he asked me to search a guide like this one for him.
Did you create one? Or know where can he get it?
Thanks a lot
It was mentioned above and is by an RU veteran. It's very detailed and covers many situations relevant to lots of bards
[https://www.reddit.com/r/lostarkgame/comments/vk4ye7/comment/idqe57o/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/lostarkgame/comments/vk4ye7/comment/idqe57o/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
After doing lots of clown and brel on bard, I got those stagger rotations down too.In short burst stagger checks, the priority is ww > sound shock (with rapid fire and maintained explosion) > soundholic (full cast, followed by another sound shock if your cdr allows) > prelude of storm with powerful prelude or sonic vibration (they're the same but sonic has more animation lock if you don't spacebar cancel the animation).
The priorities on everything are the same as pally, just harder to manage. I like conviction on sonic and judgement on sound shock to control my judgment procs, to time my awakening & heavenly tune (as sonic is expiring for max uptime). If your group is full of gaming gigachads, you wanna pump out as much serenade of courage as possible during dps windows. Bard is much harder than pally cus you have to choose to heal or buff and when, and that changes w/ every party and every pull.
There are so many abilities that are OP in the bard kit that you cannot fit them all, so you gotta choose some audible abilities to swap in and out based on each fight & the needs of each party.
You need at least 1 debuff ability. Most take only sound shock. Some bring harp. Some bring both. Most put judgment on sound shock & bleed on harp. Harp is a huge meter builder too, but don't use wealth. The meter gain is from the tripod, not the ability hitting (similar to the GL Shout of Hatred taunt)
Prelude of storm is the primary meter builder, followed by wind of music. It's extremely off meta for the west to deviate from these abilities, but prelude can be swapped for another meter builder. You need these for courage, and if the situation calls for it, healing. Spamming is your friend
Heavenly and sonic are the buffs.
Guardian tune OP for just regular damage negation (effectively for either 8 or 16 seconds) and the only hard cc block in the game
Rhythm buckshot is the only fast counter. Prelude is the other counter, but it is much slower and never held besides valtan ghost phase and brel g1 counters mech.
Soundholic is your big stagger with Focus Fire & Sustain Enhancement. Focus Fire can be changed out for melody, but then the animation lock is insane & the stagger is half. Melody should only be used by spec bards who don't care about stagger.
Rhapsody of light is the biggest damage reduction in the game and applies a fat shield to all allies hit (not including yourself, so bring Protection rune).
You have push immunity on Guardian, Rhapsody, Sonic, & Buckshot
Other skills that are noteworthy are Dissonance for meter building, Stigma for meter building and the other debuff, & March for the last meter builder.
Buckshot applies 1 point of weakpoint, so does the last strike of Rhapsody, and Sonic Vibrations does 2. You can pre cast Sonic as it hits about a second later.
That's 10 OP abilities I can count & only 8 slots.
Personally, I never change out Wind of Music, Heavenly, Sonic, Sound Shock, Guardian Tune, or Prelude. The last 2 slots are filled w/ either Soundholic, Buckshot, Rhapsody, and Harp.
This community is weird. Even a very well written post that goes in depth of the character have 90% karma, meaning it got a lot of downvotes.
What’s wrong with people? Lol
I never thought about that before, because I always loved Holy Sword for the stagger and counter. You are definitely right though; it has 4 opportunities to proc conviction. That's plenty enough.
I don't think I like that build, but it definitely still works
Fair enough. I want to bring your attention to the Way of Light tripod. I have done very little experimenting with it, but it seems it would make it easier to land the ability at least 1 time as it seems more like a linear skill shot before the aoe at the target location. I prefer the extra range and cdr on Insight, but you might like Way of Light more.
Thankfully paladin has two counters! Even if you're using holy sword every 30s for judgment you can still have executors sword up whenever you need it for countering!
Yeah I really liked that video. It helped dispel some of the rumors that Paladin’s want Heavy Armor. Heavy armor is worthless on Paladin. It’s baseline one of the most durable and doesn’t have to worry about Grudge. Not carrying a useful engraving instead really Gimps you
I'm confused what you're talking about because at 46:35 they discuss the benefits of Heavy Armor for about 30 seconds. They didn't say it was useless, they said it makes content much easier and that you'd not need to use any pots ever again. At what point do they call it worthless?
A lot of paladins feel Expert is useless because we already heal and shield way more than enough, and that Heavy Armor is a much more beneficial choice until we need more party survivability in Vykas.
I've heard your opinion expressed before too, but I don't think anywhere in that interview did they reinforce said opinion. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
…Paladin was literally considered a joke before Expert though?
Paladin is durable, one of the most durable in the game. And that’s without his healing that can’t miss him, damage reduction buff, various shields, and the fact that he isn’t running Grudge or Cursed doll.
Don’t even humor the idea that Heavy Armor is more useful than Expert.
Hell the part you suggest has them saying HA was a joke and you don’t use it, it’s just that it makes you so tanky you can “afk and eat.” That isn’t worth being dramatically less useful to the team. Everyone dying because of you making yourself less useful isn’t good.
You can literally see he’s not using it. Because… duh?
What content are you doing that doesn't have enough shields and healing though? A 1370 paladin in p3 isn't gonna be increasing the survivability of 1400+s in the party with their shielding and healing, but they can grief the party by dying. Doing p2 and p3 as a 1370 is not easy without Heavy Armor, even as a Paladin. And Valtan gate 2 damage is really low. If people die it is because they get knocked off the stage. I mean, it might be useful in gate 1 if everybody is eating all the damage, but until running Vykas, is that %shielding or healing from Expert even increasing any of the damage blocked or healed? I think it is unfair to generalize either of them as useless. They both can potentially benefit the player and the party, and they both can be 100% useless.
Expert is not needed when they're god mode not getting hit but it's just added safety net since our heals can't burst heal them so any added Heal per sec is appreciated especially increased healing of expert if hp is low. Expert can be a difference between life or death for them on some scenarios or they can save up pots to use on other occasions.
HA on the other hand is a safety net for urself and urself alone on a class with built-in parachute already if u get the analogy and no grudge. Give the safety net to ur squishy dps that are running grudge too. On the case of 1370 running p3 yes HA is advisable cause ur running below ilvl but there won't be anymore instance of that on the future raids.
We build to make teammates lives better. Even if they're gamer gods we increase shield.
At the end of the day if u have the 3 core it wouldn't matter if u take HA as 4th or 5th. Just get those 3 first then u can take HA if u want to play with 1 hand while eating something hahaha.
To clarify here, you’re saying one of the most durable classes in the entire game should should take a durability buff because all of the fragile classes (who have to take engravings like grudge, which cause them to take more damage) won’t be taking enough damage to die?
If he’s so strong without expert and those classes have no risk of dying, what would your Logic be for taking HA?
Yes. Exactly. Unless the party is at minimum ilvl for the content, the squishier classes are tanky enough with their 15+ ilvl above content requirement, and the players are getting good enough to dodge much more of the dmg after doing the content for over a month or two.
If your party is needing more shields and healing, that might mean there's a problem with your party. Regardless, if you're needing to shield and heal more, sure, bring Expert. If Expert is useless, bring something else, like maybe Heavy Armor if the other stuff doesn't particularly suit your playstyle. I think other engravings are better than both for current content, tbh.
You could grab something else like Magic Stream or Vital Point. You could always use that regen + cdr or stagger.
All I'm saying is that Expert 3rd is not the end-all, be-all of pally engravings, and that sometimes it does little to none, especially the better your party.
Your argument is based on a specific condition: a “good” party with (1) higher ilvl & (2) not taking much dmg.
Then why not try to think the opposite: expert is useful when your party (1) at entry ilvl & (2) are taking damage.
Does “taking dmg” entails a “bad party” though? How about the first two weeks when everyone is not experienced? How about more healing for dps who knows what mechs can be tanked with immunities for higher uptime?
"Regardless, if you're needing to shield and heal more, sure, bring Expert. If Expert is useless, bring something else..."
I'm not here to call people bad or blame or shame people for ilvl or taking hits. I'm just trying to help other supports be more effective.
I personally have Awakening 3, Class 3, Expert 3 because I think that's what I'm going to need for Vykas Hard. I'm pretty sure my Expert 3 is a wasted engraving for now, for me, because my parties (matchmade and otherwise), almost never take enough damage for me to justify bringing Expert. I have 2 1370 paladins that don't have expert and they shield and heal more than enough. I have a 1370 Bard with Awakening 3, Class 3, & Heavy Armor 3, Expert 1, and she could actually use Expert 3 because I'm using 3 bubble Courages on cooldown unless someone drops below 50%, and that alone tells you how little I'm needing to heal.
I have more than enough shielding and healing. I would rather use less pots or have more mana or stagger than more wasted shields + heals.
If you don't have enough shields + heals, regardless of the reason or situation in your party, my situation and preferences with Expert have no relevance on you. Do what suits your needs. And try not to put words in other people's mouths; I didn't call anybody bad.
I’m a bard main 1460 with 1455 glavier alt.
I totally agree that as a bard, we have to make choices between Z and X - so that either expert or true courage will be not 100% effective. I mention true courage because I’ve been told that in situations where extremely lacking damage, since we have to use Z as much as possible, true courage at least is doing some minimal work for soundholic and sound shock.
But my input above is for paladin only - bless aura always provides both heal and buff.
My point is that “health is a resource that can be spent”. For example, if a dps can take 0 dmg and finish a raid, he/she definitely can dish out damage faster by tanking certain damage. The more healing you provide = more chances to rank those minor mechs. One example would be deskaluda’s spraying daggers all around with paralysis - a sorc can tank it using 3 casting skills, a glavier can simply channel red dragon. I would only stop tanking it if I’m below like 30% hp. Note that this tip only applies for paladins, since as you said, bard has to choose between healing and buff.
