Me found dis "how ta be a Pladan" an "Lifted" it fum da article tinkin it mite hep ya unnerstand us better. Ifn ya tinks bout it, it makes sum sense! But for ya go sikin da mobs on me, member dat sumwhere in dis article, it sez "when da War an da Paladin of bout equl age n equipment!"...Dat meens dat HAAMS is da Tank!
If ya be interested in how to fight wit a paladan or how ta be a Paladan, me found the full story here as gud information:
http://eq.castersrealm.com/playguides/VIEW.ASP?ID=1072
THE FUNCTION OF A PALADIN IN A GROUP
This is the 'meat and potatoes' of being a paladin. We don't solo well so we may as well make ourselves more appealing to groups by playing well. A good paladin is a bit more flexible than a warrior in a group and can, as I discuss below, make a better option for damage sponge.
A. Tank
The most important job that most paladins do is tanking. By this I mean being the target of all the MOB's affection. By level 50 the paladin is almost always the clear choice for this job.
When a group is spawn limited (as opposed to mana limited) there's a million ways to screw up and still kill everything available. I'm not interested in that case. May as well let the bards tank and the paladin play cleric since efficiency is not a concern. The Planes are another story entirely - see below. My discussion here is for the group that is looking to earn experience, understaffed holding an area and/or has no competition for its spawn (imps and guardians near Djarn e.g.). In this case the efficiency of the group is of prime importance.
As I mentioned above the most efficient use of a cleric's mana is using complete heals. Once a paladin has over 2k HPs buffed he's the ideal choice for playing damage sponge. Warriors may have better armor, but give a paladin in full Valorium a Bladestopper and he's got more base AC than the warrior with full Indicolite without a shield.
The trick to making the use of complete heals effective is timing it to hit the tank as close to death as possible. This is always a bit nerve wracking as a cleric learns his skill, but in the end it can be a fun game - leading to a bit more adrenaline if nothing else. Most clerics, depending on the situation, will start to cast a CH somewhere between 1 and two bubbles of life left on the tank; and the heals should always be announced so the tank knows they're coming. As a paladin you can help the cleric out a bit. The paladin is the only tank that can seriously impact the damage rate of the MOB as it beats on him. Watch your health bar as you're about to die. It's very common for a MOB to suddenly start hitting you a lot harder as you approach zero. In this case bash and cast stun! A CH takes 10 seconds to cast. Your stun will likely freeze the MOB cold for 2 seconds or so. If you're gutsy, Holy Might will freeze the MOB even longer if you know far out enough that the CH is going to be late. This can have a dramatic impact on the chances of a CH hitting something other than your corpse. With a little practice the cleric can get used to this and hold off his CH just a few seconds later - improving its efficiency. Also, a paladin always has the last resort of hitting his Lay of Hands. In theory it's possible that a paladin can use his LoH to assist any tank if the cleric gets interrupted or if the CH is late. In reality, however, all of us paladins can hit [tab] LoH [tab] VERY quickly after months of practice. It's much harder to pick the right Fkey in an emergency situation.
Also consider the fact that the paladin does the least damage of all the tanks (with the possible exception of SKs who are on par with paladins melee-wise). By the 40's all the MOBs we fight know how to dodge, parry, riposte just like we do. These skills can only help the MOB if he's facing the attack though. If we assume that a MOB will avoid a set percentage of the damage he'd otherwise absorb doesn't it make sense that the paladin be the one to lose out on his damage?
That way the group is losing the minimum amount of melee damage. Have the warriors, rangers, SKs, bards, monks, and of course rogues get around behind the MOB and beat upon him with no fear of being dodged, etc.
You'll probably have to talk to the warriors and rangers in your group about not hitting their taunt key. It's as ingrained for them as it is for you. A number of the rangers that I play with literally move the taunt key off their front page of hot keys just to prevent hitting it by habit. They should taunt things off casters, but not off a paladin. Explain why you should be tanking for efficiency's sake. Monks are pretty used to FDing mid-fight to get MOBs off them but if they don't you might ask them to start doing so. And rogues have their new evade skill which should keep them nice and low on the hate lists. Finally ask the rangers to hold off on casting snare for a few seconds into the fight to give you a chance to get firmly established as the target.
This is not to say that common sense shouldn't apply here. An erudite paladin with scarce Ro armor should probably let the ogre warrior in full crafted tank. And even though a level 40 and 50 tank might have the same AC, all tanks can tell you that the 50 tank will take less damage from a MOB simply because of his higher level (especially against anything red to the lower level tank). But for equivalently equipped, same level tanks the paladin should play sponge.
Even if everyone in your group agrees that you should be tanking and takes steps to help you it's still going to be difficult to keep the MOBs on you - simply because everyone in the group is out hitting you! Fortunately MOBs REALLY hate being stunned and bashed. Use of our (up to) two stun spells, bash and taunt can very often keep MOB on the paladin even when he's being far out hit. Damage shields are a wonderful way of helping lock the MOBs onto a paladin since the damage dealt counts towards the paladins from the hate list point of view (though counts to nobody for determining which group gets a kill). Ask your rangers to keep a good thorn shield on you. Finally, don't underestimate the value of a well-timed greater heal to help you taunt MOBs. Clerics all know that healing things is a good way to piss them off. Well, why not use that to your advantage. Heal yourself, the wizard, whoever - it doesn't matter. That 280 HPs of healing will do wonders for making things jump back onto you. It's also very good for taunting a large number of MOBs all at once.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