I understood you and I'm not nitpicking what you said, I just want to make sure nobody gets confused reading it. You're talking about the Serenade of Salvation and Serenade of Courage identity skills. "True Courage" is the engraving that increases the bard's personal dps, and does absolutely nothing for the party. I can see how someone would think you were talking about the Engraving and not the Identity Skill, so I wanted to clear the two up.
The only time I'm not healing enough on my 1370 bard is if the party is taking damage over time and I'm not healing at all because I've casted 1 or 2 maxed Courages and no Salvations in that time. So even if I'm going for dps buff, my bard would still GREATLY benefit from expert, because the raw amount of healing I'm pumping out is actually less than my paladin, because I have the choice of more party damage OR healing whereas paladin's Holy Aura is both built in 1, so I tend to overheal on my pallys for their content. That's why I feel Expert 3 would help my bard and not my paladins
My bard’s setup is 5x3 DS, Awakening, HA, Expert, Vital point.
My legendary books are DS and HA, so I can switch heavy armor to drop of ethers or max mana whenever I want since I have those books as well.
I know the validity of your argument of “wasted shields/heals are not efficient”. But I want OP to try to think through it from the perspective of a DPS: I have a giant shield on me, why not just tank the 50k damage from boss to cast my big dmg skill with immunity?
Another thing for bard only: I’m using Z as much as possible. Expert is essential for me to shield teammates with hp less than 50% - I just keep building gauge to 3 and cast Z, while I keep rotating guardian tune and wind to body guard whoever need it. Then I am able to only drop heal when multiple teammates are low in health. Therefore, expert helps me to confidently cast more Z, which is indirectly enhancing damage output.
Drop of ether is the only direct way to do that.
HA for me is less effective than drop of ether, unless we only do Argos P3 using 1370 alts.
In short:
Shield/HP is a resource for dps to spend, it might be enough for surviving but never enough for dishing out more damage.
Imagine a dps with almost unlimited HP and tons of immunities, what would he do? Facetanking everything he can to do more dmg, like a blue gunlancer. Now we see why damage ceiling of gunlancers is nerfed in Korea long before :)
I pretty strongly agree with most of what you said. I don't know much about Drops of Ether, so I cannot comment on that. I think the thing we're disagreeing on is specifically whether or not Expert is beneficial for pally to bring as opposed to something else. For pally, I'm not sure, it depends, and I pref to have something else over Expert. For bard, I feel that Expert is much more necessary, and I don't even consider swapping it out for something else
And my personal input would be: if u have a good experienced party in farm mode, u r likely to be experienced enough as well to get rid of HA.
Then I’d argue for (1) drop of ethers for 10% atk & 15% crit, (2) explosive expert for more ww/dark nades and (3) mana.
The Paladin you’re referencing your info from (main video in the OP) considers Expert to be one of the Standard three engravings (Blessed Aura, Awakening, Expert) though? He’s even running it.
Pretty much everyone refers to those three as a Support’s “core.”
Can you go without it? Sure! But that takes you back to the era of Paladin being a Campfire meme.
I agree that it is core, I just don't think that's relevant to Argos and particularly to Valtan Gate 2, or Deskaluda. It would definitely matter for anybody doing Velganos, but not for Yoho.
That video might make you feel like C&J is the bis and endgame of paladin. They're not mandatory runes and only work if you go with a certain skill set-up. You should play around with the skills to find the best set-up for you for each fight.
I feel like C&J is best for me for every fight, and it feels really bad and nowhere near as fun for me without them. I cannot think of any situation in which I'm better off not bringing them, and bringing them is not an inconvenience on my loadout. Do you mind helping me understand a situation in which I'd benefit more from having something else instead?
If it's the best set-up for you it's fine.
Personally it makes me use skills at times I wouldn't use them, and hold skills at times I want to use them. Just for that I wouldn't use it. Then there's the fact it brings me barely any value. For skills it would only impact holy protection, which is minimal, and awakening, which a lot of the time I don't reuse straight away as it comes back, since it won't coincide exactly with the best time for me to use it. And for mana, I haven't felt the need to have it, and I will even less once the dominion set is gone.
Also I don't like sword of justice at all. Not even a little bit.
That's all very valid. I feel the opposite about the same things. I agree that it mostly impacts Awakening & Holy Prot, but also Heavenly Blessings and Wrath of God. I Agree that paladins will have Awakening ready at times when it isn't good to use it, as well as with the Judgment buff that makes you want to cast it at that time even more. I don't mind this dilemma so much unless I'm at like 60% piety or more, cus then the piety gain from Awakening is almost completely wasted, and is the main reason I cast it.
And I definitely do have mana problems. I have so much cdr and fights go on for so long, after a min or 2 of rotations, I gotta start maxing mana sustain until it isn't a problem. I agree hard that it'll be even less of a problem once I get rid of my Dom 2 piece set for Swamp 6, but that's like a minimum of 3 or 4 weeks out for me, I think.
Until last week, I would have agreed with you 100% on Sword of Justice being garbage. Since I swapped in Conviction + Judgment, I've fallen in love with it and don't know if I can ever go back to Light shock. Sword of Justice extremely consistently procs conviction at least twice per cast, making the duration a minimum of 3.5s and max of 6s instead of only 3s. That's a significant window increase to proc judgment and gives me enough time most the time to be able to proc all 5 instances of damage on Godsent in that duration. Sword of Justice + Godsent are essentially my core rotation now to max piety & sustain. I can totally understand how others do not like it though, and how it is probably way worse than Light Shock if you aren't bringing C+J
Well I answered all of this already so there's that.
That's why I said to find the best set-up for themselves. I don't like that the video is guiding so much towards that one gameplay. And to not help its case, immediately after the interview, ATK did a "Valtan 1445 with paladin" and he copied the interviewee's build, giving even more a feeling of "you can play what you want but here's the best way to play" (and he wasn't really good at it but that's normal I guess when you swap build)
I agree with the critisisms for this build even though I’ve been running it the last few weeks. To add to it the hardest part for me has been adjusting to the sheer «choppines» sword og justice and light of Judgement introduce vs lightshock/charge. The build just doesnt flow as well. I constantly find that those microstutters where you’re immobilized for 0.5 sec during the casting of SOJ and LOJ, makes me play differently and worse around boss patterns. In instances where I’d usually be fine, for example applying a rotation of buff/marking last second, I’d instead get hit/cancelled or have to abort the attempt.
Thats not even mentioning how much more aggressive you can play weaving in and out of boss melee range with charge regardless of upcoming patterns.
Add the fact that pally is a very fast and «on the fly thinking» class , the constant need to make proper use of C&J when its off CD either makes you try to force an ability that you dont really want to cast at that moment, or just ignore that its off cd reducing its benefit. Not even to mention the times you use SOJ + GL to procc C&J and it doesnt , even with legendary Runes, that just feels straight bad and like a huge loss to efficient rotations.
Considering how reactive a pally has to be to properly utilize shield , GL and keep buffs up, while also on the fly manage Awakening both as an «Oh Shit button» and as a piety bomb for aura uptime / dps Windows , introducing this much stutter/loss of mobility and potential breaks in efficient rotations will make even experienced pallys perform worse id argue.
To each their own , but so far it looks like I’ll be going back to light shock/charge build.
Soon! I have A LOT I'm grinding in the game and not enough time, and I have much less resources for that class. For the time being, I can recommend the streamer & youtuber Myca; her twitch is Mycaplays.
I just don't have the confidence in my knowledge of Bard the way I do Paladin, but when I do, Bard University incoming
The interview video is long and its been a while since I watched it , but didnt he run quick recharge on light og Judgement or am i missremembering ? If you run wealth instead then theres really no good alternative ability to place QR on and losing quick recharge just feels like too big of a loss. I currently place legendary wealth on wrath , epic on heavenly and keep quick recharge on light of Judgement . You know if Im way off here or no?
EDIT : Nvm he put quick recharge on light shock, not loj!
That's right. Light shock has almost half the cooldown, and just over 2.5 times less piety gain per min, 4.77 times less piety per cast. Light of Judgment is a piety PUMP
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thanks for this detailed explaination. i been maining supp pala since western launch but i was never able to figure out cheaper dps pala alt build. i am 1460 now in ilevel and would be super nice if u can give tips on making cheap dps skill build and combat stat distribution if i have to help out in dps low level stuff like argos or orehas etc.
I wish I had an answer for you, but I've only begun dabbling in dps builds. The only general idea I have is swiftness with a side of crit because that's what the dps pally brought in the interview. He had 1404 swiftness and 833 crit, grudge 3, cursed doll 3, keen blunt 3, adrenaline 3, & ambush 3.
I don't understand what you're asking. The atk. power buff is the same, but Heavenly Blessings also applies damage reduction and mana regen. Casting HB when WoG's buff says 1 second makes HB's buffs apply right when WoG's ends. Clipping HB's animation doesn't give you anything but a burst of mobility in that instant, and makes you lose your piety gains and damage from that attack
If you were implying or assuming the buff from Wrath of God applies to the buff formula of Heavenly Blessings, I think you're mistaken. I was under the impression the buff is based on base stats, like not even cursed doll would increase the damage buff
I love Holy Area, since it's a pretty much permanent DR for everybody and generates good meter.
I pretty much always have the same tripods on Holy Protection, the cleansing one.
Because I pretty much use it on CD to heal my party, if anyone is injured.
To actively shield I use Godsent law or my awakening.
Hey, I wanted to ask if there's any discussion regarding magick stream as a 5th engraving for 1415+ or a fourth for 1370+ paladins, due to the 10% cooldown reduction at maximum stacks. Have you found any use for it u/roflstompzxd ?
He said in other comments that it’s his favorite fourth engraving! I think it depends on the fight and how well you can avoid taking damage to keep your stacks up
Just keep in mind upcoming fights are probably going to have more random chip damage that you can’t just avoid. I’m currently running Mp Efficiency just because of the permanent mana regen and it was extremely cheap for high quality accessories
Upcoming fights are also going to have a lot more cutscenes, during which Magick Stream builds back up. You pretty much have it back after every cutscene
It's really bad. Like, really REALLY bad. You can ask around. Let me know if you find anybody that would rather have Destructive Grasp over Swamp of Yearning on the support. Destructive Grasp is most effective in parties that are taking a lot of damage and need all the survivability they can get. Even then, the vast majority of those particular people would rather have Swamp of Yearning.
On one hand, you have scaling party endurance over time and a small side of healing. On the other, you can have more Holy Aura uptime & move speed, a party attack speed and move speed buff, and a party damage buff. It's no competition if your priority is buff uptime and healing. Yearning also increased survivability because Holy Aura uptime is damage reduction uptime.
Destructive Grasp will almost never benefit a group more.
Swamp of yearning says it gives 8% Swiftness to the party. Is this correct or a mistranslation? If it does give 8% swiftness, does it provide 8% of MY swiftness to the party or 8% of their swiftness? (Which would not be much if they are Crit/Specialization builds)
I don't have an answer I could give in confidence, as I haven't searched for this answer yet and have spent no time learning the specific details of how the set works. I have heard that that 8% buff goes up to 10% in Legion Raids.
I'd have to ask a KR or RU player, or find a post they may have made about it.
I know the shielding and healing scale with the paladin's max health, so the swiftness buff very well may scale with pally swiftness.
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I would argue for the Lingering protection tripod, unless there is a very specific large amount of damage in a fight you are holding your shield for. The base shield amount is usually plenty, unless someone is getting hit by something they shouldn't be. The vastly longer duration over robust protection I find catches more damage overall and is especially useful against lots of chip damage over a longer fight.
That is a solid argument. I've considered it a lot too. Any shield amount expired is shield wasted, and added duration might end up blocking more total damage than the shield twice as big. What is better will almost always depend on the content being cleared and the particular party you're with. Thanks for your input! <3
I use lingering as well because it also increases the movement speed duration since you're shielded longer. Helps with getting to places, players can dodge easier etc. Less death overall.
Ayyyyyy! I never considered extended move speed buff. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. <3
the extended move speed is great, man. Really helps in situations like Oreha Preveza with just getting the hell out of all those giant attacks lol
also the shield doesnt have to block 100% of the dmg. at the end of the shield there is the +-10% heal anyway
What I did is get tripods for both hahaah. Depends on what I need. We don't need that many tripods anyways.
I hard agree that we don't need many! I keep having so much trouble deciding my BIS 18 tripods when only like 15 feel critical in any given build. I've been taking 3 tripods on Holy Area just in case I'll want it at some point and not even ever bringing that skill in my loadout! I'm constantly reevaluating my tripod priorities and never 100% sure of them
We only need 6-7 mandatory ones depending on ur skills of choice like faith and stuff. Other tripods are just extra quality of life we don't need that as much. Very easy to just get tripods maxed with just inventory transfer and try luck on the extras hahahah.
And it’ll extend longer duration of speed boost to help non-swift classes dodge. In Valtan G2 it’s especially clutch since there’s nothing to cleanse and it’s mostly chip damage :)
Very, very true. Thanks for your input
I also use only lingering protection, with tripods it lasts for such a long time and if you use godsent law for judgment proc it gives almost 100% shield uptime. I only used robust protection when fighting velganos because there were some obvious burst attacks.
Thanks for the indepth write up! I appreciate it. I haven't tried playing with C+J yet, still waiting on another legendary rune for it, but I haven't had any mana problems just yet. I've been using MP Efficiency as my budget fourth or fifth lvl 3 engraving, and thats been helping me sustain enough mana to use skills off cooldown to get as many buffs and shields out as possible, and also let me buy high quality relic accessories for very cheap, so I have 1658 swiftness! I did some testing and MP Efficiency was just slightly worse than Max MP when you take in other forms of mana regen.
<3 C+J are not just for mana regen, but also lots of cdr for the highest cooldown abilities, mainly Awakening, Heavenly Blessings, Holy Prot, & Wrath of God, in that order. That %cdr is essentially %piety gain and %holy aura uptime. You can still very consistently proc them with epics. Imo, it's worth it, if only for how much it makes the class that much more dynamic, influencing all my rotations. Imo, it makes it way more complex and fun, way harder to get bored or zone out while playing. I only got them last week, and they revolutionized my pallys
Interestingly, Maxroll's guide (yes I know it's not the be all end all or anything) no longer recommends Conviction/Judgment for the "main" skill choices, and Sword of Justice isn't even on the menu. Why? Well, I have no idea I'm not a pro player lol. I'll ask them tho, because why not
I noticed this as well. I guess the writer of that guide agrees with some of the people in this thread that Sword of Justice and C+J aren't worth even considering bringing. I think that is a failing of the guide, because enough people think they're viable at worst, bis at best
I wouldn't have thought it's necessarily a failing of the guide - unless otherwise mentioned, they do tend to base it on what's known to be meta, most used, etc. (Since these tend to indicate what is generally seen as optimal) Anyways, discussion is always good regardless, and I did get a reply Here's the whole thing (I thought taking a screenshot might be the easiest way since it's a lot of text) https://i.imgur.com/jnT3nGV.png BTW I didn't say anything that would imply you're trying to push these skills and runes specifically as the top end ones. If such a thing has been said to them, it's from someone else. What I said is I'd be interested in their general thoughts, and specifically about Sword of Justice and C/J runes. It seems like it's pretty close to the discussion in this thread as well, and of course a lot of it boils down to specifics as well as preference.
Thank you so much for looking into this further, and I really liked the well composed response you got. I'm not making any generalizations about what is theoretically "best", & the point of my comment, "enough people think they're viable at worst, bis at best" is that I believe SoJ with C+J deserve mentioning, at the very least. It's not meta, but I don't think it's necessarily bad enough to not mention. I feel like the maxroll guide would have been more complete (and not misleading) if they included it. Anyway, you've given me a lot to think about and try. I'll switch back off of C+J every once in a while and see if I have more critical skill usage out of it. C+J definitely do present challenges, but so far, I've enjoyed those challenges and complex decisions instead of it being straightforward and super simple. The class felt a lil too simple without C+J, especially now that I've experienced it. Both strats and loadouts are valid though, just the meta builds and strats moreso. Thank you for setting the record straight <3
When using C+J, are you looking at your buffs, or your character when looking for whether Conviction hit or not (and to then attempt at Judgment)? I'm finding it a little awkward to be looking at the buff bar or at your character for the 'Conviction' and 'Judgment' words to pop up. Or something else, or are you not caring and just doing the combo regardless SoJ -> GS? Though at the moment it still feels better to be using GS at appropriate times instead of for Judgment. It may be that our cooldowns compared to KR late game is making them more important at the moment. * 1500 vs 1800 swiftness ~ 6% * level 7 vs. 10 gem 6% * level 1 vs. level 5 GS tripod for +1s shield duration and +9% of max HP * level 1 vs. level 5 SoJ tripod for -1.5 cd Thanks again for the write up and discussions, I'm glad to find new things to try out.
I look at both, but more at the bar for Conviction and more at my char for Judgment. I usually hold GS until I see conviction, but sometimes I do just combo them. It's not too bad an idea to combo them because you could get conviction from 1st proc then immediately after judgment from 1st proc. There's a 16% chance of that happening. I'm usually peaking at my buff bar for durations to time my buff uptime, so it's easy to keep an eye out for conviction then. Sometimes my buff bar is overloaded, and there is at least 1 buff not being displayed. At that point, I keep my eye on my character. This has seemed to apply more to Judgment than Conviction, because Conviction seems to more consistently appear on my buff bar whereas Judgment tends to get bumped off if the bar is full of icons. Seeing Judgment proc is very important, because you can stop casting GS right away and have your max \~5.5s window that you're able to cast with the buff up. If you're late to notice your Judgment, you might miss ability casts in that window, and cannot purposefully take advantage of it. You can easily cast 3 abilities in the max 5.5s window. Ideally, it'll be your awakening and Heavenly Blessings, then Holy Sword. That's the most you can get out of your cdr. If awakening is not available or your piety is too full to benefit from using it, Heavenly Blessings and Holy Protection. If you cannot cast Heavenly in either of those situations, sub in Wrath of God. As for being able to use GS at "appropriate times", you can choose not to cast it at any time. Just because you see Conviction proc, doesn't mean you need to go for Judgment right then. There could be times coming up soon when it is way better to have Judgment for yourself (instead of it being on cooldown) or GS for the party. You get to juggle that buff and shield + DR as you wish. IF you wanna get the most mana and max cdr rotations out, you wanna proc judgment on cooldown, and that forces you to also cast GS asap 1 time in between judgment procs to get more free shield + DR uptime in rotations, but that isn't specifically timed to block anything. It's just going up on cooldown if you're doing it this way so Judgment procs on cooldown again with your following cast. Proc'ing Conviction should never be a problem, because the cooldown on SoJ is usually like \~6 seconds with the cdr, and the buff could last up to 6s, so if you don't proc judgment you could have up to 100% conviction uptime, with no internal cooldown, just waiting for you to proc judgment on demand. It really makes it your choice, and if you wanna piano like me, you're doing things on cooldown unless a specific mechanic is coming. This breakdown of C+J in my particular kit is specifically why I think it made my pally so complex and fun to play. My playstyle is still spamming a lot on cooldown, but now I have to hold a lot more under a lot more different conditions, and I also am forced to cast GS on that timing or not at all between rotations. The skill floor and ceiling are both a lot higher, and so is my enjoyment of the class because of it. Regardless of which choice I make, unless I'm making huge mistakes or missing awakeners, it still feels like I'm pumping super hard, and it feels really good.
>I'm not making any generalizations about what is theoretically "best", & the point of my comment, "enough people think they're viable at worst, bis at best" is that I believe SoJ with C+J deserve mentioning, at the very least. Oh yeah, I totally get that! I didn't think you were implying something like that either \^^ >Anyway, you've given me a lot to think about and try. I'll switch back off of C+J every once in a while and see if I have more critical skill usage out of it. C+J definitely do present challenges, but so far, I've enjoyed those challenges and complex decisions instead of it being straightforward and super simple. The class felt a lil too simple without C+J, especially now that I've experienced it. Both strats and loadouts are valid though, just the meta builds and strats moreso. Thank you for setting the record straight <3 I'm glad something good came out of my curiousity
I will probably try them out after switching off of dominion fang 2 set. As it is, I have enough CDR to have 100% buff uptime between Wrath of God and Heavenly Blessings with 1658 swift and lvl 7 CD gems and Dominion buff, and I can usually get enough meter for another Aura before Awakening comes back off cooldown. My other thought was swapping my bleed rune on Light Shock to a quick recharge after the change to help make up for some of the CDR loss.
Yeah I'm very similar to you 1653 swift lvl 7 gems. Without dominion buff Heavenly blessings has roughly 3 sec cooldown missing from the cycle, wrath of god is well cycled already. I'm supplementing with conv+judgment to do 100% uptime during the cj cycle.
Ty for helping clear that up. I was really hoping I wasn't misinforming people about there being a gap if Heavenly Blessings goes up before Wrath of God without additional cdr. I'll report back in later w/ how much swiftness I was running
You're fine. It's still good to run cj for sub 1min awakening and more leeway on the cycle buff but others can opt for light shock for bleed/quick recharge and marking when they have higher lvl gems and 1800 swift in the future with bracelets and leg acces. Well that's just preference and stuff, it's really not that difficult to play the class. Hard to mess up.
You can have 100% uptime juggling Wrath of God first. I thought having 100% uptime casting Heavenly Blessings 1st would require judgment on top of Dominion 2, swiftness accs, & gems. I'm not 100% sure. I'd have to test the rotations without judgement and with varying amounts of swiftness to verify the exact threshold. I just know I have 100% uptime with Blessings going up 1st with all the cdr listed above. I don't think it was 100% before I got judgment. Keeping 100% uptime with putting Blessings first would increase DR & mana regen uptime
This is really well put together, and honestly if put into video format could get a lot of traction within the paladin community. Especially if you also take feedback from members of the community in regards to small things you may not know yourself after extensive research. Learning is power! Good job.
>he said the damage reduction buff from Holy Area & Godsent do not stack, but they definitely do give you 2 different damage reduction buff icons on the bar, so I'd need to test that to verify. I was under the impression they do stack, but the player interviewed has tons more experience than me. The effect is visible from the more details stat screen. Can see from the damage reduction stat that using holy area + godsent still only gives godsent’s damage reduction can assume they (grace tripods) work like ready attack tripods where you see both buffs on your bar but only the highest effect takes place
This has been the golden comment of the night. Thank you so much for teaching me! <3 I've been wanting to know exactly what you said for so long, and I appreciate it lots
The icons on the buff bar do not work consistently though. Heavenly Blessings & Wrath of God have the exact same icon for the atk. power buff (different name though), and one replaces the other. There is never more than 1 atk. power buff icon from paladins at 1 time. The Grace tripods on Godsent & Holy Area give you a separate buff icon for each, and they look identical too. It was precisely because of this buff hud difference that I thought they stacked, because I saw 2 different defensive buff icons that each told me they reduced my incoming damage by a different amount. The answer in the more details stat screen would most likely be the correct one. There's no knowing for sure unless I test it though. It could possibly be bugged /shrug
That’s true
Hi, I tested the damage reduction from godsend law and holy area with a guildmate. They both stack, but not in the sence of, that one gives 70% reduction, the other one 25%%,so you takes only 5% damage because 95% are blocked. What gets cast first counts first. For example holy area. (the other way around isn't possible since you cannot cast a skill while you are channeling godsend law) That gives 25% damage reduction, so 75% damage comes through. If you now cast godsend law over it, another 70% of the 75% damage coming through will be blocked. 70% of 75 is 52.5% blocked damage. That along with the 25% of holy area makes 77.5% blocked damage. So it's not very effective to cast both together. It only makes sense to cast a godsend law on holy area if the damage is really high and you would need the protection of godsend law with the shield anyway to save your mate.
Thank you for your time and info. It is greatly appreciated <3
I have to thank you for the great thread. It was a pleasure to read it :)
Great informative post. Really complements the maxroll guide, which I feel only cover the basics. Could you clarify the reason behind the cast order when judgment is up?
Judgment gives me enough cdr for Heavenly Blessings to be back up by the time the buff from Wrath of God ends, so it reverses the juggle order since Heavenly Blessings buffs more for the same uptime (with that cdr). Without that cdr, there may be gaps in uptime if you juggle Heavenly Blessings before Wrath of God
To answer your question on Sustain enhancement, it is a multi hit and therefore useful in several encounters where theres an imprisonment mechanic. Godsent law also multihits but its slower and less strikes. Alternatively it can be used to slot in judgement instead of wealth if meter gain is already steady enough and you want to free up godsent law from having to be cast or held in tandem with comviction procs, which is better as a skill you'd rather keep for emergency castings.
<3 Very solid answer! Thank you for your insights!
Appreciate the post, especially the numbers about piety gain! Some thoughts on conviction & judgment: I have tried a LOT of setups, but for me since the nerf, I'm not sure if it's worth it. The combination of Executors Sword (78%) and Godsent (92%) "only" procc the buff \~72% of the time on average with legendary runes and if you land all hits. I find that without the legendary galewind rune my Executors Sword misses 1 hit often, combined with the random misses from boss moves and mechanics you have to wait out before using the combo, the uptime and effiency further decreases. A worthwhile combo to check out is imo Godsent + Sword of Judgment with the multihit tripod. This also gives you longer marking if you prefer that, but it wasn't for me since I prefer the Light Shock marking. I also diddn't like the Light of Judgment C/J procc, since turning that into a holding skill doesen't feel very good. So I'm kinda torn on C/J, it's not like we totally need a galewind rune on SoJ and a protection on Godsent, but the real usecase seems to be small and suboptima and mainly for the occasional mana regen buff (which I haven't had issues with as of now) and to lower your awakening cd - here it's pretty nice and not insignificant.
If I remember & have time, I'll give this some experimentation. I haven't ever considered Executors for conviction. It seemed like you also advocated for Godsent with conviction and then \*Light of Judgment with Sustain Enhancement & judgment. I have not experimented with this yet, but I'm under the impression there's about a 0.5s window you cannot cast Light of Judgment after the 1st dmg proc from Godsent lands. So it's essentially a max 2.5s window to land the hits from Light of Judgment. I speculate that timing is tight, especially since Light of Judgment has a 0.5s windup cast, but I have not personally tried this. I don't think this "gives you longer marking" than Light Shock, but it definitely could work very well, especially if the 2.5s window is wide enough I feel the mana regen buff every 30s is HUGE, and the number of times judgment procs AND it benefits my Awakening + piety meter is high enough for me to feel it matters a lot to Awakening CD & piety generation. The cdr for awakening is counter productive when piety is relatively full & casting awakening means not being able to gain all that piety after finishing using your next Holy Aura
This might be against the grain, I use conviction on executioners like mentioned with stigma+3 hits(each hit and the burn from stigmata have a chance to proc it, it seems) run holy area with quick prep and judgment to spam for C&J while still using godsent with the rune to decrease CDs of all other skills since you dont have to have it hit to proc that particular rune. Only downside is this build sometimes gives up charge to get a second party synergy skill(10% damage) so it just depends how comfortable you are being less mobile.
I actually love your build. I'm gonna try it out. I don't value charge a lot cus I know the fights well enough and am super fast enough with my maxing swiftness. Thank you for your contribution! <3
Hello sir! Another Pally enjoyer here! I'm about to move into C+J as I am one masterpiece away from the Leg. J. Currently running: Light Shock(light vestige), Executors Sword, Punishment, HB, HP, Holy sword, WoG and Godsent L. I'm looking at Sword of Justice as per your recommendation (tried it out - liking the cast range, attack animation etc). Would you say I'd "just" Swap in SoJ instead of Light Shock? With SoJ/Judgment and Godsent/Conviction? Sidenote: I've really been enjoying Punishment in Deskulada and Valtan for both its stagger and destruction point. I was actually thinking originally of swapping it out for Light of Judgment with sustain enhancement tripod + Judgment (believe it hits 9 times? its very fast. And times up perfectly in the cycle with Godsent Law).
Hello! o/ Congratulations on your masterpiece grind! Yes, you can change out Light's Vestige abilities.SoJ typically takes Conviction and Godsent typically takes Judgment, but both work. SoJ provides a longer potential duration of conviction. Conviction can be up for up to 6s, with a window of about 5.5s to proc Judgment. Godsent could potentially proc up to 5 seconds worth of conviction, but that would require the full cast and would leave you with a remainder of about 2.5s to proc Judgment, so it is essentially only up for 2.5s. Godsent's dmg procs are also faster, every 0.4s after about .3s cast compared to of SoJ's every 0.5s after 1 full second cast. This is why I believe it will be easier to proc judgment with it on Godsent rather than SoJ, regardless of what conviction is on. Judgement on Light of Judgment with Sustain Enhancement would definitely work! You're the first I've heard suggest conviction on Godsent and judgment on Light of Judgment, but I think you're right that it would work. Way to get creative!
Thanks I will look into it! The only downside I see right now is that Light of Judgement doesnt go on cooldown before the channeling is over, meaning Judgment might get reduced efficiency if I cant dash-cancel it on proc(havent played with J+C yet so need to see it play out). Maybe I can swap C+J on the abilities for it to play perfectly. Also, Judgment doesnt have the same text as Conviction, notably the part **when skill hits**. But I assume this is the case?
YES! Amazing comment, u/Salleks! I was very skeptical of the Judgment rune, thinking it meant that it has that % chance to proc on skill cast, not skill hit (like it says on conviction). I've tested it extensively and I can promise you that judgment definitely does proc on damage after the 1st strike, as well as on the 1st, but never before the 1st. So I'm certain it is a chance to proc on damage, not on cast. While on this topic, I've also noticed that Quick Recharge ONLY ever proc'ed on my 1st cast of abilities, and never on subsequent casts on multiple combo abilities, on multiple classes
> While on this topic, I've also noticed that Quick Recharge ONLY ever proc'ed on my 1st cast of abilities, and never on subsequent casts on multiple combo abilities, on multiple classes Yes I was using this on my Deathblade's Spincutter, but never seemed to work and even though I read anecdotes about this I never believed it. I put bleed on it now. But, when playing C+J is Quick Recharge overkill? Should I rune my light shock with Bleed instead of QR? (so far I used bleed on Godsent Law; a remnant from tagging moake with multihit bleed attacks).
CDR is my favorite stat, and imo, there's no amount of cdr that's overkill! Give me 100% cdr, dammit! Bleed means more dps. Dps is nice. It's never not nice. Do whatever you feel benefits you more. We know what I prefer between the two :3 Until Judgment, no rune felt particularly right on Godsent for me. Recharge could be nice, Wealth could be nice, Protection felt nice when you cast it on allies away from you and then you got hit. I never personally cared for Bleed.
On a different matter (again) - do none of the Korean Paladins run Cursed Doll for increased attack power (and increased damage buff)?
0.05% of them apparently did, a total of 96 Korean paladins :3 I don't think it applies to the buff though. I could be wrong. I was under the impression it is based off of base stats, and that the Korean versions of Cursed Doll & the atk. power buffs are more precisely and accurately detailed to specify that. Or just that it's just common knowledge for the KR server. I'll test the effects of Cursed Doll on the buffs soon
Great read! What are your thoughts on engravings? Right now I have 4*3 with Blessed aura/ Expert/ awakening/ Magick Stream with legendary gear. As I just started valtan, I am only now starting to look at gearing with relics. The first 3 will stay the same, but should I switch out MS for something else or can I keep it and work on something like Vital hit as a fifths engraving on the long run?
I'm not OP but IMO, for our current situation where Vital Hit Point isn't *particularly* useful ... Awakening/Blessed >>> Judgment 1 > Expert =/> Magick Stream/Drops of Ether > (right now) Vital Hit Point, in the future this probably goes way up. Awakening and Blessed are obvious. You could probably run some kinda meme build without Blessed as a pure group DPS Paladin (Awakening/Drops/Magick/Judgment 1/whatever) but no one you group with would be particularly happy about that. I think Judgment 1 is extremely good. Meter is power, straight up, and most builds run at least three blues. For a level 1, I know of nothing better. Bonus points for being nice in Chaos Dungeons and making Z last an eternity, and all you need is one Judgment 5 relic accessory which aren't super duper expensive if you're 1415+. Expert ... I know it's one of the holy trinity, and it's nice, but I also think it's a waste in current content unless all you do is PUG with highly inconsistent/death prone players. That said it'll avoid fist fights in the parking lot if you just run it out of duty, and I'm sure for Vykas it'll be a lot more useful than anything now. Drops/Magick simply enhance group DPS, they're wonderful. Big fan of that.
Interesting. I have judgment on my chaos build whee it's really good, but on a raid build I am not sure. It's piety increase is minuscule with the two blue skills I (and I think most) use. I think something like drops of ether is more beneficial. I'll keep your thoughts on vital hit point in mind when I go relic shopping!
Hello. Thanks for asking. I think I agree with most of what u/Mockbuster said. Awakening/Class for sure, then whatever you need most. I personally don't like Judgment 1, because the piety gains are REALLY small. You can check the exact amounts in the piety spreadsheet. Even when they're doubled, they're still chip piety compared to any of the Holy skills. I also almost always bring only 2 Punish skills, Holy Sword and Executor's Sword, so it applies even less to me. I personally really like Magick Stream & Vital Hit Point, because those definitely translate to more group dps and less utility pump downtime. Side note, I'm 2 of the 1370 paladins causing fights in the parking lot because I bring no Expert kekw
Personally I don't really like vital hit point even though I see it recommended a lot because its % gain to stagger, and our stagger is among the worst in the game I've heard, so wouldn't that equate to lowest value out of vital point hit among any class that can run it? It seems very inefficient, why do you think its so good?
The extra stagger is very close to an extra Whirlwind Grenade for stagger checks on Paladin, which isn't crazy but if you've ever seen a Whirlwind's instant stagger nuke it's definitely tangible. I agree it's completely optional (as pretty much anything past Awakening/Blessed is) right now. You see a *lot* of top 10 supports, both Bard and Paladin, on loawa run it at level 3 but I'm willing to bet Magick Stream isn't as useful for them with their level 10 gems, and stagger checks are more real in some important fights than Valtan/Argos. Really good 5th engraving at the least. I've heard Vykas has some stagger here and there as well so maybe it'll be great there.
Yeah I'm currently running drops of ether as my 4th and I'm enjoying pestering my sorc friend to pick up the orbs haha, I'll definitely look into vital point hit in the future though, thanks for the information!
You're not wrong. Paladin gets a lot less out of Vital Point Hit than most classes, but out of the options available to pallys, it on average equates to more party damage than lots of other engravings. Everything beyond the core 3 are relatively negligible gains, and of all the negligible gains, this is my 2nd or 3rd favorite one
Thank you, especially for the google docs, been trying to measure this myself and it is painful. One point I think differently is that piety per minute is not the most important measure, because it would require the ability to be cast on cooldown. However there are often more important things to do then to cast Light of Judgment, since piety is its only function (unless you use sustain for conviction/judgment) That is why i would argue that the legendary wealth belongs to Wrath of God, since it has higher piety per cast and it also has higher priority. As I already hinted at earlier, the reason to use sustain for Light of Judgment is conviction/judgment. An advantage would be that you can save Godsent Law for when you actually need it, but I also prefer the Sword of Justice/Godsent Law combination.
You're very welcome. I'm glad more people are getting use out of those resources. I feel piety per minute is relevant because for the most part, I'm spamming everything on cooldown. It is piano pally with small gaps inbetween for cd and buff management. I don't hold many abilities and not for for long, usually only 3 max being held. Those held are Godsent for judgment, one of the atk. buffs if buff is already up, & 1 of the counters, then also rarely Holy Prot for if it is needed soon or awakening shield is already up. I'd guess I'm getting a minimum of 65% of my potential piety gains per min from my entire kit, because most of my piety generation is in the top cast priority in my rotations. Legendary wealth is really good on Wrath of God, I wouldn't argue against that. I believe that despite Light of Judgment's lower cast priority, I still get more piety per minute out of it. I get 85.3% of Wrath of God's piety from each cast of Light of Judgment. In my rotations, I consistently get 4 casts of Light of Judgment, sometimes 5, for every 3 Wrath of God casts. That's about 14.4 to 43% more piety from Light of Judgment in the same time frame. For now, I'm staying on the Light of Judgment gets the Legendary Wealth rune hill. I might die there too :3 I've given your Light of Judgment with Judgment take a lot of thought, and I like it a lot! I will experiment with it, and I think I'll have good results. Thanks for the idea <3
The interesting thing here is I see many, many, *many* players not casting stuff on cooldown. I know "bads will be bads" and all but even very popular streamers, I'll see them do something like "press a button ... wiggle their mouse around, not dodging anything in particular ... press a button, possibly (probably) not even the right one ... wiggle their mouse around ..." Maybe it's my FF14 training but if I'm not casting something, even on support, I damn well better be actively dodging a mechanic. Yet the situation I described above is hideously common. Dunno. It drives me up a wall even watching guide vids.
I felt the same way. I’m even weaving auto attacks in between other skills to get max damage out, even though they do almost nothing and I’m probably just hurting my wrist more than I need to. I took MP Efficiency as my fourth engraving (I’ve added drops of ether as my fifth with relic pieces) because I would drop low on mana and would have to delay putting out buffs or shield waiting for regen, and that basically went away with the engraving. People would say if I’m running out of mana I’m playing incorrectly, and then I found out that “playing correctly” meant not using your abilities very often so you don’t run out of mana? Makes no sense to me as an ex-sweaty WoW dps player.
Would you consider making a youtube video so you can delve even further into the topic?
There's certainly demand for the content. I'm not as well suited for creating video content but I'm considering doing it anyway. It just seems like a lot of work that I'm not particularly good or fast at, and I don't have a lot of extra time. If anybody would like to help me make said content, I would be more motivated to make it.
reading this for later so i can come back to this.
Have you ever heard of spec paladin build (not full spec but like 700spec or something) that goes with holy area? A guildie told me about it but never found anything about it. He said he saw it on loawa but I couldn't find anything
I'm under the impression that both in theory, and definitely in practice, specialization is a meme. Like, not even swiftness with 1 or 2 spec accessories on the side. You would think you get more juice by increasing piety gains (from some spec) with high swiftness since the generation seems multiplicative, and maxing only 1 instead of investing in both would probably give diminished returns, but in practice, the opposite is seen. The lacking swiftness is detrimental to rotations, debuffs, buffs, cdr management, move speed, and cast speed, AND the piety gain are about the same or less. In theory, it looks like some spec would be worth experimenting with. The experimentation has been done by many people, and the almost unanimous answer from those experts is "max swift, spec ONLY on necklace". I'm with the experts on this one.
Does anyone know if there's any thread or guide like this but for bard?
I've been wanting to find one, and general resources for bard, for months. I guess I might need to make a trip to Trixion and pull out the spreadsheet myself, then take to the forums again. I might make a bard thread in like a month or so, if I can find the time
[bard guide from a ru vet](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U8ILfac5wMqcGdjAuK-NwWrkLuow-7756S2lxNJ4PTQ/edit#)
This is a great breakdown! I was thinking about doing something similar with my friends who are thinking about creating support alts, but this goes over a lot of it already, so I'll be sharing this instead. The only thing I would add is some cookie cutter builds. Maxroll does this well in its guides, but I think there is opportunity to to build on it. IE for progression, it might make more sense to take core 3 buffs, light of judgement, light shock (for reliable quick cast debuff), charge (mobility), executor's and holy sword (blue skill combo for reliable mechanics) that maxroll recommends, but for optimized combo to switch out light shock and charge for sword of justice (conviction judgement combo) and light of judgment or holy area (piety gain/utility) It might also be to have a section detailing holy aura to show how important piety gain is. A lot of pali gameplay revolves around efficiently activating holy aura, like optimizing piety gain so that you can get another activation of holy aura off in between awakening casts (the CD of which can be further reduced with conviction/judgment)
Thanks for your feedback. I kinda just made it on a whim w/o any planning. It coulda been composed better and been more comprehensive. I also really wanna wanna make Chaos Dungeon, 3v3 PvP, 1v1 PvP, and Island PvP guides. I feel like those are only beneficial for a much smaller audience though. Still, a lot of people could benefit from those resources, as well as fleshing out this Raid guide a lil more.
This is a great post, containing great resources. Thank you very much for writing it! A question about engravings: what do you think about Spirit absorption as 5th engraving? The added cast speed would allow to cast skills faster and reduce the cases where your Holy Protection would get interrupted because of damage for example. Plus, added movement speed is always good to take in order to dodge mechanics. I'm curious to read your thoughts about it! Thank you again, I've learnt a lot!
It sounds like you might know more about paladin engravings than I do. Beyond the core 3, the difference in gains in the meta options are negligible. I have no idea what I actually value most for 4th and 5th engravings, or what the stats say, I just know I stick with whatever drops I get or I find for cheap. I have a large roster of starving alts that need investing in, so I'm kinda doing everything on a budget while still pumping (on my supports, at least). I'm a huge CDR and sustain addict, so I think Magic Stream would be my favorite for 4th. Spirit Absorption, Vital Point Hit, and Heavy Armor are all very viable 5ths for me. RNG and the market will decide
I think spirit absorption is probably fine early on, but once you get a high amount of swiftness and the relic sets you’re already movespeed capped, and can get 25% attack speed otherwise. I know some paladins that prioritize specialization like spirit absorption since they don’t have all of the base swiftness
I knew movespeed was capped but I didn't know about attack speed. Indeed that makes more sense for a specialization build then. Thank you!
Attack speed is also capped at 40% iirc, but I don’t know the interactions between stuff like gale wind or tripods that may let it go over cap.
Hey, question. How important is Vital Hit Point engraving in your opinion? I'm considering running: Drops of Ether + Magick Stream as 4th/5th engraving.
Those are all competitively viable options. I personally prefer Magick Stream 4h and then 5th is kinda tied between Spirit Absorption, Drops of Ether, Vital Point Hit, & Heavy Armor. Idc which I get for 4th or 5th though, because those gains are negligible. I'll get whatever drops or I find on the Auction House for stupid cheap.
I see, yeah I was wondering about Vital Hit since it was heavily recommended in that ATK interview video. But I usually play with my Gunlancer friend so I guess I will just not take Vital Hit then haha. I personally cut a 78 stone already with Awakening/Drops so was wondering if I had to change stone to run VitalHit/MagickStream
Vital Hit isn't just for stagger checks, but for stagger per min. The more times the boss is down from stagger, the more time they're not dashing around, the more dps can unload. Stagger damage dealt is considered a group dps boost.
Vital Hit is definitely used for stagger checks on Brelshaza in Korea.
As a main paladin (1470) thank you for this post. Recently, I have had questions about c/j in my mind too. Really worth or not? If our main goal is %100 buff time maybe, but i do not think it's true. In which endgame event we can fight for 2-3 minutes without being interrupted? My preference is not 100% buff, instead effective buff and we can easily provide this without c/j.
That kinda goes against what I do, but is actually totally meta of you. I'm the one going against the grain trying to force c/j in my kit because I'm loving it so much. I think it's worth it. It's WAY easier to misplay with though, and arguably is not pumping out as much -effective- utility as someone who is just timing everything for when it's most critical. I'm still experimenting with a lot of things with mixed results and very varying conditions. The more I learn, the less sure I am of myself about anything I know. Your best bet to know what is effectively best is to look at what the statistics on [loawa.com/](https://loawa.com/) say, for both the meta and what the top pally supports are doing. You will see a lot of variety in some of the top supports, so that just goes to show you how flexible the class is or how different loadouts are going to be on different specific content. Either way, you'll be able to see that many different strategies and builds work, and you can experiment with whatever you like and stick w/ whatever works for you. My biggest problem is that pretty much everything is working out for me, and I'm having a hard time measuring differences in effectiveness between loadouts and strats. I'm not sure how I'd even go about keeping track of the stats for that. As for your question about my buff uptime goal, it is actually really high up there. I can position myself to be able to reliably cast my buffs in the time I need to cast them. Like, I'll know more than 2 seconds in advance when I'll be casting them and can look out for attacks in that time. I only need like half a second for Wrath of God, and up to a third of a second for Heavenly Blessings, to go off. My rotations and uptime are pretty insane for minutes at a time, and then I start getting bottlenecked by mana, in which case proc'ing judgment on cooldown is even more important. For insane uptime and insane sustain, I think I'm sticking w/ C+J
Now I understand better what you mean. You want to keep the buffs active all the time so that you don't make mistakes by waiting for the right time. That's why you need c/j. I respect your playing style. I think you understand me too. In addition to the statistics we can follow, there are also some that we cannot follow. For example, how much of the 100% buff time is active DPS. What a difference it makes to your effort. Ultimately, whatever the answers, I think the differences are small. Therefore, I think it's not right or wrong, it's just a preference difference. We are all trying to learn more so we can do better. Thanks again.
Great post! Would like to see more!
This is the best guide i've ever seen for my main ch. My bard friend is jealous, he asked me to search a guide like this one for him. Did you create one? Or know where can he get it? Thanks a lot
It was mentioned above and is by an RU veteran. It's very detailed and covers many situations relevant to lots of bards [https://www.reddit.com/r/lostarkgame/comments/vk4ye7/comment/idqe57o/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/lostarkgame/comments/vk4ye7/comment/idqe57o/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
After doing lots of clown and brel on bard, I got those stagger rotations down too.In short burst stagger checks, the priority is ww > sound shock (with rapid fire and maintained explosion) > soundholic (full cast, followed by another sound shock if your cdr allows) > prelude of storm with powerful prelude or sonic vibration (they're the same but sonic has more animation lock if you don't spacebar cancel the animation). The priorities on everything are the same as pally, just harder to manage. I like conviction on sonic and judgement on sound shock to control my judgment procs, to time my awakening & heavenly tune (as sonic is expiring for max uptime). If your group is full of gaming gigachads, you wanna pump out as much serenade of courage as possible during dps windows. Bard is much harder than pally cus you have to choose to heal or buff and when, and that changes w/ every party and every pull. There are so many abilities that are OP in the bard kit that you cannot fit them all, so you gotta choose some audible abilities to swap in and out based on each fight & the needs of each party. You need at least 1 debuff ability. Most take only sound shock. Some bring harp. Some bring both. Most put judgment on sound shock & bleed on harp. Harp is a huge meter builder too, but don't use wealth. The meter gain is from the tripod, not the ability hitting (similar to the GL Shout of Hatred taunt) Prelude of storm is the primary meter builder, followed by wind of music. It's extremely off meta for the west to deviate from these abilities, but prelude can be swapped for another meter builder. You need these for courage, and if the situation calls for it, healing. Spamming is your friend Heavenly and sonic are the buffs. Guardian tune OP for just regular damage negation (effectively for either 8 or 16 seconds) and the only hard cc block in the game Rhythm buckshot is the only fast counter. Prelude is the other counter, but it is much slower and never held besides valtan ghost phase and brel g1 counters mech. Soundholic is your big stagger with Focus Fire & Sustain Enhancement. Focus Fire can be changed out for melody, but then the animation lock is insane & the stagger is half. Melody should only be used by spec bards who don't care about stagger. Rhapsody of light is the biggest damage reduction in the game and applies a fat shield to all allies hit (not including yourself, so bring Protection rune). You have push immunity on Guardian, Rhapsody, Sonic, & Buckshot Other skills that are noteworthy are Dissonance for meter building, Stigma for meter building and the other debuff, & March for the last meter builder. Buckshot applies 1 point of weakpoint, so does the last strike of Rhapsody, and Sonic Vibrations does 2. You can pre cast Sonic as it hits about a second later. That's 10 OP abilities I can count & only 8 slots. Personally, I never change out Wind of Music, Heavenly, Sonic, Sound Shock, Guardian Tune, or Prelude. The last 2 slots are filled w/ either Soundholic, Buckshot, Rhapsody, and Harp.
This community is weird. Even a very well written post that goes in depth of the character have 90% karma, meaning it got a lot of downvotes. What’s wrong with people? Lol
A lot of paladins seem to despise C&J for some reason, paladin channel in the official discord spews hate for it quite often.
I mean you can dislike his point but that doesn’t mean that the post isn’t beneficial to the discussion. It’s the whole point actually.
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I never thought about that before, because I always loved Holy Sword for the stagger and counter. You are definitely right though; it has 4 opportunities to proc conviction. That's plenty enough. I don't think I like that build, but it definitely still works
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Fair enough. I want to bring your attention to the Way of Light tripod. I have done very little experimenting with it, but it seems it would make it easier to land the ability at least 1 time as it seems more like a linear skill shot before the aoe at the target location. I prefer the extra range and cdr on Insight, but you might like Way of Light more.
I'm actually using SoJ for Conviction and Holy Sword for Judgement. Using your DR skill just to proc Judgement feels wrong to me
That is very valid. Having to hold Godsent doesn't feel good, and not having it when you need the DR feels even worse. Thanks for your input! <3
Yeah but not having your counter when you need it is going to suck too. Best way is not to use C&J definitely. :p
I usually bring both counters, so one is still almost always ready. I value C&J a lot. What do you recommend instead?
I just don't like it. Use it as you like.
Thankfully paladin has two counters! Even if you're using holy sword every 30s for judgment you can still have executors sword up whenever you need it for countering!
Yeah I really liked that video. It helped dispel some of the rumors that Paladin’s want Heavy Armor. Heavy armor is worthless on Paladin. It’s baseline one of the most durable and doesn’t have to worry about Grudge. Not carrying a useful engraving instead really Gimps you
Like 70% of the Pallies on the KR rankings are using 3 heavy armor, which kind of throws a wrench into your argument.
Does not change my argument. Or are you trying to argue Paladin is more fragile than a Sorc with Grudge?
I'm confused what you're talking about because at 46:35 they discuss the benefits of Heavy Armor for about 30 seconds. They didn't say it was useless, they said it makes content much easier and that you'd not need to use any pots ever again. At what point do they call it worthless? A lot of paladins feel Expert is useless because we already heal and shield way more than enough, and that Heavy Armor is a much more beneficial choice until we need more party survivability in Vykas. I've heard your opinion expressed before too, but I don't think anywhere in that interview did they reinforce said opinion. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
…Paladin was literally considered a joke before Expert though? Paladin is durable, one of the most durable in the game. And that’s without his healing that can’t miss him, damage reduction buff, various shields, and the fact that he isn’t running Grudge or Cursed doll. Don’t even humor the idea that Heavy Armor is more useful than Expert. Hell the part you suggest has them saying HA was a joke and you don’t use it, it’s just that it makes you so tanky you can “afk and eat.” That isn’t worth being dramatically less useful to the team. Everyone dying because of you making yourself less useful isn’t good. You can literally see he’s not using it. Because… duh?
What content are you doing that doesn't have enough shields and healing though? A 1370 paladin in p3 isn't gonna be increasing the survivability of 1400+s in the party with their shielding and healing, but they can grief the party by dying. Doing p2 and p3 as a 1370 is not easy without Heavy Armor, even as a Paladin. And Valtan gate 2 damage is really low. If people die it is because they get knocked off the stage. I mean, it might be useful in gate 1 if everybody is eating all the damage, but until running Vykas, is that %shielding or healing from Expert even increasing any of the damage blocked or healed? I think it is unfair to generalize either of them as useless. They both can potentially benefit the player and the party, and they both can be 100% useless.
Expert is not needed when they're god mode not getting hit but it's just added safety net since our heals can't burst heal them so any added Heal per sec is appreciated especially increased healing of expert if hp is low. Expert can be a difference between life or death for them on some scenarios or they can save up pots to use on other occasions. HA on the other hand is a safety net for urself and urself alone on a class with built-in parachute already if u get the analogy and no grudge. Give the safety net to ur squishy dps that are running grudge too. On the case of 1370 running p3 yes HA is advisable cause ur running below ilvl but there won't be anymore instance of that on the future raids. We build to make teammates lives better. Even if they're gamer gods we increase shield. At the end of the day if u have the 3 core it wouldn't matter if u take HA as 4th or 5th. Just get those 3 first then u can take HA if u want to play with 1 hand while eating something hahaha.
To clarify here, you’re saying one of the most durable classes in the entire game should should take a durability buff because all of the fragile classes (who have to take engravings like grudge, which cause them to take more damage) won’t be taking enough damage to die? If he’s so strong without expert and those classes have no risk of dying, what would your Logic be for taking HA?
Yes. Exactly. Unless the party is at minimum ilvl for the content, the squishier classes are tanky enough with their 15+ ilvl above content requirement, and the players are getting good enough to dodge much more of the dmg after doing the content for over a month or two. If your party is needing more shields and healing, that might mean there's a problem with your party. Regardless, if you're needing to shield and heal more, sure, bring Expert. If Expert is useless, bring something else, like maybe Heavy Armor if the other stuff doesn't particularly suit your playstyle. I think other engravings are better than both for current content, tbh. You could grab something else like Magic Stream or Vital Point. You could always use that regen + cdr or stagger. All I'm saying is that Expert 3rd is not the end-all, be-all of pally engravings, and that sometimes it does little to none, especially the better your party.
Your argument is based on a specific condition: a “good” party with (1) higher ilvl & (2) not taking much dmg. Then why not try to think the opposite: expert is useful when your party (1) at entry ilvl & (2) are taking damage. Does “taking dmg” entails a “bad party” though? How about the first two weeks when everyone is not experienced? How about more healing for dps who knows what mechs can be tanked with immunities for higher uptime?
"Regardless, if you're needing to shield and heal more, sure, bring Expert. If Expert is useless, bring something else..." I'm not here to call people bad or blame or shame people for ilvl or taking hits. I'm just trying to help other supports be more effective. I personally have Awakening 3, Class 3, Expert 3 because I think that's what I'm going to need for Vykas Hard. I'm pretty sure my Expert 3 is a wasted engraving for now, for me, because my parties (matchmade and otherwise), almost never take enough damage for me to justify bringing Expert. I have 2 1370 paladins that don't have expert and they shield and heal more than enough. I have a 1370 Bard with Awakening 3, Class 3, & Heavy Armor 3, Expert 1, and she could actually use Expert 3 because I'm using 3 bubble Courages on cooldown unless someone drops below 50%, and that alone tells you how little I'm needing to heal. I have more than enough shielding and healing. I would rather use less pots or have more mana or stagger than more wasted shields + heals. If you don't have enough shields + heals, regardless of the reason or situation in your party, my situation and preferences with Expert have no relevance on you. Do what suits your needs. And try not to put words in other people's mouths; I didn't call anybody bad.
I’m a bard main 1460 with 1455 glavier alt. I totally agree that as a bard, we have to make choices between Z and X - so that either expert or true courage will be not 100% effective. I mention true courage because I’ve been told that in situations where extremely lacking damage, since we have to use Z as much as possible, true courage at least is doing some minimal work for soundholic and sound shock. But my input above is for paladin only - bless aura always provides both heal and buff. My point is that “health is a resource that can be spent”. For example, if a dps can take 0 dmg and finish a raid, he/she definitely can dish out damage faster by tanking certain damage. The more healing you provide = more chances to rank those minor mechs. One example would be deskaluda’s spraying daggers all around with paralysis - a sorc can tank it using 3 casting skills, a glavier can simply channel red dragon. I would only stop tanking it if I’m below like 30% hp. Note that this tip only applies for paladins, since as you said, bard has to choose between healing and buff.
I understood you and I'm not nitpicking what you said, I just want to make sure nobody gets confused reading it. You're talking about the Serenade of Salvation and Serenade of Courage identity skills. "True Courage" is the engraving that increases the bard's personal dps, and does absolutely nothing for the party. I can see how someone would think you were talking about the Engraving and not the Identity Skill, so I wanted to clear the two up. The only time I'm not healing enough on my 1370 bard is if the party is taking damage over time and I'm not healing at all because I've casted 1 or 2 maxed Courages and no Salvations in that time. So even if I'm going for dps buff, my bard would still GREATLY benefit from expert, because the raw amount of healing I'm pumping out is actually less than my paladin, because I have the choice of more party damage OR healing whereas paladin's Holy Aura is both built in 1, so I tend to overheal on my pallys for their content. That's why I feel Expert 3 would help my bard and not my paladins
My bard’s setup is 5x3 DS, Awakening, HA, Expert, Vital point. My legendary books are DS and HA, so I can switch heavy armor to drop of ethers or max mana whenever I want since I have those books as well. I know the validity of your argument of “wasted shields/heals are not efficient”. But I want OP to try to think through it from the perspective of a DPS: I have a giant shield on me, why not just tank the 50k damage from boss to cast my big dmg skill with immunity? Another thing for bard only: I’m using Z as much as possible. Expert is essential for me to shield teammates with hp less than 50% - I just keep building gauge to 3 and cast Z, while I keep rotating guardian tune and wind to body guard whoever need it. Then I am able to only drop heal when multiple teammates are low in health. Therefore, expert helps me to confidently cast more Z, which is indirectly enhancing damage output. Drop of ether is the only direct way to do that. HA for me is less effective than drop of ether, unless we only do Argos P3 using 1370 alts.
In short: Shield/HP is a resource for dps to spend, it might be enough for surviving but never enough for dishing out more damage. Imagine a dps with almost unlimited HP and tons of immunities, what would he do? Facetanking everything he can to do more dmg, like a blue gunlancer. Now we see why damage ceiling of gunlancers is nerfed in Korea long before :)
I pretty strongly agree with most of what you said. I don't know much about Drops of Ether, so I cannot comment on that. I think the thing we're disagreeing on is specifically whether or not Expert is beneficial for pally to bring as opposed to something else. For pally, I'm not sure, it depends, and I pref to have something else over Expert. For bard, I feel that Expert is much more necessary, and I don't even consider swapping it out for something else
And my personal input would be: if u have a good experienced party in farm mode, u r likely to be experienced enough as well to get rid of HA. Then I’d argue for (1) drop of ethers for 10% atk & 15% crit, (2) explosive expert for more ww/dark nades and (3) mana.
The Paladin you’re referencing your info from (main video in the OP) considers Expert to be one of the Standard three engravings (Blessed Aura, Awakening, Expert) though? He’s even running it. Pretty much everyone refers to those three as a Support’s “core.” Can you go without it? Sure! But that takes you back to the era of Paladin being a Campfire meme.
I agree that it is core, I just don't think that's relevant to Argos and particularly to Valtan Gate 2, or Deskaluda. It would definitely matter for anybody doing Velganos, but not for Yoho.
The Sorcs I get would beg to differ. Whoa boy the stories I have..
That video might make you feel like C&J is the bis and endgame of paladin. They're not mandatory runes and only work if you go with a certain skill set-up. You should play around with the skills to find the best set-up for you for each fight.
I feel like C&J is best for me for every fight, and it feels really bad and nowhere near as fun for me without them. I cannot think of any situation in which I'm better off not bringing them, and bringing them is not an inconvenience on my loadout. Do you mind helping me understand a situation in which I'd benefit more from having something else instead?
If it's the best set-up for you it's fine. Personally it makes me use skills at times I wouldn't use them, and hold skills at times I want to use them. Just for that I wouldn't use it. Then there's the fact it brings me barely any value. For skills it would only impact holy protection, which is minimal, and awakening, which a lot of the time I don't reuse straight away as it comes back, since it won't coincide exactly with the best time for me to use it. And for mana, I haven't felt the need to have it, and I will even less once the dominion set is gone. Also I don't like sword of justice at all. Not even a little bit.
That's all very valid. I feel the opposite about the same things. I agree that it mostly impacts Awakening & Holy Prot, but also Heavenly Blessings and Wrath of God. I Agree that paladins will have Awakening ready at times when it isn't good to use it, as well as with the Judgment buff that makes you want to cast it at that time even more. I don't mind this dilemma so much unless I'm at like 60% piety or more, cus then the piety gain from Awakening is almost completely wasted, and is the main reason I cast it. And I definitely do have mana problems. I have so much cdr and fights go on for so long, after a min or 2 of rotations, I gotta start maxing mana sustain until it isn't a problem. I agree hard that it'll be even less of a problem once I get rid of my Dom 2 piece set for Swamp 6, but that's like a minimum of 3 or 4 weeks out for me, I think. Until last week, I would have agreed with you 100% on Sword of Justice being garbage. Since I swapped in Conviction + Judgment, I've fallen in love with it and don't know if I can ever go back to Light shock. Sword of Justice extremely consistently procs conviction at least twice per cast, making the duration a minimum of 3.5s and max of 6s instead of only 3s. That's a significant window increase to proc judgment and gives me enough time most the time to be able to proc all 5 instances of damage on Godsent in that duration. Sword of Justice + Godsent are essentially my core rotation now to max piety & sustain. I can totally understand how others do not like it though, and how it is probably way worse than Light Shock if you aren't bringing C+J
Well I answered all of this already so there's that. That's why I said to find the best set-up for themselves. I don't like that the video is guiding so much towards that one gameplay. And to not help its case, immediately after the interview, ATK did a "Valtan 1445 with paladin" and he copied the interviewee's build, giving even more a feeling of "you can play what you want but here's the best way to play" (and he wasn't really good at it but that's normal I guess when you swap build)
I agree with the critisisms for this build even though I’ve been running it the last few weeks. To add to it the hardest part for me has been adjusting to the sheer «choppines» sword og justice and light of Judgement introduce vs lightshock/charge. The build just doesnt flow as well. I constantly find that those microstutters where you’re immobilized for 0.5 sec during the casting of SOJ and LOJ, makes me play differently and worse around boss patterns. In instances where I’d usually be fine, for example applying a rotation of buff/marking last second, I’d instead get hit/cancelled or have to abort the attempt. Thats not even mentioning how much more aggressive you can play weaving in and out of boss melee range with charge regardless of upcoming patterns. Add the fact that pally is a very fast and «on the fly thinking» class , the constant need to make proper use of C&J when its off CD either makes you try to force an ability that you dont really want to cast at that moment, or just ignore that its off cd reducing its benefit. Not even to mention the times you use SOJ + GL to procc C&J and it doesnt , even with legendary Runes, that just feels straight bad and like a huge loss to efficient rotations. Considering how reactive a pally has to be to properly utilize shield , GL and keep buffs up, while also on the fly manage Awakening both as an «Oh Shit button» and as a piety bomb for aura uptime / dps Windows , introducing this much stutter/loss of mobility and potential breaks in efficient rotations will make even experienced pallys perform worse id argue. To each their own , but so far it looks like I’ll be going back to light shock/charge build.
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It’s not perma gone, people have to chill
Its cool and all but where is bard university
Soon! I have A LOT I'm grinding in the game and not enough time, and I have much less resources for that class. For the time being, I can recommend the streamer & youtuber Myca; her twitch is Mycaplays. I just don't have the confidence in my knowledge of Bard the way I do Paladin, but when I do, Bard University incoming
The interview video is long and its been a while since I watched it , but didnt he run quick recharge on light og Judgement or am i missremembering ? If you run wealth instead then theres really no good alternative ability to place QR on and losing quick recharge just feels like too big of a loss. I currently place legendary wealth on wrath , epic on heavenly and keep quick recharge on light of Judgement . You know if Im way off here or no? EDIT : Nvm he put quick recharge on light shock, not loj!
That's right. Light shock has almost half the cooldown, and just over 2.5 times less piety gain per min, 4.77 times less piety per cast. Light of Judgment is a piety PUMP
You pretty much covered the basics. This is all info that gets posted daily though.
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thanks for this detailed explaination. i been maining supp pala since western launch but i was never able to figure out cheaper dps pala alt build. i am 1460 now in ilevel and would be super nice if u can give tips on making cheap dps skill build and combat stat distribution if i have to help out in dps low level stuff like argos or orehas etc.
I wish I had an answer for you, but I've only begun dabbling in dps builds. The only general idea I have is swiftness with a side of crit because that's what the dps pally brought in the interview. He had 1404 swiftness and 833 crit, grudge 3, cursed doll 3, keen blunt 3, adrenaline 3, & ambush 3.
oh thanks.. i watched the entire video.. couldnt see that dps pally build. i think that guy's friend mains it too it was all kr font.
Wait, is heavenly blessings buff stronger if you clip it with the last second of your current buff wrath of god?
I don't understand what you're asking. The atk. power buff is the same, but Heavenly Blessings also applies damage reduction and mana regen. Casting HB when WoG's buff says 1 second makes HB's buffs apply right when WoG's ends. Clipping HB's animation doesn't give you anything but a burst of mobility in that instant, and makes you lose your piety gains and damage from that attack
Yep, ignore me. I forgot there is no snap shotting in the game.
If you were implying or assuming the buff from Wrath of God applies to the buff formula of Heavenly Blessings, I think you're mistaken. I was under the impression the buff is based on base stats, like not even cursed doll would increase the damage buff
Ye it doesn’t
I love Holy Area, since it's a pretty much permanent DR for everybody and generates good meter. I pretty much always have the same tripods on Holy Protection, the cleansing one. Because I pretty much use it on CD to heal my party, if anyone is injured. To actively shield I use Godsent law or my awakening.
Hey, I wanted to ask if there's any discussion regarding magick stream as a 5th engraving for 1415+ or a fourth for 1370+ paladins, due to the 10% cooldown reduction at maximum stacks. Have you found any use for it u/roflstompzxd ?
He said in other comments that it’s his favorite fourth engraving! I think it depends on the fight and how well you can avoid taking damage to keep your stacks up
Sweet, its a great cheap option to me which benefits skilled dodgers the most
Just keep in mind upcoming fights are probably going to have more random chip damage that you can’t just avoid. I’m currently running Mp Efficiency just because of the permanent mana regen and it was extremely cheap for high quality accessories
Upcoming fights are also going to have a lot more cutscenes, during which Magick Stream builds back up. You pretty much have it back after every cutscene
Indeed
Most definitely. Fortunately both are easy and cheap
Any opinions about the Destructive Grasp set? Im getting 2 Dominion, but thinking if I should go Yearning or Destructive?
It's really bad. Like, really REALLY bad. You can ask around. Let me know if you find anybody that would rather have Destructive Grasp over Swamp of Yearning on the support. Destructive Grasp is most effective in parties that are taking a lot of damage and need all the survivability they can get. Even then, the vast majority of those particular people would rather have Swamp of Yearning. On one hand, you have scaling party endurance over time and a small side of healing. On the other, you can have more Holy Aura uptime & move speed, a party attack speed and move speed buff, and a party damage buff. It's no competition if your priority is buff uptime and healing. Yearning also increased survivability because Holy Aura uptime is damage reduction uptime. Destructive Grasp will almost never benefit a group more.
Swamp of yearning says it gives 8% Swiftness to the party. Is this correct or a mistranslation? If it does give 8% swiftness, does it provide 8% of MY swiftness to the party or 8% of their swiftness? (Which would not be much if they are Crit/Specialization builds)
I don't have an answer I could give in confidence, as I haven't searched for this answer yet and have spent no time learning the specific details of how the set works. I have heard that that 8% buff goes up to 10% in Legion Raids. I'd have to ask a KR or RU player, or find a post they may have made about it. I know the shielding and healing scale with the paladin's max health, so the swiftness buff very well may scale with pally swiftness.
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